November 1890-December 1891
Returning from Sydney at the end of October 1890,
Stevenson and his wife at once took up their abode in
the wooden four-roomed cottage, or “rough barrack,”
as he calls it, which had been built for them in the clearing
at Vailima during the months of their absence at Sydney
and on their cruise in the Equator. Mr. Lloyd Osbourne
in the meantime had started for England to wind up
the family affairs at Bournemouth. During the first few
months, as will be seen by the following letters, the conditions
of life at Vailima were rough to the point of hardship.
But matters soon mended; the work of clearing
and planting went on under the eye of the master and
mistress diligently and in the main successfully, though
not of course without complications and misadventures.
Ways and means of catering were found, and abundance
began to reign in place of the makeshifts and privations
of the first days. By April a better house, fit to receive
the elder Mrs. Stevenson, had been built; and later in
the year plans for further extension were considered, but
for the present held over. The attempt made at first to
work the establishment by means of white servants and
head-men indoors and out proved unsatisfactory, and was
gradually superseded by the formation of an efficient
native staff, which in course of time developed itself into
something like a small, devoted feudal clan.
During the earlier months of 1891 Stevenson was not
in continuous residence on his new property, but went
away on two excursions, the first to Sydney to meet his
mother; the second, in company of the American Consul
Mr. Sewall, to Tutuila, a neighbouring island of the Samoan
group. Of the latter, to him very interesting, trip, the
correspondence contains only the beginning of an account
abruptly broken off: more, will be found in the extracts
from his diary given in Mr. Graham Balfour’s Life (ed. 1906,
pp. 312 f.). During part of the spring he was fortunate
in having the company of two distinguished Americans,
the painter Lafarge and the historian Henry Adams, in
addition to that of the local planters, traders, and officials,
a singular and singularly mixed community. After some
half-year’s residence he began to realise that the arrangements
made for the government of Samoa by treaty between
the three powers England, Germany, and America were not
working nor promising to work well. Stevenson was no
abstracted student or dreamer; the human interests and
human duties lying immediately about him were ever the
first in his eyes; and he found himself drawn deeply into
the complications of local politics, as so active a spirit
could not fail to be drawn, however little taste he might
have for the work.
He kept in the meantime at a fair level of health, and
among the multitude of new interests was faithful in the
main business of his life—that is, to literature. He did not
cease to toil uphill at the heavy task of preparing for
serial publication the letters, or more properly chapters,
on the South Seas. He planned and began delightedly his
happiest tale of South Sea life, The High Woods of Ulufanua,
afterwards changed to The Beach of Falesá; conceived the
scheme, which was never carried out, of working two
of his old conceptions into one long genealogical novel or
fictitious family history to be called The Shovels of Newton
French; and in the latter part of the year worked hard
in continuation of The Wrecker. Having completed this
during November, he turned at once, from a sense of duty
rather than from any literary inspiration, to the Footnote
to History, a laboriously prepared and minutely conscientious
account of recent events in Samoa.
From his earliest days at Vailima, determined that our
intimacy should suffer no diminution by absence, Stevenson
began, to my great pleasure, the practice of writing me
a monthly budget containing a full account of his doings
and interests. At first the pursuits of the enthusiastic
farmer, planter, and overseer filled these letters delightfully,
to the exclusion of almost everything else except
references to his books projected or in hand. Later these
interests began to give place in his letters to those of
the local politician, immersed in affairs which seemed to
me exasperatingly petty and obscure, however grave the
potential European complications which lay behind them.
At any rate, they were hard to follow intelligently from
the other side of the globe; and it was a relief whenever
his correspondence turned to matters literary or domestic,
or humours of his own mind and character. These letters,
or so much of them as seemed suitable for publication,
were originally printed separately, in the year following
the writer’s death, under the title Vailima Letters. They are
here placed, with some additions, in chronological order
among those addressed to other friends or acquaintances.
During this first year at Vailima his general correspondence
was not nearly so large as it afterwards became; Mr.
Burlingame, as representative of the house of Scribner,
receiving the lion’s share next to myself.
For the love of Stevenson I will ask readers to take
the small amount of pains necessary to grasp and remember
the main facts of Samoan politics in the ten years 1889-99.
At the date when he settled in Vailima the government of
the islands had lately been re-ordered between the three
powers interested—namely, Germany, England, and the
United States—at the Convention of Berlin (July 14, 1889).
The rivalries and jealousies of these three powers, complicated
with the conflicting claims of various native kings
or chiefs, had for some time kept the affairs of the islands
dangerously embroiled. Under the Berlin Convention,
Malietoa Laupepa, who had previously been deposed and
deported by the Germans in favour of a nominee of their
own, was reinstated as king, to the exclusion of his kinsman,
the powerful and popular Mataafa, whose titles were
equally good and abilities certainly greater, but who was
especially obnoxious to the Germans owing to his resistance
to them during the troubles of the preceding years. In
the course of that resistance a small German force had
been worsted in a petty skirmish at Fagalii, and resentment
at this affront to the national pride was for several
years one of the chief obstacles to the reconciliation of
contending interests. For a time the two kinsmen, Laupepa
and Mataafa, lived on amicable terms, but presently
differences arose between them. Mataafa had expected
to occupy a position of influence in the government:
finding himself ignored, he withdrew to a camp (Malie)
a few miles outside the town of Apia, where he lived in
semi-royal state as a sort of passive rebel or rival to
the recognised king. In the meantime, in the course of
the year 1891, the two white officials appointed under the
Berlin Convention—namely, the Chief Justice, a Swedish
gentleman named Cedercrantz, and the President of the
Council, Baron Senfft von Pilsach—had come out to the
islands and entered on their duties. These gentlemen soon
proved themselves unfitted for their task to a degree both
disastrous and grotesque. Almost the entire white community
were soon against them; with the native population
they had no influence or credit; affairs both political
and municipal went from bad to worse; and the consuls
of the three powers, acting as an official board of advisers
to the king, could do very little to mend them.
To the impropriety of some of the official proceedings
Stevenson felt compelled to call attention in a series of
letters to the Times, the first of which appeared in 1891,
the remainder in 1892. He had formed the conviction that
for the cure of Samoan troubles two things were necessary:
first and above all, the reconciliation of Laupepa and
Mataafa; secondly, the supersession of the unlucky Chief
Justice and President by men better qualified for their
tasks. To effect the former purpose, he made his only
practical intromission in local politics, and made it unsuccessfully.
The motive of his letters to the Times was the
hope to effect the second. In this matter, after undergoing
the risk, which was at one moment serious, of deportation,
he in the end saw his wishes fulfilled. The first Chief
Justice and President were replaced by better qualified
persons in the course of 1893. But meantime the muddle
had grown to a head. In the autumn of that year war
broke out between the partisans of Laupepa and Mataafa:
the latter were defeated, and Mataafa exiled to a distant
island. At the close of the following year Stevenson died.
Three years later followed the death of Laupepa: then
came more confused rivalries between various claimants
to the kingly title. The Germans, having by this time
come round to Stevenson’s opinion, backed the claims of
Mataafa, which they had before stubbornly disallowed,
while the English and Americans stood for another candidate.
In 1899 these differences resulted in a calamitous
and unjustifiable action, the bombardment of native villages
for several successive days by English and American
war-ships. As a matter of urgent necessity, to avert
worse things, new negotiations were set on foot between
the three powers, with the result that England withdrew
her claims in Samoa altogether, America was satisfied with
the small island of Tutuila with its fine harbour of Pago-pago,
while the two larger islands of Upolu and Savaii
were ceded to Germany. German officials have governed
them well and peacefully ever since, having allowed the
restored Mataafa, as long as he lived, a recognised position
of headship among the native chiefs. Stevenson during his
lifetime was obnoxious to the German official world. But
his name and memory are now held in honour by them, his
policy to a large extent practically followed, and he would
have been the first to acknowledge the merits of the new
order had he lived to witness it.
These remarks, following the subject down to what
remains for the present its historic conclusion, will, I
hope, be enough to clear it for the present purpose out
of the reader’s way and enable him to understand as much
as is necessary of the political allusions in this and the
following sections of the correspondence.
It need only be added that in reading the following
pages it must be borne in mind that Mulinuu and Malie,
the places respectively of Laupepa’s and Mataafa’s residence,
are also used to signify their respective parties and
followings.
To Sidney Colvin
During the absence of the Stevensons at Sydney some eight
acres of the Vailima property had been cleared of jungle, a cottage
roughly built on the clearing, and something done towards making
the track up the hill from Apia into a practicable road. They
occupied the cottage at once, and the following letters narrate of
the sequel.
In the Mountain, Apia, Samoa, Monday, November 2nd, 1890.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—This is a hard and interesting and
beautiful life that we lead now. Our place is in a deep
cleft of Vaea Mountain, some six hundred feet above the
sea, embowered in forest, which is our strangling enemy,
and which we combat with axes and dollars. I went
crazy over outdoor work, and had at last to confine myself
to the house, or literature must have gone by the board.
Nothing is so interesting as weeding, clearing, and path-making;
the oversight of labourers becomes a disease;
it is quite an effort not to drop into the farmer; and it
does make you feel so well. To come down covered with
mud and drenched with sweat and rain after some hours
in the bush, change, rub down, and take a chair in the
verandah, is to taste a quiet conscience. And the strange
thing that I mark is this: If I go out and make sixpence,
bossing my labourers and plying the cutlass or the spade,
idiot conscience applauds me; if I sit in the house and
make twenty pounds, idiot conscience wails over my neglect
and the day wasted. For near a fortnight I did not go
beyond the verandah; then I found my rush of work
run out, and went down for the night to Apia; put in
Sunday afternoon with our consul, “a nice young man,”
dined with my friend H. J. Moors in the evening, went
to church—no less—at the white and half-white church—I
had never been before, and was much interested; the
woman I sat next looked a full-blood native, and it was
in the prettiest and readiest English that she sang the
hymns; back to Moors’, where we yarned of the islands,
being both wide wanderers, till bedtime; bed, sleep,
breakfast, horse saddled; round to the mission, to get
Mr. Clarke to be my interpreter; over with him to the
King’s, whom I have not called on since my return;
received by that mild old gentleman; have some interesting
talk with him about Samoan superstitions and my
land—the scene of a great battle in his (Malietoa Laupepa’s)
youth—the place which we have cleared the platform of
his fort—the gulley of the stream full of dead bodies—the
fight rolled off up Vaea mountain-side; back with Clarke
to the mission; had a bit of lunch and consulted over a
queer point of missionary policy just arisen, about our
new Town Hall and the balls there—too long to go into,
but a quaint example of the intricate questions which
spring up daily in the missionary path.1
Then off up the hill; Jack very fresh, the sun (close
on noon) staring hot, the breeze very strong and pleasant;
the ineffable green country all round—gorgeous little birds
(I think they are humming-birds, but they say not) skirmishing
in the wayside flowers. About a quarter way up
I met a native coming down with the trunk of a cocoa
palm across his shoulder; his brown breast glittering with
sweat and oil: “Talofa”—“Talofa, alii—You see that
white man? He speak for you.” “White man he gone
up here?”—“Ioe” (Yes)—“Tofa, alii”—“Tofa, soifua!”
I put on Jack up the steep path, till he is all as white as
shaving stick—Brown’s euxesis, wish I had some—past
Tanugamanono, a bush village—see into the houses as I
pass—they are open sheds scattered on a green—see the
brown folk sitting there, suckling kids, sleeping on their
stiff wooden pillows—then on through the wood path—and
here I find the mysterious white man (poor devil!) with
his twenty years’ certificate of good behaviour as a book-keeper,
frozen out by the strikes in the colonies, come
up here on a chance, no work to be found, big hotel bill,
no ship to leave in—and come up to beg twenty dollars
because he heard I was a Scotchman, offering to leave
his portmanteau in pledge. Settle this, and on again; and
here my house comes in view, and a war whoop fetches
my wife and Henry (or Simelé), our Samoan boy, on the
front balcony; and I am home again, and only sorry that
I shall have to go down again to Apia this day week. I
could, and would, dwell here unmoved, but there are
things to be attended to.
Never say I don’t give you details and news. That
is a picture of a letter.
I have been hard at work since I came; three chapters
of The Wrecker, and since that, eight of the South Sea
book, and, along and about and in between, a hatful of
verses. Some day I’ll send the verse to you, and you’ll
say if any of it is any good. I have got in a better vein
with the South Sea book, as I think you will see; I think
these chapters will do for the volume without much
change. Those that I did in the Janet Nicoll, under the
most ungodly circumstances, I fear will want a lot of
suppling and lightening, but I hope to have your remarks
in a month or two upon that point. It seems a long
while since I have heard from you. I do hope you are
well. I am wonderful, but tired from so much work; ’tis
really immense what I have done; in the South Sea
book I have fifty pages copied fair, some of which has
been four times, and all twice written; certainly fifty
pages of solid scriving inside a fortnight, but I was at it
by seven a.m. till lunch, and from two till four or five
every day; between whiles, verse and blowing on the
flageolet; never outside. If you could see this place!
but I don’t want any one to see it till my clearing is done,
and my house built. It will be a home for angels.
 |
| * Point referred to in text. |
| ........ Paths. |
| ======== Our boundary. |
| a. Garden. |
b. Present house. |
| c. Banana Patch. |
d. Waterfall. |
| e. Large waterfall into deep gorge where the heat of the fight was. |
So far I wrote after my bit of dinner, some cold meat
and bananas, on arrival. Then out to see where Henry
and some of the men were clearing the garden; for it
was plain there was to be no work to-day indoors, and I
must set in consequence to farmering. I stuck a good
while on the way up, for the path there is largely my own
handiwork, and there were a lot of sprouts and saplings
and stones to be removed. Then I reached our clearing
just where the streams join in one; it had a fine autumn
smell of burning, the smoke blew in the woods, and the boys
were pretty merry and busy. Now I had a private design:—
The Vaita’e I had explored pretty far up; not yet the
other stream, the Vaituliga (g=nasal n, as ng in sing);
and up that, with my wood knife, I set off alone. It is
here quite dry; it went through endless woods; about
as broad as a Devonshire lane, here and there crossed by
fallen trees; huge trees overhead in the sun, dripping
lianas and tufted with orchids, tree ferns, ferns depending
with air roots from the steep banks, great arums—I had
not skill enough to say if any of them were the edible
kind, one of our staples here!—hundreds of bananas—another
staple—and alas! I had skill enough to know all
of these for the bad kind that bears no fruit. My Henry
moralised over this the other day; how hard it was that
the bad banana flourished wild, and the good must be
weeded and tended; and I had not the heart to tell him
how fortunate they were here, and how hungry were other
lands by comparison. The ascent of this lovely lane of
my dry stream filled me with delight. I could not but
be reminded of old Mayne Reid, as I have been more than
once since I came to the tropics; and I thought, if Reid
had been still living, I would have written to tell him
that, for me, it had come true; and I thought, forbye,
that, if the great powers go on as they are going, and the
Chief Justice delays, it would come truer still; and the
war-conch will sound in the hills, and my home will be
inclosed in camps, before the year is ended. And all at
once—mark you, how Mayne Reid is on the spot—a
strange thing happened. I saw a liana stretch across the
bed of the brook about breast-high, swung up my knife to
sever it, and—behold, it was a wire! On either hand it
plunged into thick bush; to-morrow I shall see where it
goes and get a guess perhaps of what it means. To-day I
know no more than—there it is. A little higher the brook
began to trickle, then to fill. At last, as I meant to do some
work upon the homeward trail, it was time to turn. I did
not return by the stream; knife in hand, as long as my endurance
lasted, I was to cut a path in the congested bush.
At first it went ill with me; I got badly stung as
high as the elbows by the stinging plant; I was nearly
hung in a tough liana—a rotten trunk giving way under
my feet; it was deplorable bad business. And an axe—if
I dared swing one—would have been more to the purpose
than my cutlass. Of a sudden things began to go
strangely easier; I found stumps, bushing out again;
my body began to wonder, then my mind; I raised my
eyes and looked ahead; and, by George, I was no longer
pioneering, I had struck an old track overgrown, and
was restoring an old path. So I laboured till I was in
such a state that Carolina Wilhelmina Skeggs2 could
scarce have found a name for it. Thereon desisted; returned
to the stream; made my way down that stony
track to the garden, where the smoke was still hanging
and the sun was still in the high tree-tops, and so home.
Here, fondly supposing my long day was over, I rubbed
down; exquisite agony; water spreads the poison of
these weeds; I got it all over my hands, on my chest,
in my eyes, and presently, while eating an orange, à la
Rarotonga, burned my lip and eye with orange juice.
Now all day, our three small pigs had been adrift, to the
mortal peril of our corn, lettuce, onions, etc., and as I
stood smarting on the back verandah, behold the three
piglings issuing from the wood just opposite. Instantly
I got together as many boys as I could—three, and got
the pigs penned against the rampart of the sty, till the
others joined; whereupon we formed a cordon, closed,
captured the deserters, and dropped them, squeaking
amain, into their strengthened barracks where, please God,
they may now stay!
Perhaps you may suppose the day now over; you are
not the head of a plantation, my juvenile friend. Politics
succeeded: Henry got adrift in his English, Bene was too
cowardly to tell me what he was after: result, I have lost
seven good labourers, and had to sit down and write to
you to keep my temper. Let me sketch my lads.—Henry—Henry
has gone down to town or I could not be writing
to you—this were the hour of his English lesson else,
when he learns what he calls “long explessions” or “your
chief’s language” for the matter of an hour and a half—Henry
is a chiefling from Savaii; I once loathed, I now
like and—pending fresh discoveries—have a kind of respect
for Henry. He does good work for us; goes among the
labourers, bossing and watching; helps Fanny; is civil,
kindly, thoughtful; O si sic semper! But will he be “his
sometime self throughout the year”? Anyway, he has
deserved of us, and he must disappoint me sharply ere I
give him up.—Bene—or Peni—Ben, in plain English—is
supposed to be my ganger; the Lord love him! God
made a truckling coward, there is his full history. He
cannot tell me what he wants; he dares not tell me what
is wrong; he dares not transmit my orders or translate
my censures. And with all this, honest, sober, industrious,
miserably smiling over the miserable issue of his own unmanliness.—Paul—a
German—cook and steward—a glutton
of work—a splendid fellow; drawbacks, three: (1) no
cook; (2) an inveterate bungler; a man with twenty
thumbs, continually falling in the dishes, throwing out the
dinner, preserving the garbage; (3) a dr——, well, don’t let
us say that—but we daren’t let him go to town, and he—poor,
good soul—is afraid to be let go.—Lafaele (Raphael),
a strong, dull, deprecatory man; splendid with an axe,
if watched; the better for a rowing, when he calls me
“Papa” in the most wheedling tones; desperately afraid
of ghosts, so that he dare not walk alone up in the banana
patch—see map. The rest are changing labourers; and
to-night, owing to the miserable cowardice of Peni, who
did not venture to tell me what the men wanted—and
which was no more than fair—all are gone—and my weeding
in the article of being finished! Pity the sorrows of a
planter.
I am, Sir, yours, and be jowned to you, The Planter,
R. L. S.
Tuesday, 3rd.—I begin to see the whole scheme of
letter-writing; you sit down every day and pour out an
equable stream of twaddle.
This morning all my fears were fled, and all the trouble
had fallen to the lot of Peni himself, who deserved it;
my field was full of weeders; and I am again able to
justify the ways of God. All morning I worked at the
South Seas, and finished the chapter I had stuck upon on
Saturday. Fanny, awfully hove-to with rheumatics and
injuries received upon the field of sport and glory, chasing
pigs, was unable to go up and down stairs, so she sat upon
the back verandah, and my work was chequered by her
cries. “Paul, you take a spade to do that—dig a hole
first. If you do that, you’ll cut your foot off! Here, you
boy, what you do there? You no get work? You go
find Simelé; he give you work. Peni, you tell this boy
he go find Simelé; suppose Simelé no give him work, you
tell him go ’way. I no want him here. That boy no
good.”—Peni (from the distance in reassuring tones), “All
right, sir!”—Fanny (after a long pause), “Peni, you tell
that boy go find Simelé! I no want him stand here all
day. I no pay that boy. I see him all day. He no do
nothing.”—Luncheon, beef, soda-scones, fried bananas,
pine-apple in claret, coffee. Try to write a poem; no go.
Play the flageolet. Then sneakingly off to farmering and
pioneering. Four gangs at work on our place; a lively
scene; axes crashing and smoke blowing; all the knives
are out. But I rob the garden party of one without a
stock, and you should see my hand—cut to ribbons. Now
I want to do my path up the Vaituliga single-handed, and
I want it to burst on the public complete. Hence, with
devilish ingenuity, I begin it at different places; so that
if you stumble on one section, you may not even then
suspect the fulness of my labours. Accordingly, I started
in a new place, below the wire, and hoping to work up
to it. It was perhaps lucky I had so bad a cutlass, and
my smarting hand bid me stay before I had got up to the
wire, but just in season, so that I was only the better of
my activity, not dead beat as yesterday.
A strange business it was, and infinitely solitary; away
above, the sun was in the high tree-tops; the lianas noosed
and sought to hang me; the saplings struggled, and came
up with that sob of death that one gets to know so well;
great, soft, sappy trees fell at a lick of the cutlass, little
tough switches laughed at and dared my best endeavour.
Soon, toiling down in that pit of verdure, I heard blows
on the far side, and then laughter. I confess a chill settled
on my heart. Being so dead alone, in a place where by
rights none should be beyond me, I was aware, upon
interrogation, if those blows had drawn nearer, I should
(of course quite unaffectedly) have executed a strategic
movement to the rear; and only the other day I was
lamenting my insensibility to superstition! Am I beginning
to be sucked in? Shall I become a midnight twitterer
like my neighbours? At times I thought the blows were
echoes; at times I thought the laughter was from birds.
For our birds are strangely human in their calls. Vaea
mountain about sundown sometimes rings with shrill cries,
like the hails of merry, scattered children. As a matter of
fact, I believe stealthy wood-cutters from Tanugamanono
were above me in the wood and answerable for the blows;
as for the laughter, a woman and two children had come
and asked Fanny’s leave to go up shrimp-fishing in the
burn; beyond doubt, it was these I heard. Just at the
right time I returned; to wash down, change, and begin
this snatch of letter before dinner was ready, and to finish
it afterwards, before Henry has yet put in an appearance
for his lesson in “long explessions.”
Dinner: stewed beef and potatoes, baked bananas,
new loaf-bread hot from the oven, pine-apple in claret.
These are great days; we have been low in the past; but
now are we as belly-gods, enjoying all things.
Wednesday, (Hist. Vailima resumed.)—A gorgeous
evening of after-glow in the great tree-tops and behind
the mountain, and full moon over the lowlands and the
sea, inaugurated a night of horrid cold. To you effete
denizens of the so-called temperate zone, it had seemed
nothing; neither of us could sleep; we were up seeking
extra coverings, I know not at what hour—it was as bright
as day. The moon right over Vaea—near due west, the
birds strangely silent, and the wood of the house tingling
with cold; I believe it must have been 60°! Consequence:
Fanny has a headache and is wretched, and I could do no
work. (I am trying all round for a place to hold my pen;
you will hear why later on; this to explain penmanship.)
I wrote two pages, very bad, no movement, no life or
interest; then I wrote a business letter; then took to
tootling on the flageolet, till glory should call me farmering.
I took up at the fit time Lafaele and Mauga—Mauga,
accent on the first, is a mountain, I don’t know what
Maugà means—mind what I told you of the value of g—to
the garden, and set them digging, then turned my
attention to the path. I could not go into my bush path
for two reasons: 1st, sore hands; 2nd, had on my trousers
and good shoes. Lucky it was. Right in the wild lime
hedge which cuts athwart us just homeward of the garden,
I found a great bed of kuikui—sensitive plant—our deadliest
enemy. A fool brought it to this island in a pot, and
used to lecture and sentimentalise over the tender thing.
The tender thing has now taken charge of this island, and
men fight it, with torn hands, for bread and life. A singular,
insidious thing, shrinking and biting like a weasel; clutching
by its roots as a limpet clutches to a rock. As I fought
him, I bettered some verses in my poem, The Woodman;3
the only thought I gave to letters. Though the kuikui was
thick, there was but a small patch of it, and when I was
done I attacked the wild lime, and had a hand-to-hand
skirmish with its spines and elastic suckers. All this time,
close by, in the cleared space of the garden, Lafaele and
Maugà were digging. Suddenly quoth Lafaele, “Somebody
he sing out.”—“Somebody he sing out? All right.
I go.” And I went and found they had been whistling
and “singing out” for long, but the fold of the hill and
the uncleared bush shuts in the garden so that no one
heard, and I was late for dinner, and Fanny’s headache
was cross; and when the meal was over, we had to cut
up a pineapple which was going bad, to make jelly of;
and the next time you have a handful of broken blood-blisters,
apply pine-apple juice, and you will give me news
of it, and I request a specimen of your hand of write five
minutes after—the historic moment when I tackled this
history. My day so far.
Fanny was to have rested. Blessed Paul began making
a duck-house; she let him be; the duck-house fell down,
and she had to set her hand to it. He was then to make
a drinking-place for the pigs; she let him be again—he
made a stair by which the pigs will probably escape this
evening, and she was near weeping. Impossible to blame
the indefatigable fellow; energy is too rare and goodwill
too noble a thing to discourage; but it’s trying when
she wants a rest. Then she had to cook the dinner; then,
of course—like a fool and a woman—must wait dinner
for me, and make a flurry of herself. Her day so far.
Cetera adhuc desunt.
Friday—I think.—I have been too tired to add to this
chronicle, which will at any rate give you some guess of
our employment. All goes well; the kuikui—(think of
this mispronunciation having actually infected me to the
extent of misspelling! tuitui is the word by rights)—the
tuitui is all out of the paddock—a fenced park between
the house and boundary; Peni’s men start to-day on the
road; the garden is part burned, part dug; and Henry,
at the head of a troop of underpaid assistants, is hard at
work clearing. The part clearing you will see from the
map; from the house run down to the stream side, up
the stream nearly as high as the garden; then back to the
star which I have just added to the map.
My long, silent contests in the forest have had a
strange effect on me. The unconcealed vitality of these
vegetables, their exuberant number and strength, the
attempts—I can use no other word—of lianas to enwrap
and capture the intruder, the awful silence, the knowledge
that all my efforts are only like the performance of
an actor, the thing of a moment, and the wood will silently
and swiftly heal them up with fresh effervescence; the
cunning sense of the tuitui, suffering itself to be touched
with wind-swayed grasses and not minding—but let the
grass be moved by a man, and it shuts up; the whole
silent battle, murder, and slow death of the contending
forest; weigh upon the imagination. My poem The Woodman
stands; but I have taken refuge in a new story,
which just shot through me like a bullet in one of my
moments of awe, alone in that tragic jungle:—
The High Woods of Ulufanua4
1. A South Sea Bridal.
2. Under the Ban.
3. Savao and Faavao.
4. Cries in the High Wood.
5. Rumour full of Tongues.
6. The Hour of Peril.
7. The Day of Vengeance.
|
It is very strange, very extravagant, I dare say; but
it’s varied, and picturesque, and has a pretty love affair,
and ends well. Ulufanua is a lovely Samoan word, ulu =
grove; fanua = land; grove-land—“the tops of the high
trees.” Savao, “sacred to the wood,” and Faavao, “wood-ways,”
are the names of two of the characters, Ulufanua
the name of the supposed island.
I am very tired, and rest off to-day from all but letters.
Fanny is quite done up; she could not sleep last night,
something it seemed like asthma—I trust not. I suppose
Lloyd will be about, so you can give him the benefit of
this long scrawl.5 Never say that I can’t write a letter,
say that I don’t.—Yours ever, my dearest fellow,
R. L. S.
Later on Friday.—The guidwife had bread to bake,
and she baked it in a pan, O! But between whiles she
was down with me weeding sensitive in the paddock. The
men have but now passed over it; I was round in that
very place to see the weeding was done thoroughly, and
already the reptile springs behind our heels. Tuitui is
a truly strange beast, and gives food for thought. I am
nearly sure—I cannot yet be quite, I mean to experiment,
when I am less on the hot chase of the beast—that, even
at the instant he shrivels up his leaves, he strikes his
prickles downward so as to catch the uprooting finger;
instinctive, say the gabies; but so is man’s impulse to
strike out. One thing that takes and holds me is to see
the strange variation in the propagation of alarm among
these rooted beasts; at times it spreads to a radius (I
speak by the guess of the eye) of five or six inches; at
times only one individual plant appears frightened at a
time. We tried how long it took one to recover; ’tis a
sanguine creature; it is all abroad again before (I guess
again) two minutes. It is odd how difficult in this world
it is to be armed. The double armour of this plant betrays
it. In a thick tuft, where the leaves disappear, I thrust
In my hand, and the bite of the thorns betrays the top-most
stem. In the open again, and when I hesitate if it
be clover, a touch on the leaves, and its fine sense and
retractile action betrays its identity at once. Yet it has
one gift incomparable. Rome had virtue and knowledge;
Rome perished. The sensitive plant has indigestible seeds—so
they say—and it will flourish for ever. I give my
advice thus to a young plant—have a strong root, a weak
stem, and an indigestible seed; so you will outlast the
eternal city, and your progeny will clothe mountains, and
the irascible planter will blaspheme in vain. The weak
point of tuitui is that its stem is strong.
Supplementary Page.—Here beginneth the third lesson,
which is not from the planter but from a less estimable
character, the writer of books.
I want you to understand about this South Sea Book.
The job is immense; I stagger under material. I have
seen the first big tache. It was necessary to see the smaller
ones; the letters were at my hand for the purpose, but I
was not going to lose this experience; and, instead of
writing mere letters, have poured out a lot of stuff for the
book. How this works and fits, time is to show. But I
believe, in time, I shall get the whole thing in form. Now,
up to date, that is all my design, and I beg to warn you
till we have the whole (or much) of the stuff together, you
can hardly judge—and I can hardly judge. Such a mass
of stuff is to be handled, if possible without repetition—so
much foreign matter to be introduced—if possible with
perspicuity—and, as much as can be, a spirit of narrative
to be preserved. You will find that come stronger
as I proceed, and get the explanations worked through.
Problems of style are (as yet) dirt under my feet; my
problem is architectural, creative—to get this stuff
jointed and moving. If I can do that, I will trouble
you for style; anybody might write it, and it would be
splendid; well-engineered, the masses right, the blooming
thing travelling—twig?
This I wanted you to understand, for lots of the stuff
sent home is, I imagine, rot—and slovenly rot—and some
of it pompous rot; and I want you to understand it’s a
lay-in.
Soon, if the tide of poeshie continues, I’ll send you a
whole lot to damn. You never said thank you for the
handsome tribute addressed to you from Apemama;6 such
is the gratitude of the world to the God-sent poick. Well,
well:—“Vex not thou the poick’s mind, With thy coriaceous
ingratitude, The P. will be to your faults more than
a little blind, And yours is a far from handsome attitude.”
Having thus dropped into poetry in a spirit of friendship,
I have the honour to subscribe myself, Sir, your obedient
humble servant,
Silas Wegg.
I suppose by this you will have seen the lad—and his
feet will have been in the Monument—and his eyes beheld
the face of George.7 Well!
There is much eloquence in a well!
I am, Sir,
Yours
The Epigrammatist
To E. L. Burlingame
The opening sentences of the following refer of course to The
Wrecker, and particularly to a suggestion of mine concerning the
relation of the main narrative to the prologue:—
Vailima, Apia, Samoa, Nov. 7, 1890.
I wish you to add to the words at the end of the prologue;
they run, I think, thus, “And this is the yarn of
Loudon Dodd”; add, “not as he told, but as he wrote
it afterwards for his diversion.” This becomes the more
needful, because, when all is done, I shall probably revert
to Tai-o-hae, and give final details about the characters
in the way of a conversation between Dodd and Havers.
These little snippets of information and faits-divers have
always a disjointed, broken-backed appearance; yet,
readers like them. In this book we have introduced so
many characters, that this kind of epilogue will be looked
for; and I rather hope, looking far ahead, that I can
lighten it in dialogue.
We are well past the middle now. How does it strike
you? and can you guess my mystery? It will make a
fattish volume!
I say, have you ever read the Highland Widow? I
never had till yesterday: I am half inclined, bar a trip
or two, to think it Scott’s masterpiece; and it has the
name of a failure! Strange things are readers.
I expect proofs and revises in duplicate.
We have now got into a small barrack at our place.
We see the sea six hundred feet below filling the end of
two vales of forest. On one hand the mountain runs above
us some thousand feet higher; great trees stand round
us in our clearing; there is an endless voice of birds; I
have never lived in such a heaven; just now, I have
fever, which mitigates but not destroys my gusto in my
circumstances.—You may envy
Robert Louis Stevenson.
... O, I don’t know if I mentioned that having seen
your new tail to the magazine, I cried off interference, at
least for this trip. Did I ask you to send me my books
and papers, and all the bound volumes of the mag.?
quorum pars. I might add that were there a good book
or so—new—I don’t believe there is—such would be
welcome.
I desire—I positively begin to awake—to be remembered
to Scribner, Low, St. Gaudens, Russell Sullivan.
Well, well, you fellows have the feast of reason and the
flow of soul; I have a better-looking place and climate:
you should hear the birds on the hill now! The day has
just wound up with a shower; it is still light without,
though I write within here at the cheek of a lamp; my
wife and an invaluable German are wrestling about bread
on the back verandah; and how the birds and the frogs
are rattling, and piping, and hailing from the woods!
Here and there a throaty chuckle; here and there, cries
like those of jolly children who have lost their way; here
and there, the ringing sleigh-bell of the tree frog. Out
and away down below me on the sea it is still raining; it
will be wet under foot on schooners, and the house will
leak; how well I know that! Here the showers only
patter on the iron roof, and sometimes roar; and within,
the lamp burns steady on the tafa-covered walls, with
their dusky tartan patterns, and the book-shelves with
their thin array of books; and no squall can rout my
house or bring my heart into my mouth.—The well-pleased
South Sea Islander,
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin
Vailima, Tuesday, November 25th,1890.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—I wanted to go out bright and early
to go on with my survey. You never heard of that. The
world has turned, and much water run under bridges,
since I stopped my diary. I have written six more chapters
of the book, all good I potently believe, and given up, as
a deception of the devil’s, the High Woods. I have been
once down to Apia, to a huge native feast at Seumanutafa’s,
the chief of Apia. There was a vast mass of food, crowds
of people, the police charging among them with whips,
the whole in high good humour on both sides; infinite
noise; and a historic event—Mr. Clarke, the missionary,
and his wife, assisted at a native dance. On my return
from this function, I found work had stopped; no more
South Seas in my belly. Well, Henry had cleared a great
deal of our bush on a contract, and it ought to be measured.
I set myself to the task with a tape-line; it seemed a
dreary business; then I borrowed a prismatic compass,
and tackled the task afresh. I have no books; I had not
touched an instrument nor given a thought to the business
since the year of grace 1871; you can imagine with
what interest I sat down yesterday afternoon to reduce
my observations; five triangles I had taken; all five
came right, to my ineffable joy. Our dinner—the lowest
we have ever been—consisted of one avocado pear between
Fanny and me, a ship’s biscuit for the guidman, white
bread for the Missis, and red wine for the twa. No salt
horse, even, in all Vailima! After dinner Henry came,
and I began to teach him decimals; you wouldn’t think
I knew them myself after so long desuetude!
I could not but wonder how Henry stands his evenings
here; the Polynesian loves gaiety—I feed him with decimals,
the mariner’s compass, derivations, grammar, and
the like; delecting myself, after the manner of my race,
moult tristement. I suck my paws; I live for my dexterities
and by my accomplishments; even my clumsinesses
are my joy—my woodcuts, my stumbling on the pipe,
this surveying even—and even weeding sensitive; anything
to do with the mind, with the eye, with the hand—with
a part of me; diversion flows in these ways for
the dreary man. But gaiety is what these children want;
to sit in a crowd, tell stories and pass jests, to hear one
another laugh and scamper with the girls. It’s good
fun, too, I believe, but not for R. L. S., ætat. 40. Which
I am now past forty, Custodian, and not one penny the
worse that I can see; as amusable as ever; to be on
board ship is reward enough for me; give me the wages
of going on—in a schooner! Only, if ever I were gay,
which I misremember, I am gay no more. And here is
poor Henry passing his evenings on my intellectual husks,
which the professors masticated; keeping the accounts of
the estate—all wrong I have no doubt—I keep no check,
beyond a very rough one; marching in with a cloudy
brow, and the day-book under his arm; tackling decimals,
coming with cases of conscience—how would an English
chief behave in such a case? etc.; and, I am bound to say,
on any glimmer of a jest, lapsing into native hilarity as
a tree straightens itself after the wind is by. The other
night I remembered my old friend—I believe yours also—Scholastikos,
and administered the crow and the anchor—they
were quite fresh to Samoan ears (this implies a
very early severance)—and I thought the anchor would
have made away with my Simelé altogether.
Fanny’s time, in this interval, has been largely occupied
in contending publicly with wild swine. We have a black
sow; we call her Jack Sheppard; impossible to confine
her—impossible also for her to be confined! To my sure
knowledge she has been in an interesting condition for
longer than any other sow in story; else she had long
died the death; as soon as she is brought to bed, she
shall count her days. I suppose that sow has cost us
in days’ labour from thirty to fifty dollars; as many as
eight boys (at a dollar a day) have been twelve hours in
chase of her. Now it is supposed that Fanny has outwitted
her; she grins behind broad planks in what was
once the cook-house. She is a wild pig; far handsomer
than any tame; and when she found the cook-house was
too much for her methods of evasion, she lay down on
the floor and refused food and drink for a whole Sunday.
On Monday morning she relapsed, and now eats and
drinks like a little man. I am reminded of an incident.
Two Sundays ago, the sad word was brought that the
sow was out again; this time she had carried another in
her flight. Moors and I and Fanny were strolling up to
the garden, and there by the waterside we saw the black
sow, looking guilty. It seemed to me beyond words; but
Fanny’s cri du cœur was delicious: “G-r-r!” she cried;
“nobody loves you!”
I would I could tell you the moving story of our cart
and cart-horses; the latter are dapple-grey, about sixteen
hands, and of enormous substance; the former was
a kind of red and green shandrydan with a driving bench;
plainly unfit to carry lumber or to face our road. (Remember
that the last third of my road, about a mile, is all
made out of a bridle-track by my boys—and my dollars.)
It was supposed a white man had been found—an ex-German
artilleryman—to drive this last; he proved incapable
and drunken; the gallant Henry, who had never
driven before, and knew nothing about horses—except the
rats and weeds that flourish on the islands—volunteered;
Moors accepted, proposing to follow and supervise: despatched
his work and started after. No cart! he hurried
on up the road—no cart. Transfer the scene to Vailima,
where on a sudden, to Fanny and me, the cart appears,
apparently at a hard gallop, some two hours before it
was expected; Henry radiantly ruling chaos from the
bench. It stopped: it was long before we had time to
remark that the axle was twisted like the letter L. Our
first care was the horses. There they stood, black with
sweat, the sweat raining from them—literally raining—their
heads down, their feet apart—and blood running
thick from the nostrils of the mare. We got out Fanny’s
under-clothes—couldn’t find anything else but our blankets—to
rub them down, and in about half an hour we
had the blessed satisfaction to see one after the other
take a bite or two of grass. But it was a toucher; a little
more and these steeds would have been foundered.
Monday, 31st(?) November.—Near a week elapsed, and
no journal. On Monday afternoon, Moors rode up and
I rode down with him, dined, and went over in the evening
to the American consulate; present, Consul-General
Sewall, Lieut. Parker and Mrs. Parker, Lafarge the American
decorator, Adams an American historian; we talked late,
and it was arranged I was to write up for Fanny, and we
should both dine on the morrow.
On the Friday, I was all forenoon in the mission house,
lunched at the German consulate, went on board the
Sperber(German war-ship) in the afternoon, called on my
lawyer on my way out to American Consulate, and talked
till dinner time with Adams, whom I am supplying with
introductions and information for Tahiti and the Marquesas.
Fanny arrived a wreck, and had to lie down.
The moon rose, one day past full, and we dined in the
verandah, a good dinner on the whole; talk with Lafarge
about art and the lovely dreams of art students.8 Remark
by Adams, which took me briskly home to the Monument—“I
only liked one young woman—and that was Mrs.
Procter.”9 Henry James would like that. Back by moonlight
in the consulate boat—Fanny being too tired to
walk—to Moors’s. Saturday, I left Fanny to rest, and was
off early to the Mission, where the politics are thrilling
just now. The native pastors (to every one’s surprise)
have moved of themselves in the matter of the native
dances, desiring the restrictions to be removed, or rather
to be made dependent on the character of the dance.
Clarke, who had feared censure and all kinds of trouble, is,
of course, rejoicing greatly. A characteristic feature: the
argument of the pastors was handed in in the form of a
fictitious narrative of the voyage of one Mr. Pye, an
English traveller, and his conversation with a chief;
there are touches of satire in this educational romance.
Mr. Pye, for instance, admits that he knows nothing
about the Bible. At the Mission I was sought out by
Henry in a devil of an agitation; he has been made the
victim of a forgery—a crime hitherto unknown in Samoa.
I had to go to Folau, the chief judge here, in the matter.
Folau had never heard of the offence, and begged to know
what was the punishment; there may be lively times
in forgery ahead. It seems the sort of crime to tickle a
Polynesian. After lunch—you can see what a busy three
days I am describing—we set off to ride home. My Jack
was full of the devil of corn and too much grass, and no
work. I had to ride ahead and leave Fanny behind. He
is a most gallant little rascal is my Jack, and takes the
whole way as hard as the rider pleases. Single incident:
half-way up, I find my boys upon the road and stop and
talk with Henry in his character of ganger, as long as
Jack will suffer me. Fanny drones in after; we make a
show of eating—or I do—she goes to bed about half-past
six! I write some verses, read Irving’s Washington, and
follow about half-past eight. O, one thing more I did, in
a prophetic spirit. I had made sure Fanny was not fit to
be left alone, and wrote before turning in a letter to
Chalmers, telling him I could not meet him in Auckland
at this time. By eleven at night, Fanny got me wakened—she
had tried twice in vain—and I found her very bad.
Thence till three, we laboured with mustard poultices, laudanum,
soda and ginger—Heavens! wasn’t it cold; the land
breeze was as cold as a river; the moon was glorious in
the paddock, and the great boughs and the black shadows
of our trees were inconceivable. But it was a poor time.
Sunday morning found Fanny, of course, a complete
wreck, and myself not very brilliant. Paul had to go to
Vailele re cocoa-nuts; it was doubtful if he could be back
by dinner; never mind, said I, I’ll take dinner when you
return. Off set Paul. I did an hour’s work, and then
tackled the house work. I did it beautiful: the house was
a picture, it resplended of propriety. Presently Mr. Moors’
Andrew rode up; I heard the doctor was at the Forest
House and sent a note to him; and when he came, I
heard my wife telling him she had been in bed all day,
and that was why the house was so dirty! Was it grateful?
Was it politic? Was it TRUE?—Enough! In the
interval, up marched little L. S., one of my neighbours,
all in his Sunday white linens; made a fine salute, and
demanded the key of the kitchen in German and English.
And he cooked dinner for us, like a little man, and had
it on the table and the coffee ready by the hour. Paul had
arranged me this surprise. Some time later, Paul returned
himself with a fresh surprise on hand; he was almost
sober; nothing but a hazy eye distinguished him from
Paul of the week days: vivat!
On the evening I cannot dwell. All the horses got out
of the paddock, went across, and smashed my neighbour’s
garden into a big hole. How little the amateur conceives
a farmer’s troubles. I went out at once with a lantern,
staked up a gap in the hedge, was kicked at by a chestnut
mare, who straightway took to the bush; and came back.
A little after, they had found another gap, and the crowd
were all abroad again. What has happened to our own
garden nobody yet knows.
Fanny had a fair night, and we are both tolerable this
morning, only the yoke of correspondence lies on me heavy.
I beg you will let this go on to my mother. I got such a
good start in your letter, that I kept on at it, and I have
neither time nor energy for more.—Yours ever,
R. L. S.
Something new.—I was called from my letters by the
voice of Mr. ——, who had just come up with a load of
wood, roaring, “Henry! Henry! Bring six boys!” I
saw there was something wrong, and ran out. The cart,
half unloaded, had upset with the mare in the shafts;
she was all cramped together and all tangled up in harness
and cargo, the off shaft pushing her over, the carter holding
her up by main strength, and right along-side of her—where
she must fall if she went down—a deadly stick
of a tree like a lance. I could not but admire the
wisdom and faith of this great brute; I never saw
the riding-horse that would not have lost its life in
such a situation; but the cart-elephant patiently waited
and was saved. It was a stirring three minutes, I can
tell you.
I forgot in talking of Saturday to tell of one incident
which will particularly interest my mother. I met Dr.
Davis from Savaii, and had an age-long talk about Edinburgh
folk; it was very pleasant. He has been studying
in Edinburgh, along with his son; a pretty relation. He
told me he knew nobody but college people: “I was
altogether a student,” he said with glee. He seems full
of cheerfulness and thick-set energy. I feel as if I could
put him in a novel with effect; and ten to one, if I
know more of him, the image will be only blurred.
Tuesday, Dec. 2nd.—I should have told you yesterday
that all my boys were got up for their work in moustaches
and side-whiskers of some sort of blacking—I suppose
wood-ash. It was a sight of joy to see them return at
night, axe on shoulder, feigning to march like soldiers, a
choragus with a loud voice singing out, “March—step!
March—step!” in imperfect recollection of some drill.
R. L. S.
To E. L. Burlingame
The intention here announced was only carried out to the extent
of finishing one paper, My First Book, and beginning a few others—Genesis
of the Master of Ballantrae, Rosa Quo Locorum, etc.; see
Edinburgh edition, Miscellanies, vol. iv. The “long experience of
gambling places” is a phrase which must not be misunderstood.
Stevenson loved risk to life and limb, but hated gambling for money,
and had known the tables only as a looker-on during holiday or
invalid travels as a boy and young man. “Tamate” is the native
(Rarotongan) word for trader, used especially as a name for the
famous missionary pioneer, the Rev. James Chalmers, for whom
Stevenson had an unbounded respect.
[Vailima, December1890.]
MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—By some diabolical accident,
I have mislaid your last. What was in it? I know not,
and here I am caught unexpectedly by the American mail,
a week earlier than by computation. The computation,
not the mail, is supposed to be in error. The vols. of
Scribner’s have arrived, and present a noble appearance
in my house, which is not a noble structure at present. But
by autumn we hope to be sprawling in our verandah,
twelve feet, sir, by eighty-eight in front, and seventy-two
on the flank; view of the sea and mountains, sunrise,
moonrise, and the German fleet at anchor three miles
away in Apia harbour. I hope some day to offer you a
bowl of kava there, or a slice of a pine-apple, or some
lemonade from my own hedge. “I know a hedge where
the lemons grow”—Shakespeare. My house at this moment
smells of them strong; and the rain, which a while ago
roared there, now rings in minute drops upon the iron roof.
I have no Wrecker for you this mail, other things having
engaged me. I was on the whole rather relieved you did
not vote for regular papers, as I feared the traces. It is
my design from time to time to write a paper of a reminiscential
(beastly word) description; some of them I
could scarce publish from different considerations; but
some of them—for instance, my long experience of gambling
places—Homburg, Wiesbaden, Baden-Baden, old
Monaco, and new Monte Carlo—would make good magazine
padding, if I got the stuff handled the right way. I
never could fathom why verse was put in magazines; it
has something to do with the making-up, has it not? I
am scribbling a lot just now; if you are taken badly
that way, apply to the South Seas. I could send you
some, I believe, anyway, only none of it is thoroughly
ripe. If you have kept back the volume of ballads, I’ll
soon make it of a respectable size if this fit continue. By
the next mail you may expect some more Wrecker, or I
shall be displeased. Probably no more than a chapter,
however, for it is a hard one, and I am denuded of my
proofs, my collaborator having walked away with them
to England; hence some trouble in catching the just note.
I am a mere farmer: my talk, which would scarce
interest you on Broadway, is all of fuafua and tuitui and
black boys, and planting and weeding, and axes and
cutlasses; my hands are covered with blisters and full of
thorns; letters are, doubtless, a fine thing, so are beer
and skittles, but give me farmering in the tropics for real
interest. Life goes in enchantment; I come home to find
I am late for dinner; and when I go to bed at night, I
could cry for the weariness of my loins and thighs. Do
not speak to me of vexation, the life brims with it, but
with living interest fairly.
Christmas I go to Auckland, to meet Tamate, the New
Guinea missionary, a man I love. The rest of my life is
a prospect of much rain, much weeding and making of
paths, a little letters, and devilish little to eat.—I am,
my dear Burlingame, with messages to all whom it may
concern, very sincerely yours,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Sidney Colvin
[Vailima] Monday, twenty-somethingth of
December 1890.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—I do not say my Jack is anything
extraordinary; he is only an island horse; and the
profane might call him a Punch; and his face is like a
donkey’s; and natives have ridden him, and he has no
mouth in consequence, and occasionally shies. But his
merits are equally surprising; and I don’t think I should
ever have known Jack’s merits if I had not been riding
up of late on moonless nights. Jack is a bit of a dandy;
he loves to misbehave in a gallant manner, above all on
Apia Street, and when I stop to speak to people, they
say (Dr. Stuebel the German consul said about three days
ago), “O what a wild horse! it cannot be safe to ride
him.” Such a remark is Jack’s reward, and represents
his ideal of fame. Now when I start out of Apia on a
dark night, you should see my changed horse; at a fast
steady walk, with his head down, and sometimes his
nose to the ground—when he wants to do that, he asks
for his head with a little eloquent polite movement indescribable—he
climbs the long ascent and threads the
darkest of the wood. The first night I came it was starry;
and it was singular to see the starlight drip down into
the crypt of the wood, and shine in the open end of the
road, as bright as moonlight at home; but the crypt
itself was proof, blackness lived in it. The next night
it was raining. We left the lights of Apia and passed
into limbo. Jack finds a way for himself, but he does
not calculate for my height above the saddle; and I am
directed forward, all braced up for a crouch and holding
my switch upright in front of me. It is curiously interesting.
In the forest, the dead wood is phosphorescent; some
nights the whole ground is strewn with it, so that it seems
like a grating over a pale hell; doubtless this is one of
the things that feed the night fears of the natives; and
I am free to confess that in a night of trackless darkness
where all else is void, these pallid ignes suppositi have a
fantastic appearance, rather bogey even. One night, when
it was very dark, a man had put out a little lantern by
the wayside to show the entrance to his ground. I saw
the light, as I thought, far ahead, and supposed it was a
pedestrian coming to meet me; I was quite taken by
surprise when it struck in my face and passed behind me.
Jack saw it, and he was appalled; do you think he thought
of shying? No, sir, not in the dark; in the dark Jack
knows he is on duty; and he went past that lantern steady
and swift; only, as he went, he groaned and shuddered.
For about 2500 of Jack’s steps we only passed one house—that
where the lantern was; and about 1500 of these
are in the darkness of the pit. But now the moon is on
tap again, and the roads lighted.
I have been exploring up the Vaituluiga; see your map.
It comes down a wonderful fine glen; at least 200 feet
of cliffs on either hand, winding like a corkscrew, great
forest trees filling it. At the top there ought to be a
fine double fall; but the stream evades it by a fault and
passes underground. Above the fall it runs (at this season)
full and very gaily in a shallow valley, some hundred
yards before the head of the glen. Its course is seen full
of grasses, like a flooded meadow; that is the sink! beyond
the grave of the grasses, the bed lies dry. Near this upper
part there is a great show of ruinous pig-walls; a village
must have stood near by.
To walk from our house to Wreck Hill (when the path
is buried in fallen trees) takes one about half an hour,
I think; to return, not more than twenty minutes; I dare
say fifteen. Hence I should guess it was three-quarters
of a mile. I had meant to join on my explorations passing
eastward by the sink; but, Lord! how it rains.
Later.—I went out this morning with a pocket compass
and walked in a varying direction, perhaps on an
average S. by W., 1754 paces. Then I struck into the
bush, N.W. by N., hoping to strike the Vaituluiga above
the falls. Now I have it plotted out I see I should have
gone W. or even W. by S.; but it is not easy to guess.
For 600 weary paces I struggled through the bush, and
then came on the stream below the gorge, where it was
comparatively easy to get down to it. In the place where
I struck it, it made cascades about a little isle, and was
running about N.E., 20 to 30 feet wide, as deep as to my
knee, and piercing cold. I tried to follow it down, and
keep the run of its direction and my paces; but when I
was wading to the knees and the waist in mud, poison
brush, and rotted wood, bound hand and foot in lianas,
shovelled unceremoniously off the one shore and driven to
try my luck upon the other—I saw I should have hard
enough work to get my body down, if my mind rested.
It was a damnable walk; certainly not half a mile as the
crow flies, but a real bucketer for hardship. Once I had
to pass the stream where it flowed between banks about
three feet high. To get the easier down, I swung myself
by a wild-cocoanut—(so called, it bears bunches of scarlet
nutlets)—which grew upon the brink. As I so swung, I
received a crack on the head that knocked me all abroad.
Impossible to guess what tree had taken a shy at me.
So many towered above, one over the other, and the
missile, whatever it was, dropped in the stream and was
gone before I had recovered my wits. (I scarce know
what I write, so hideous a Niagara of rain roars, shouts,
and demonizes on the iron roof—it is pitch dark too—the
lamp lit at 5!) It was a blessed thing when I struck
my own road; and I got home, neat for lunch time, one
of the most wonderful mud statues ever witnessed. In
the afternoon I tried again, going up the other path by
the garden, but was early drowned out; came home,
plotted out what I had done, and then wrote this truck
to you.
Fanny has been quite ill with ear-ache. She won’t go,10
hating the sea at this wild season; I don’t like to leave
her; so it drones on, steamer after steamer, and I guess
it’ll end by no one going at all. She is in a dreadful misfortune
at this hour; a case of kerosene having burst in
the kitchen. A little while ago it was the carpenter’s
horse that trod in a nest of fourteen eggs, and made an
omelette of our hopes. The farmer’s lot is not a happy
one. And it looks like some real uncompromising bad
weather too. I wish Fanny’s ear were well. Think of
parties in Monuments! think of me in Skerryvore, and
now of this. It don’t look like a part of the same universe
to me. Work is quite laid aside; I have worked myself
right out.
Christmas Eve.—Yesterday, who could write? My wife
near crazy with ear-ache; the rain descending in white
crystal rods and playing hell’s tattoo, like a tutti of battering
rams, on our sheet-iron roof; the wind passing high
overhead with a strange dumb mutter, or striking us full,
so that all the huge trees in the paddock cried aloud, and
wrung their hands, and brandished their vast arms. The
horses stood in the shed like things stupid. The sea and
the flagship lying on the jaws of the bay vanished in sheer
rain. All day it lasted; I locked up my papers in the
iron box, in case it was a hurricane, and the house might
go. We went to bed with mighty uncertain feelings; far
more than on shipboard, where you have only drowning
ahead—whereas here you have a smash of beams, a shower
of sheet-iron, and a blind race in the dark and through
a whirlwind for the shelter of an unfinished stable—and
my wife with ear-ache! Well, well, this morning, we had
word from Apia; a hurricane was looked for, the ships
were to leave the bay by 10 A.M.; it is now 3.30, and the
flagship is still a fixture, and the wind round in the blessed
east, so I suppose the danger is over. But heaven is still
laden; the day dim, with frequent rattling bucketfuls of
rain; and just this moment (as I write) a squall went
overhead, scarce striking us, with that singular, solemn
noise of its passage, which is to me dreadful. I have
always feared the sound of wind beyond everything. In
my hell it would always blow a gale.
I have been all day correcting proofs, and making out
a new plan for our house. The other was too dear to be
built now, and it was a hard task to make a smaller house
that would suffice for the present, and not be a mere
waste of money in the future. I believe I have succeeded;
I have taken care of my study anyway.
Two favours I want to ask of you. First, I wish you
to get Pioneering in New Guinea, by J. Chalmers. It’s
a missionary book, and has less pretensions to be literature
than Spurgeon’s sermons. Yet I think even through
that, you will see some of the traits of the hero that wrote
it; a man that took me fairly by storm for the most
attractive, simple, brave, and interesting man in the
whole Pacific. He is away now to go up the Fly River;
a desperate venture, it is thought; he is quite a Livingstone
card.
Second, try and keep yourself free next winter; and
if my means can be stretched so far, I’ll come to Egypt
and we’ll meet at Shepheard’s Hotel, and you’ll put me
in my place, which I stand in need of badly by this time.
Lord, what bully times! I suppose I’ll come per British
Asia, or whatever you call it, and avoid all cold, and might
be in Egypt about November as ever was—eleven months
from now or rather less. But do not let us count our
chickens.
Last night three piglings were stolen from one of our
pig-pens. The great Lafaele appeared to my wife uneasy,
so she engaged him in conversation on the subject, and
played upon him the following engaging trick. You advance
your two forefingers towards the sitter’s eyes; he closes
them, whereupon you substitute (on his eyelids) the fore
and middle fingers of the left hand; and with your right
(which he supposes engaged) you tap him on the head
and back. When you let him open his eyes, he sees you
withdrawing the two forefingers. “What that?” asked
Lafaele. “My devil,” says Fanny. “I wake um, my
devil. All right now. He go catch the man that catch
my pig.” About an hour afterwards, Lafaele came for
further particulars. “O, all right,” my wife says. “By
and by, that man he sleep, devil go sleep same place.
By and by, that man plenty sick. I no care. What for
he take my pig?” Lafaele cares plenty; I don’t think
he is the man, though he may be; but he knows him,
and most likely will eat some of that pig to-night. He
will not eat with relish.
Saturday, 27th.—It cleared up suddenly after dinner,
and my wife and I saddled up and off to Apia, whence
we did not return till yesterday morning. Christmas Day
I wish you could have seen our party at table. H. J.
Moors at one end with my wife, I at the other with Mrs. M.,
between us two native women, Carruthers the lawyer,
Moors’s two shop-boys—Walters and A. M. the quadroon—and
the guests of the evening, Shirley Baker, the defamed
and much-accused man of Tonga, and his son, with the
artificial joint to his arm—where the assassins shot him
in shooting at his father. Baker’s appearance is not unlike
John Bull on a cartoon; he is highly interesting to
speak to, as I had expected; I found he and I had many
common interests, and were engaged in puzzling over
many of the same difficulties. After dinner it was quite
pretty to see our Christmas party, it was so easily pleased
and prettily behaved. In the morning I should say I had
been to lunch at the German consulate, where I had as
usual a very pleasant time. I shall miss Dr. Stuebel11
much when he leaves, and when Adams and Lafarge go
also, it will be a great blow. I am getting spoiled with
all this good society.
On Friday morning, I had to be at my house affairs
before seven; and they kept me in Apia till past ten,
disputing, and consulting about brick and stone and
native and hydraulic lime, and cement and sand, and
all sorts of otiose details about the chimney—just what
I fled from in my father’s office twenty years ago; I
should have made a languid engineer. Rode up with the
carpenter. Ah, my wicked Jack! on Christmas Eve, as
I was taking the saddle bag off, he kicked at me, and
fetched me too, right on the shin. On Friday, being annoyed
at the carpenter’s horse having a longer trot, he uttered
a shrill cry and tried to bite him! Alas, alas, these are
like old days; my dear Jack is a Bogue,12 but I cannot
strangle Jack into submission.
I have given up the big house for just now; we go
ahead right away with a small one, which should be ready
in two months, and I suppose will suffice for just now.
O I know I haven’t told you about our aitu, have I?
It is a lady, aitu fafine: she lives on the mountain-side;
her presence is heralded by the sound of a gust of wind;
a sound very common in the high woods; when she
catches you, I do not know what happens; but in practice
she is avoided, so I suppose she does more than pass
the time of day. The great aitu Saumai-afe was once a
living woman, and became an aitu, no one understands
how; she lives in a stream at the well-head, her hair is red,
she appears as a lovely young lady, her bust particularly
admired, to handsome young men; these die, her
love being fatal;—as a handsome youth she has been
known to court damsels with the like result, but this is
very rare; as an old crone she goes about and asks for
water, and woe to them who are uncivil! Saumai-afe
means literally, “Come here a thousand!” A good name
for a lady of her manners. My aitu fafine does not seem
to be in the same line of business. It is unsafe to be a
handsome youth in Samoa; a young man died from her
favours last month—so we said on this side of the island;
on the other, where he died, it was not so certain. I, for
one, blame it on Madam Saumai-afe without hesitation.
Example of the farmer’s sorrows. I slipped out on the
balcony a moment ago. It is a lovely morning, cloudless,
smoking hot, the breeze not yet arisen. Looking west, in
front of our new house, I saw two heads of Indian corn
wagging, and the rest and all nature stock still. As
I looked, one of the stalks subsided and disappeared. I
dashed out to the rescue; two small pigs were deep in
the grass—quite hid till within a few yards—gently but
swiftly demolishing my harvest. Never be a farmer.
12.30 p.m.—I while away the moments of digestion by
drawing you a faithful picture of my morning. When I
had done writing as above it was time to clean our house.
When I am working, it falls on my wife alone, but to-day
we had it between us; she did the bedroom, I the sitting-room,
in fifty-seven minutes of really most unpalatable
labour. Then I changed every stitch, for I was wet through,
and sat down and played on my pipe till dinner was ready,
mighty pleased to be in a mildly habitable spot once
more. The house had been neglected for near a week,
and was a hideous spot; my wife’s ear and our visit to
Apia being the causes: our Paul we prefer not to see
upon that theatre, and God knows he has plenty to
do elsewhere.
I am glad to look out of my back door and see the boys
smoothing the foundations of the new house; this is all
very jolly, but six months of it has satisfied me; we have
too many things for such close quarters; to work in the
midst of all the myriad misfortunes of the planter’s life,
seated in a Dyonisius’ (can’t spell him) ear, whence I
catch every complaint, mishap and contention, is besides
the devil; and the hope of a cave of my own inspires me
with lust. O to be able to shut my own door and make
my own confusion! O to have the brown paper and the
matches and “make a hell of my own” once more!
I do not bother you with all my troubles in these outpourings;
the troubles of the farmer are inspiriting—they
are like difficulties out hunting—a fellow rages at
the time and rejoices to recall and to commemorate them.
My troubles have been financial. It is hard to arrange
wisely interests so distributed. America, England, Samoa,
Sydney, everywhere I have an end of liability hanging
out and some shelf of credit hard by; and to juggle all
these and build a dwelling-place here, and check expense—a
thing I am ill fitted for—you can conceive what a
nightmare it is at times. Then God knows I have not
been idle. But since The Master nothing has come to raise
any coins. I believe the springs are dry at home, and
now I am worked out, and can no more at all. A
holiday is required.
Dec. 28th.—I have got unexpectedly to work again,
and feel quite dandy. Good-bye.
R. L. S.
To Henry James
Mr. Lafarge the artist and Mr. Henry Adams the historian have
been mentioned already. The pinch in the matter of eatables only
lasted for a little while, until Mrs. Stevenson had taken her bearings
and made her arrangements in the matter of marketing, etc.
Vailima, Apia, Samoa, December 29th, 1890.
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,—It is terrible how little everybody
writes, and how much of that little disappears in
the capacious maw of the Post Office. Many letters, both
from and to me, I now know to have been lost in transit:
my eye is on the Sydney Post Office, a large ungainly
structure with a tower, as being not a hundred miles from
the scene of disappearance; but then I have no proof.
The Tragic Muse you announced to me as coming; I had
already ordered it from a Sydney bookseller: about two
months ago he advised me that his copy was in the post;
and I am still tragically museless.
News, news, news. What do we know of yours?
What do you care for ours? We are in the midst of the
rainy season, and dwell among alarms of hurricanes, in
a very unsafe little two-storied wooden box 650 feet above
and about three miles from the sea-beach. Behind us, till
the other slope of the island, desert forest, peaks, and
loud torrents; in front green slopes to the sea, some fifty
miles of which we dominate. We see the ships as they
go out and in to the dangerous roadstead of Apia; and
if they lie far out, we can even see their topmasts while
they are at anchor. Of sounds of men, beyond those of
our own labourers, there reach us, at very long intervals,
salutes from the warships in harbour, the bell of the
cathedral church, and the low of the conch-shell calling
the labour boys on the German plantations. Yesterday,
which was Sunday—the quantième is most likely erroneous;
you can now correct it—we had a visitor—Baker of Tonga.
Heard you ever of him? He is a great man here: he is
accused of theft, rape, judicial murder, private poisoning,
abortion, misappropriation of public moneys—oddly
enough, not forgery, nor arson; you would be amused
if you knew how thick the accusations fly in this South
Sea world. I make no doubt my own character is
something illustrious; or if not yet, there is a good time
coming.
But all our resources have not of late been Pacific.
We have had enlightened society: Lafarge the painter,
and your friend Henry Adams: a great privilege—would
it might endure. I would go oftener to see them, but the
place is awkward to reach on horseback. I had to swim
my horse the last time I went to dinner; and as I have
not yet returned the clothes I had to borrow, I dare not
return in the same plight: it seems inevitable—as soon
as the wash comes in, I plump straight into the American
consul’s shirt or trousers! They, I believe, would come
oftener to see me but for the horrid doubt that weighs
upon our commissariat department; we have often almost
nothing to eat; a guest would simply break the bank;
my wife and I have dined on one avocado pear; I have
several times dined on hard bread and onions. What
would you do with a guest at such narrow seasons?—eat
him? or serve up a labour boy fricasseed?
Work? work is now arrested, but I have written, I
should think, about thirty chapters of the South Sea book;
they will all want rehandling, I dare say. Gracious, what a
strain is a long book! The time it took me to design this
volume, before I could dream of putting pen to paper,
was excessive; and then think of writing a book of travels
on the spot, when I am continually extending my information,
revising my opinions, and seeing the most finely
finished portions of my work come part by part in pieces.
Very soon I shall have no opinions left. And without an
opinion, how to string artistically vast accumulations of
fact? Darwin said no one could observe without a theory;
I suppose he was right; ’tis a fine point of metaphysic;
but I will take my oath, no man can write without one—at
least the way he would like to, and my theories melt,
melt, melt, and as they melt the thaw-waters wash down
my writing, and leave unideal tracts—wastes instead of
cultivated farms.
Kipling is by far the most promising young man who
has appeared since—ahem—I appeared. He amazes me
by his precocity and various endowment. But he alarms
me by his copiousness and haste. He should shield his
fire with both hands “and draw up all his strength and
sweetness in one ball.” (“Draw all his strength and all
His sweetness up into one ball”? I cannot remember
Marvell’s words.) So the critics have been saying to me:
but I was never capable of—and surely never guilty of—such
a debauch of production. At this rate his works
will soon fill the habitable globe; and surely he was
armed for better conflicts than these succinct sketches and
flying leaves of verse? I look on, I admire, I rejoice for myself;
but in a kind of ambition we all have for our tongue
and literature I am wounded. If I had this man’s fertility
and courage, it seems to me I could heave a pyramid.
Well, we begin to be the old fogies now; and it was
high time something rose to take our places. Certainly
Kipling has the gifts; the fairy godmothers were all
tipsy at his christening: what will he do with them?
Good-bye, my dear James; find an hour to write to
us, and register your letter.—Yours affectionately,
R. L. S.
To Rudyard Kipling
In 1890, on first becoming acquainted with Mr. Kipling’s Soldiers
Three, Stevenson had written off his congratulations red-hot. “Well
and indeed, Mr. Mulvaney,” so ran the first sentences of his note,
“but it’s as good as meat to meet in with you, sir. They tell me
it was a man of the name of Kipling made ye; but indeed and they
can’t fool me; it was the Lord God Almighty that made you.”
Taking the cue thus offered, Mr. Kipling had written back in the
character of his own Irishman, Thomas Mulvaney, addressing
Stevenson’s Highlander, Alan Breck Stewart. In the following
letter, which belongs to an uncertain date in 1891, Alan Breck is
made to reply. “The gentleman I now serve with” means, of
course, R. L. S. himself.
[Vailima, 1891.]
SIR,—I cannot call to mind having written you, but
I am so throng with occupation this may have fallen
aside. I never heard tell I had any friends in Ireland,
and I am led to understand you are come of no considerable
family. The gentleman I now serve with assures
me, however, you are a very pretty fellow and your letter
deserves to be remarked. It’s true he is himself a man
of a very low descent upon the one side; though upon
the other he counts cousinship with a gentleman, my very
good friend, the late Mr. Balfour of the Shaws, in the
Lothian; which I should be wanting in good fellowship
to forget. He tells me besides you are a man of your
hands; I am not informed of your weapon; but if all be
true it sticks in my mind I would be ready to make exception
in your favour, and meet you like one gentleman
with another. I suppose this’ll be your purpose in your
favour, which I could very ill make out; it’s one I would
be sweir to baulk you of. It seems, Mr. McIlvaine, which
I take to be your name, you are in the household of a
gentleman of the name of Coupling: for whom my friend
is very much engaged. The distances being very uncommodious,
I think it will be maybe better if we leave it
to these two to settle all that’s necessary to honour. I
would have you to take heed it’s a very unusual condescension
on my part, that bear a King’s name; and for the
matter of that I think shame to be mingled with a person
of the name of Coupling, which is doubtless a very good
house but one I never heard tell of, any more than Stevenson.
But your purpose being laudable, I would be sorry
(as the word goes) to cut off my nose to spite my face.—I
am, Sir, your humble servant,
A. Stewart,
Chevalier de St. Louis.
To Mr. M’Ilvaine,
Gentleman Private in a foot regiment,
under cover to Mr. Coupling.
He has read me some of your Barrack Room Ballants,
which are not of so noble a strain as some of mine in the
Gaelic, but I could set some of them to the pipes if this
rencounter goes as it’s to be desired. Let’s first, as I understand
you to move, do each other this rational courtesy;
and if either will survive, we may grow better acquaint.
For your tastes for what’s martial and for poetry agree
with mine.
A. S.
To Sidney Colvin
This is the first appearance in Stevenson’s letters of the Swedish
Chief Justice of Samoa, Mr. Conrad Cedercrantz, of whom we shall
hear enough and more than enough in the sequel.
S.S. Lübeck, between Apia and Sydney,
Jan. 17th, 1891.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—The Faamasino Sili, or Chief Justice,
to speak your low language, has arrived. I had ridden
down with Henry and Lafaele; the sun was down, the
night was close at hand, so we rode fast; just as I came to
the corner of the road before Apia, I heard a gun fire;
and lo, there was a great crowd at the end of the pier,
and the troops out, and a chief or two in the height of
Samoa finery, and Seumanu coming in his boat (the oarsmen
all in uniform), bringing the Faamasino Sili sure
enough. It was lucky he was no longer; the natives would
not have waited many weeks. But think of it, as I sat in
the saddle at the outside of the crowd (looking, the English
consul said, as if I were commanding the manœuvres), I
was nearly knocked down by a stampede of the three
consuls; they had been waiting their guest at the Matafele
end, and some wretched intrigue among the whites had
brought him to Apia, and the consuls had to run all the
length of the town and come too late.
The next day was a long one; I was at a marriage of
Gurr the banker to Fanua, the virgin of Apia. Bride and
bridesmaids were all in the old high dress; the ladies were
all native; the men, with the exception of Seumanu, all
white.
It was quite a pleasant party, and while we were writing,
we had a bird’s-eye view of the public reception of
the Chief Justice. The best part of it were some natives
in war array; with blacked faces, turbans, tapa kilts, and
guns, they looked very manly and purposelike. No, the
best part was poor old drunken Joe, the Portuguese boatman,
who seemed to think himself specially charged with
the reception, and ended by falling on his knees before
the Chief Justice on the end of the pier and in full view
of the whole town and bay. The natives pelted him with
rotten bananas; how the Chief Justice took it I was
too far off to see; but it was highly absurd.
I have commemorated my genial hopes for the regimen
of the Faamasino Sili in the following canine verses, which,
if you at all guess how to read them, are very pretty in
movement, and (unless he be a mighty good man) too
true in sense.
We’re quarrelling, the villages, we’ve beaten the wooden drums,
Sa femisai o nu’u, sa taia o pate,
Is confounded thereby the justice,
Ua atuatuvale a le faamasino e,
The chief justice, the terrified justice,
Le faamasino sili, le faamasino se,
Is on the point of running away the justice,
O le a solasola le faamasino e,
The justice denied any influence, the terrified justice,
O le faamasino le ai a, le faamasino se,
O le a solasola le faamasino e.
Well, after this excursion into tongues that have never
been alive—though I assure you we have one capital
book in the language, a book of fables by an old missionary
of the unpromising name of Pratt, which is simply
the best and the most literary version of the fables known
to me. I suppose I should except La Fontaine, but L. F.
takes a long time; these are brief as the books of our
childhood, and full of wit and literary colour; and O,
Colvin, what a tongue it would be to write, if one only
knew it—and there were only readers. Its curse in common
use is an incredible left-handed wordiness; but in
the hands of a man like Pratt it is succinct as Latin,
compact of long rolling polysyllables and little and often
pithy particles, and for beauty of sound a dream. Listen,
I quote from Pratt—this is good Samoan, not canine—
1 almost wa, 2 the two a’s just distinguished, 3 the ai
is practically suffixed to the verb, 4 almost vow. The
excursion has prolonged itself.
I started by the Lübeck to meet Lloyd and my mother;
there were many reasons for and against; the main reason
against was the leaving of Fanny alone in her blessed
cabin, which has been somewhat remedied by my carter,
Mr. ——, putting up in the stable and messing with her;
but perhaps desire of change decided me not well, though
I do think I ought to see an oculist, being very blind
indeed, and sometimes unable to read. Anyway I left,
the only cabin passenger, four and a kid in the second
cabin, and a dear voyage it had like to have proved.
Close to Fiji (choose a worse place on the map) we broke
our shaft early one morning; and when or where we
might expect to fetch land or meet with any ship, I would
like you to tell me. The Pacific is absolutely desert. I
have sailed there now some years; and scarce ever seen
a ship except in port or close by; I think twice. It was
the hurricane season besides, and hurricane waters. Well,
our chief engineer got the shaft—it was the middle crank
shaft—mended; thrice it was mended, and twice broke
down; but now keeps up—only we dare not stop, for it
is almost impossible to start again. The captain in the
meanwhile crowded her with sail; fifteen sails in all,
every stay being gratified with a stay-sail, a boat-boom
sent aloft for a maintop-gallant yard, and the derrick of
a crane brought in service as bowsprit. All the time we
have had a fine, fair wind and a smooth sea; to-day at
noon our run was 203 miles (if you please!), and we are
within some 360 miles of Sydney. Probably there has
never been a more gallant success; and I can say honestly
it was well worked for. No flurry, no high words, no long
faces; only hard work and honest thought; a pleasant,
manly business to be present at. All the chances were
we might have been six weeks—ay, or three months at
sea—or never turned up at all, and now it looks as though
we should reach our destination some five days too late.
To Marcel Schwob
Sydney, January 19th,1891.
MY DEAR SIR,—Sapristi, comme vous y allez! Richard
III. and Dumas, with all my heart: but not Hamlet.
Hamlet is great literature; Richard III. a big, black,
gross, sprawling melodrama, writ with infinite spirit but
with no refinement or philosophy by a man who had
the world, himself, mankind, and his trade still to learn.
I prefer the Vicomte de Bragelonne to Richard III.; it
is better done of its kind: I simply do not mention the
Vicomte in the same part of the building with Hamlet,
or Lear, or Othello, or any of those masterpieces that
Shakespeare survived to give us.
Also, comme vous y allez in my commendation! I fear
my solide éducation classique had best be described, like
Shakespeare’s, as “little Latin and no Greek” and I was
educated, let me inform you, for an engineer. I shall tell
my bookseller to send you a copy of Memories and Portraits,
where you will see something of my descent and education,
as it was, and hear me at length on my dear Vicomte.
I give you permission gladly to take your choice out of
my works, and translate what you shall prefer, too much
honoured that so clever a young man should think it
worth the pains. My own choice would lie between Kidnapped
and the Master of Ballantrae. Should you choose
the latter, pray do not let Mrs. Henry thrust the sword
up to the hilt in the frozen ground—one of my inconceivable
blunders, an exaggeration to stagger Hugo. Say
“she sought to thrust it in the ground.” In both these
works you should be prepared for Scotticisms used deliberately.
I fear my stepson will not have found time to get to
Paris; he was overwhelmed with occupation, and is
already on his voyage back. We live here in a beautiful
land, amid a beautiful and interesting people. The life is
still very hard: my wife and I live in a two-roomed
cottage, about three miles and six hundred and fifty feet
above the sea; we have had to make the road to it; our
supplies are very imperfect; in the wild weather of this
(the hurricane) season we have much discomfort: one
night the wind blew in our house so outrageously that we
must sit in the dark; and as the sound of the rain on the
roof made speech inaudible, you may imagine we found
the evening long. All these things, however, are pleasant
to me. You say l’artiste inconscient set off to travel: you
do not divide me right. 0.6 of me is artist; 0.4, adventurer.
First, I suppose, come letters; then adventure; and
since I have indulged the second part, I think the formula
begins to change: 0.55 of an artist, 0.45 of the adventurer
were nearer true. And if it had not been for my small
strength, I might have been a different man in all things.
Whatever you do, do not neglect to send me what you
publish on Villon: I look forward to that with lively
interest. I have no photograph at hand, but I will send
one when I can. It would be kind if you would do the
like, for I do not see much chance of our meeting in the
flesh: and a name, and a handwriting, and an address,
and even a style? I know about as much of Tacitus, and
more of Horace; it is not enough between contemporaries,
such as we still are. I have just remembered another of
my books, which I re-read the other day, and thought in
places good—Prince Otto. It is not as good as either of
the others; but it has one recommendation—it has female
parts, so it might perhaps please better in France.
I will ask Chatto to send you, then—Prince Otto,
Memories and Portraits, Underwoods, and Ballads, none of
which you seem to have seen. They will be too late for
the New Year: let them be an Easter present.
You must translate me soon; you will soon have
better to do than to transvase the work of others.—Yours
very truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson,
With the worst pen in the South Pacific.
To Charles Baxter
Stevenson had been indignant with an old friend at Edinburgh,
who had received much kindness from his mother, for neglecting to
call on her after her return from her wanderings in the Pacific.
S.S. Lübeck, at sea [on the return voyage
from Sydney, February 1891].
MY DEAR CHARLES,—Perhaps in my old days I do grow
irascible; “the old man virulent” has long been my pet
name for myself. Well, the temper is at least all gone
now; time is good at lowering these distemperatures; far
better is a sharp sickness, and I am just (and scarce) afoot
again after a smoking hot little malady at Sydney. And
the temper being gone, I still think the same.... We
have not our parents for ever; we are never very good
to them; when they go and we have lost our front-file
man we begin to feel all our neglects mighty sensibly. I
propose a proposal. My mother is here on board with me;
to-day for once I mean to make her as happy as I am able,
and to do that which I know she likes. You, on the other
hand, go and see your father, and do ditto, and give him
a real good hour or two. We shall both be glad hereafter.—Yours
ever,
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin
Stevenson had been sharply ailing as usual at Sydney, and was
now on his way back. Having received proofs of some of his South
Sea chapters, he had begun to realise that they were not what he
had hoped to make them.
[On Board Ship between Sydney and Apia,
February1891.]
MY DEAR COLVIN,—The Janet Nicoll stuff was rather
worse than I had looked for; you have picked out all
that is fit to stand, bar two others (which I don’t dislike)—the
Port of Entry and the House of Temoana; that is
for a present opinion; I may condemn these also ere I
have done. By this time you should have another Marquesan
letter, the worst of the lot, I think; and seven
Paumotu letters, which are not far out of the vein, as I
wish it; I am in hopes the Hawaiian stuff is better yet:
time will show, and time will make perfect. Is something
of this sort practicable for the dedication?
TERRA MARIQUE
PER PERICULA PER ARDUA
AMICAE COMITI
D.D.
AMANS VIATOR
’Tis a first shot concocted this morning in my berth:
I had always before been trying it in English, which insisted
on being either insignificant or fulsome: I cannot
think of a better word than comes, there being not the
shadow of a Latin book on board; yet sure there is some
other. Then viator (though it sounds all right) is doubtful;
it has too much, perhaps, the sense of wayfarer? Last,
will it mark sufficiently that I mean my wife? And first,
how about blunders? I scarce wish it longer.
Have had a swingeing sharp attack in Sydney; beating
the fields13 for two nights, Saturday and Sunday.
Wednesday was brought on board, tel quel, a wonderful
wreck; and now, Wednesday week, am a good deal picked
up, but yet not quite a Samson, being still groggy afoot
and vague in the head. My chess, for instance, which is
usually a pretty strong game, and defies all rivalry aboard,
is vacillating, devoid of resource and observation, and
hitherto not covered with customary laurels. As for work,
it is impossible. We shall be in the saddle before long, no
doubt, and the pen once more couched. You must not
expect a letter under these circumstances, but be very
thankful for a note. Once at Samoa, I shall try to resume
my late excellent habits, and delight you with journals,
you unaccustomed, I unaccustomed; but it is never too
late to mend.
It is vastly annoying that I cannot go even to Sydney
without an attack; and heaven knows my life was anodyne.
I only once dined with anybody; at the club with Wise;
worked all morning—a terrible dead pull; a month only
produced the imperfect embryos of two chapters; lunched
in the boarding-house, played on my pipe; went out and
did some of my messages; dined at a French restaurant,
and returned to play draughts, whist, or Van John with
my family. This makes a cheery life after Samoa; but
it isn’t what you call burning the candle at both ends,
is it? (It appears to me not one word of this letter will
be legible by the time I am done with it, this dreadful
ink rubs off.) I have a strange kind of novel under construction;
it begins about 1660 and ends 1830, or perhaps
I may continue it to 1875 or so, with another life. One,
two, three, four, five, six generations, perhaps seven, figure
therein; two of my old stories, “Delafield” and “Shovel,”
are incorporated; it is to be told in the third person, with
some of the brevity of history, some of the detail of romance.
The Shovels of Newton French will be the name. The idea
is an old one; it was brought to birth by an accident;
a friend in the islands who picked up F. Jenkin,14 read
a part, and said: “Do you know, that’s a strange book?
I like it; I don’t believe the public will; but I like it.”
He thought it was a novel! “Very well,” said I, “we’ll
see whether the public will like it or not; they shall have
the chance.”—Yours ever,
R. L. S.
To H. B. Baildon
The late Mr. H. Bellyse Baildon, for some time Lecturer on
English Literature at the University of Vienna and afterwards at
Dundee, had been an old schoolmate and fellow-aspirant in literature
with Stevenson at Edinburgh. “Chalmers,” of course, is the Rev.
James Chalmers of Rarotonga and New Guinea already referred to
above, the admirable missionary, explorer, and administrator, whom
Stevenson sometimes expressed a desire to survive, for the sake
only of writing his life.
Vailima, Upolu [Spring 1891].
MY DEAR BAILDON,—This is a real disappointment. It
was so long since we had met, I was anxious to see where
time had carried and stranded us. Last time we saw each
other—it must have been all ten years ago, as we were
new to the thirties—it was only for a moment, and now
we’re in the forties, and before very long we shall be in
our graves. Sick and well, I have had a splendid life of
it, grudge nothing, regret very little—and then only some
little corners of misconduct for which I deserve hanging,
and must infallibly be damned—and, take it all over,
damnation and all, would hardly change with any man
of my time, unless perhaps it were Gordon or our friend
Chalmers: a man I admire for his virtues, love for his
faults, and envy for the really A1 life he has, with everything
heart—my heart, I mean—could wish. It is curious
to think you will read this in the grey metropolis; go the
first grey, east-windy day into the Caledonian Station, if
it looks at all as it did of yore: I met Satan there. And
then go and stand by the cross, and remember the other
one—him that went down—my brother, Robert Fergusson.
It is a pity you had not made me out, and seen me as
patriarch and planter. I shall look forward to some record
of your time with Chalmers: you can’t weary me of that
fellow, he is as big as a house and far bigger than any
church, where no man warms his hands. Do you know
anything of Thomson? Of A——, B——, C——, D——,
E——, F——, at all? As I write C.’s name mustard
rises in my nose; I have never forgiven that weak, amiable
boy a little trick he played me when I could ill afford it:
I mean that whenever I think of it, some of the old wrath
kindles, not that I would hurt the poor soul, if I got the
world with it. And Old X——? Is he still afloat?
Harmless bark! I gather you ain’t married yet, since
your sister, to whom I ask to be remembered, goes with
you. Did you see a silly tale, John Nicholson’s Predicament,15
or some such name, in which I made free with your
home at Murrayfield? There is precious little sense in it,
but it might amuse. Cassell’s published it in a thing
called Yule-Tide years ago, and nobody that ever I heard
of read or has ever seen Yule-Tide. It is addressed to a
class we never met—readers of Cassell’s series and that
class of conscientious chaff, and my tale was dull, though
I don’t recall that it was conscientious. Only, there’s the
house at Murrayfield and a dead body in it. Glad the
Ballads amused you. They failed to entertain a coy
public, at which I wondered; not that I set much account
by my verses, which are the verses of Prosator; but I
do know how to tell a yarn, and two of the yarns are
great. Rahero is for its length a perfect folk-tale: savage
and yet fine, full of tailforemost morality, ancient as the
granite rocks; if the historian, not to say the politician,
could get that yarn into his head, he would have learned
some of his ABC. But the average man at home cannot
understand antiquity; he is sunk over the ears in Roman
civilisation; and a tale like that of Rahero falls on his
ears inarticulate. The Spectator said there was no
psychology in it; that interested me much: my grandmother
(as I used to call that able paper, and an able
paper it is, and a fair one) cannot so much as observe the
existence of savage psychology when it is put before it.
I am at bottom a psychologist and ashamed of it; the tale
seized me one-third because of its picturesque features,
two-thirds because of its astonishing psychology, and the
Spectator says there’s none. I am going on with a lot
of island work, exulting in the knowledge of a new world,
“a new created world” and new men; and I am sure
my income will DECLINE and FALL off; for the effort of
comprehension is death to the intelligent public, and sickness
to the dull.
I do not know why I pester you with all this trash,
above all as you deserve nothing. I give you my warm
talofa (“my love to you,” Samoan salutation). Write me
again when the spirit moves you. And some day, if I
still live, make out the trip again and let us hob-a-nob
with our grey pows on my verandah.—Yours sincerely,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Sidney Colvin
The latter part of this letter was written in the course of an
expedition on which Stevenson had been invited by the American
Consul, Mr. Sewall, to the neighbouring island of Tutuila. Unluckily
the letter breaks off short, and the only record of this trip
occurs in the diary partly quoted in Mr. Balfour’s Life, ch. xiv.
Vailima, Friday, March 19th [1891].
MY DEAR S. C.,—You probably expect that now I am
back at Vailima I shall resume the practice of the diary
letter. A good deal is changed. We are more; solitude
does not attend me as before; the night is passed playing
Van John for shells; and, what is not less important, I
have just recovered from a severe illness, and am easily
tired.
I will give you to-day. I sleep now in one of the lower
rooms of the new house, where my wife has recently joined
me. We have two beds, an empty case for a table, a chair,
a tin basin, a bucket and a jug; next door in the dining-room,
the carpenters camp on the floor, which is covered
with their mosquito nets. Before the sun rises, at 5.45
or 5.50, Paul brings me tea, bread, and a couple of eggs;
and by about six I am at work. I work in bed—my bed
is of mats, no mattress, sheets, or filth—mats, a pillow,
and a blanket—and put in some three hours. It was 9.5
this morning when I set off to the stream-side to my
weeding; where I toiled, manuring the ground with the
best enricher, human sweat, till the conch-shell was blown
from our verandah at 10.30. At eleven we dine; about
half-past twelve I tried (by exception) to work again,
could make nothing on’t, and by one was on my way to
the weeding, where I wrought till three. Half-past five is
our next meal, and I read Flaubert’s Letters till the hour
came round; dined, and then, Fanny having a cold, and
I being tired, came over to my den in the unfinished
house, where I now write to you, to the tune of the carpenters’
voices, and by the light—I crave your pardon—by
the twilight of three vile candles filtered through
the medium of my mosquito bar. Bad ink being of the
party, I write quite blindfold, and can only hope you may
be granted to read that which I am unable to see while
writing.
I said I was tired; it is a mild phrase; my back aches
like toothache; when I shut my eyes to sleep, I know
I shall see before them—a phenomenon to which both
Fanny and I are quite accustomed—endless vivid deeps
of grass and weed, each plant particular and distinct, so
that I shall lie inert in body, and transact for hours the
mental part of my day business, choosing the noxious
from the useful. And in my dreams I shall be hauling
on recalcitrants, and suffering stings from nettles, stabs
from citron thorns, fiery bites from ants, sickening resistances
of mud and slime, evasions of slimy roots, dead
weight of heat, sudden puffs of air, sudden starts from
bird-calls in the contiguous forest—some mimicking my
name, some laughter, some the signal of a whistle, and
living over again at large the business of my day.
Though I write so little, I pass all my hours of field-work
in continual converse and imaginary correspondence.
I scarce pull up a weed, but I invent a sentence on the
matter to yourself; it does not get written; autant en
emportent les vents; but the intent is there, and for me
(in some sort) the companionship. To-day, for instance,
we had a great talk. I was toiling, the sweat dripping
from my nose, in the hot fit after a squall of rain: methought
you asked me—frankly, was I happy. Happy
(said I); I was only happy once; that was at Hyères; it
came to an end from a variety of reasons, decline of
health, change of place, increase of money, age with his
stealing steps; since then, as before then, I know not what
it means. But I know pleasure still; pleasure with a
thousand faces, and none perfect, a thousand tongues all
broken, a thousand hands, and all of them with scratching
nails. High among these I place this delight of weeding
out here alone by the garrulous water, under the silence
of the high wood, broken by incongruous sounds of birds.
And take my life all through, look at it fore and back,
and upside down,—though I would very fain change myself—I
would not change my circumstances, unless it were to
bring you here. And yet God knows perhaps this intercourse
of writing serves as well; and I wonder, were you
here indeed, would I commune so continually with the
thought of you. I say “I wonder” for a form; I know,
and I know I should not.
So far, and much further, the conversation went, while
I groped in slime after viscous roots, nursing and sparing
little spears of grass, and retreating (even with outcry)
from the prod of the wild lime. I wonder if any one had
ever the same attitude to Nature as I hold, and have held
for so long? This business fascinates me like a tune or
a passion; yet all the while I thrill with a strong distaste.
The horror of the thing, objective and subjective, is always
present to my mind; the horror of creeping things, a
superstitious horror of the void and the powers about me,
the horror of my own devastation and continual murders.
The life of the plants comes through my finger-tips, their
struggles go to my heart like supplications. I feel myself
blood-boltered; then I look back on my cleared grass,
and count myself an ally in a fair quarrel, and make stout
my heart.
It is but a little while since I lay sick in Sydney, beating
the fields about the navy and Dean Swift and Dryden’s
Latin hymns; judge if I love this reinvigorating climate,
where I can already toil till my head swims and every
string in the poor jumping Jack (as he now lies in bed)
aches with a kind of yearning strain, difficult to suffer in
quiescence.
As for my damned literature,16 God knows what a business
it is, grinding along without a scrap of inspiration or
a note of style. But it has to be ground, and the mill
grinds exceeding slowly though not particularly small.
The last two chapters have taken me considerably over a
month, and they are still beneath pity. This I cannot
continue, time not sufficing; and the next will just have
to be worse. All the good I can express is just this; some
day, when style revisits me, they will be excellent matter
to rewrite. Of course, my old cure of a change of work
would probably answer, but I cannot take it now. The
treadmill turns; and, with a kind of desperate cheerfulness,
I mount the idle stair. I haven’t the least anxiety
about the book; unless I die, I shall find the time to make
it good; but the Lord deliver me from the thought of the
Letters! However, the Lord has other things on hand;
and about six to-morrow, I shall resume the consideration
practically, and face (as best I may) the fact of my incompetence
and disaffection to the task. Toil I do not spare;
but fortune refuses me success. We can do more, Whatever-his-name-was,
we can deserve it. But my misdesert
began long since, by the acceptation of a bargain
quite unsuitable to all my methods.17
To-day I have had a queer experience. My carter has
from the first been using my horses for his own ends; when
I left for Sydney, I put him on his honour to cease, and
my back was scarce turned ere he was forfeit. I have
only been waiting to discharge him; and to-day an
occasion arose. I am so much the old man virulent, so
readily stumble into anger, that I gave a deal of consideration
to my bearing, and decided at last to imitate that of
the late ——. Whatever he might have to say, this
eminently effective controversialist maintained a frozen
demeanour and a jeering smile. The frozen demeanour
is beyond my reach; but I could try the jeering smile;
did so, perceived its efficacy, kept in consequence my
temper, and got rid of my friend, myself composed and
smiling still, he white and shaking like an aspen. He
could explain everything; I said it did not interest me.
He said he had enemies; I said nothing was more likely.
He said he was calumniated; with all my heart, said I,
but there are so many liars, that I find it safer to believe
them. He said, in justice to himself, he must explain:
God forbid I should interfere with you, said I, with the
same factitious grin, but it can change nothing. So I
kept my temper, rid myself of an unfaithful servant, found
a method of conducting similar interviews in the future,
and fell in my own liking. One thing more: I learned
a fresh tolerance for the dead ——; he too had learned—perhaps
had invented—the trick of this manner; God
knows what weakness, what instability of feeling, lay
beneath. Ce que c’est que de nous! poor human nature;
that at past forty I must adjust this hateful mask for the
first time, and rejoice to find it effective; that the effort
of maintaining an external smile should confuse and
embitter a man’s soul.
To-day I have not weeded; I have written instead
from six till eleven, from twelve till two; with the interruption
of the interview aforesaid; a damned Letter is
written for the third time; I dread to read it, for I dare
not give it a fourth chance—unless it be very bad indeed.
Now I write you from my mosquito curtain, to the song
of saws and planes and hammers, and wood clumping on
the floor above; in a day of heavenly brightness; a bird
twittering near by; my eye, through the open door, commanding
green meads, two or three forest trees casting
their boughs against the sky, a forest-clad mountain-side
beyond, and close in by the door-jamb a nick of the blue
Pacific. It is March in England, bleak March, and I lie
here with the great sliding doors wide open in an undershirt
and p’jama trousers, and melt in the closure of
mosquito bars, and burn to be out in the breeze. A few
torn clouds—not white, the sun has tinged them a warm
pink—swim in heaven. In which blessed and fair day, I
have to make faces and speak bitter words to a man—who
has deceived me, it is true—but who is poor, and older
than I, and a kind of a gentleman too. On the whole,
I prefer the massacre of weeds.
Sunday.—When I had done talking to you yesterday,
I played on my pipe till the conch sounded, then went
over to the old house for dinner, and had scarce risen
from table ere I was submerged with visitors. The first
of these despatched, I spent the rest of the evening going
over the Samoan translation of my Bottle Imp18 with
Claxton the missionary; then to bed, but being upset,
I suppose, by these interruptions, and having gone all day
without my weeding, not to sleep. For hours I lay awake
and heard the rain fall, and saw faint, far-away lightning
over the sea, and wrote you long letters which I scorn to
reproduce. This morning Paul was unusually early; the
dawn had scarce begun when he appeared with the tray
and lit my candle; and I had breakfasted and read (with
indescribable sinkings) the whole of yesterday’s work before
the sun had risen. Then I sat and thought, and sat and
better thought. It was not good enough, nor good; it
was as slack as journalism, but not so inspired; it was
excellent stuff misused, and the defects stood gross on it
like humps upon a camel. But could I, in my present
disposition, do much more with it? in my present pressure
for time, were I not better employed doing another one
about as ill, than making this some thousandth fraction
better? Yes, I thought; and tried the new one, and
behold, I could do nothing: my head swims, words do
not come to me, nor phrases, and I accepted defeat, packed
up my traps, and turned to communicate the failure to
my esteemed correspondent. I think it possible I overworked
yesterday. Well, we’ll see to-morrow—perhaps try
again later. It is indeed the hope of trying later that keeps
me writing to you. If I take to my pipe, I know myself—all
is over for the morning. Hurray, I’ll correct proofs!
Pago-Pago, Wednesday.—After I finished on Sunday I
passed a miserable day; went out weeding, but could
not find peace. I do not like to steal my dinner, unless I
have given myself a holiday in a canonical manner; and
weeding after all is only fun, the amount of its utility small,
and the thing capable of being done faster and nearly as
well by a hired boy. In the evening Sewall came up
(American consul) and proposed to take me on a malaga,19
which I accepted. Monday I rode down to Apia, was
nearly all day fighting about drafts and money; the silver
problem does not touch you, but it is (in a strange and
I hope passing phase) making my situation difficult in
Apia.
About eleven, the flags were all half-masted; it was
old Captain Hamilton (Samasoni the natives called him)
who had passed away. In the evening I walked round to
the U.S. consulate; it was a lovely night with a full moon;
and as I got round to the hot corner of Matautu I heard
hymns in front. The balcony of the dead man’s house
was full of women singing; Mary (the widow, a native)
sat on a chair by the doorstep, and I was set beside her
on a bench, and next to Paul the carpenter; as I sat
down I had a glimpse of the old captain, who lay in a
sheet on his own table. After the hymn was over, a
native pastor made a speech which lasted a long while;
the light poured out of the door and windows; the girls
were sitting clustered at my feet; it was choking hot.
After the speech was ended, Mary carried me within; the
captain’s hands were folded on his bosom, his face and
head were composed; he looked as if he might speak at
any moment; I have never seen this kind of waxwork so
express or more venerable; and when I went away, I was
conscious of a certain envy for the man who was out
of the battle. All night it ran in my head, and the next
day when we sighted Tutuila, and ran into this beautiful
landlocked loch of Pago Pago (whence I write), Captain
Hamilton’s folded hands and quiet face said a great deal
more to me than the scenery.
I am living here in a trader’s house; we have a good
table, Sewall doing things in style; and I hope to benefit
by the change, and possibly get more stuff for Letters.
In the meanwhile, I am seized quite mal-à-propos with
desire to write a story, The Bloody Wedding, founded on
fact—very possibly true, being an attempt to read a
murder case—not yet months old, in this very place and
house where I now write. The indiscretion is what stops
me; but if I keep on feeling as I feel just now it will have
to be written. Three Star Nettison, Kit Nettison, Field
the Sailor, these are the main characters: old Nettison,
and the captain of the man of war, the secondary. Possible
scenario. Chapter I....
To Sidney Colvin
Saturday, April 18th [1891].
MY DEAR COLVIN,—I got back on Monday night, after
twenty-three hours in an open boat; the keys were lost;
the consul (who had promised us a bottle of Burgundy)
nobly broke open his storeroom, and we got to bed about
midnight. Next morning the blessed consul promised us
horses for the daybreak; forgot all about it, worthy man;
set us off at last in the heat of the day, and by a short
cut which caused infinite trouble, and we were not home
till dinner. I was extenuated, and have had a high fever
since, or should have been writing before. To-day for the
first time, I risk it. Tuesday I was pretty bad; Wednesday
had a fever to kill a horse; Thursday I was better,
but still out of ability to do aught but read awful trash.
This is the time one misses civilisation; I wished to send
out for some police novels; Montépin would have about
suited my frozen brain. It is a bother when all one’s
thought turns on one’s work in some sense or other; I
could not even think yesterday; I took to inventing
dishes by way of entertainment. Yesterday, while I lay
asleep in the afternoon, a very lucky thing happened; the
Chief Justice came to call; met one of our employés on
the road; and was shown what I had done to the road.
“Is this the road across the island?” he asked.
“The only one,” said Innes.
“And has one man done all this?”
“Three times,” said the trusty Innes. “It has had to
be made three times, and when Mr. Stevenson came, it
was a track like what you see beyond.”
“This must be put right,” said the Chief Justice.
Sunday.—The truth is, I broke down yesterday almost
as soon as I began, and have been surreptitiously finishing
the entry to-day. For all that I was much better, ate all
the time, and had no fever. The day was otherwise
uneventful. I am reminded; I had another visitor on
Friday; and Fanny and Lloyd, as they returned from a
forest raid, met in our desert, untrodden road, first Father
Didier, Keeper of the conscience of Mataafa, the rising
star; and next the Chief Justice, sole stay of Laupepa,
the present and unsteady star, and remember, a few days
before we were close to the sick bed and entertained by
the amateur physician of Tamasese, the late and sunken
star. “That is the fun of this place,” observed Lloyd;
“everybody you meet is so important.” Everybody is
also so gloomy. It will come to war again, is the opinion
of all the well informed—and before that to many bankruptcies;
and after that, as usual, to famine. Here, under
the microscope, we can see history at work.
Wednesday.—I have been very neglectful. A return
to work, perhaps premature, but necessary, has used up
all my possible energies, and made me acquainted with the
living headache. I just jot down some of the past notabilia.
Yesterday B., a carpenter, and K., my (unsuccessful)
white man, were absent all morning from their work;
I was working myself, where I hear every sound with
morbid certainty, and I can testify that not a hammer
fell. Upon inquiry I found they had passed the morning
making ice with our ice machine and taking the horizon
with a spirit level! I had no sooner heard this than—a
violent headache set in; I am a real employer of labour
now, and have much of the ship captain when aroused;
and if I had a headache, I believe both these gentlemen
had aching hearts. I promise you, the late —— was to
the front; and K., who was the most guilty, yet (in a
sense) the least blameable, having the brains and character
of a canary-bird, fared none the better for B.’s repartees.
I hear them hard at work this morning, so the menace may
be blessed. It was just after my dinner, just before theirs,
that I administered my redoubtable tongue—it is really
redoubtable—to these skulkers. (Paul used to triumph
over Mr. J. for weeks. “I am very sorry for you,” he
would say; “you’re going to have a talk with Mr. Stevenson
when he comes home: you don’t know what that is!”)
In fact, none of them do, till they get it. I have known
K., for instance, for months; he has never heard me complain,
or take notice, unless it were to praise; I have used
him always as my guest, and there seems to be something
in my appearance which suggests endless, ovine long-suffering!
We sat in the upper verandah all evening, and
discussed the price of iron roofing, and the state of the
draught-horses, with Innes, a new man we have taken, and
who seems to promise well.
One thing embarrasses me. No one ever seems to
understand my attitude about that book; the stuff sent
was never meant for other than a first state; I never
meant it to appear as a book. Knowing well that I have
never had one hour of inspiration since it was begun, and
have only beaten out my metal by brute force and patient
repetition, I hoped some day to get a “spate of style”
and burnish it—fine mixed metaphor. I am now so sick
that I intend, when the Letters are done and some more
written that will be wanted, simply to make a book of it by
the pruning-knife. I cannot fight longer; I am sensible
of having done worse than I hoped, worse than I feared;
all I can do now is to do the best I can for the future, and
clear the book, like a piece of bush, with axe and cutlass.
Even to produce the MS. of this will occupy me, at the
most favourable opinion, till the middle of next year;
really five years were wanting, when I could have made
a book; but I have a family, and—perhaps I could not
make the book after all.
To W. Craibe Angus
The late Mr. Craibe Angus of Glasgow was one of the chief
organisers of the Burns Exhibition in that city, and had proposed
to send out to Samoa a precious copy of the Jolly Beggars to receive
the autograph of R. L. S. and be returned for the purposes of that
Exhibition. The line quoted, “But still our hearts are true,” etc.,
should, it appears, run, “But still the blood is strong, the heart is
Highland.” The author of the Canadian Boat Song which opens
thus was Hugh, twelfth Earl of Eglinton. The first quotation is of
course from Burns.
Vailima, Samoa, April 1891.
DEAR MR. ANGUS,—Surely I remember you! It was
W. C. Murray who made us acquainted, and we had a
pleasant crack. I see your poet is not yet dead. I remember
even our talk—or you would not think of trusting
that invaluable Jolly Beggars to the treacherous posts,
and the perils of the sea, and the carelessness of authors.
I love the idea, but I could not bear the risk. However—
“Hale be your heart, hale be your fiddle—”
it was kindly thought upon.
My interest in Burns is, as you suppose, perennial. I
would I could be present at the exhibition, with the purpose
of which I heartily sympathise; but the Nancy has
not waited in vain for me, I have followed my chest, the
anchor is weighed long ago, I have said my last farewell
to the hills and the heather and the lynns: like Leyden,
I have gone into far lands to die, not stayed like Burns
to mingle in the end with Scottish soil. I shall not even
return like Scott for the last scene. Burns Exhibitions
are all over. ’Tis a far cry to Lochow from tropical
Vailima.
“But still our hearts are true, our hearts are Highland,
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.”
|
When your hand is in, will you remember our poor
Edinburgh Robin? Burns alone has been just to his
promise; follow Burns, he knew best, he knew whence he
drew fire—from the poor, white-faced, drunken, vicious
boy that raved himself to death in the Edinburgh madhouse.
Surely there is more to be gleaned about Fergusson,
and surely it is high time the task was set about.
I may tell you (because your poet is not dead) something
of how I feel: we are three Robins who have touched
the Scots lyre this last century. Well, the one is the
world’s; he did it, he came off, he is for ever; but I and
the other—ah! what bonds we have—born in the same
city; both sickly, both pestered, one nearly to madness,
one to the madhouse, with a damnatory creed; both seeing
the stars and the dawn, and wearing shoe-leather on
the same ancient stones, under the same pends, down the
same closes, where our common ancestors clashed in their
armour, rusty or bright. And the old Robin, who was
before Burns and the flood, died in his acute, painful youth,
and left the models of the great things that were to come;
and the new, who came after, outlived his green-sickness,
and has faintly tried to parody the finished work. If you
will collect the strays of Robin Fergusson, fish for material,
collect any last re-echoing of gossip, command me to do
what you prefer—to write the preface—to write the whole
if you prefer: anything, so that another monument (after
Burns’s) be set up to my unhappy predecessor on the
causey of Auld Reekie. You will never know, nor will
any man, how deep this feeling is: I believe Fergusson
lives in me. I do, but tell it not in Gath; every man has
these fanciful superstitions, coming, going, but yet enduring;
only most men are so wise (or the poet in them so
dead) that they keep their follies for themselves.—I am,
yours very truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Edmund Gosse
Vailima, April 1891.
MY DEAR GOSSE,—I have to thank you and Mrs. Gosse
for many mementoes, chiefly for your Life of your father.
There is a very delicate task, very delicately done. I noted
one or two carelessnesses, which I meant to point out to
you for another edition; but I find I lack the time, and
you will remark them for yourself against a new edition.
There were two, or perhaps three, flabbinesses of style
which (in your work) amazed me. Am I right in thinking
you were a shade bored over the last chapters? or was
it my own fault that made me think them susceptible of
a more athletic compression? (The flabbinesses were not
there, I think, but in the more admirable part, where they
showed the bigger.) Take it all together, the book struck
me as if you had been hurried at the last, but particularly
hurried over the proofs, and could still spend a very profitable
fortnight in earnest revision and (towards the end)
heroic compression. The book, in design, subject, and
general execution, is well worth the extra trouble. And
even if I were wrong in thinking it specially wanted, it
will not be lost; for do we not know, in Flaubert’s dread
confession, that “prose is never done”? What a medium
to work in, for a man tired, perplexed among different aims
and subjects, and spurred by the immediate need of
“siller”! However, it’s mine for what it’s worth; and
it’s one of yours, the devil take it; and you know, as well
as Flaubert, and as well as me, that it is never done; in
other words, it is a torment of the pit, usually neglected
by the bards who (lucky beggars!) approached the Styx
in measure. I speak bitterly at the moment, having just
detected in myself the last fatal symptom, three blank
verses in succession—and I believe, God help me, a hemistich
at the tail of them; hence I have deposed the labourer,
come out of hell by my private trap, and now write to you
from my little place in purgatory. But I prefer hell:
would I could always dig in those red coals—or else be at
sea in a schooner, bound for isles unvisited: to be on
shore and not to work is emptiness—suicidal vacancy.
I was the more interested in your Life of your father,
because I meditate one of mine, or rather of my family.
I have no such materials as you, and (our objections
already made) your attack fills me with despair; it is
direct and elegant, and your style is always admirable to
me—lenity, lucidity, usually a high strain of breeding, an
elegance that has a pleasant air of the accidental. But
beware of purple passages. I wonder if you think as well
of your purple passages as I do of mine? I wonder
if you think as ill of mine as I do of yours? I wonder;
I can tell you at least what is wrong with yours—they
are treated in the spirit of verse. The spirit—I don’t
mean the measure, I don’t mean you fall into bastard
cadences; what I mean is that they seem vacant and
smoothed out, ironed, if you like. And in a style which
(like yours) aims more and more successfully at the
academic, one purple word is already much; three—a
whole phrase—is inadmissible. Wed yourself to a clean
austerity: that is your force. Wear a linen ephod,
splendidly candid. Arrange its folds, but do not fasten it
with any brooch. I swear to you, in your talking robes,
there should be no patch of adornment; and where the
subject forces, let it force you no further than it must;
and be ready with a twinkle of your pleasantry. Yours
is a fine tool, and I see so well how to hold it; I wonder
if you see how to hold mine? But then I am to the neck
in prose, and just now in the “dark interstylar cave,” all
methods and effects wooing me, myself in the midst impotent
to follow any. I look for dawn presently, and a full
flowing river of expression, running whither it wills. But
these useless seasons, above all, when a man must continue
to spoil paper, are infinitely weary.
We are in our house after a fashion; without furniture,
’tis true, camping there, like the family after a sale. But
the bailiff has not yet appeared; he will probably come
after. The place is beautiful beyond dreams; some fifty
miles of the Pacific spread in front; deep woods all round;
a mountain making in the sky a profile of huge trees upon
our left; about us, the little island of our clearing, studded
with brave old gentlemen (or ladies, or “the twa o’ them”)
whom we have spared. It is a good place to be in; night
and morning, we have Theodore Rousseaus (always a new
one) hung to amuse us on the walls of the world; and
the moon—this is our good season, we have a moon just
now—makes the night a piece of heaven. It amazes me
how people can live on in the dirty north; yet if you saw
our rainy season (which is really a caulker for wind, wet,
and darkness—howling showers, roaring winds, pit-blackness
at noon) you might marvel how we could endure
that. And we can’t. But there’s a winter everywhere;
only ours is in the summer. Mark my words: there will
be a winter in heaven—and in hell. Cela rentre dans les
procédés du bon Dieu; et vous verrez! There’s another
very good thing about Vailima, I am away from the little
bubble of the literary life. It is not all beer and skittles,
is it? By the by, my Ballads seem to have been dam
bad; all the crickets sing so in their crickety papers;
and I have no ghost of an idea on the point myself: verse
is always to me the unknowable. You might tell me how
it strikes a professional bard: not that it really matters,
for, of course, good or bad, I don’t think I shall get into
that galley any more. But I should like to know if you
join the shrill chorus of the crickets. The crickets are
the devil in all to you: ’tis a strange thing, they seem to
rejoice like a strong man in their injustice. I trust you
got my letter about your Browning book. In case it
missed, I wish to say again that your publication of
Browning’s kind letter, as an illustration of his character,
was modest, proper, and in radiant good taste.—In Witness
whereof, etc. etc.,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Miss Rawlinson
The next is written to a young friend and visitor of Bournemouth
days (see vol. xxiv. p. 227) on the news of her engagement to
Mr. Alfred Spender.
Vailima, Apia, Samoa, April 1891.
MY DEAR MAY,—I never think of you by any more
ceremonial name, so I will not pretend. There is not
much chance that I shall forget you until the time comes
for me to forget all this little turmoil in a corner (though
indeed I have been in several corners) of an inconsiderable
planet. You remain in my mind for a good reason,
having given me (in so short a time) the most delightful
pleasure. I shall remember, and you must still be
beautiful. The truth is, you must grow more so, or you
will soon be less. It is not so easy to be a flower, even
when you bear a flower’s name. And if I admired you so
much, and still remember you, it is not because of your
face, but because you were then worthy of it, as you must
still continue.
Will you give my heartiest congratulations to Mr.
Spender? He has my admiration; he is a brave man;
when I was young, I should have run away from the sight
of you, pierced with the sense of my unfitness. He is
more wise and manly. What a good husband he will
have to be! And you—what a good wife! Carry your
love tenderly. I will never forgive him—or you—it is in
both your hands—if the face that once gladdened my
heart should be changed into one sour or sorrowful.
What a person you are to give flowers! It was so I first
heard of you; and now you are giving the May flower!
Yes, Skerryvore has passed; it was, for us. But I
wish you could see us in our new home on the mountain,
in the middle of great woods, and looking far out over the
Pacific. When Mr. Spender is very rich, he must bring
you round the world and let you see it, and see the old
gentleman and the old lady. I mean to live quite a long
while yet, and my wife must do the same, or else I couldn’t
manage it; so, you see, you will have plenty of time;
and it’s a pity not to see the most beautiful places, and
the most beautiful people moving there, and the real stars
and moon overhead, instead of the tin imitations that
preside over London. I do not think my wife very well;
but I am in hopes she will now have a little rest. It has
been a hard business, above all for her; we lived four
months in the hurricane season in a miserable house, overborne
with work, ill-fed, continually worried, drowned in
perpetual rain, beaten upon by wind, so that we must sit
in the dark in the evenings; and then I ran away, and
she had a month of it alone. Things go better now; the
back of the work is broken; and we are still foolish enough
to look forward to a little peace. I am a very different
person from the prisoner of Skerryvore. The other day
I was three-and-twenty hours in an open boat; it made
me pretty ill; but fancy its not killing me half-way! It
is like a fairy story that I should have recovered liberty
and strength, and should go round again among my fellow-men,
boating, riding, bathing, toiling hard with a wood-knife
in the forest. I can wish you nothing more delightful
than my fortune in life; I wish it you; and better, if
the thing be possible.
Lloyd is tinkling below me on the typewriter; my wife
has just left the room; she asks me to say she would have
written had she been well enough, and hopes to do it still.—Accept
the best wishes of your admirer,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Sidney Colvin
This letter announces (1) the arrival of Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
from Sydney, to take up her abode in her son’s island home now
that the conditions of life there had been made fairly comfortable;
and (2) the receipt of a letter from me expressing the disappointment
felt by Stevenson’s friends at home at the impersonal and even
tedious character of some portions of the South Sea Letters that
had reached us. As a corrective of this opinion, I may perhaps
mention here that there is a certain many-voyaged master-mariner
as well as master-writer—no less a person than Mr. Joseph Conrad—who
does not at all share it, and prefers In the South Seas to
Treasure Island.
[Vailima] April 29th, ’91.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—I begin again. I was awake this
morning about half-past four. It was still night, but I
made my fire, which is always a delightful employment,
and read Lockhart’s Scott until the day began to peep.
It was a beautiful and sober dawn, a dove-coloured dawn,
insensibly brightening to gold. I was looking at it some
while over the down-hill profile of our eastern road when
I chanced to glance northward, and saw with extraordinary
pleasure the sea lying outspread. It seemed as smooth as
glass, and yet I knew the surf was roaring all along the
reef, and indeed, if I had listened, I could have heard it—and
saw the white sweep of it outside Matautu.
I am out of condition still, and can do nothing, and
toil to be at my pen, and see some ink behind me. I
have taken up again The High Woods of Ulufanua. I
still think the fable too fantastic and far-fetched. But,
on a re-reading, fell in love with my first chapter, and
for good or evil I must finish it. It is really good, well
fed with facts, true to the manners, and (for once in my
works) rendered pleasing by the presence of a heroine
who is pretty. Miss Uma is pretty; a fact. All my
other women have been as ugly as sin, and like Falconet’s
horse (I have just been reading the anecdote in Lockhart),
mortes forbye.
News: our old house is now half demolished; it is
to be rebuilt on a new site; now we look down upon and
through the open posts of it like a bird-cage, to the woods
beyond. My poor Paulo has lost his father and succeeded
to thirty thousand thalers (I think); he had to go down
to the consulate yesterday to send a legal paper; got
drunk, of course, and is still this morning in so bemused
a condition that our breakfasts all went wrong. Lafaele
is absent at the deathbed of his fair spouse; fair she was,
but not in deed, acting as harlot to the wreckers at work
on the warships, to which society she probably owes her
end, having fallen off a cliff, or been thrust off it—inter
pocula. Henry is the same, our stand-by. In this transition
stage he has been living in Apia; but the other
night he stayed up, and sat with us about the chimney
in my room. It was the first time he had seen a fire in
a hearth; he could not look at it without smiles, and was
always anxious to put on another stick. We entertained
him with the fairy tales of civilisation—theatres, London,
blocks in the street, Universities, the Underground, newspapers,
etc., and projected once more his visit to Sydney.
If we can manage, it will be next Christmas. (I see it
will be impossible for me to afford a further journey this
winter.) We have spent since we have been here about
£2,500, which is not much if you consider we have built
on that three houses, one of them of some size, and a
considerable stable, made two miles of road some three
times, cleared many acres of bush, made some miles of
path, planted quantities of food, and enclosed a horse
paddock and some acres of pig run; but ’tis a good deal
of money regarded simply as money. K. is bosh; I
have no use for him; but we must do what we can with
the fellow meanwhile; he is good-humoured and honest,
but inefficient, idle himself, the cause of idleness in others,
grumbling, a self-excuser—all the faults in a bundle. He
owes us thirty weeks’ service—the wretched Paul about
half as much. Henry is almost the only one of our
employés who has a credit.
May 17th.—Well, am I ashamed of myself? I do not
think so. I have been hammering letters ever since,
and got three ready and a fourth about half through;
all four will go by the mail, which is what I wish, for so
I keep at least my start. Days and days of unprofitable
stubbing and digging, and the result still poor as literature,
left-handed, heavy, unillumined, but I believe readable
and interesting as matter. It has been no joke of a hard
time, and when my task was done, I had little taste for
anything but blowing on the pipe. A few necessary letters
filled the bowl to overflowing.
My mother has arrived, young, well, and in good
spirits. By desperate exertions, which have wholly
floored Fanny, her room was ready for her, and the dining-room
fit to eat in. It was a famous victory. Lloyd never
told me of your portrait till a few days ago; fortunately,
I had no pictures hung yet; and the space over my
chimney waits your counterfeit presentment. I have not
often heard anything that pleased me more; your severe
head shall frown upon me and keep me to the mark. But
why has it not come? Have you been as forgetful as
Lloyd?
18th.—Miserable comforters are ye all! I read your
esteemed pages this morning by lamplight and the glimmer
of the dawn, and as soon as breakfast was over, I must
turn to and tackle these despised labours! Some courage
was necessary, but not wanting. There is one thing at
least by which I can avenge myself for my drubbing, for
on one point you seem impenetrably stupid. Can I find
no form of words which will at last convey to your intelligence
the fact that these letters were never meant, and are
not now meant, to be other than a quarry of materials from
which the book may be drawn? There seems something
incommunicable in this (to me) simple idea; I know
Lloyd failed to comprehend it, I doubt if he has grasped
it now; and I despair, after all these efforts, that you
should ever be enlightened. Still, oblige me by reading
that form of words once more, and see if a light does not
break. You may be sure, after the friendly freedoms of
your criticism (necessary I am sure, and wholesome I
know, but untimely to the poor labourer in his landslip)
that mighty little of it will stand.
Our Paul has come into a fortune, and wishes to go
home to the Hie Germanie. This is a tile on our head,
and if a shower, which is now falling, lets up, I must go
down to Apia, and see if I can find a substitute of any
kind. This is, from any point of view, disgusting; above
all, from that of work; for, whatever the result, the mill
has to be kept turning; apparently dust, and not flour,
is the proceed. Well, there is gold in the dust, which
is a fine consolation, since—well, I can’t help it; night
or morning, I do my darndest, and if I cannot charge
for merit, I must e’en charge for toil, of which I have
plenty and plenty more ahead before this cup is drained;
sweat and hyssop are the ingredients.
We are clearing from Carruthers’ Road to the pig
fence, twenty-eight powerful natives with Catholic medals
about their necks, all swiping in like Trojans; long may
the sport continue!
The invoice to hand. Ere this goes out, I hope to see
your expressive, but surely not benignant countenance!
Adieu, O culler of offensive expressions—‘and a’ to be
a posy to your ain dear May!’—Fanny seems a little
revived again after her spasm of work. Our books and
furniture keep slowly draining up the road, in a sad state
of scatterment and disrepair; I wish the devil had had
K. by his red beard before he had packed my library.
Odd leaves and sheets and boards—a thing to make a
bibliomaniac shed tears—are fished out of odd corners.
But I am no bibliomaniac, praise Heaven, and I bear up,
and rejoice when I find anything safe.
19th.—However, I worked five hours on the brute, and
finished my Letter all the same, and couldn’t sleep last
night by consequence. Haven’t had a bad night since I
don’t know when; dreamed a large handsome man (a
New Orleans planter) had insulted my wife, and, do what
I pleased, I could not make him fight me; and woke to
find it was the eleventh anniversary of my marriage. A
letter usually takes me from a week to three days; but
I’m sometimes two days on a page—I was once three—and
then my friends kick me. C’est-y-bête! I wish
letters of that charming quality could be so timed as to
arrive when a fellow wasn’t working at the truck in
question; but, of course, that can’t be. Did not go down
last night. It showered all afternoon, and poured heavy
and loud all night.
You should have seen our twenty-five popés (the
Samoan phrase for a Catholic, lay or cleric) squatting
when the day’s work was done on the ground outside the
verandah, and pouring in the rays of forty-eight eyes
through the back and the front door of the dining-room,
while Henry and I and the boss pope signed the contract.
The second boss (an old man) wore a kilt (as usual) and
a Balmoral bonnet with a little tartan edging and the
tails pulled off. I told him that hat belong to my country—Sekotia;
and he said, yes, that was the place that he
belonged to right enough. And then all the Papists
laughed till the woods rang; he was slashing away with
a cutlass as he spoke.
The pictures20 have decidedly not come; they may
probably arrive Sunday.
To Miss Adelaide Boodle
The reference in the first paragraph is to a previous letter concerning
private matters, in which Stevenson had remonstrated with
his correspondent on what seemed to him her mistaken reasons for
a certain course of conduct.
[Vailima, May 1891.]
MY DEAR ADELAIDE,—I will own you just did manage
to tread on my gouty toe; and I beg to assure you with
most people I should simply have turned away and said
no more. My cudgelling was therefore in the nature of
a caress or testimonial.
God forbid, I should seem to judge for you on such a
point; it was what you seemed to set forth as your
reasons that fluttered my old Presbyterian spirit—for,
mind you, I am a child of the Covenanters—whom I do
not love, but they are mine after all, my father’s and my
mother’s—and they had their merits too, and their ugly
beauties, and grotesque heroisms, that I love them for,
the while I laugh at them; but in their name and mine
do what you think right, and let the world fall. That is
the privilege and the duty of private persons; and I shall
think the more of you at the greater distance, because
you keep a promise to your fellow-man, your helper and
creditor in life, by just so much as I was tempted to think
the less of you (O not much, or I would never have been
angry) when I thought you were the swallower of a (tinfoil)
formula.
I must say I was uneasy about my letter, not because
it was too strong as an expression of my unregenerate
sentiments, but because I knew full well it should be
followed by something kinder. And the mischief has
been in my health. I fell sharply sick in Sydney, was
put aboard the Lübeck pretty bad, got to Vailima, hung
on a month there, and didn’t pick up as well as my work
needed; set off on a journey, gained a great deal, lost it
again; and am back at Vailima, still no good at my
necessary work. I tell you this for my imperfect excuse
that I should not have written you again sooner to remove
the bad taste of my last.
A road has been called Adelaide Road; it leads from
the back of our house to the bridge, and thence to the
garden, and by a bifurcation to the pig pen. It is thus
much traversed, particularly by Fanny. An oleander,
the only one of your seeds that prospered in this climate,
grows there; and the name is now some week or ten
days applied and published. Adelaide Road leads also
into the bush, to the banana patch and by a second
bifurcation over the left branch of the stream to the
plateau and the right hand of the gorges. In short, it
leads to all sorts of good, and is, besides, in itself a pretty
winding path, bound downhill among big woods to the
margin of the stream.
What a strange idea, to think me a Jew-hater! Isaiah
and David and Heine are good enough for me; and I
leave more unsaid. Were I of Jew blood, I do not think
I could ever forgive the Christians; the ghettos would
get in my nostrils like mustard or lit gunpowder. Just
so you, as being a child of the Presbytery, I retain—I
need not dwell on that. The ascendant hand is what I
feel most strongly; I am bound in and in with my forbears;
were he one of mine, I should not be struck at
all by Mr. Moss of Bevis Marks, I should still see behind
him Moses of the Mount and the Tables and the shining
face. We are all nobly born; fortunate those who know
it; blessed those who remember.
I am, my dear Adelaide, most genuinely yours,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Write by return to say you are better, and I will try
to do the same.
To Charles Baxter
The following refers again to the project of a long genealogical
novel expanded from the original idea of Henry Shovel.
[Vailima] Tuesday, 19th May ’91.
MY DEAR CHARLES,—I don’t know what you think of
me, not having written to you at all during your illness.
I find two sheets begun with your name, but that is no
excuse.... I am keeping bravely; getting about better
every day, and hope soon to be in my usual fettle. My
books begin to come; and I fell once more on the Old
Bailey session papers. I have 1778, 1784, and 1786.
Should you be able to lay hands on any other volumes,
above all a little later, I should be very glad you should
buy them for me. I particularly want one or two during
the course of the Peninsular War. Come to think, I ought
rather to have communicated this want to Bain. Would
it bore you to communicate to that effect with the great
man? The sooner I have them, the better for me. ’Tis
for Henry Shovel. But Henry Shovel has now turned into
a work called The Shovels of Newton French: including
Memoirs of Henry Shovel, a Private in the Peninsular War,
which work is to begin in 1664 with the marriage of Skipper,
afterwards Alderman Shovel of Bristol, Henry’s great-great-grandfather,
and end about 1832 with his own second
marriage to the daughter of his runaway aunt. Will the
public ever stand such an opus? Gude kens, but it
tickles me. Two or three historical personages will just
appear: Judge Jeffreys, Wellington, Colquhoun, Grant,
and I think Townsend the runner. I know the public
won’t like it; let ’em lump it then; I mean to make it
good; it will be more like a saga.
Adieu.—Yours ever affectionately,
R. L. Stevenson.
To Sidney Colvin
[Vailima] June 1891.
SIR,—To you, under your portrait, which is, in expression,
your true, breathing self, and up to now saddens
me; in time, and soon, I shall be glad to have it there;
it is still only a reminder of your absence. Fanny wept
when we unpacked it, and you know how little she is given
to that mood; I was scarce Roman myself, but that does
not count—I lift up my voice so readily. These are good
compliments to the artist.21 I write in the midst of a
wreck of books, which have just come up, and have for
once defied my labours to get straight. The whole floor
is filled with them, and (what’s worse) most of the shelves
forbye; and where they are to go to, and what is to become
of the librarian, God knows. It is hot to-night, and has
been airless all day, and I am out of sorts, and my work
sticks, the devil fly away with it and me. We had an
alarm of war since last I wrote my screeds to you, and
it blew over, and is to blow on again, and the rumour goes
they are to begin by killing all the whites. I have no belief
in this, and should be infinitely sorry if it came to pass—I
do not mean for us, that were otiose—but for the poor, deluded
schoolboys, who should hope to gain by such a step.
Letter resumed, June 20th.—No diary this time. Why?
you ask. I have only sent out four Letters, and two
chapters of The Wrecker. Yes, but to get these I have
written 132 pp., 66,000 words in thirty days; 2200 words
a day; the labours of an elephant. God knows what it’s
like, and don’t ask me, but nobody shall say I have spared
pains. I thought for some time it wouldn’t come at all.
I was days and days over the first letter of the lot—days
and days writing and deleting and making no headway whatever,
till I thought I should have gone bust; but it came
at last after a fashion, and the rest went a thought more
easily, though I am not so fond as to fancy any better.
Your opinion as to the Letters as a whole is so damnatory
that I put them by. But there is a “hell of a want of”
money this year. And these Gilbert Island papers, being the
most interesting in matter, and forming a compact whole, and
being well illustrated, I did think of as a possible resource.
It would be called
Six Months in Melanesia,
Two Island Kings,
—— Monarchies,
Gilbert Island Kings,
—— Monarchies,
|
and I dare say I’ll think of a better yet—and would divide
thus:—
| Butaritari |
| I. |
A Town Asleep. |
| II. |
The Three Brothers. |
| III. |
Around our House. |
| IV. |
A Tale of a Tapu. |
| V. |
The Five Days’ Festival. |
| VI. |
Domestic Life—(which might be omitted, but
not well, better be recast). |
| The King of Apemama |
| VII. |
The Royal Traders. |
| VIII. |
Foundation of Equator Town. |
| IX. |
The Palace of Mary Warren. |
| X. |
Equator Town and the Palace. |
| XI. |
King and Commons. |
| XII. |
The Devil Work Box. |
| XIII. |
The Three Corslets. |
| XIV. |
Tail piece; the Court upon a Journey. |
I wish you to watch these closely, judging them as
a whole, and treating them as I have asked you, and
favour me with your damnatory advice. I look up at
your portrait, and it frowns upon me. You seem to view
me with reproach. The expression is excellent; Fanny
wept when she saw it, and you know she is not given to
the melting mood. She seems really better; I have a
touch of fever again, I fancy overwork, and to-day, when
I have overtaken my letters, I shall blow on my pipe.
Tell Mrs. Sitwell I have been playing Le Chant d’Amour
lately, and have arranged it, after awful trouble, rather
prettily for two pipes; and it brought her before me with
an effect scarce short of hallucination. I could hear her
voice in every note; yet I had forgot the air entirely, and
began to pipe it from notes as something new, when I
was brought up with a round turn by this reminiscence.
We are now very much installed; the dining-room is
done, and looks lovely. Soon we shall begin to photograph
and send you our circumstances. My room is still a howling
wilderness. I sleep on a platform in a window, and
strike my mosquito bar and roll up my bedclothes every
morning, so that the bed becomes by day a divan. A
great part of the floor is knee-deep in books, yet nearly
all the shelves are filled, alas! It is a place to make a
pig recoil, yet here are my interminable labours begun
daily by lamp-light, and sometimes not yet done when
the lamp has once more to be lighted. The effect of
pictures in this place is surprising. They give great
pleasure.
June 21st.—A word more. I had my breakfast this
morning at 4.30! My new cook has beaten me and (as
Lloyd says) revenged all the cooks in the world. I have
been hunting them to give me breakfast early since I was
twenty; and now here comes Mr. Ratke, and I have to
plead for mercy. I cannot stand 4.30; I am a mere fevered
wreck; it is now half-past eight, and I can no more, and
four hours divide me from lunch, the devil take the man!
Yesterday it was about 5.30, which I can stand; day
before 5, which is bad enough; to-day, I give out. It is
like a London season, and as I do not take a siesta once
in a month, and then only five minutes, I am being worn
to the bones, and look aged and anxious.
We have Rider Haggard’s brother here as a Land
Commissioner; a nice kind of a fellow; indeed, all the
three Land Commissioners are very agreeable.
To E. L. Burlingame
For the result of the suggestion made in the following, see
Scribner’s Magazine, October 1893, p. 494.
Vailima [Summer 1891].
MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—I find among my grandfather’s
papers his own reminiscences of his voyage round
the north with Sir Walter, eighty years ago, labuntur anni!
They are not remarkably good, but he was not a bad
observer, and several touches seem to me speaking. It
has occurred to me you might like them to appear in
the Magazine. If you would, kindly let me know, and
tell me how you would like it handled. My grandad’s MS.
runs to between six and seven thousand words, which I
could abbreviate of anecdotes that scarce touch Sir W.
Would you like this done? Would you like me to introduce
the old gentleman? I had something of the sort in
my mind, and could fill a few columns rather à propos.
I give you the first offer of this, according to your request;
for though it may forestall one of the interests of my
biography, the thing seems to me particularly suited for
prior appearance in a magazine.
I see the first number of The Wrecker; I thought it
went lively enough; and by a singular accident, the
picture is not unlike Tai-o-hae!
Thus we see the age of miracles, etc.—Yours very
sincerely,
R. L. S.
Proofs for next mail.
To W. Craibe Angus
Referring again to the Burns Exhibition and to his correspondent’s
request for an autograph in a special copy of The Jolly
Beggars.
[Summer 1891.]
DEAR MR. ANGUS,—You can use my letter as you will.
The parcel has not come; pray Heaven the next post
bring it safe. Is it possible for me to write a preface here?
I will try if you like, if you think I must: though surely
there are Rivers in Assyria. Of course you will send me
sheets of the catalogue; I suppose it (the preface) need
not be long; perhaps it should be rather very short?
Be sure you give me your views upon these points. Also
tell me what names to mention among those of your
helpers, and do remember to register everything, else it
is not safe.
The true place (in my view) for a monument to Fergusson
were the churchyard of Haddington. But as that
would perhaps not carry many votes, I should say one
of the two following sites:—First, either as near the site
of the old Bedlam as we could get, or, second, beside
the Cross, the heart of his city. Upon this I would have
a fluttering butterfly, and, I suggest, the citation,
Poor butterfly, thy case I mourn.
For the case of Fergusson is not one to pretend about.
A more miserable tragedy the sun never shone upon, or
(in consideration of our climate) I should rather say refused
to brighten.—Yours truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Where Burns goes will not matter. He is no local
poet, like your Robin the First; he is general as the
casing air. Glasgow, as the chief city of Scottish men,
would do well; but for God’s sake, don’t let it be like
the Glasgow memorial to Knox; I remember, when I first
saw this, laughing for an hour by Shrewsbury clock.
R. L. S.
To H. C. Ide
The following is written to the American Land Commissioner
(later Chief Justice for a term) in Samoa, whose elder daughter, then
at home in the States, had been born on a Christmas Day, and
consequently regarded herself as defrauded of her natural rights
to a private anniversary of her own.
[Vailima, June 19, 1891.]
DEAR MR. IDE,—Herewith please find the Document,
which I trust will prove sufficient in law. It seems to
me very attractive in its eclecticism; Scots, English, and
Roman law phrases are all indifferently introduced, and
a quotation from the works of Haynes Bayly can hardly
fail to attract the indulgence of the Bench.—Yours very
truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
I, Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate of the Scots Bar,
author of The Master of Ballantrae and Moral Emblems,
stuck civil engineer, sole owner and patentee of the Palace
and Plantation known as Vailima in the island of Upolu,
Samoa, a British Subject, being in sound mind, and pretty
well, I thank you, in body;
In consideration that Miss Annie H. Ide, daughter of
H. C. Ide, in the town of Saint Johnsbury, in the county
of Caledonia, in the state of Vermont, United States of
America, was born, out of all reason, upon Christmas Day,
and is therefore out of all justice denied the consolation
and profit of a proper birthday;
And considering that I, the said Robert Louis Stevenson,
have attained an age when O, we never mention it,
and that I have now no further use for a birthday of any
description;
And in consideration that I have met H. C. Ide, the
father of the said Annie H. Ide, and found him about as
white a land commissioner as I require;
Have transferred, and do hereby transfer, to the said
Annie H. Ide, all and whole my rights and privileges in
the thirteenth day of November, formerly my birthday,
now, hereby, and henceforth, the birthday of the said
Annie H. Ide, to have, hold, exercise, and enjoy the same
in the customary manner, by the sporting of fine raiment,
eating of rich meats, and receipt of gifts, compliments,
and copies of verse, according to the manner of our
ancestors;
And I direct the said Annie H. Ide to add to the said
name of Annie H. Ide the name Louisa—at least in
private; and I charge her to use my said birthday with
moderation and humanity, et tamquam bona filia familiæ,
the said birthday not being so young as it once was, and
having carried me in a very satisfactory manner since I
can remember;
And in case the said Annie H. Ide shall neglect or
contravene either of the above conditions, I hereby revoke
the donation and transfer my rights in the said birthday
to the President of the United States of America for the
time being;
In witness whereof I have hereto set my hand and seal
this nineteenth day of June in the year of grace eighteen
hundred and ninety-one.
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Witness, Lloyd Osbourne,
Witness, Harold Watts.
To Sidney Colvin
The misgivings herein expressed about the imminence of a native
war were not realised until two years later, and the plans of defence
into which Stevenson here enters with characteristic gusto were not
put to the test.
[Vailima, June and July 1891.]
MY DEAR COLVIN,—I am so hideously in arrears that
I know not where to begin. However, here I am a
prisoner in my room, unfit for work, incapable of reading
with interest, and trying to catch up a bit. We have a
guest here: a welcome guest: my Sydney music master,
whose health broke down, and who came with his remarkable
simplicity, to ask a month’s lodging. He is newly
married, his wife in the family way: beastly time to fall
sick. I have found, by good luck, a job for him here
which will pay some of his way: and in the meantime
he is a pleasant guest, for he plays the flute with little
sentiment but great perfection, and endears himself by
his simplicity. To me, especially; I am so weary of
finding people approach me with precaution, pick their
words, flatter, and twitter; but the muttons of the good
God are not at all afraid of the lion. They take him
as he comes, and he does not bite—at least not hard.
This makes us a party of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, at table;
deftly waited on by Mary Carter, a very nice Sydney
girl, who served us at a boarding-house and has since
come on—how long she will endure this exile is another
story; and gauchely waited on by Faauma, the new
left-handed wife of the famed Lafaele, a little creature
in native dress of course and as beautiful as a bronze
candlestick, so fine, clean and dainty in every limb; her
arms and her little hips in particular masterpieces. The
rest of the crew may be stated briefly: the great Henry
Simelé, still to the front; King, of the yellow beard,
rather a disappointment—I am inclined on this point to
republican opinions: Ratke, a German cook, good—and
Germanly bad, he don’t make my kitchen; Paul, now
working out his debts outdoor; Emma, a strange weird
creature—I suspect (from her colour) a quarter white—widow
of a white man, ugly, capable, a really good laundress;
Java—yes, that is the name—they spell it Siava,
but pronounce it, and explain it Java—her assistant, a
creature I adore from her plain, wholesome, bread-and-butter
beauty. An honest, almost ugly, bright, good-natured
face; the rest (to my sense) merely exquisite.
She comes steering into my room of a morning, like Mrs.
Nickleby, with elaborate precaution; unlike her, noiseless.
If I look up from my work, she is ready with an
explosive smile. I generally don’t, and wait to look at
her as she stoops for the bellows, and trips tiptoe off again,
a miracle of successful womanhood in every line. I am
amused to find plain, healthy Java pass in my fancy so
far before pretty young Faauma. I observed Lloyd the
other day to say that Java must have been lovely “when
she was young”; and I thought it an odd word, of a
woman in the height of health, not yet touched with fat,
though (to be just) a little slack of bust.
Our party you know: Fanny, Lloyd, my mother,
Belle, and “the babe”—as we call him—Austin. We
have now three instruments; Boehm flageolet, flute, and
Bb clarinet; and we expect in a few days our piano. This
is a great pleasure to me; the band-mastering, the playing
and all. As soon as I am done with this stage of a letter,
I shall return, not being allowed to play, to band-master,
being engaged in an attempt to arrange an air with effect
for the three pipes. And I’ll go now, by jabers.
July 3rd.—A long pause: occasioned, first by some
days of hard work: next by a vile quinsey—if that be the
way to spell it. But to-day I must write. For we have
all kinds of larks on hand. The wars and rumours of
wars begin to take consistency, insomuch that we have
landed the weapons this morning, and inspected the
premises with a view to defence. Of course it will come
to nothing; but as in all stories of massacres, the one you
don’t prepare for is the one that comes off. All our natives
think ill of the business; none of the whites do. According
to our natives the demonstration threatened for to-day
or to-morrow is one of vengeance on the whites—small
wonder—and if that begins—where will it stop? Anyway
I don’t mean to go down for nothing, if I can help
it; and to amuse you I will tell you our plans.
There is the house, upper story. Our weak point is
of course the sides AB, AH; so we propose to place half
our garrison in the space HGFD and half in the opposite
corner, BB′CD. We shall communicate through the
interior, there is a water-tank in the angle C, my mother
and Austin are to go in the loft. The holding of only these
two corners and deserting the corner C′ is for economy
and communication, two doors being in the sides GF and
CD; so that any one in the corner C′ could only communicate
or be reinforced by exposure. Besides we are
short of mattresses. Garrison: R. L. S., Lloyd, Fanny,
King, Ratke—doubtful, he may go—Emma, Mary, Belle;
weapons: eight revolvers and a shot gun, and swords
galore; but we’re pretty far gone when we come to the
swords. It has been rather a lark arranging; but I find
it a bore to write, and I doubt it will be cruel stale to
read about, when all’s over and done, as it will be ere this
goes, I fancy: far more ere it reaches you.
Date unknown.—Well, nothing as yet, though I don’t
swear by it yet. There has been a lot of trouble, and there
still is a lot of doubt as to the future; and those who sit
in the chief seats, who are all excellent, pleasant creatures,
are not, perhaps, the most wise of mankind. They actually
proposed to kidnap and deport Mataafa; a scheme which
would have loosed the avalanche at once. But some
human being interfered and choked off this pleasing
scheme. You ask me in yours just received, what will
become of us if it comes to a war? Well, if it is a war of
the old sort, nothing. It will mean a little bother, and
a great deal of theft, and more amusement. But if it
comes to the massacre lark, I can only answer with the
Bell of Old Bow. You are to understand that, in my
reading of the native character, every day that passes is
a solid gain. They put in the time public speaking; so
wear out their energy, develop points of difference and
exacerbate internal ill-feeling. Consequently, I feel less
apprehension of difficulty now, by about a hundredfold.
All that I stick to, is that if war begins, there are ten
chances to one we shall have it bad. The natives have
been scurvily used by all the white powers without exception;
and they labour under the belief, of which they
can’t be cured, that they defeated Germany. This makes
an awkward complication.
I was extremely vexed to hear you were ill again.
I hope you are better. ’Tis a long time we have known
each other now, to be sure. Well, well! you say you
are sure to catch fever in the bush; so we do continually;
but you are to conceive Samoa fever as the least formidable
malady under heaven: implying only a day or so of
slight headache and languor and ill humour, easily reduced
by quinine or antipyrine. The hot fever I had was from
over-exertion and blood poisoning, no doubt, and irritation
of the bladder; it went of its own accord and with
rest. I have had since a bad quinsey which knocked me
rather useless for about a week, but I stuck to my work,
with great difficulty and small success.
Date unknown.—But it’s fast day and July, and the
rude inclement depth of winter, and the thermometer
was 68 this morning and a few days ago it was 63, and
we have all been perishing with cold. All still seems
quiet. Your counterfeit presentments are all round us:
the pastel over my bed, the Dew-Smith photograph over
my door, and the “celebrity” on Fanny’s table. My room
is now done, and looks very gay, and chromatic with its
blue walls and my coloured lines of books.
To Sidney Colvin
This is the first letter in which Stevenson expresses the opinion
which had been forcing itself upon him, and which he felt it his duty
in the following year to express publicly in letters to the Times,
of the unwisdom of the government established under the treaty
between the Three Powers and the incompetence of the officials
appointed to carry it out.
[Vailima] Sunday, Sept. 5(?), 1891.
My Dear Colvin,—Yours from Lochinver has just
come. You ask me if I am ever homesick for the Highlands
and the Isles. Conceive that for the last month I
have been living there between 1786 and 1850, in my
grandfather’s diaries and letters. I had to take a rest;
no use talking; so I put in a month over my Lives of
the Stevensons with great pleasure and profit and some
advance; one chapter and a part drafted. The whole
promises well. Chapter I. Domestic Annals. Chapter II.
The Northern Lights. Chapter III. The Bell Rock.
Chapter IV. A Family of Boys. Chap. V. The Grandfather.
VI. Alan Stevenson. VII. Thomas Stevenson. My materials
for my great-grandfather are almost null; for my grandfather
copious and excellent. Name, a puzzle. A Scottish
Family, A Family of Engineers, Northern Lights, The
Engineers of the Northern Lights: A Family History.
Advise; but it will take long. Now, imagine if I have
been homesick for Barrahead and Island Glass, and Kirkwall,
and Cape Wrath, and the Wells of the Pentland
Firth; I could have wept.
Now for politics. I am much less alarmed; I believe
the malo (= raj, government) will collapse and cease like
an overlain infant, without a shot fired. They have now
been months here on their big salaries—and Cedercrantz,
whom I specially like as a man, has done nearly nothing,
and the Baron, who is well-meaning, has done worse.
They have these large salaries, and they have all the
taxes; they have made scarce a foot of road; they have
not given a single native a position—all to white men;
they have scarce laid out a penny on Apia, and scarce a
penny on the King; they have forgot they were in Samoa,
or that such a thing as Samoans existed, and had eyes
and some intelligence. The Chief Justice has refused to
pay his customs! The President proposed to have an
expensive house built for himself, while the King, his
master, has none! I had stood aside, and been a loyal,
and, above all, a silent subject, up to then; but now I
snap my fingers at their malo. It is damned, and I’m
damned glad of it. And this is not all. Last “Wainiu,”
when I sent Fanny off to Fiji, I hear the wonderful news
that the Chief Justice is going to Fiji and the Colonies
to improve his mind. I showed my way of thought to
his guest, Count Wachtmeister, whom I have sent to you
with a letter—he will tell you all the news. Well, the
Chief Justice stayed, but they said he was to leave yesterday.
I had intended to go down, and see and warn him!
But the President’s house had come up in the meanwhile,
and I let them go to their doom, which I am only anxious
to see swiftly and (if it may be) bloodlessly fall.
Thus I have in a way withdrawn my unrewarded
loyalty. Lloyd is down to-day with Moors to call on
Mataafa; the news of the excursion made a considerable
row in Apia, and both the German and the English consuls
besought Lloyd not to go. But he stuck to his purpose,
and with my approval. It’s a poor thing if people
are to give up a pleasure party for a malo that has never
done anything for us but draw taxes, and is going to go
pop, and leave us at the mercy of the identical Mataafa,
whom I have not visited for more than a year, and who
is probably furious.
The sense of my helplessness here has been rather
bitter; I feel it wretched to see this dance of folly and
injustice and unconscious rapacity go forward from day
to day, and to be impotent. I was not consulted—or
only by one man, and that on particular points; I did
not choose to volunteer advice till some pressing occasion;
I have not even a vote, for I am not a member of the
municipality.
What ails you, miserable man, to talk of saving
material? I have a whole world in my head, a whole
new society to work, but I am in no hurry; you will
shortly make the acquaintance of the Island of Ulufanua,
on which I mean to lay several stories; the Bloody Wedding,
possibly the High Woods—(O, it’s so good, the High
Woods, but the story is craziness; that’s the trouble)—a
political story, the Labour Slave, etc. Ulufanua is an
imaginary island; the name is a beautiful Samoan word
for the top of a forest; ulu=leaves or hair, fanua=land.
The ground or country of the leaves. “Ulufanua the isle
of the sea,” read that verse dactylically and you get the
beat; the u’s are like our double oo; did ever you hear
a prettier word?
I do not feel inclined to make a volume of Essays,22
but if I did, and perhaps the idea is good—and any idea
is better than the South Seas—here would be my choice of
the Scribner articles: Dreams, Beggars, Lantern-Bearers,
Random Memories. There was a paper called the Old
Pacific Capital in Fraser, in Tulloch’s time, which had
merit; there were two on Fontainebleau in the Magazine
of Art in Henley’s time. I have no idea if they’re any
good; then there’s the Emigrant Train. Pulvis et Umbra
is in a different key, and wouldn’t hang on with the rest.
I have just interrupted my letter and read through
the chapter of the High Woods that is written, a chapter
and a bit, some sixteen pages, really very fetching, but
what do you wish? the story is so wilful, so steep, so
silly—it’s a hallucination I have outlived, and yet I never
did a better piece of work, horrid, and pleasing, and extraordinarily
true; it’s sixteen pages of the South Seas;
their essence. What am I to do? Lose this little gem—for
I’ll be bold, and that’s what I think it—or go on
with the rest, which I don’t believe in, and don’t like,
and which can never make aught but a silly yarn? Make
another end to it? Ah, yes, but that’s not the way I
write; the whole tale is implied; I never use an effect,
when I can help it, unless it prepares the effects that are
to follow; that’s what a story consists in. To make
another end, that is to make the beginning all wrong.
The dénouement of a long story is nothing; it is just a
“full close,” which you may approach and accompany
as you please—it is a coda, not an essential member in
the rhythm; but the body and end of a short story is
bone of the bone and blood of the blood of the beginning.
Well, I shall end by finishing it against my judgment;
that fragment is my Delilah. Golly, it’s good. I am not
shining by modesty; but I do just love the colour and
movement of that piece so far as it goes.
I was surprised to hear of your fishing. And you saw
the Pharos,23 thrice fortunate man; I wish I dared go
home, I would ask the Commissioners to take me round
for old sake’s sake, and see all my family pictures once
more from the Mull of Galloway to Unst. However, all
is arranged for our meeting in Ceylon, except the date
and the blooming pounds. I have heard of an exquisite
hotel in the country, airy, large rooms, good cookery, not
dear; we shall have a couple of months there, if we can
make it out, and converse or—as my grandfather always
said—“commune.” “Communings with Mr. Kennedy as
to Lighthouse Repairs.” He was a fine old fellow, but a
droll.
Evening.—Lloyd has returned. Peace and war were
played before his eyes at heads or tails. A German was
stopped with levelled guns; he raised his whip; had it
fallen, we might have been now in war. Excuses were
made by Mataafa himself. Doubtless the thing was done—I
mean the stopping of the German—a little to show
off before Lloyd. Meanwhile —— was up here, telling
how the Chief Justice was really gone for five or eight
weeks, and begging me to write to the Times and denounce
the state of affairs; many strong reasons he advanced;
and Lloyd and I have been since his arrival and ——’s
departure, near half an hour, debating what should be done.
Cedercrantz is gone; it is not my fault; he knows my
views on that point—alone of all points;—he leaves me
with my mouth sealed. Yet this is a nice thing that
because he is guilty of a fresh offence—his flight—the
mouth of the only possible influential witness should be
closed? I do not like this argument. I look like a cad,
if I do in the man’s absence what I could have done in
a more manly manner in his presence. True; but why
did he go? It is his last sin. And I, who like the man
extremely—that is the word—I love his society—he is
intelligent, pleasant, even witty, a gentleman—and you
know how that attaches—I loathe to seem to play a base
part; but the poor natives—who are like other folk,
false enough, lazy enough, not heroes, not saints—ordinary
men damnably misused—are they to suffer because I like
Cedercrantz, and Cedercrantz has cut his lucky? This is
a little tragedy, observe well—a tragedy! I may be right,
I may be wrong in my judgment, but I am in treaty with
my honour. I know not how it will seem to-morrow.
Lloyd thought the barrier of honour insurmountable, and
it is an ugly obstacle. He (Cedercrantz) will likely meet
my wife three days from now, may travel back with her,
will be charming if he does; suppose this, and suppose
him to arrive and find that I have sprung a mine—or the
nearest approach to it I could find—behind his back?
My position is pretty. Yes, I am an aristocrat. I have
the old petty, personal view of honour? I should blush
till I die if I do this; yet it is on the cards that I may
do it. So much I have written you in bed, as a man writes
or talks, in a bittre Wahl. Now I shall sleep, and see if I
am more clear. I will consult the missionaries at least—I
place some reliance in M. also—or I should if he were
not a partisan; but a partisan he is. There’s a pity. To
sleep! A fund of wisdom in the prostrate body and the
fed brain. Kindly observe R. L. S. in the talons of politics!
’Tis funny—’tis sad. Nobody but these cursed idiots
could have so driven me; I cannot bear idiots.
My dear Colvin, I must go to sleep; it is long past
ten—a dreadful hour for me. And here am I lingering (so
I feel) in the dining-room at the Monument, talking to
you across the table, both on our feet, and only the two
stairs to mount, and get to bed, and sleep, and be waked
by dear old George—to whom I wish my kindest remembrances—next
morning. I look round, and there is my
blue room, and my long lines of shelves, and the door
gaping on a moonless night, and no word of S. C. but
his twa portraits on the wall. Good-bye, my dear fellow,
and good-night. Queer place the world!
Monday.—No clearness of mind with the morning; I
have no guess what I should do. ’Tis easy to say that
the public duty should brush aside these little considerations
of personal dignity; so it is that politicians begin,
and in a month you find them rat and flatter and intrigue
with brows of brass. I am rather of the old view, that a
man’s first duty is to these little laws; the big he does
not, he never will, understand; I may be wrong about
the Chief Justice and the Baron and the state of Samoa;
I cannot be wrong about the vile attitude I put myself in
if I blow the gaff on Cedercrantz behind his back.
Tuesday.—One more word about the South Seas, in
answer to a question I observed I have forgotten to answer.
The Tahiti part has never turned up, because it has never
been written. As for telling you where I went or when,
or anything about Honolulu, I would rather die; that is
fair and plain. How can anybody care when or how I
left Honolulu? A man of upwards of forty cannot waste
his time in communicating matter of that indifference.
The letters, it appears, are tedious; they would be more
tedious still if I wasted my time upon such infantile and
sucking-bottle details. If ever I put in any such detail,
it is because it leads into something or serves as a transition.
To tell it for its own sake, never! The mistake is
all through that I have told too much; I had not sufficient
confidence in the reader, and have overfed him; and here
are you anxious to learn how I—O Colvin! Suppose it
had made a book, all such information is given to one
glance of an eye by a map with a little dotted line upon
it. But let us forget this unfortunate affair.
Wednesday.—Yesterday I went down to consult Clarke,
who took the view of delay. Has he changed his mind
already? I wonder: here at least is the news. Some
little while back some men of Manono—what is Manono?—a
Samoan rotten borough, a small isle of huge political
importance, heaven knows why, where a handful of chiefs
make half the trouble in the country. Some men of Manono
(which is strong Mataafa) burned down the houses and
destroyed the crops of some Malietoa neighbours. The
President went there the other day and landed alone on
the island, which (to give him his due) was plucky. Moreover,
he succeeded in persuading the folks to come up
and be judged on a particular day in Apia. That day
they did not come; but did come the next, and, to their
vast surprise, were given six months’ imprisonment and
clapped in gaol. Those who had accompanied them cried
to them on the streets as they were marched to prison,
“Shall we rescue you?” The condemned, marching in the
hands of thirty men with loaded rifles, cried out “No”!
And the trick was done. But it was ardently believed a
rescue would be attempted; the gaol was laid about with
armed men day and night; but there was some question
of their loyalty, and the commandant of the forces, a
very nice young beardless Swede, became nervous, and
conceived a plan. How if he should put dynamite under
the gaol, and in case of an attempted rescue blow up
prison and all? He went to the President, who agreed;
he went to the American man-of-war for the dynamite
and machine, was refused, and got it at last from the
Wreckers. The thing began to leak out, and there arose a
muttering in town. People had no fancy for amateur
explosions, for one thing. For another, it did not clearly
appear that it was legal; the men had been condemned
to six months’ prison, which they were peaceably undergoing;
they had not been condemned to death. And
lastly, it seemed a somewhat advanced example of civilisation
to set before barbarians. The mutter in short became
a storm, and yesterday, while I was down, a cutter was
chartered, and the prisoners were suddenly banished to
the Tokelaus. Who has changed the sentence? We are
going to stir in the dynamite matter; we do not want
the natives to fancy us consenting to such an outrage.
Fanny has returned from her trip, and on the whole
looks better. The High Woods are under way, and their
name is now the Beach of Falesá, and the yarn is cured.
I have about thirty pages of it done; it will be fifty to
seventy I suppose. No supernatural trick at all; and
escaped out of it quite easily; can’t think why I was so
stupid for so long. Mighty glad to have Fanny back to
this “Hell of the South Seas,” as the German Captain
called it. What will Cedercrantz think when he comes
back? To do him justice, had he been here, this Manono
hash would not have been.
Here is a pretty thing. When Fanny was in Fiji all
the Samoa and Tokelau folks were agog about our “flash”
house; but the whites had never heard of it.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Author of The Beach of Falesá.
To Sidney Colvin
[Vailima], Sept. 28, 1891.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—Since I last laid down my pen, I
have written and rewritten The Beach of Falesá; something
like sixty thousand words of sterling domestic
fiction (the story, you will understand, is only half that
length); and now I don’t want to write any more again
for ever, or feel so; and I’ve got to overhaul it once again
to my sorrow. I was all yesterday revising, and found a
lot of slacknesses and (what is worse in this kind of thing)
some literaryisms. One of the puzzles is this: It is a first
person story—a trader telling his own adventure in an
island. When I began I allowed myself a few liberties,
because I was afraid of the end; now the end proved
quite easy, and could be done in the pace; so the beginning
remains about a quarter tone out (in places); but
I have rather decided to let it stay so. The problem is
always delicate; it is the only thing that worries me in
first person tales, which otherwise (quo’ Alan) “set better
wi’ my genius.” There is a vast deal of fact in the story,
and some pretty good comedy. It is the first realistic
South Sea story; I mean with real South Sea character
and details of life. Everybody else who has tried, that
I have seen, got carried away by the romance, and ended
in a kind of sugar candy sham epic, and the whole effect
was lost—there was no etching, no human grin, consequently
no conviction. Now I have got the smell and look
of the thing a good deal. You will know more about the
South Seas after you have read my little tale than if you
had read a library. As to whether any one else will read
it, I have no guess. I am in an off time, but there is just
the possibility it might make a hit; for the yarn is good
and melodramatic, and there is quite a love affair—for
me; and Mr. Wiltshire (the narrator) is a huge lark,
though I say it. But there is always the exotic question,
and everything, the life, the place, the dialects—trader’s
talk, which is a strange conglomerate of literary expressions
and English and American slang, and Beach de
Mar, or native English,—the very trades and hopes and
fears of the characters, are all novel, and may be found
unwelcome to that great, hulking, bullering whale, the
public.
Since I wrote, I have been likewise drawing up a
document to send in to the President; it has been dreadfully
delayed, not by me, but to-day they swear it will
be sent in. A list of questions about the dynamite report
are herein laid before him, and considerations suggested
why he should answer.
October 5th.—Ever since my last snatch I have been
much chivied about over the President business; his
answer has come, and is an evasion accompanied with
schoolboy insolence, and we are going to try to answer it.
I drew my answer and took it down yesterday; but one
of the signatories wants another paragraph added, which
I have not yet been able to draw, and as to the wisdom
of which I am not yet convinced.
Next day, Oct. 7th the right day.—We are all in rather
a muddled state with our President affair. I do loathe
politics, but at the same time, I cannot stand by and
have the natives blown in the air treacherously with
dynamite. They are still quiet; how long this may continue
I do not know, though of course by mere prescription
the Government is strengthened, and is probably
insured till the next taxes fall due. But the unpopularity
of the whites is growing. My native overseer, the
great Henry Simelé, announced to-day that he was
“weary of whites upon the beach. All too proud,” said
this veracious witness. One of the proud ones had
threatened yesterday to cut off his head with a bush
knife! These are “native outrages”; honour bright,
and setting theft aside, in which the natives are active,
this is the main stream of irritation. The natives are
generally courtly, far from always civil, but really gentle,
and with a strong sense of honour of their own, and
certainly quite as much civilised as our dynamiting
President.
We shall be delighted to see Kipling.24 I go to bed
usually about half-past eight, and my lamp is out before
ten; I breakfast at six. We may say roughly we have
no soda water on the island, and just now truthfully no
whisky. I have heard the chimes at midnight; now no
more, I guess. But—Fanny and I, as soon as we can
get coins for it, are coming to Europe, not to England:
I am thinking of Royat. Bar wars. If not, perhaps the
Apennines might give us a mountain refuge for two
months or three in summer. How is that for high? But
the money must be all in hand first.
October 13th.—How am I to describe my life these
last few days? I have been wholly swallowed up in
politics, a wretched business, with fine elements of farce
in it too, which repay a man in passing, involving many
dark and many moonlight rides, secret counsels which
are at once divulged, sealed letters which are read aloud
in confidence to the neighbours, and a mass of fudge and
fun, which would have driven me crazy ten years ago,
and now makes me smile.
On Friday, Henry came and told us he must leave
and go to “my poor old family in Savaii”; why? I do
not quite know—but, I suspect, to be tattooed—if so,
then probably to be married, and we shall see him no
more. I told him he must do what he thought his duty;
we had him to lunch, drank his health, and he and I rode
down about twelve. When I got down, I sent my horse
back to help bring down the family later. My own afternoon
was cut out for me; my last draft for the President
had been objected to by some of the signatories. I stood
out, and one of our small number accordingly refused to
sign. Him I had to go and persuade, which went off
very well after the first hottish moments; you have no
idea how stolid my temper is now. By about five the
thing was done; and we sat down to dinner at the Chinaman’s—the
Verrey or Doyen of Apia—Gurr and I at each
end as hosts; Gurr’s wife—Fanua, late maid of the
village; her (adopted) father and mother, Seumanu and
Faatulia, Fanny, Belle, Lloyd, Austin, and Henry Simelé,
his last appearance. Henry was in a kilt of grey shawl,
with a blue jacket, white shirt, and black necktie, and
looked like a dark genteel guest in a Highland shooting-box.
Seumanu (opposite Fanny, next G.) is chief of
Apia, a rather big gun in this place, looking like a large,
fatted, military Englishman, bar the colour. Faatulia,
next me, is a bigger chief than her husband. Henry is a
chief too—his chief name, Iiga (Ee-eeng-a), he has not
yet “taken” because of his youth. We were in fine
society, and had a pleasant meal-time, with lots of fun.
Then to the Opera—I beg your pardon, I mean the Circus.
We occupied the first row in the reserved seats, and there
in the row behind were all our friends—Captain Foss and
his Captain-Lieutenant, three of the American officers,
very nice fellows, the Dr., etc., so we made a fine show
of what an embittered correspondent of the local paper
called “the shoddy aristocracy of Apia”; and you
should have seen how we carried on, and how I clapped,
and Captain Foss hollered “wunderschön!” and threw
himself forward in his seat, and how we all in fact enjoyed
ourselves like school-children, Austin not a shade more
than his neighbours. Then the Circus broke up, and the
party went home, but I stayed down, having business on
the morrow.
Yesterday, October 12th, great news reaches me, and
Lloyd and I, with the mail just coming in, must leave
all, saddle, and ride down. True enough, the President
had resigned! Sought to resign his presidency of the
council, and keep his advisership to the King; given
way to the consuls’ objections and resigned all—then fell
out with them about the disposition of the funds, and was
now trying to resign from his resignation! Sad little
President, so trim to look at, and I believe so kind to his
little wife! Not only so, but I meet Dunnet on the beach.
Dunnet calls me in consultation, and we make with infinite
difficulty a draft of a petition to the King....
Then to dinner at Moors’s, a very merry meal, interrupted
before it was over by the arrival of the committee. Slight
sketch of procedure agreed upon, self appointed spokesman,
and the deputation sets off. Walk all through
Matafele, all along Mulinuu, come to the King’s house;
he has verbally refused to see us in answer to our letter,
swearing he is gasegase (chief sickness, not common man’s)
and indeed we see him inside in bed. It is a miserable
low house, better houses by the dozen in the little hamlet
(Tanugamanono) of bushmen on our way to Vailima; and
the President’s house in process of erection just opposite!
We are told to return to-morrow; I refuse; and at last
we are very sourly received, sit on the mats, and I open
out, through a very poor interpreter, and sometimes hampered
by unacceptable counsels from my backers. I can
speak fairly well in a plain way now. C. asked me to
write out my harangue for him this morning; I have done
so, and couldn’t get it near as good. I suppose (talking
and interpreting) I was twenty minutes or half an hour
on the deck; then his majesty replied in the dying
whisper of a big chief; a few words of rejoinder (approving),
and the deputation withdrew, rather well satisfied.
A few days ago this intervention would have been a
deportable offence; not now, I bet; I would like them
to try. A little way back along Mulinuu, Mrs. Gurr met
us with her husband’s horse; and he and she and Lloyd
and I rode back in a heavenly moonlight. Here ends a
chapter in the life of an island politician! Catch me at
it again; ’tis easy to go in, but it is not a pleasant trade.
I have had a good team, as good as I could get on the
beach; but what trouble even so, and what fresh troubles
shaping. But I have on the whole carried all my points;
I believe all but one, and on that (which did not concern
me) I had no right to interfere. I am sure you would be
amazed if you knew what a good hand I am at keeping
my temper, talking people over, and giving reasons which
are not my reasons, but calculated for the meridian of
the particular objection; so soon does falsehood await the
politician in his whirling path.
To Henry James
Stevenson had again been reading Mr. James’s Lesson of the
Master; Adela Chart is the heroine of the second story in that
collection, called The Marriages.
[Vailima, October 1891.]
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,—From this perturbed and
hunted being expect but a line, and that line shall be
but a whoop for Adela. O she’s delicious, delicious; I
could live and die with Adela—die, rather the better of
the two; you never did a straighter thing, and never
will.
David Balfour, second part of Kidnapped, is on the
stocks at last; and is not bad, I think. As for The
Wrecker, it’s a machine, you know—don’t expect aught
else—a machine, and a police machine; but I believe
the end is one of the most genuine butcheries in literature;
and we point to our machine with a modest pride,
as the only police machine without a villain. Our criminals
are a most pleasing crew, and leave the dock with
scarce a stain upon their character.
What a different line of country to be trying to draw
Adela, and trying to write the last four chapters of The
Wrecker! Heavens, it’s like two centuries; and ours is
such rude, transpontine business, aiming only at a certain
fervour of conviction and sense of energy and violence in
the men; and yours is so neat and bright and of so exquisite
a surface! Seems dreadful to send such a book
to such an author; but your name is on the list. And
we do modestly ask you to consider the chapters on the
Norah Creina with the study of Captain Nares, and the
forementioned last four, with their brutality of substance
and the curious (and perhaps unsound) technical manœuvre
of running the story together to a point as we go
along, the narrative becoming more succinct and the
details fining off with every page.—Sworn affidavit of
R. L. S.
No person now alive has beaten Adela: I adore Adela
and her maker. Sic subscrib.
Robert Louis Stevenson.
A Sublime Poem to follow.
Adela, Adela, Adela Chart,
What have you done to my elderly heart?
Of all the ladies of paper and ink
I count you the paragon, call you the pink.
The word of your brother depicts you in part:
“You raving maniac!” Adela Chart;
But in all the asylums that cumber the ground,
So delightful a maniac was ne’er to be found.
I pore on you, dote on you, clasp you to heart,
I laud, love, and laugh at you, Adela Chart,
And thank my dear maker the while I admire
That I can be neither your husband nor sire.
Your husband’s, your sire’s were a difficult part;
You’re a byway to suicide, Adela Chart;
But to read of, depicted by exquisite James,
O, sure you’re the flower and quintessence of dames.
|
R. L. S.
Eructavit cor meum
My heart was inditing a goodly matter about Adela
Chart.
Though oft I’ve been touched by the volatile dart,
To none have I grovelled but Adela Chart,
There are passable ladies, no question, in art—
But where is the marrow of Adela Chart?
I dreamed that to Tyburn I passed in the cart—
I dreamed I was married to Adela Chart:
From the first I awoke with a palpable start,
The second dumbfoundered me, Adela Chart!
|
Another verse bursts from me, you see; no end to the
violence of the Muse.
To E. L. Burlingame
[Vailima], October 8th, 1891.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—All right, you shall have the
Tales of my Grandfather soon, but I guess we’ll try and
finish off The Wrecker first. A propos of whom, please
send some advanced sheets to Cassell’s—away ahead of
you—so that they may get a dummy out.
Do you wish to illustrate My Grandfather? He mentions
as excellent a portrait of Scott by Basil Hall’s
brother. I don’t think I ever saw this engraved; would
it not, if you could get track of it, prove a taking embellishment?
I suggest this for your consideration and
inquiry. A new portrait of Scott strikes me as good.
There is a hard, tough, constipated old portrait of my
grandfather hanging in my aunt’s house, Mrs. Alan Stevenson,
16 St. Leonard’s Terrace, Chelsea, which has never
been engraved—the better portrait, Joseph’s bust, has
been reproduced, I believe, twice—and which, I am sure,
my aunt would let you have a copy of. The plate could
be of use for the book when we get so far, and thus to
place it in the Magazine might be an actual saving.
I am swallowed up in politics for the first, I hope for
the last, time in my sublunary career. It is a painful,
thankless trade; but one thing that came up I could not
pass in silence. Much drafting, addressing, deputationising
has eaten up all my time, and again (to my contrition)
I leave you Wreckerless. As soon as the mail leaves I
tackle it straight.—Yours very sincerely,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To E. L. Burlingame
[Vailima, October 1891.]
MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—The time draws nigh, the mail
is near due, and I snatch a moment of collapse so that
you may have at least some sort of a scratch of note along
with the
\ end
\ of
\ The
\ Wrecker.Hurray!
|
which I mean to go herewith. It has taken me a devil
of a pull, but I think it’s going to be ready. If I did not
know you were on the stretch waiting for it and trembling
for your illustrations, I would keep it for another
finish; but things being as they are, I will let it go the
best way I can get it. I am now within two pages of
the end of Chapter XXV., which is the last chapter, the
end with its gathering up of loose threads, being the dedication
to Low, and addressed to him; this is my last
and best expedient for the knotting up of these loose
cards. ’Tis possible I may not get that finished in time,
in which case you’ll receive only Chapters XXII. to XXV.
by this mail, which is all that can be required for illustration.
I wish you would send me Memoirs of Baron Marbot
(French); Introduction to the Study of the History of
Language, Strong, Logeman & Wheeler; Principles of
Psychology, William James; Morris & Magnusson’s Saga
Library, any volumes that are out; George Meredith’s
One of our Conquerors; Là Bas, by Huysmans (French);
O’Connor Morris’s Great Commanders of Modern Times;
Life’s Handicap, by Kipling; of Taine’s Origines de la
France Contemporaine, I have only as far as la Révolution,
vol. iii.; if another volume is out, please add that. There
is for a book-box.
I hope you will like the end; I think it is rather strong
meat. I have got into such a deliberate, dilatory, expansive
turn, that the effort to compress this last yarn
was unwelcome; but the longest yarn has to come to an
end some time. Please look it over for carelessnesses,
and tell me if it had any effect upon your jaded editorial
mind. I’ll see if ever I have time to add more.
I add to my book-box list Adams’ Historical Essays;
the Plays of A. W. Pinero—all that have appeared, and
send me the rest in course as they do appear; Noughts
and Crosses by Q.; Robertson’s Scotland under her Early
Kings.
Sunday.—The deed is done, didst thou not hear a noise?
“The end” has been written to this endless yarn, and I
am once more a free man. What will he do with it?
To Sidney Colvin
[Vailima] Monday, October 24th.
MY DEAR CARTHEW,25—See what I have written, but
it’s Colvin I’m after—I have written two chapters, about
thirty pages of Wrecker since the mail left, which must
be my excuse, and the bother I’ve had with it is not to
be imagined; you might have seen me the day before
yesterday weighing British sov.’s and Chili dollars to
arrange my treasure chest. And there was such a calculation,
not for that only, but for the ship’s position and
distances when—but I am not going to tell you the yarn—and
then, as my arithmetic is particularly lax, Lloyd
had to go over all my calculations; and then, as I had
changed the amount of money, he had to go over all his
as to the amount of the lay; and altogether, a bank
could be run with less effusion of figures than it took
to shore up a single chapter of a measly yarn. However,
it’s done, and I have but one more, or at the outside two,
to do, and I am Free! and can do any damn thing I like.
Before falling on politics, I shall give you my day.
Awoke somewhere about the first peep of day, came
gradually to, and had a turn on the verandah before 5.55,
when “the child” (an enormous Wallis Islander) brings
me an orange; at 6, breakfast; 6.10, to work; which
lasts till, at 10.30, Austin comes for his history lecture;
this is rather dispiriting, but education must be gone
about in faith—and charity, both of which pretty nigh
failed me to-day about (of all things) Carthage; 11,
luncheon; after luncheon in my mother’s room, I read
Chapter XXIII. of The Wrecker, then Belle, Lloyd, and I
go up and make music furiously till about 2 (I suppose),
when I turn into work again till 4; fool from 4 to half-past,
tired out and waiting for the bath hour; 4.30, bath;
4.40, eat two heavenly mangoes on the verandah, and see
the boys arrive with the pack-horses; 5, dinner; smoke,
chat on verandah, then hand of cards, and at last at 8
come up to my room with a pint of beer and a hard
biscuit, which I am now consuming, and as soon as they
are consumed I shall turn in.
Such are the innocent days of this ancient and outworn
sportsman; to-day there was no weeding, usually
there is however, edged in somewhere. My books for the
moment are a crib to Phædo, and the second book of
Montaigne; and a little while back I was reading Frederic
Harrison, Choice of Books, etc.—very good indeed, a
great deal of sense and knowledge in the volume, and
some very true stuff, contra Carlyle, about the eighteenth
century. A hideous idea came over me that perhaps
Harrison is now getting old. Perhaps you are. Perhaps
I am. Oh, this infidelity must be stared firmly down.
I am about twenty-three—say twenty-eight; you about
thirty, or, by’r lady, thirty-four; and as Harrison belongs
to the same generation, there is no good bothering about
him.
Here has just been a fine alert; I gave my wife a
dose of chlorodyne. “Something wrong,” says she.
“Nonsense,” said I. “Embrocation,” said she. I smelt
it, and—it smelt very funny. “I think it’s just gone
bad, and to-morrow will tell.” Proved to be so.
Wednesday.—History of Tuesday.—Woke at usual
time, very little work, for I was tired, and had a job for
the evening—to write parts for a new instrument, a
violin. Lunch, chat, and up to my place to practise;
but there was no practising for me—my flageolet was
gone wrong, and I had to take it all to pieces, clean it,
and put it up again. As this is a most intricate job—the
thing dissolves into seventeen separate members, most of
these have to be fitted on their individual springs as fine
as needles, and sometimes two at once with the springs
shoving different ways—it took me till two. Then Lloyd
and I rode forth on our errands; first to Motootua, where
we had a really instructive conversation on weeds and
grasses. Thence down to Apia, where we bought a fresh
bottle of chlorodyne and conversed on politics.
My visit to the King, which I thought at the time a
particularly nugatory and even schoolboy step, and only
consented to because I had held the reins so tight over
my little band before, has raised a deuce of a row—new
proclamation, no one is to interview the sacred puppet
without consuls’ permission, two days’ notice, and an
approved interpreter—read (I suppose) spy. Then back;
I should have said I was trying the new horse; a tallish
piebald, bought from the circus; he proved steady and
safe, but in very bad condition, and not so much the
wild Arab steed of the desert as had been supposed. The
height of his back, after commodious Jack, astonished
me, and I had a great consciousness of exercise and florid
action, as I posted to his long, emphatic trot. We had to
ride back easy; even so he was hot and blown; and when
we set a boy to lead him to and fro, our last character
for sanity perished. We returned just neat for dinner;
and in the evening our violinist arrived, a young lady,
no great virtuoso truly, but plucky, industrious, and
a good reader; and we played five pieces with huge
amusement, and broke up at nine. This morning I have
read a splendid piece of Montaigne, written this page of
letter, and now turn to The Wrecker.
Wednesday.—November 16th or 17th—and I am
ashamed to say mail day. The Wrecker is finished, that
is the best of my news; it goes by this mail to Scribner’s;
and I honestly think it a good yarn on the whole and of
its measly kind. The part that is genuinely good is Nares,
the American sailor; that is a genuine figure; had there
been more Nares it would have been a better book; but
of course it didn’t set up to be a book, only a long tough
yarn with some pictures of the manners of to-day in the
greater world—not the shoddy sham world of cities, clubs,
and colleges, but the world where men still live a man’s
life. The worst of my news is the influenza; Apia is
devastate; the shops closed, a ball put off, etc. As yet
we have not had it at Vailima, and, who knows? we
may escape. None of us go down, but of course the boys
come and go.
Your letter had the most wonderful “I told you so”
I ever heard in the course of my life. Why, you madman,
I wouldn’t change my present installation for any
post, dignity, honour, or advantage conceivable to me. It
fills the bill; I have the loveliest time. And as for wars
and rumours of wars, you surely know enough of me to
be aware that I like that also a thousand times better
than decrepit peace in Middlesex? I do not quite like
politics; I am too aristocratic, I fear, for that. God
knows I don’t care who I chum with; perhaps like sailors
best; but to go round and sue and sneak to keep a crowd
together—never. My imagination, which is not the least
damped by the idea of having my head cut off in the
bush, recoils aghast from the idea of a life like Gladstone’s,
and the shadow of the newspaper chills me to the bone.
Hence my late eruption was interesting, but not what I
like. All else suits me in this (killed a mosquito) A1
abode.
About politics. A determination was come to by the
President that he had been an idiot; emissaries came to
Gurr and me to kiss and be friends. My man proposed
I should have a personal interview; I said it was quite
useless, I had nothing to say; I had offered him the
chance to inform me, had pressed it on him, and had
been very unpleasantly received, and now “Time was.”
Then it was decided that I was to be made a culprit
against Germany; the German Captain—a delightful
fellow and our constant visitor—wrote to say that as “a
German officer” he could not come even to say farewell.
We all wrote back in the most friendly spirit, telling him
(politely) that some of these days he would be sorry,
and we should be delighted to see our friend again. Since
then I have seen no German shadow.
Mataafa has been proclaimed a rebel; the President
did this act, and then resigned. By singular good fortune,
Mataafa has not yet moved; no thanks to our idiot
governors. They have shot their bolt; they have made
a rebel of the only man (to their own knowledge, on the
report of their own spy) who held the rebel party in check;
and having thus called on war to fall, they can do no
more, sit equally “expertes” of vis and counsel, regarding
their handiwork. It is always a cry with these folks
that he (Mataafa) had no ammunition. I always said it
would be found; and we know of five boat-loads that
have found their way to Malie already. Where there are
traders, there will be ammunition; aphorism by R. L. S.
Now what am I to do next?
Lives of the Stevensons? Historia Samoae? A History
for Children? Fiction? I have had two hard months at
fiction; I want a change. Stevensons? I am expecting
some more material; perhaps better wait. Samoa?
rather tempting; might be useful to the islands—and to
me; for it will be written in admirable temper; I have
never agreed with any party, and see merits and excuses
in all; should do it (if I did) very slackly and easily,
as if half in conversation. History for Children? This
flows from my lessons to Austin; no book is any good.
The best I have seen is Freeman’s Old English History;
but his style is so rasping, and a child can learn more,
if he’s clever. I found my sketch of general Aryan history,
given in conversation, to have been practically correct—at
least what I mean is, Freeman had very much the
same stuff in his early chapters, only not so much, and
I thought not so well placed; and the child remembered
some of it. Now the difficulty is to give this general idea
of main place, growth, and movement; it is needful to
tack it on a yarn. Now Scotch is the only history I know;
it is the only history reasonably represented in my library;
it is a very good one for my purpose, owing to two civilisations
having been face to face throughout—or rather
Roman civilisation face to face with our ancient barbaric
life and government, down to yesterday, to 1750 anyway.
But the Tales of a Grandfather stand in my way; I am
teaching them to Austin now, and they have all Scott’s
defects and all Scott’s hopeless merit. I cannot compete
with that; and yet, so far as regards teaching History,
how he has missed his chances! I think I’ll try; I really
have some historic sense, I feel that in my bones. Then
there’s another thing. Scott never knew the Highlands;
he was always a Borderer. He has missed that whole,
long, strange, pathetic story of our savages, and, besides,
his style is not very perspicuous to childhood. Gad, I
think I’ll have a flutter. Buridan’s Ass! Whither to go,
what to attack. Must go to other letters; shall add to
this, if I have time.
To W. Craibe Angus
Vailima, Samoa, November 1891.
MY DEAR MR. ANGUS,—Herewith the invaluable sheets.
They came months after your letter, and I trembled; but
here they are, and I have scrawled my vile name on them,
and “thocht shame” as I did it. I am expecting the
sheets of your catalogue, so that I may attack the preface.
Please give me all the time you can. The sooner the
better; you might even send me early proofs as they are
sent out, to give me more incubation. I used to write
as slow as judgment; now I write rather fast; but I am
still “a slow study,” and sit a long while silent on my
eggs. Unconscious thought, there is the only method:
macerate your subject, let it boil slow, then take the lid
off and look in—and there your stuff is, good or bad. But
the journalist’s method is the way to manufacture lies;
it is will-worship—if you know the luminous quaker phrase;
and the will is only to be brought in the field for study
and again for revision. The essential part of work is not
an act, it is a state.
I do not know why I write you this trash.
Many thanks for your handsome dedication. I have
not yet had time to do more than glance at Mrs. Begg; it
looks interesting.—Yours very truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Miss Annie H. Ide
Vailima, Samoa [November 1891].
MY DEAR LOUISA,—Your picture of the church, the
photograph of yourself and your sister, and your very
witty and pleasing letter, came all in a bundle, and made
me feel I had my money’s worth for that birthday. I am
now, I must be, one of your nearest relatives; exactly
what we are to each other, I do not know, I doubt if the
case has ever happened before—your papa ought to know,
and I don’t believe he does; but I think I ought to call
you in the meanwhile, and until we get the advice of counsel
learned in the law, my name-daughter. Well, I was
extremely pleased to see by the church that my name-daughter
could draw; by the letter, that she was no fool;
and by the photograph, that she was a pretty girl, which
hurts nothing. See how virtues are rewarded! My first
idea of adopting you was entirely charitable; and here
I find that I am quite proud of it, and of you, and that I
chose just the kind of name-daughter I wanted. For I can
draw too, or rather I mean to say I could before I forgot
how; and I am very far from being a fool myself,
however much I may look it; and I am as beautiful as
the day, or at least I once hoped that perhaps I might
be going to be. And so I might. So that you see we are
well met, and peers on these important points. I am
very glad also that you are older than your sister. So
should I have been, if I had had one. So that the number
of points and virtues which you have inherited from your
name-father is already quite surprising.
I wish you would tell your father—not that I like to
encourage my rival—that we have had a wonderful time
here of late, and that they are having a cold day on Mulinuu,
and the consuls are writing reports, and I am writing to
the Times, and if we don’t get rid of our friends this time
I shall begin to despair of everything but my name-daughter.
You are quite wrong as to the effect of the birthday
on your age. From the moment the deed was registered
(as it was in the public press with every solemnity), the
13th of November became your own and only birthday,
and you ceased to have been born on Christmas Day.
Ask your father: I am sure he will tell you this is sound
law. You are thus become a month and twelve days
younger than you were, but will go on growing older for
the future in the regular and human manner from one
13th November to the next. The effect on me is more
doubtful; I may, as you suggest, live for ever; I might,
on the other hand, come to pieces like the one-horse shay
at a moment’s notice; doubtless the step was risky, but
I do not the least regret that which enables me to sign
myself your revered and delighted name-father,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Charles Baxter
[Vailima, November 1891.]
DEAR CHARLES,—[After dealing with some matters of
business] I believe that’s a’. By this time, I suppose you
will have heard from McClure, and the Beach of Falesá
will be decided on for better for worse. The end of The
Wrecker goes by this mail, an awfae relief. I am now free
and can do what I please. What do I please? I kenna.
I’ll bide a wee. There’s a child’s history in the wind; and
there’s my grandfather’s life begun; and there’s a histry
of Samoa in the last four or five years begun—there’s a
kind of sense to this book; it may help the Samoans, it
may help me, for I am bound on the altar here for anti-Germanism.
Then there’s The Pearl Fisher about a quarter
done; and there’s various short stories in various degrees
of incompleteness. De’il, there’s plenty grist; but the
mill’s unco slaw! To-morrow or next day, when the
mail’s through, I’ll attack one or other, or maybe something
else. All these schemes begin to laugh at me, for
the day’s far through, and I believe the pen grows heavy.
However, I believe The Wrecker is a good yarn of its poor
sort, and it is certainly well nourished with facts; no
realist can touch me there; for by this time I do begin
to know something of life in the XIXth century, which
no novelist either in France or England seems to know
much of. You must have great larks over masonry.
You’re away up in the ranks now and (according to works
that I have read) doubtless design assassinations. But I
am an outsider; and I have a certain liking for a light
unto my path which would deter me from joining the
rank and file of so vast and dim a confraternity. At your
altitude it becomes (of course) amusing and perhaps useful.
Yes, I remember the L.J.R.,26 and the constitution,
and my homily on Liberty, and yours on Reverence, which
was never written—so I never knew what reverence was.
I remember I wanted to write Justice also; but I forget
who had the billet. My dear papa was in a devil of a
taking; and I had to go and lunch at Ferrier’s in a strangely
begrutten state, which was infra dig. for a homilist on
liberty. It was about four, I suppose, that we met in the
Lothian Road,—had we the price of two bitters between
us? questionable!
Your bookseller (I have lost his letter, I mean the
maid has, arranging my room, and so have to send by
you) wrote me a letter about Old Bailey Papers. Gosh,
I near swarfed; dam’d, man, I near had dee’d o’t. It’s
only yin or twa volumes I want; say 500 or 1000 pages
of the stuff; and the worthy man (much doubting) proposed
to bury me in volumes. Please allay his rage, and
apologise that I have not written him direct. His note
was civil and purposelike. And please send me a copy of
Henley’s Book of Verses; mine has disappeared.
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin
Nov. 25th, 1891.
MY DEAR COLVIN, MY DEAR COLVIN,—I wonder how
often I’m going to write it. In spite of the loss of three
days, as I have to tell, and a lot of weeding and cacao
planting, I have finished since the mail left four chapters,
forty-eight pages of my Samoa history. It is true that
the first three had been a good deal drafted two years ago,
but they had all to be written and re-written, and the
fourth chapter is all new. Chapter I. Elements of Discord—Native.
II. Elements of Discord—Foreign. III. The
Success of Laupepa. IV. Brandeis. V. Will probably be
called “The Rise of Mataafa.” VI. Furor Consularis—a
devil of a long chapter. VII. Stuebel the Pacificator.
VIII. Government under the Treaty of Berlin. IX. Practical
Suggestions. Say three-sixths of it are done, maybe
more; by this mail five chapters should go, and that
should be a good half of it; say sixty pages. And if you
consider that I sent by last mail the end of The Wrecker,
coming on for seventy or eighty pages, and the mail before
that the entire tale of the Beach of Falesá, I do not think
I can be accused of idleness. This is my season; I often
work six and seven, and sometimes eight hours; and the
same day I am perhaps weeding or planting for an hour
or two more—and I dare say you know what hard work
weeding is—and it all agrees with me at this time of the
year—like—like idleness, if a man of my years could be
idle.
My first visit to Apia was a shock to me; every second
person the ghost of himself, and the place reeking with
infection. But I have not got the thing yet, and hope to
escape. This shows how much stronger I am; think of
me flitting through a town of influenza patients seemingly
unscathed. We are all on the cacao planting.
The next day my wife and I rode over to the German
plantation, Vailele, whose manager is almost the only
German left to speak to us. Seventy labourers down with
influenza! It is a lovely ride, half-way down our mountain
towards Apia, then turn to the right, ford the river,
and three miles of solitary grass and cocoa palms, to where
the sea beats and the wild wind blows unceasingly about
the plantation house. On the way down Fanny said,
“Now what would you do if you saw Colvin coming up?”
Next day we rode down to Apia to make calls.
Yesterday the mail came, and the fat was in the fire.
Nov. 29th (?).—Book.27 All right. I must say I like
your order. And the papers are some of them up to dick,
and no mistake. I agree with you the lights seem a little
turned down. The truth is, I was far through (if you
understand Scots), and came none too soon to the South
Seas, where I was to recover peace of body and mind.
No man but myself knew all my bitterness in those days.
Remember that, the next time you think I regret my
exile. And however low the lights are, the stuff is true,
and I believe the more effective; after all, what I wish
to fight is the best fought by a rather cheerless presentation
of the truth. The world must return some day to the
word duty, and be done with the word reward. There are
no rewards, and plenty duties. And the sooner a man
sees that and acts upon it like a gentleman or a fine old
barbarian, the better for himself.
There is my usual puzzle about publishers. Chatto
ought to have it, as he has all the other essays; these all
belong to me, and Chatto publishes on terms. Longman
has forgotten the terms we are on; let him look up our
first correspondence, and he will see I reserved explicitly,
as was my habit, the right to republish as I choose. Had
the same arrangement with Henley, Magazine of Art, and
with Tulloch, Fraser’s.—For any necessary note or preface,
it would be a real service if you would undertake the duty
yourself. I should love a preface by you, as short or as
long as you choose, three sentences, thirty pages, the thing
I should like is your name. And the excuse of my great
distance seems sufficient. I shall return with this the
sheets corrected as far as I have them; the rest I will
leave, if you will, to you entirely; let it be your book,
and disclaim what you dislike in the preface. You can
say it was at my eager prayer. I should say I am the
less willing to pass Chatto over, because he behaved the
other day in a very handsome manner. He asked leave
to reprint Damien; I gave it to him as a present, explaining
I could receive no emolument for a personal attack.
And he took out my share of profits, and sent them in my
name to the Leper Fund. I could not bear after that to
take from him any of that class of books which I have
always given him. Tell him the same terms will do.
Clark to print, uniform with the others.
I have lost all the days since this letter began rehandling
Chapter IV. of the Samoa racket. I do not go
in for literature; address myself to sensible people rather
than to sensitive. And, indeed, it is a kind of journalism,
I have no right to dally; if it is to help, it must come
soon. In two months from now it shall be done, and
should be published in the course of March. I propose
Cassell gets it. I am going to call it A Footnote to History:
Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa, I believe. I recoil from
serious names; they seem so much too pretentious for a
pamphlet. It will be about the size of Treasure Island, I
believe. Of course, as you now know, my case of conscience
cleared itself off, and I began my intervention
directly to one of the parties. The other, the Chief Justice,
I am to inform of my book the first occasion. God knows
if the book will do any good—or harm; but I judge it
right to try. There is one man’s life certainly involved;
and it may be all our lives. I must not stand and slouch,
but do my best as best I can. But you may conceive the
difficulty of a history extending to the present week, at
least, and where almost all the actors upon all sides are of
my personal acquaintance. The only way is to judge
slowly, and write boldly, and leave the issue to fate....
I am far indeed from wishing to confine myself to creative
work; that is a loss, the other repairs; the one chance for
a man, and, above all, for one who grows elderly, ahem, is
to vary drainage and repair. That is the one thing I
understand—the cultivation of the shallow solum of my
brain. But I would rather, from soon on, be released from
the obligation to write. In five or six years this plantation—suppose
it and us still to exist—should pretty well support
us and pay wages; not before, and already the six
years seem long to me. If literature were but a pastime!
I have interrupted myself to write the necessary notification
to the Chief Justice.
I see in looking up Longman’s letter that it was as
usual the letter of an obliging gentleman; so do not
trouble him with my reminder. I wish all my publishers
were not so nice. And I have a fourth and a fifth baying
at my heels; but for these, of course, they must go wanting.
Dec. 2nd.—No answer from the Chief Justice, which is
like him, but surely very wrong in such a case. The lunch
bell! I have been off work, playing patience and weeding
all morning. Yesterday and the day before I drafted
eleven and revised nine pages of Chapter V., and the truth
is, I was extinct by lunch-time, and played patience
sourly the rest of the day. To-morrow or next day I hope
to go in again and win. Lunch 2nd Bell.
Dec. 2nd, afternoon.—I have kept up the idleness; blew
on the pipe to Belle’s piano; then had a ride in the forest
all by my nainsel; back and piped again, and now dinner
nearing. Take up this sheet with nothing to say. The
weird figure of Faauma is in the room washing my windows,
in a black lavalava (kilt) with a red handkerchief hanging
from round her neck between her breasts; not another
stitch; her hair close cropped and oiled; when she first
came here she was an angelic little stripling, but she is
now in full flower—or half-flower—and grows buxom.
As I write, I hear her wet cloth moving and grunting with
some industry; for I had a word this day with her husband
on the matter of work and meal-time, when she is
always late. And she has a vague reverence for Papa, as
she and her enormous husband address me when anything
is wrong. Her husband is Lafaele, sometimes called the
archangel, of whom I have writ you often. Rest of our
household, Talolo, cook; Pulu, kitchen boy, good, steady,
industrious lads; Henry, back again from Savaii, where
his love affair seems not to have prospered, with what
looks like a spear-wound in the back of his head, of which
Mr. Reticence says nothing; Simi, Manuele, and two other
labourers outdoors. Lafaele is provost of the live-stock,
whereof now, three milk-cows, one bull-calf, one heifer,
Jack, Macfarlane, the mare, Harold, Tifaga Jack, Donald
and Edinburgh—seven horses—O, and the stallion—eight
horses; five cattle; total, if my arithmetic be correct,
thirteen head of beasts; I don’t know how the pigs stand,
or the ducks, or the chickens; but we get a good many
eggs, and now and again a duckling or a chickling for the
table; the pigs are more solemn, and appear only on birthdays
and sich.
Monday, Dec. 7.—On Friday morning about eleven
1500 cacao seeds arrived, and we set to and toiled from
twelve that day to six, and went to bed pretty tired. Next
day I got about an hour and a half at my History, and
was at it again by 8.10, and except an hour for lunch kept
at it till four P.M. Yesterday, I did some History in the
morning, and slept most of the afternoon; and to-day,
being still averse from physical labour, and the mail drawing
nigh, drew out of the squad, and finished for press the
fifth chapter of my History; fifty-nine pages in one month;
which (you will allow me to say) is a devil of a large order;
it means at least 177 pages of writing; 89,000 words!
and hours going to and fro among my notes. However,
this is the way it has to be done; the job must be done
fast, or it is of no use. And it is a curious yarn. Honestly,
I think people should be amused and convinced, if they
could be at the pains to look at such a damned outlandish
piece of machinery, which of course they won’t. And
much I care.
When I was filling baskets all Saturday, in my dull
mulish way, perhaps the slowest worker there, surely the
most particular, and the only one that never looked up
or knocked off, I could not but think I should have been
sent on exhibition as an example to young literary men.
Here is how to learn to write, might be the motto. You
should have seen us; the verandah was like an Irish
bog; our hands and faces were bedaubed with soil; and
Faauma was supposed to have struck the right note when
she remarked (à propos of nothing), “Too much eleele
(soil) for me!” The cacao (you must understand) has to
be planted at first in baskets of plaited cocoa-leaf. From
four to ten natives were plaiting these in the wood-shed.
Four boys were digging up soil and bringing it by the
boxful to the verandah. Lloyd and I and Belle, and
sometimes S. (who came to bear a hand), were filling the
baskets, removing stones and lumps of clay; Austin and
Faauma carried them when full to Fanny, who planted a
seed in each, and then set them, packed close, in the
corners of the verandah. From twelve on Friday till five
P.M. on Saturday we planted the first 1500, and more than
700 of a second lot. You cannot dream how filthy we
were, and we were all properly tired. They are all at it
again to-day, bar Belle and me, not required, and glad
to be out of it. The Chief Justice has not yet replied, and
I have news that he received my letter. What a man!
I have gone crazy over Bourget’s Sensations d’Italie;
hence the enclosed dedication,28 a mere cry of gratitude
for the best fun I’ve had over a new book this ever so!
To Fred Orr
The following is in answer to an application for an autograph
from a young gentleman in the United States:—
Vailima, Upolu, Samoa, November 28th, 1891.
DEAR SIR,—Your obliging communication is to hand.
I am glad to find that you have read some of my books,
and to see that you spell my name right. This is a point
(for some reason) of great difficulty; and I believe that a
gentleman who can spell Stevenson with a v at sixteen,
should have a show for the Presidency before fifty. By
that time
I, nearer to the wayside inn,
predict that you will have outgrown your taste for autographs,
but perhaps your son may have inherited the
collection, and on the morning of the great day will recall
my prophecy to your mind. And in the papers of 1921
(say) this letter may arouse a smile.
Whatever you do, read something else besides novels
and newspapers; the first are good enough when they are
good; the second, at their best, are worth nothing. Read
great books of literature and history; try to understand
the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages; be sure you do
not understand when you dislike them; condemnation is
non-comprehension. And if you know something of these
two periods, you will know a little more about to-day, and
may be a good President.
I send you my best wishes, and am yours,
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Author of a vast quantity of little books.
To E. L. Burlingame
The next letter announces to his New York publishers the beginning
of his volume on the troubles of Samoa, A Footnote to
History.
[Vailima, December 1891.]
MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—The end of The Wrecker having
but just come in, you will, I dare say, be appalled to
receive three (possibly four) chapters of a new book of the
least attractive sort: a history of nowhere in a corner, or
no time to mention, running to a volume! Well, it may
very likely be an illusion; it is very likely no one could
possibly wish to read it, but I wish to publish it. If you
don’t cotton to the idea, kindly set it up at my expense,
and let me know your terms for publishing. The great
affair to me is to have per return (if it might be) four or
five—better say half a dozen—sets of the roughest proofs
that can be drawn. There are a good many men here
whom I want to read the blessed thing, and not one would
have the energy to read MS. At the same time, if you
care to glance at it, and have the time, I should be very
glad of your opinion as to whether I have made any step
at all towards possibly inducing folk at home to read matter
so extraneous and outlandish. I become heavy and
owlish; years sit upon me; it begins to seem to me to be
a man’s business to leave off his damnable faces and say
his say. Else I could have made it pungent and light and
lively. In considering, kindly forget that I am R. L. S.;
think of the four chapters as a book you are reading, by
an inhabitant of our “lovely but fatil” islands; and see
if it could possibly amuse the hebetated public. I have
to publish anyway, you understand; I have a purpose
beyond; I am concerned for some of the parties to this
quarrel. What I want to hear is from curiosity; what I
want you to judge of is what we are to do with the book
in a business sense. To me it is not business at all; I
had meant originally to lay all the profits to the credit
of Samoa; when it comes to the pinch of writing, I judge
this unfair—I give too much—and I mean to keep (if there
be any profit at all) one-half for the artisan; the rest I
shall hold over to give to the Samoans for that which I
choose and against work done. I think I have never heard
of greater insolence than to attempt such a subject; yet
the tale is so strange and mixed, and the people so oddly
charactered—above all, the whites—and the high note of
the hurricane and the warships is so well prepared to take
popular interest, and the latter part is so directly in the
day’s movement, that I am not without hope that some
may read it; and if they don’t, a murrain on them! Here
is, for the first time, a tale of Greeks—Homeric Greeks—mingled
with moderns, and all true; Odysseus alongside
of Rajah Brooke, proportion gardée; and all true.
Here is for the first time since the Greeks (that I remember)
the history of a handful of men, where all know each other
in the eyes, and live close in a few acres, narrated at length,
and with the seriousness of history. Talk of the modern
novel; here is a modern history. And if I had the misfortune
to found a school, the legitimate historian might
lie down and die, for he could never overtake his material.
Here is a little tale that has not “caret”-ed its “vates”;
“sacer” is another point.
R. L. S.
To Henry James
Mr. Henry James was in the habit of sending out for Stevenson’s
reading books that seemed likely to interest him, and among
the last had been M. Paul Bourget’s Sensations d’Italie.
December 7th, 1891.
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,—Thanks for yours; your
former letter was lost; so it appears was my long and
masterly treatise on the Tragic Muse. I remember sending
it very well, and there went by the same mail a long and
masterly tractate to Gosse about his daddy’s life, for which
I have been long expecting an acknowledgment, and which
is plainly gone to the bottom with the other. If you see
Gosse, please mention it. These gems of criticism are now
lost literature, like the tomes of Alexandria. I could not
do ’em again. And I must ask you to be content with a
dull head, a weary hand, and short commons, for to-day,
as I am physically tired with hard work of every kind,
the labours of the planter and the author both piled upon
me mountain deep. I am delighted beyond expression
by Bourget’s book: he has phrases which affect me almost
like Montaigne; I had read ere this a masterly essay of his
on Pascal; this book does it; I write for all his essays by
this mail, and shall try to meet him when I come to Europe.
The proposal is to pass a summer in France, I think in
Royat, where the faithful could come and visit me; they
are now not many. I expect Henry James to come and
break a crust or two with us. I believe it will be only my
wife and myself; and she will go over to England, but
not I, or possibly incog. to Southampton, and then to
Boscombe to see poor Lady Shelley. I am writing—trying
to write in a Babel fit for the bottomless pit; my
wife, her daughter, her grandson and my mother, all
shrieking at each other round the house—not in war,
thank God! but the din is ultra martial, and the note of
Lloyd joins in occasionally, and the cause of this to-do
is simply cacao, whereof chocolate comes. You may
drink of our chocolate perhaps in five or six years from
now, and not know it. It makes a fine bustle, and gives
us some hard work, out of which I have slunk for to-day.
I have a story coming out: God knows when or how;
it answers to the name of the Beach of Falesá, and I think
well of it. I was delighted with the Tragic Muse; I
thought the Muse herself one of your best works; I was
delighted also to hear of the success of your piece, as you
know I am a dam failure,29 and might have dined with the
dinner club that Daudet and these parties frequented.
Next day.—I have just been breakfasting at Baiae and
Brindisi, and the charm of Bourget hag-rides me. I
wonder if this exquisite fellow, all made of fiddle-strings
and scent and intelligence, could bear any of my bald
prose. If you think he could, ask Colvin to send him a
copy of these last essays of mine when they appear; and
tell Bourget they go to him from a South Sea Island as
literal homage. I have read no new book for years that
gave me the same literary thrill as his Sensations d’Italie.
If (as I imagine) my cut-and-dry literature would be death
to him, and worse than death—journalism—be silent on
the point. For I have a great curiosity to know him, and
if he doesn’t know my work, I shall have the better chance
of making his acquaintance. I read The Pupil the other
day with great joy; your little boy is admirable; why
is there no little boy like that unless he hails from the
Great Republic?
Here I broke off, and wrote Bourget a dedication; no
use resisting; it’s a love affair. O, he’s exquisite, I bless
you for the gift of him. I have really enjoyed this book
as I—almost as I—used to enjoy books when I was going
twenty-twenty-three; and these are the years for reading!
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin
[Vailima] Tuesday, Dec. 1891.
SIR,—I have the honour to report further explorations
of the course of the river Vaea, with accompanying sketch
plan. The party under my command consisted of one
horse, and was extremely insubordinate and mutinous,
owing to not being used to go into the bush, and being
half-broken anyway—and that the wrong half. The route
indicated for my party was up the bed of the so-called
river Vaea, which I accordingly followed to a distance of
perhaps two or three furlongs eastward from the house of
Vailima, where the stream being quite dry, the bush thick,
and the ground very difficult, I decided to leave the main
body of the force under my command tied to a tree, and
push on myself with the point of the advance guard, consisting
of one man. The valley had become very narrow
and airless; foliage close shut above; dry bed of the
stream much excavated, so that I passed under fallen trees
without stooping. Suddenly it turned sharply to the north,
at right angles to its former direction; I heard living
water, and came in view of a tall face of rock and the
stream spraying down it; it might have been climbed,
but it would have been dangerous, and I had to make my
way up the steep earth banks, where there is nowhere
any looting for man, only for trees, which made the rounds
of my ladder. I was near the top of this climb, which was
very hot and steep, and the pulses were buzzing all over
my body, when I made sure there was one external sound
in my ears, and paused to listen. No mistake; a sound
of a mill-wheel thundering, I thought, close by, yet below
me, a huge mill-wheel, yet not going steadily, but with a
schottische movement, and at each fresh impetus shaking
the mountain. There, where I was, I just put down the
sound to the mystery of the bush; where no sound now
surprises me—and any sound alarms; I only thought it
would give Jack a fine fright, down where he stood tied
to a tree by himself, and he was badly enough scared when
I left him. The good folks at home identified it; it was
a sharp earthquake.
At the top of the climb I made my way again to the
watercourse; it is here running steady and pretty full;
strange these intermittencies—and just a little below the
main stream is quite dry, and all the original brook has
gone down some lava gallery of the mountain—and just a
little further below, it begins picking up from the left hand
in little boggy tributaries, and in the inside of a hundred
yards has grown a brook again.30 The general course of
the brook was, I guess, S.E.; the valley still very deep
and whelmed in wood. It seemed a swindle to have made
so sheer a climb and still find yourself at the bottom of a
well. But gradually the thing seemed to shallow, the
trees to seem poorer and smaller; I could see more and
more of the silver sprinkles of sky among the foliage,
instead of the sombre piling up of tree behind tree. And
here I had two scares—first, away up on my right hand
I heard a bull low; I think it was a bull from the quality
of the low, which was singularly songful and beautiful;
the bulls belong to me, but how did I know that the bull
was aware of that? and my advance guard not being at
all properly armed, we advanced with great precaution
until I was satisfied that I was passing eastward of the
enemy. It was during this period that a pool of the river
suddenly boiled up in my face in a little fountain. It
was in a very dreary, marshy part among dilapidated
trees that you see through holes in the trunks of; and if
any kind of beast or elf or devil had come out of that
sudden silver ebullition, I declare I do not think I should
have been surprised. It was perhaps a thing as curious—a
fish, with which these head waters of the stream are
alive. They are some of them as long as my finger, should
be easily caught in these shallows, and some day I’ll have
a dish of them.
Very soon after I came to where the stream collects in
another banana swamp, with the bananas bearing well.
Beyond, the course is again quite dry; it mounts with a
sharp turn a very steep face of the mountain, and then
stops abruptly at the lip of a plateau, I suppose the top
of Vaea mountain: plainly no more springs here—there
was no smallest furrow of a watercourse beyond—and my
task might be said to be accomplished. But such is the
animated spirit in the service that the whole advance
guard expressed a sentiment of disappointment that an
exploration, so far successfully conducted, should come
to a stop in the most promising view of fresh successes.
And though unprovided either with compass or cutlass, it
was determined to push some way along the plateau,
marking our direction by the laborious process of bending
down, sitting upon, and thus breaking the wild cocoanut
trees. This was the less regretted by all from a delightful
discovery made of a huge banyan growing here in the
bush, with flying-buttressed flying buttresses, and huge
arcs of trunk hanging high overhead and trailing down
new complications of root. I climbed some way up what
seemed the original beginning; it was easier to climb
than a ship’s rigging, even rattled; everywhere there
was foot-hold and hand-hold. It was judged wise to
return and rally the main body, who had now been left
alone for perhaps forty minutes in the bush.
The return was effected in good order, but unhappily
I only arrived (like so many other explorers) to find my
main body or rear-guard in a condition of mutiny; the
work, it is to be supposed, of terror. It is right I should
tell you the Vaea has a bad name, an aitu fafine—female
devil of the woods—succubus—haunting it, and doubtless
Jack had heard of her; perhaps, during my absence, saw
her; lucky Jack! Anyway, he was neither to hold nor
to bind, and finally, after nearly smashing me by accident,
and from mere scare and insubordination several times,
deliberately set in to kill me; but poor Jack! the tree he
selected for that purpose was a banana! I jumped off
and gave him the heavy end of my whip over the buttocks!
Then I took and talked in his ear in various voices; you
should have heard my alto—it was a dreadful, devilish note—I
knew Jack knew it was an aitu. Then I mounted him
again, and he carried me fairly steadily. He’ll learn yet.
He has to learn to trust absolutely to his rider; till he
does, the risk is always great in thick bush, where a fellow
must try different passages, and put back and forward,
and pick his way by hair’s-breadths.
The expedition returned to Vailima in time to receive
the visit of the R. C. Bishop. He is a superior man, much
above the average of priests.
Thursday.—Yesterday the same expedition set forth to
the southward by what is known as Carruthers’ Road. At
a fallen tree which completely blocks the way, the main
body was as before left behind, and the advance guard of
one now proceeded with the exploration. At the great
tree known as Mepi Tree, after Maben the surveyor, the
expedition struck forty yards due west till it struck the
top of a steep bank which it descended. The whole bottom
of the ravine is filled with sharp lava blocks quite unrolled
and very difficult and dangerous to walk among; no water
in the course, scarce any sign of water. And yet surely
water must have made this bold cutting in the plateau.
And if so, why is the lava sharp? My science gave out;
but I could not but think it ominous and volcanic. The
course of the stream was tortuous, but with a resultant
direction a little by west of north; the sides the whole
way exceeding steep, the expedition buried under fathoms
of foliage. Presently water appeared in the bottom, a good
quantity; perhaps thirty or forty cubic feet, with pools
and waterfalls. A tree that stands all along the banks
here must be very fond of water; its roots lie close-packed
down the stream, like hanks of guts, so as to make often
a corrugated walk, each root ending in a blunt tuft of filaments,
plainly to drink water. Twice there came in small
tributaries from the left or western side—the whole plateau
having a smartish inclination to the east; one of the
tributaries in a handsome little web of silver hanging in
the forest. Twice I was startled by birds; one that
barked like a dog; another that whistled loud ploughman’s
signals, so that I vow I was thrilled, and thought
I had fallen among runaway blacks, and regretted my
cutlass which I had lost and left behind while taking bearings.
A good many fishes in the brook, and many crayfish;
one of the last with a queer glow-worm head. Like
all our brooks, the water is pure as air, and runs over red
stones like rubies. The foliage along both banks very
thick and high, the place close, the walking exceedingly
laborious. By the time the expedition reached the fork,
it was felt exceedingly questionable whether the moral of
the force were sufficiently good to undertake more extended
operations. A halt was called, the men refreshed
with water and a bath, and it was decided at a drumhead
council of war to continue the descent of the Embassy
Water straight for Vailima, whither the expedition returned,
in rather poor condition, and wet to the waist,
about 4 P.M.
Thus in two days the two main watercourses of this
country have been pretty thoroughly explored, and I conceive
my instructions fully carried out. The main body
of the second expedition was brought back by another
officer despatched for that purpose from Vailima. Casualties:
one horse wounded; one man bruised; no deaths—as
yet, but the bruised man feels to-day as if his case
was mighty serious.
Dec. 25, ’91.—Your note with a very despicable bulletin
of health arrived only yesterday, the mail being a day
behind. It contained also the excellent Times article,
which was a sight for sore eyes. I am still taboo; the
blessed Germans will have none of me; and I only hope
they may enjoy the Times article. ’Tis my revenge! I
wish you had sent the letter too, as I have no copy, and
do not even know what I wrote the last day, with a bad
headache, and the mail going out. However, it must
have been about right, for the Times article was in the
spirit I wished to arouse. I hope we can get rid of the
man before it is too late. He has set the natives to war;
but the natives, by God’s blessing, do not want to fight,
and I think it will fizzle out—no thanks to the man who
tried to start it. But I did not mean to drift into these
politics; rather to tell you what I have done since I last
wrote.
Well, I worked away at my History for a while, and
only got one chapter done; no doubt this spate of work
is pretty low now, and will be soon dry; but, God bless
you, what a lot I have accomplished; Wrecker done, Beach
of Falesá done, half the History: c’est étonnant. (I hear
from Burlingame, by the way, that he likes the end of the
Wrecker; ’tis certainly a violent, dark yarn with interesting,
plain turns of human nature), then Lloyd and I went
down to live in Haggard’s rooms, where Fanny presently
joined us. Haggard’s rooms are in a strange old building—old
for Samoa, and has the effect of the antique like
some strange monastery; I would tell you more of it,
but I think I’m going to use it in a tale. The annexe
close by had its door sealed; poor Dowdney lost at sea
in a schooner. The place is haunted. The vast empty
sheds, the empty store, the airless, hot, long, low rooms,
the claps of wind that set everything flying—a strange
uncanny house to spend Christmas in.
Jan. 1st,’92.—For a day or two I have sat close and
wrought hard at the History, and two more chapters are
all but done. About thirty pages should go by this mail,
which is not what should be, but all I could overtake.
Will any one ever read it? I fancy not; people don’t
read history for reading, but for education and display—and
who desires education in the history of Samoa, with
no population, no past, no future, or the exploits of Mataafa,
Malietoa, and Consul Knappe? Colkitto and Galasp are
a trifle to it. Well, it can’t be helped, and it must be
done, and, better or worse, it’s capital fun. There are
two to whom I have not been kind—German Consul
Becker and the English Captain Hand, R. N.
On Dec. 30th I rode down with Belle to go to (if you
please) the Fancy Ball. When I got to the beach, I found
the barometer was below 29°, the wind still in the east
and steady, but a huge offensive continent of clouds and
vapours forming to leeward. It might be a hurricane; I
dared not risk getting caught away from my work, and,
leaving Belle, returned at once to Vailima. Next day—yesterday—it
was a tearer; we had storm shutters up;
I sat in my room and wrote by lamplight—ten pages, if
you please, seven of them draft, and some of these compiled
authorities, so that was a brave day’s work. About two
a huge tree fell within sixty paces of our house; a little
after, a second went; and we sent out boys with axes
and cut down a third, which was too near the house, and
buckling like a fishing rod. At dinner we had the front
door closed and shuttered, the back door open, the lamp
lit. The boys in the cook-house were all out at the cook-house
door, where we could see them looking in and
smiling. Lauilo and Faauma waited on us with smiles.
The excitement was delightful. Some very violent squalls
came as we sat there, and every one rejoiced; it was
impossible to help it; a soul of putty had to sing. All
night it blew; the roof was continually sounding under
missiles; in the morning the verandahs were half full of
branches torn from the forest. There was a last very wild
squall about six; the rain, like a thick white smoke,
flying past the house in volleys, and as swift, it seemed,
as rifle balls; all with a strange, strident hiss, such as I
have only heard before at sea, and, indeed, thought to be
a marine phenomenon. Since then the wind has been
falling with a few squalls, mostly rain. But our road is
impassable for horses; we hear a schooner has been
wrecked and some native houses blown down in Apia,
where Belle is still and must remain a prisoner. Lucky
I returned while I could! But the great good is this;
much bread-fruit and bananas have been destroyed; if this
be general through the islands, famine will be imminent;
and whoever blows the coals, there can be no war. Do I
then prefer a famine to a war? you ask. Not always,
but just now. I am sure the natives do not want a war;
I am sure a war would benefit no one but the white
officials, and I believe we can easily meet the famine—or
at least that it can be met. That would give our officials
a legitimate opportunity to cover their past errors.
Jan. 2nd.—I woke this morning to find the blow quite
ended. The heaven was all a mottled grey; even the
east quite colourless; the downward slope of the island
veiled in wafts of vapour, blue like smoke; not a leaf
stirred on the tallest tree; only, three miles away below
me on the barrier reef, I could see the individual breakers
curl and fall, and hear their conjunct roaring rise, as it
still rises at 1 P.M., like the roar of a thoroughfare close
by. I did a good morning’s work, correcting and clarifying
my draft, and have now finished for press eight chapters,
ninety-one pages, of this piece of journalism. Four more
chapters, say fifty pages, remain to be done; I should
gain my wager and finish this volume in three months,
that is to say, the end should leave me per February
mail; I cannot receive it back till the mail of April. Yes,
it can be out in time; pray God that it be in time to help.
How do journalists fetch up their drivel? I aim only
at clearness and the most obvious finish, positively at no
higher degree of merit, not even at brevity—I am sure it
could have been all done, with double the time, in two-thirds
of the space. And yet it has taken me two months
to write 45,500 words; and, be damned to my wicked
prowess, I am proud of the exploit! The real journalist
must be a man not of brass only, but bronze. Chapter IX.
gapes for me, but I shrink on the margin, and go on chattering
to you. This last part will be much less offensive
(strange to say) to the Germans. It is Becker they will
never forgive me for; Knappe I pity and do not dislike;
Becker I scorn and abominate. Here is the tableau.
I. Elements of Discord: Native. II. Elements of Discord:
Foreign. III. The Sorrows of Laupepa. IV. Brandeis. V.
The Battle of Matautu. VI. Last Exploits of Becker. VII.
The Samoan Camps. VIII. Affairs of Lautii and Fangalii.
IX. “Furor Consularis.” X. The Hurricane. XI. Stuebel
Recluse. XII. The Present Government. I estimate the
whole roughly at 70,000 words. Should anybody ever
dream of reading it, it would be found amusing. 70000/300
= 233 printed pages; a respectable little five-bob volume,
to bloom unread in shop windows. After that, I’ll have
a spank at fiction. And rest? I shall rest in the grave,
or when I come to Italy. If only the public will continue
to support me! I lost my chance not dying; there seems
blooming little fear of it now. I worked close on five
hours this morning; the day before, close on nine; and
unless I finish myself off with this letter, I’ll have another
hour and a half, or aiblins twa, before dinner. Poor man,
how you must envy me, as you hear of these orgies of
work, and you scarce able for a letter. But Lord, Colvin,
how lucky the situations are not reversed, for I have no
situation, nor am fit for any. Life is a steigh brae. Here,
have at Knappe, and no more clavers!
Jan. 3rd.—There was never any man had so many
irons in the fire, except Jim Pinkerton.31 I forgot to
mention I have the most gallant suggestion from Lang,
with an offer of MS. authorities, which turns my brain.
It’s all about the throne of Poland and buried treasure
in the Mackay country, and Alan Breck can figure there
in glory.
Yesterday, J. and I set off to Blacklock’s (American
Consul) who lives not far from that little village I have
so often mentioned as lying between us and Apia. I had
some questions to ask him for my History; thence we
must proceed to Vailele, where I had also to cross-examine
the plantation manager about the battle there. We went
by a track I had never before followed down the hill to
Vaisigano, which flows here in a deep valley, and was
unusually full, so that the horses trembled in the ford.
The whole bottom of the valley is full of various streams
posting between strips of forest with a brave sound of
waters. In one place we had a glimpse of a fall some
way higher up, and then sparkling in sunlight in the
midst of the green valley. Then up by a winding path
scarce accessible to a horse for steepness, to the other
side, and the open cocoanut glades of the plantation.
Here we rode fast, did a mighty satisfactory afternoon’s
work at the plantation house, and still faster back. On
the return Jack fell with me, but got up again; when I
felt him recovering I gave him his head, and he shoved
his foot through the rein; I got him by the bit however,
and all was well; he had mud over all his face, but his
knees were not broken. We were scarce home when the
rain began again; that was luck. It is pouring now in
torrents; we are in the height of the bad season. Lloyd
leaves along with this letter on a change to San Francisco;
he had much need of it, but I think this will brace him up.
I am, as you see, a tower of strength. I can remember
riding not so far and not near so fast when I first came to
Samoa, and being shattered next day with fatigue; now
I could not tell I have done anything; have re-handled
my battle of Fangalii according to yesterday’s information—four
pages rewritten; and written already some half-dozen
pages of letters.
I observe with disgust that while of yore, when I own
I was guilty, you never spared me abuse—but now, when
I am so virtuous, where is the praise? Do admit that I
have become an excellent letter-writer—at least to you,
and that your ingratitude is imbecile.—Yours ever,
R. L. S.
“In the missionary work which is being done among the
Samoans, Mr. Stevenson was especially interested. He was an
observant, shrewd, yet ever generous critic of all our religious and
educational organisations. His knowledge of native character and
life enabled him to understand missionary difficulties, while his
genial contact with all sorts and conditions of men made him keen
to detect deficiencies in men and methods, and apt in useful suggestion.”
The above is the testimony of the Mr. Clarke here mentioned
(Rev. W. E. Clarke of the London Missionary Society).
This gentleman was from the first one of the most valued friends of
Mr. Stevenson and his family in Samoa, and, when the end came,
read the funeral service beside his grave on Mount Vaea.
The lady in the Vicar of Wakefield who declares herself “all
in a muck of sweat.”
First published in the New Review, January 1895.
Afterwards changed into The Beach of Falesá.
Mr. Lloyd Osbourne had come to England to pack and wind up
affairs at Skerryvore.
The lines beginning “I heard the pulse of the besieging sea”;
see Vol. xxiv., p. 366.
“The Monument” was his name for my house at the British
Museum, and George was my old faithful servant, George Went.
The late Mr. John Lafarge, long an honoured doyen among
New York artists, whose record of his holiday in the South Seas,
in the shape of a series of water-colour sketches of the scenery and
people (with a catalogue full of interesting notes and observations),
was one of the features of the Champ de Mars Salon in 1895.
Mrs. B. W. Procter, the stepdaughter of Basil Montagu and
widow of Barry Cornwall. The death of this spirited veteran in
1888 snapped one of the last links with the days and memories
of Keats and Coleridge. A shrewd and not too indulgent judge of
character, she took R. L. S. into warm favour at first sight, and
never spoke of or inquired after him but with unwonted tenderness.
On a projected expedition to Sydney.
See A Footnote to History for more in praise of Dr. Stuebel, and
of his exceptional deserts among white officials in Samoa.
One of the many aliases of the wicked Skye-terrier of Hyères,
Davos, and Bournemouth days, celebrated in the essay On the
Character of Dogs.
Battre les champs, to wander in mind.
Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin, by R. L. S., prefixed to Papers
Literary, Scientific, etc., by the late Fleeming Jenkin, F.R.S., LL.D.;
2 vols. London, Longmans, 1887. The first chapters consist of a
genealogical history of the family. This, to my mind one of the
best works of R. L. S., has lately been separately reprinted, having
long been accessible only in the Edinburgh and Pentland editions.
Of Delafleld I never heard; the plan of Shovel, which was to be in
great part a story of the Peninsular War, had been sketched out
and a few chapters written as long ago as the seventies.
The Misadventures of John Nicholson.
The South Sea Letters.
The price advanced for these Letters was among the considerations
which originally induced the writer to set out on his Pacific
voyage.
The first serial tale, says Mr. Clarke, ever read by Samoans in
their own language was the story of the Bottle Imp, “which found
its way into print at Samoa, and was read with wonder and delight
in many a thatched Samoan hut before it won the admiration of
readers at home.” In the English form the story was published
first in Black and White, and afterwards in the volume called Island
Nights’ Entertainments.
Boating expedition: pronounce malanga.
Portraits of myself for which he had asked.
Miss Fanny Macpherson, now Lady Holroyd.
In reply to a suggestion which ultimately took effect in the
shape of the volume called Across the Plains (Chatto & Windus,
1892).
The steam-yacht of the Commissioners of Northern Lights, on
which he had been accustomed as a lad to accompany his father
on the official trips of inspection round the coast.
Mr. Rudyard Kipling was at this time planning a trip to
Samoa, but the plan was unfortunately not carried out, and he
and Stevenson never met.
Readers of The Wrecker will not need to be reminded that this
is the name of the personage on whom the mystery in that story
hinges.
See vol. xxiii. pp. 46, 48.
Across the Plains. The papers specially referred to in the next
lines are those written at Saranac Lake in the winter of 1887-88,
including A Letter to a Young Gentleman, Pulvis et Umbra, A Christmas
Sermon.
For the volume Across the Plains.
i.e. on the stage.
As to this peculiar intermittency of the Samoan streams, full
in their upper course, but below in many places dry or lost, compare
the late Lord Pembroke’s South Sea Bubbles, p. 212:—“One odd
thing connected with these ravines is the fact that the higher you
go the more water you find. Unlike the Thames, which begins, I
believe, in half a mile of dusty lane, and expands in its brimming
breadth as it approaches the sea, a Samoan stream begins in bubbling
plenty and ends in utter drought a mile or two from the salt water.
Gradually as you ascend you become more and more hopeful;
moist patches of sand appear here and there, then tiny pools that
a fallen leaf might cover, then larger ones with little thread-like runs
of water between them; larger and larger, till at last you reach
some hard ledge of trap, over which a glorious stream gurgles and
splashes into a pool ample enough for the bath of an elephant.”
In The Wrecker. As to the story thus suggested by Mr. Andrew
Lang, see below, pp. 171, 187, etc.
January-December 1892
The New Year found Stevenson down with his first attack
of the influenza epidemic, then virulent all over the world.
But the illness was not sufficient to stop his work, and in
the first two months of the year he was busy continuing
his conscientious labours on The Footnote to History, seeing
The Wrecker and The Beach of Falesá through the press,
planning the South Sea plantation novel Sophia Scarlet,
which never got beyond that inchoate stage, and writing
the continuation to Kidnapped, first intended to bear the
name of the hero, David Balfour, and afterwards changed
to Catriona. With this he proceeded swimmingly, completing
it between February and September, in a shorter
time than any other of his sustained narratives; and
on publication its success was great. By May he had
finished the Footnote, and then had a dash at the first
chapters of The Young Chevalier, which stand in their
truncated state a piece of work as vivid and telling as he
had ever done. Early in the autumn he struck a still
fuller note in the draft of the first chapters of Weir of
Hermiston.
During this year the household at Vailima received a
new temporary inmate in the person of Mr. Graham
Balfour, a cousin whom Stevenson had not previously
known, but with whom he soon formed the closest and
most confidential friendship of his later life. In the
summer and early autumn he was much taken up both
with politics and with hospitalities. As hereinafter
narrated, he made, and was thwarted in, a serious attempt
to effect a reconciliation between the two rival chiefs;
and continued his series of letters to the Times showing
up the incompetence, and worse, of the responsible Treaty
officials. In August he took lively pleasure in a visit paid
to the islands by Lady Jersey and some members of her
family from Australia. During the course of their stay
he conducted the visitors to the rebel camp under aliases,
as the needs of the time required, and in a manner that
seemed like the realisation of a chapter of a Waverley
novel. A month or two later he became aware, with more
amusement than alarm, of measures for his deportation
set on foot but not carried through by the Treaty officials.
For a man of his temper, the political muddle and mismanagement
of which the Samoan Islands were the scene—and
not only these, however much he might lament
them for the sake of the inhabitants, but even the risks he
ran of serious personal consequences from his own action,—added
to life at least as much of zest and excitement
as of annoyance.
In October he determined, not without serious financial
misgivings and chiefly in deference to his mother’s urgency,
to enlarge his house at Vailima by putting up a new block
adjoining and communicating with that which he had
hitherto inhabited. The work was promptly and efficiently
carried out by the German Firm and completed by the
end of the year. Quite towards the close of December,
copies of The Footnote to History reached Samoa, and the
book, so far from being a cause of offence to his friends
the managers of that firm, as both he and they had feared,
was found acceptable and devoid of offence by them: a
result celebrated in the convivial manner described in the
last letter of this section. On the whole the year had
been a prosperous one, full of successful work and eager
interests, although darkened in its later months by disquietude
on account of his wife’s health. He had himself
well maintained the improved strength and the renewed
capacity both for literary work and outdoor activity
which life in the South Seas had brought him from the
first.
To E. L. Burlingame
[Vailima] Jan, 2nd, ’92.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—Overjoyed you were pleased
with The Wrecker, and shall consider your protests. There
is perhaps more art than you think for in the peccant
chapter, where I have succeeded in packing into one a
dedication, an explanation, and a termination. Surely you
had not recognised the phrase about boodle? It was a
quotation from Jim Pinkerton, and seemed to me agreeably
skittish. However, all shall be prayerfully considered.
To come to a more painful subject. Herewith go three
more chapters of the wretched History; as you see, I
approach the climax. I expect the book to be some 70,000
words, of which you have now 45. Can I finish it for
next mail? I am going to try! ’Tis a long piece of
journalism, and full of difficulties here and there, of this
kind and that, and will make me a power of friends to be
sure. There is one Becker who will probably put up a
window to me in the church where he was baptized; and
I expect a testimonial from Captain Hand.
Sorry to let the mail go without the Scott; this has
been a bad month with me, and I have been below myself.
I shall find a way to have it come by next, or know the
reason why. The mail after, anyway.
A bit of a sketch map appears to me necessary for my
History; perhaps two. If I do not have any, ’tis impossible
any one should follow; and I, even when not at all
interested, demand that I shall be able to follow; even a
tourist book without a map is a cross to me; and there
must be others of my way of thinking. I inclose the very
artless one that I think needful. Vailima, in case you are
curious, is about as far again behind Tanugamanono as
that is from the sea.
M’Clure is publishing a short story of mine, some
50,000 words, I think, The Beach of Falesá; when he’s
done with it, I want you and Cassell to bring it out in a
little volume; I shall send you a dedication for it; I
believe it good; indeed, to be honest, very good. Good
gear that pleases the merchant.
The other map that I half threaten is a chart for the
hurricane. Get me Kimberley’s report of the hurricane:
not to be found here. It is of most importance; I must
have it with my proofs of that part, if I cannot have it
earlier, which now seems impossible.—Yours in hot haste,
R. L. Stevenson.
To Miss Adelaide Boodle
At the news that his correspondent was occupied teaching and
entertaining a class of children in a Kilburn basement, Stevenson
bethinks himself of helping her by writing an account of Samoa
and Samoan life for children.
Vailima, January 4th, 1892.
MY DEAR ADELAIDE,—We were much pleased with
your letter and the news of your employment. Admirable,
your method. But will you not run dry of fairy
stories? Please salute your pupils, and tell them that a
long, lean, elderly man who lives right through on the
under side of the world, so that down in your cellar you
are nearer him than the people in the street, desires his
compliments. This man lives in an island which is not
very long, and extremely narrow. The sea beats round
it very hard, so that it is difficult to get to shore. There
is only one harbour where ships come, even that is very
wild and dangerous; four ships of war were broken there
a little while ago, and one of them is still lying on its side
on a rock clean above water, where the sea threw it as
you might throw your fiddle bow on the table. All
round the harbour the town is strung out, it is nothing but
wooden houses, only there are some churches built of
stone, not very large, but the people have never seen
such fine buildings. Almost all the houses are of one
story. Away at one end lives the king of the whole
country. His palace has a thatched roof which stands
upon posts; it has no walls, but when it blows and rains,
they have Venetian blinds which they let down between
the posts and make it very snug. There is no furniture,
and the king and queen and the courtiers sit and eat on
the floor, which is of gravel: the lamp stands there too,
and every now and then it is upset. These good folks
wear nothing but a kilt about their waists, unless to go to
church or for a dance, or the New Year, or some great
occasion. The children play marbles all along the street;
and though they are generally very jolly, yet they get
awfully cross over their marbles, and cry and fight like
boys and girls at home. Another amusement in country
places is to shoot fish with a bow and arrow. All round
the beach there is bright shallow water where fishes can
be seen darting or lying in shoals. The child trots round
the shore, and wherever he sees a fish, lets fly an arrow
and misses, and then wades in after his arrow. It is great
fun (I have tried it) for the child, and I never heard of
it doing any harm to the fishes: so what could be more
jolly? The road up to this lean man’s house is uphill
all the way and through forests; the forests are of great
trees, not so much unlike the trees at home, only here
and there are some very queer ones mixed with them,
cocoa-nut palms, and great forest trees that are covered
with blossom like red hawthorn, but not near so bright;
and from all the trees thick creepers hang down
like ropes, and nasty-looking weeds that they call
orchids grow in the forks of the branches; and on
the ground many prickly things are dotted which they
call pine-apples: I suppose every one has eaten pineapple
drops.
On the way up to the lean man’s house you pass a little
village, all of houses like the king’s house, so that as you
ride through you can see everybody sitting at dinner, or
if it be night, lying in their beds by lamplight; for all
these people are terribly afraid of ghosts, and would not
lie in the dark for any favour. After the village, there is
only one more house, and that is the lean man’s. For
the people are not very many, and live all by the sea, and
the whole inside of the island is desert woods and mountains.
When the lean man goes into this forest, he is very
much ashamed to say it, but he is always in a terrible
fright. The wood is so great and empty and hot, and it
is always filled with curious noises; birds cry like children
and bark like dogs, and he can hear people laughing and
felling trees; and the other day (when he was far in the
woods) he heard a great sound like the biggest mill-wheel
possible going with a kind of dot-and-carry-one movement
like a dance. That was the noise of an earthquake away
down below him in the bowels of the earth, and that is
the same thing as to say away up towards you in your
cellar in Kilburn. All these noises make him feel lonely
and scared, and he doesn’t quite know what he is scared
of. Once when he was just about to cross a river, a blow
struck him on the top of his head and knocked him head-foremost
down the bank and splash into the water. It
was a nut, I fancy, that had fallen from a tree, by which
accidents people are sometimes killed. But at the time
he thought it was a black boy.
Aha, say you, and what is a black boy? Well, there
are here a lot of poor people who are brought here from
distant islands to labour as slaves for the Germans. They
are not at all like the king or his people, who are brown
and very pretty; but these are black as negroes and as
ugly as sin, poor souls, and in their own lands they live
all the time at war and cook and eat men’s flesh. The
Germans thrash them with whips to make them work,
and every now and then some run away into the Bush,
as the forest is called, and build little sheds of leaves,
and eat nuts and roots and fruit, and dwell there by themselves
in the great desert. Sometimes they are bad and
wild and come down in the villages and steal and kill;
and people whisper to each other that some of them have
gone back to their horrid old habits, and catch men and
women in order to eat them. But it is very likely not
true; and the most of them are only poor, stupid, trembling,
half-starved, pitiful creatures like frightened dogs.
Their life is all very well when the sun shines, as it does
eight or nine months in the year. But it is very different
the rest of the time. The wind rages here most violently.
The great trees thrash about like whips; the air is filled
with leaves and great branches flying about like birds;
and the sound of the trees falling shakes the earth. It
rains too as it never rains at home. You can hear a shower
while it is yet half a mile away, hissing like a shower-bath
in the forest; and when it comes to you, the water blinds
your eyes, and the cold drenching takes your breath away
as though some one had struck you. In that kind of
weather it must be dreadful indeed to live in the woods,
one man alone by himself. And you must know that, if
the lean man feels afraid to be in the forest, the people of
the island and the black boys are much more afraid than
he. For they believe the woods to be quite filled with
spirits; some are like pigs, and some are like flying things;
but others (and these are thought the most dangerous)
come in the shape of beautiful young women and young
men, beautifully dressed in the island manner, with fine
kilts and fine necklaces and crowns of scarlet seeds and
flowers. Woe betide he or she who gets to speak with
one of these! They will be charmed out of their wits,
and come home again quite silly, and go mad and die.
So that the poor black boy must be always trembling and
looking about for the coming of the women-devils.
Sometimes the women-devils go down out of the woods
into the villages, and here is a tale the lean man heard
last year. One of the islanders was sitting in his house,
and he had cooked fish. There came along the road two
beautiful young women, dressed as I told you, who came
into his house and asked for some of his fish. It is the
fashion in the islands always to give what is asked, and
never to ask folk’s names. So the man gave them fish
and talked to them in the island jesting way. And presently
he asked one of the women for her red necklace,
which is good manners and their way; he had given the
fish, and he had a right to ask for something back. “I
will give it you by and by,” said the woman, and she and
her companion went away; but he thought they were
gone very suddenly, and the truth is they had vanished.
The night was nearly come, when the man heard the
voice of the woman crying that he should come to her
and she would give the necklace. And he looked out, and
behold she was standing calling him from the top of the
sea, on which she stood as you might on the table. At
that, fear came on the man; he fell on his knees and
prayed, and the woman disappeared. It was known afterwards
that this was once a woman indeed, but should have
died a thousand years ago, and has lived all that while as
a devil in the woods beside the spring of a river. Saumai-afe
(Sow-my-affy) is her name, in case you want to
write to her.—Ever your friend Tusitala (tale-writer),
alias Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Sidney Colvin
The South Sea novel here mentioned, Sophia Scarlet, never got
beyond the rough draft of an opening chapter or two.
[Vailima] Jan. 31st, ’92.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—No letter at all from you, and this
scratch from me! Here is a year that opens ill. Lloyd
is off to “the coast” sick—the coast means California over
most of the Pacific—I have been down all month with
influenza, and am just recovering—I am overlaid with
proofs, which I am just about half fit to attend to. One
of my horses died this morning, and another is now dying
on the front lawn—Lloyd’s horse and Fanny’s. Such is
my quarrel with destiny. But I am mending famously,
come and go on the balcony, have perfectly good nights,
and though I still cough, have no oppression and no hemorrhage
and no fever. So if I can find time and courage to
add no more, you will know my news is not altogether of
the worst; a year or two ago, and what a state I should
have been in now! Your silence, I own, rather alarms
me. But I tell myself you have just miscarried; had you
been too ill to write, some one would have written me.
Understand, I send this brief scratch not because I am
unfit to write more, but because I have 58 galleys of The
Wrecker and 102 of The Beach of Falesá to get overhauled
somehow or other in time for the mail, and for three weeks
I have not touched a pen with my finger.
Feb. 1st.—The second horse is still alive, but I still think
dying. The first was buried this morning. My proofs are
done; it was a rough two days of it, but done. Consummatum
est; ua uma. I believe The Wrecker ends
well; if I know what a good yarn is, the last four chapters
make a good yarn—but pretty horrible. The Beach of
Falesá I still think well of, but it seems it’s immoral and
there’s a to-do, and financially it may prove a heavy disappointment.
The plaintive request sent to me, to make
the young folks married properly before “that night,” I
refused; you will see what would be left of the yarn, had I
consented.32 This is a poison bad world for the romancer,
this Anglo-Saxon world; I usually get out of it by not
having any women in it at all; but when I remember
I had The Treasure of Franchard refused as
unfit for a family magazine, I feel despair weigh upon
my wrists.
As I know you are always interested in novels, I must
tell you that a new one is now entirely planned. It is to
be called Sophia Scarlet, and is in two parts. Part I. The
Vanilla Planter. Part II. The Overseers. No chapters,
I think; just two dense blocks of narrative, the first of
which is purely sentimental, but the second has some rows
and quarrels, and winds up with an explosion, if you please!
I am just burning to get at Sophia, but I must do this
Samoan journalism—that’s a cursed duty. The first part
of Sophia, bar the first twenty or thirty pages, writes itself;
the second is more difficult, involving a good many characters—about
ten, I think—who have to be kept all
moving, and give the effect of a society. I have three
women to handle, out and well-away! but only Sophia
is in full tone. Sophia and two men, Windermere, the
Vanilla Planter, who dies at the end of Part I., and Rainsforth,
who only appears in the beginning of Part II. The
fact is, I blush to own it, but Sophia is a regular novel;
heroine and hero, and false accusation, and love, and
marriage, and all the rest of it—all planted in a big South
Sea plantation run by ex-English officers—à la Stewart’s
plantation in Tahiti.33 There is a strong undercurrent of
labour trade which gives it a kind of Uncle Tom flavour,
absit omen!
The first start is hard; it is hard to avoid a little
tedium here, but I think by beginning with the arrival of
the three Miss Scarlets hot from school and society in
England, I may manage to slide in the information. The
problem is exactly a Balzac one, and I wish I had his fist—for
I have already a better method—the kinetic, whereas
he continually allowed himself to be led into the static.
But then he had the fist, and the most I can hope is to get
out of it with a modicum of grace and energy, but for sure
without the strong impression, the full, dark brush. Three
people have had it, the real creator’s brush: Scott, see
much of The Antiquary and The Heart of Midlothian
(especially all round the trial, before, during, and after)—Balzac—and
Thackeray in Vanity Fair. Everybody else
either paints thin, or has to stop to paint, or paints excitedly,
so that you see the author skipping before his canvas.
Here is a long way from poor Sophia Scarlet!
This day is published
Sophia Scarlet
By
Robert Louis Stevenson
To J. M. Barrie
The following is the first of several letters to Mr. J. M. Barrie,
for whose work Stevenson had a warm admiration, and with whom
he soon established by correspondence a cordial friendship.
Vailima, Samoa, February 1892.
DEAR MR. BARRIE,—This is at least the third letter I
have written you, but my correspondence has a bad habit
of not getting so far as the post. That which I possess of
manhood turns pale before the business of the address
and envelope. But I hope to be more fortunate with this:
for, besides the usual and often recurrent desire to thank
you for your work—you are one of four that have come to
the front since I was watching and had a corner of my own
to watch, and there is no reason, unless it be in these
mysterious tides that ebb and flow, and make and mar
and murder the works of poor scribblers, why you should
not do work of the best order. The tides have borne away
my sentence, of which I was weary at any rate, and between
authors I may allow myself so much freedom as
to leave it pending. We are both Scots besides, and I
suspect both rather Scotty Scots; my own Scotchness
tends to intermittency, but is at times erisypelitous—if
that be rightly spelt. Lastly, I have gathered we had
both made our stages in the metropolis of the winds: our
Virgil’s “grey metropolis,” and I count that a lasting
bond. No place so brands a man.
Finally, I feel it a sort of duty to you to report progress.
This may be an error, but I believed I detected your hand
in an article—it may be an illusion, it may have been by
one of those industrious insects who catch up and reproduce
the handling of each emergent man—but I’ll still
hope it was yours—and hope it may please you to hear
that the continuation of Kidnapped is under way. I have
not yet got to Alan, so I do not know if he is still alive,
but David seems to have a kick or two in his shanks. I
was pleased to see how the Anglo-Saxon theory fell into
the trap: I gave my Lowlander a Gaelic name, and even
commented on the fact in the text; yet almost all critics
recognised in David and Alan a Saxon and a Celt. I know
not about England; in Scotland at least, where Gaelic
was spoken in Fife little over the century ago, and in
Galloway not much earlier, I deny that there exists such
a thing as a pure Saxon, and I think it more than questionable
if there be such a thing as a pure Celt.
But what have you to do with this? and what have I?
Let us continue to inscribe our little bits of tales, and let
the heathen rage!—Yours, with sincere interest in your
career,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Sidney Colvin
[Vailima] Feb. 1892.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—This has been a busyish month for
a sick man. First, Faauma—the bronze candlestick, whom
otherwise I called my butler—bolted from the bed and
bosom of Lafaele, the Archangel Hercules, prefect of the
cattle. There was a deuce to pay, and Hercules was inconsolable,
and immediately started out after a new wife,
and has had one up on a visit, but says she has “no conversation”;
and I think he will take back the erring and
possibly repentant candlestick; whom we all devoutly
prefer, as she is not only highly decorative, but good-natured,
and if she does little work makes no rows. I
tell this lightly, but it really was a heavy business; many
were accused of complicity, and Rafael was really very
sorry. I had to hold beds of justice—literally—seated in
my bed and surrounded by lying Samoans seated on the
floor; and there were many picturesque and still inexplicable
passages. It is hard to reach the truth in
these islands.
The next incident overlapped with this. S. and Fanny
found three strange horses in the paddock: for long now
the boys have been forbidden to leave their horses here
one hour because our grass is over-grazed. S. came up
with the news, and I saw I must now strike a blow. “To
the pound with the lot,” said I. He proposed taking the
three himself, but I thought that too dangerous an experiment,
said I should go too, and hurried into my boots so
as to show decision taken, in the necessary interviews.
They came of course—the interviews—and I explained
what I was going to do at huge length, and stuck to my
guns. I am glad to say the natives, with their usual
(purely speculative) sense of justice, highly approved the
step after reflection. Meanwhile off went S. and I with
the three corpora delicti; and a good job I went! Once,
when our circus began to kick, we thought all was up;
but we got them down all sound in wind and limb. I
judged I was much fallen off from my Elliot forefathers,
who managed this class of business with neatness and
despatch.
As we got down to town, we met the mother and
daughter of my friend ——, bathed in tears; they had
left the house over a row, which I have not time or spirits
to describe. This matter dashed me a good deal, and the
first decent-looking day I mounted and set off to see if
I could not patch things up. Half-way down it came on
to rain tropic style, and I came back from my second
outing drenched like a drowned man—I was literally
blinded as I came back among these sheets of water;
and the consequence was I was laid down with diarrhœa
and threatenings of Samoa colic for the inside of another
week. Meanwhile up came Laulii,34 in whose house Mrs.
and Miss —— have taken refuge. One of Mrs. ——’s
grievances is that her son has married one of these “pork-eaters
and cannibals.” (As a matter of fact there is no
memory of cannibalism in Samoa.) And a strange thing
it was to hear the “cannibal” Laulii describe her sorrows.
She is singularly pretty and sweet, her training reflects
wonderful credit on her husband; and when she began to
describe to us—to act to us, in the tone of an actress walking
through a rehearsal—the whole bearing of her angry
guests; indicating the really tragic notes when they came
in, so that Fanny and I were ashamed to laugh, and touching
off the merely ludicrous with infinite tact and sly
humour; showing, in fact, in her whole picture of a couple
of irate barbarian women, the whole play and sympathy
of what we call the civilised mind; the contrast was
seizing. I speak with feeling. To-day again, being the
first day humanly possible for me, I went down to Apia
with Fanny, and between two and three hours did I argue
with that old woman—not immovable, would she had
been! but with a mechanical mind like a piece of a musical
snuff-box, that returned always to the same starting-point;
not altogether base, for she was long-suffering with me
and professed even gratitude, and was just (in a sense)
to her son, and showed here and there moments of genuine
and not undignified emotion; but O! on the other side,
what lapses—what a mechanical movement of the brain,
what occasional trap-door devils of meanness, what a
wooden front of pride! I came out damped and saddened
and (to say truth) a trifle sick. My wife had better luck
with the daughter; but O, it was a weary business!
To add to my grief—but that’s politics. Before I sleep
to-night I have a confession to make. When I was sick
I tried to get to work to finish that Samoa thing; wouldn’t
go; and at last, in the colic time, I slid off into David
Balfour,35 some 50 pages of which are drafted, and like me
well. Really I think it is spirited; and there’s a heroine
that (up to now) seems to have attractions: absit omen!
David, on the whole, seems excellent. Alan does not come
in till the tenth chapter, and I am only at the eighth, so
I don’t know if I can find him again; but David is on his
feet, and doing well, and very much in love, and mixed
up with the Lord Advocate and the (untitled) Lord Lovat,
and all manner of great folk. And the tale interferes with
my eating and sleeping. The join is bad; I have not
thought to strain too much for continuity; so this part
be alive, I shall be content. But there’s no doubt David
seems to have changed his style, de’il ha’e him! And much
I care, if the tale travel!
Friday, Feb.?? 19th?—Two incidents to-day which I
must narrate. After lunch, it was raining pitilessly; we
were sitting in my mother’s bedroom, and I was reading
aloud Kinglake’s Charge of the Light Brigade, and we had
just been all seized by the horses aligning with Lord
George Paget, when a figure appeared on the verandah;
a little, slim, small figure of a lad, with blond (i.e. limed)
hair, a propitiatory smile, and a nose that alone of all his
features grew pale with anxiety. “I come here stop,” was
about the outside of his English; and I began at once to
guess that he was a runaway labourer,36 and that the bush-knife
in his hand was stolen. It proved he had a mate,
who had lacked his courage, and was hidden down the
road; they had both made up their minds to run away,
and had “come here stop.” I could not turn out the poor
rogues, one of whom showed me marks on his back, into
the drenching forest; I could not reason with them, for
they had not enough English, and not one of our boys
spoke their tongue; so I bade them feed and sleep here
to-night, and to-morrow I must do what the Lord shall
bid me.
Near dinner time, I was told that a friend of Lafaele’s
had found human remains in my bush. After dinner, a
figure was seen skulking across towards the waterfall,
which produced from the verandah a shout, in my most
stentorian tones: “O ai le ingoa?” literally “Who the
name?” which serves here for “What’s your business?”
as well. It proved to be Lafaele’s friend; I bade a kitchen
boy, Lauilo, go with him to see the spot, for though it had
ceased raining, the whole island ran and dripped. Lauilo
was willing enough, but the friend of the archangel demurred;
he had too much business; he had no time.
“All right,” I said, “you too much frightened, I go
along,” which of course produced the usual shout of
delight from all those who did not require to go. I got
into my Saranac snow boots; Lauilo got a cutlass; Mary
Carter, our Sydney maid, joined the party for a lark, and
off we set. I tell you our guide kept us moving; for the
dusk fell swift. Our woods have an infamous reputation
at the best, and our errand (to say the least of it) was
grisly. At last they found the remains; they were old,
which was all I cared to be sure of; it seemed a strangely
small “pickle-banes” to stand for a big, flourishing, buck-islander,
and their situation in the darkening and dripping
bush was melancholy. All at once, I found there was a
second skull, with a bullet-hole I could have stuck my
two thumbs in—say anybody else’s one thumb. My
Samoans said it could not be, there were not enough
bones; I put the two pieces of skull together, and at last
convinced them. Whereupon, in a flash, they found the
not unromantic explanation. This poor brave had succeeded
in the height of a Samoan warrior’s ambition; he
had taken a head, which he was never destined to show
to his applauding camp. Wounded himself, he had crept
here into the bush to die with his useless trophy by his
side. His date would be about fifteen years ago, in the
great battle between Laupepa and Talavou, which took
place on My Land, Sir. To-morrow we shall bury the
bones and fire a salute in honour of unfortunate courage.
Do you think I have an empty life? or that a man
jogging to his club has so much to interest and amuse
him?—touch and try him too, but that goes along with
the others: no pain, no pleasure, is the iron law. So here
I stop again, and leave, as I left yesterday, my political
business untouched. And lo! here comes my pupil, I
believe, so I stop in time.
March 2nd.—Since I last wrote, fifteen chapters of
David Balfour have been drafted, and five tirés au clair.
I think it pretty good; there’s a blooming maiden that
costs anxiety—she is as virginal as billy; but David
seems there and alive, and the Lord Advocate is good, and
so I think is an episodic appearance of the Master of Lovat.
In Chapter XVII. I shall get David abroad—Alan went
already in Chapter XII. The book should be about the
length of Kidnapped; this early part of it, about D.’s
evidence in the Appin case, is more of a story than anything
in Kidnapped, but there is no doubt there comes a
break in the middle, and the tale is practically in two
divisions. In the first James More and the M’Gregors,
and Catriona, only show; in the second, the Appin case
being disposed of, and James Stewart hung, they rule the
roast and usurp the interest—should there be any left.
Why did I take up David Balfour? I don’t know. A
sudden passion.
Monday, I went down in the rain with a colic to take
the chair at a public meeting; dined with Haggard;
sailed off to my meeting, and fought with wild beasts for
three anxious hours. All was lost that any sensible man
cared for, but the meeting did not break up—thanks a
good deal to R. L. S.—and the man who opposed my
election, and with whom I was all the time wrangling,
proposed the vote of thanks to me with a certain handsomeness;
I assure you I had earned it.... Haggard
and the great Abdul, his high-caste Indian servant,
imported by my wife, were sitting up for me with supper,
and I suppose it was twelve before I got to bed. Tuesday
raining, my mother rode down, and we went to the Consulate
to sign a Factory and Commission. Thence, I to
the lawyers, to the printing office, and to the mission. It
was dinner time when I returned home.
This morning, our cook-boy having suddenly left—injured
feelings—the archangel was to cook breakfast. I
found him lighting the fire before dawn; his eyes blazed,
he had no word of any language left to use, and I saw in
him (to my wonder) the strongest workings of gratified
ambition. Napoleon was no more pleased to sign his first
treaty with Austria than was Lafaele to cook that breakfast.
All morning, when I had hoped to be at this letter,
I slept like one drugged, and you must take this (which
is all I can give you) for what it is worth—
D. B.
Memoirs of his Adventures at Home and Abroad.
The Second Part; wherein are set forth the misfortunes
in which he was involved upon the Appin Murder; his
troubles with Lord Advocate Prestongrange; captivity
on the Bass Rock; journey into France and Holland;
and singular relations with James More Drummond or
Macgregor, a son of the notorious Rob Roy.
Chapters.—I. A Beggar on Horseback. II. The Highland
Writer. III. I go to Pilrig. IV. Lord Advocate
Prestongrange. V. Butter and Thunder. VI. I make a
fault in honour. VII. The Bravo. VIII. The Heather on
Fire. IX. I begin to be haunted with a red-headed man.
X. The Wood by Silvermills. XI. On the march again
with Alan. XII. Gillane Sands. XIII. The Bass Rock.
XIV. Black Andie’s Tale of Tod Lapraik. XV. I go to
Inveraray.
That is it, as far as drafted. Chapters IV. V. VII. IX.
and XIV. I am specially pleased with; the last being an
episodical bogie story about the Bass Rock told there by
the Keeper.
To William Morris
The following draft letter addressed to Mr. William Morris was
found among Stevenson’s papers after his death. It has touches of
affectation and constraint not usual with him, and it is no doubt
on that account that he did not send it; but though not in his best
manner, it seems worth printing as illustrating the variety of his
interests and admirations in literature.
Vailima, Samoa, Feb. 1892.
MASTER,—A plea from a place so distant should have
some weight, and from a heart so grateful should have
some address. I have been long in your debt, Master,
and I did not think it could be so much increased as you
have now increased it. I was long in your debt and deep
in your debt for many poems that I shall never forget,
and for Sigurd before all, and now you have plunged me
beyond payment by the Saga Library. And so now, true
to human nature, being plunged beyond payment, I come
and bark at your heels.
For surely, Master, that tongue that we write, and that
you have illustrated so nobly, is yet alive. She has her
rights and laws, and is our mother, our queen, and our
instrument. Now in that living tongue where has one
sense, whereas another. In the Heathslayings Story, p. 241,
line 13, it bears one of its ordinary senses. Elsewhere and
usually through the two volumes, which is all that has
yet reached me of this entrancing publication, whereas is
made to figure for where.
For the love of God, my dear and honoured Morris, use
where, and let us know whereas we are, wherefore our
gratitude shall grow, whereby you shall be the more
honoured wherever men love clear language, whereas now,
although we honour, we are troubled.
Whereunder, please find inscribed to this very impudent
but yet very anxious document, the name of one of
the most distant but not the youngest or the coldest of
those who honour you
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Mrs. Charles Fairchild
The projected visit of Mr. Kipling, with his wife and brother-in-law,
to Samoa, which is mentioned towards the close of this letter,
never took place, much to the regret of both authors.
[Vailima, March 1892.]
MY DEAR MRS. FAIRCHILD,—I am guilty in your sight,
but my affairs besiege me. The chief-justiceship of a
family of nineteen persons is in itself no sinecure, and
sometimes occupies me for days: two weeks ago for four
days almost entirely, and for two days entirely. Besides
which, I have in the last few months written all but one
chapter of a History of Samoa for the last eight or nine
years; and while I was unavoidably delayed in the writing
of this, awaiting material, put in one-half of David Balfour,
the sequel to Kidnapped. Add the ordinary impediments
of life, and admire my busyness. I am now an old, but
healthy skeleton, and degenerate much towards the
machine. By six at work: stopped at half-past ten to give
a history lesson to a step-grandson; eleven, lunch; after
lunch we have a musical performance till two; then to
work again; bath, 4.40; dinner, five; cards in the evening
till eight; and then to bed—only I have no bed, only
a chest with a mat and blankets—and read myself to sleep.
This is the routine, but often sadly interrupted. Then you
may see me sitting on the floor of my verandah haranguing
and being harangued by squatting chiefs on a question of
a road; or more privately holding an inquiry into some
dispute among our familiars, myself on my bed, the
boys on the floor—for when it comes to the judicial I
play dignity—or else going down to Apia on some more
or less unsatisfactory errand. Altogether it is a life that
suits me, but it absorbs me like an ocean. That is what
I have always envied and admired in Scott; with all that
immensity of work and study, his mind kept flexible,
glancing to all points of natural interest. But the lean
hot spirits, such as mine, become hypnotised with their
bit occupations—if I may use Scotch to you—it is so far
more scornful than any English idiom. Well, I can’t help
being a skeleton, and you are to take this devious passage
for an apology.
I thought Aladdin37 capital fun; but why, in fortune,
did he pretend it was moral at the end? The so-called
nineteenth century, où va-t-il se nicher? ’Tis a trifle, but
Pyle would do well to knock the passage out, and leave
his boguey tale a boguey tale, and a good one at that.
The arrival of your box was altogether a great success
to the castaways. You have no idea where we live. Do
you know, in all these islands there are not five hundred
whites, and no postal delivery, and only one village—it
is no more—and would be a mean enough village in Europe?
We were asked the other day if Vailima were the name of
our post town, and we laughed. Do you know, though
we are but three miles from the village metropolis, we
have no road to it, and our goods are brought on the pack-saddle?
And do you know—or I should rather say, can
you believe—or (in the famous old Tichborne trial phrase)
would you be surprised to learn, that all you have read
of Vailima—or Subpriorsford, as I call it—is entirely false,
and we have no ice-machine, and no electric light, and
no water supply but the cistern of the heavens, and but
one public room, and scarce a bedroom apiece? But, of
course, it is well known that I have made enormous sums
by my evanescent literature, and you will smile at my
false humility. The point, however, is much on our minds
just now. We are expecting an invasion of Kiplings;
very glad we shall be to see them; but two of the party
are ladies, and I tell you we had to hold a council of war to
stow them. You European ladies are so particular; with
all of mine, sleeping has long become a public function, as
with natives and those who go down much into the sea
in ships.
Dear Mrs. Fairchild, I must go to my work. I have
but two words to say in conclusion.
First, civilisation is rot.
Second, console a savage with more of the milk of that
over-civilised being, your adorable schoolboy.
As I wrote these remarkable words, I was called down
to eight o’clock prayers, and have just worked through a
chapter of Joshua and five verses, with five treble choruses,
of a Samoan hymn; but the music was good, our boys
and precentress (’tis always a woman that leads) did
better than I ever heard them, and to my great pleasure I
understood it all except one verse. This gave me the
more time to try and identify what the parts were doing,
and further convict my dull ear. Beyond the fact that
the soprano rose to the tonic above, on one occasion I
could recognise nothing. This is sickening, but I mean
to teach my ear better before I am done with it or this
vile carcase.
I think it will amuse you (for a last word) to hear that
our precentress—she is the washerwoman—is our shame.
She is a good, healthy, comely, strapping young wench,
full of energy and seriousness, a splendid workwoman, delighting
to train our chorus, delighting in the poetry of
the hymns, which she reads aloud (on the least provocation)
with a great sentiment of rhythm. Well, then, what is
curious? Ah, we did not know! but it was told us in a
whisper from the cook-house—she is not of good family.
Don’t let it get out, please; everybody knows it, of course,
here; there is no reason why Europe and the States should
have the advantage of me also. And the rest of my house-folk
are all chief-people, I assure you. And my late overseer
(far the best of his race) is a really serious chief
with a good “name.” Tina is the name; it is not in the
Almanach de Gotha, it must have got dropped at press.
The odd thing is, we rather share the prejudice. I have
almost always—though not quite always—found the higher
the chief the better the man through all the islands; or,
at least, that the best man came always from a highish
rank. I hope Helen will continue to prove a bright exception.
With love to Fairchild and the Huge Schoolboy, I am,
my dear Mrs. Fairchild, yours very sincerely,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Sidney Colvin
[Vailima] March 9th [1892].
MY DEAR S. C.,—Take it not amiss if this is a wretched
letter. I am eaten up with business. Every day this
week I have had some business impediment—I am even
now waiting a deputation of chiefs about the road—and
my precious morning was shattered by a polite old scourge
of a faipule—parliament man—come begging. All the
time David Balfour is skelping along. I began it the 13th
of last month; I have now 12 chapters, 79 pages ready
for press, or within an ace, and, by the time the month is
out, one-half should be completed, and I’ll be back at
drafting the second half. What makes me sick is to think
of Scott turning out Guy Mannering in three weeks! What
a pull of work: heavens, what thews and sinews! And
here am I, my head spinning from having only re-written
seven not very difficult pages—and not very good when
done. Weakling generation. It makes me sick of myself,
to make such a fash and bobbery over a rotten end of an
old nursery yarn, not worth spitting on when done. Still,
there is no doubt I turn out my work more easily than of
yore; and I suppose I should be singly glad of that.
And if I got my book done in six weeks, seeing it will
be about half as long as a Scott, and I have to write everything
twice, it would be about the same rate of industry.
It is my fair intention to be done with it in three months,
which would make me about one-half the man Sir Walter
was for application and driving the dull pen. Of the merit
we shall not talk; but I don’t think Davie is without merit.
March 12th.—And I have this day triumphantly finished
15 chapters, 100 pages—being exactly one-half (as near as
anybody can guess) of David Balfour; the book to be
about a fifth as long again (altogether) as Treasure Island:
could I but do the second half in another month! But I
can’t, I fear; I shall have some belated material arriving
by next mail, and must go again at the History. Is it
not characteristic of my broken tenacity of mind, that I
should have left Davie Balfour some five years in the
British Linen Company’s Office, and then follow him at
last with such vivacity? But I leave you again; the last
(15th) chapter ought to be re-wrote, or part of it, and I
want the half completed in the month, and the month is
out by midnight; though, to be sure, last month was
February, and I might take grace. These notes are only
to show I hold you in mind, though I know they can have
no interest for man or God or animal.
I should have told you about the Club. We have been
asked to try and start a sort of weekly ball for the half-castes
and natives, ourselves to be the only whites; and
we consented, from a very heavy sense of duty, and with
not much hope. Two nights ago we had twenty people up,
received them in the front verandah, entertained them on
cake and lemonade, and I made a speech—embodying our
proposals, or conditions, if you like—for I suppose thirty
minutes. No joke to speak to such an audience, but it
is believed I was thoroughly intelligible. I took the plan
of saying everything at least twice in a different form of
words, so that if the one escaped my hearers, the other
might be seized. One white man came with his wife, and
was kept rigorously on the front verandah below! You
see what a sea of troubles this is like to prove; but it is
the only chance—and when it blows up, it must blow up!
I have no more hope in anything than a dead frog; I go
into everything with a composed despair, and don’t mind—just
as I always go to sea with the conviction I am to
be drowned, and like it before all other pleasures. But
you should have seen the return voyage, when nineteen
horses had to be found in the dark, and nineteen bridles,
all in a drench of rain, and the club, just constituted as
such, sailed away in the wet, under a cloudy moon like a
bad shilling, and to descend a road through the forest that
was at that moment the image of a respectable mountain
brook. My wife, who is president with power to expel,
had to begin her functions....
25th March.—Heaven knows what day it is, but I am
ashamed, all the more as your letter from Bournemouth
of all places—poor old Bournemouth!—is to hand, and
contains a statement of pleasure in my letters which I
wish I could have rewarded with a long one. What has
gone on? A vast of affairs, of a mingled, strenuous, inconclusive,
desultory character; much waste of time, much
riding to and fro, and little transacted or at least peracted.
Let me give you a review of the present state of our
live stock.—Six boys in the bush; six souls about the
house. Talolo, the cook, returns again to-day, after an
absence which has cost me about twelve hours of riding,
and I suppose eight hours’ solemn sitting in council. “I
am sorry indeed for the Chief Justice of Samoa,” I said;
“it is more than I am fit for to be Chief Justice of Vailima.”—Lauilo
is steward. Both these are excellent servants;
we gave a luncheon party when we buried the Samoan
bones, and I assure you all was in good style, yet we never
interfered. The food was good, the wine and dishes went
round as by mechanism.—Steward’s assistant and washman,
Arrick, a New Hebridee black boy, hired from the German
firm; not so ugly as most, but not pretty neither; not so
dull as his sort are, but not quite a Crichton. When he
came first, he ate so much of our good food that he got
a prominent belly. Kitchen assistant, Tomas (Thomas in
English), a Fiji man, very tall and handsome, moving like
a marionette with sudden bounds, and rolling his eyes
with sudden effort.—Washerwoman and precentor, Helen,
Tomas’s wife. This is our weak point; we are ashamed
of Helen; the cook-house blushes for her; they murmur
there at her presence. She seems all right; she is not a
bad-looking, strapping wench, seems chaste, is industrious,
has an excellent taste in hymns—you should have heard
her read one aloud the other day, she marked the rhythm
with so much gloating, dissenter sentiment. What is
wrong, then? says you. Low in your ear—and don’t let
the papers get hold of it—she is of no family. None, they
say; literally a common woman. Of course, we have out-islanders,
who may be villeins; but we give them the
benefit of the doubt, which is impossible with Helen of
Vailima; our blot, our pitted speck. The pitted speck I
have said is our precentor. It is always a woman who
starts Samoan song; the men who sing second do not
enter for a bar or two. Poor, dear Faauma, the unchaste,
the extruded Eve of our Paradise, knew only two hymns;
but Helen seems to know the whole repertory, and the
morning prayers go far more lively in consequence.—Lafaele,
provost of the cattle. The cattle are Jack, my
horse, quite converted, my wife rides him now, and he is as
steady as a doctor’s cob; Tifaga Jack, a circus horse, my
mother’s piebald, bought from a passing circus; Belle’s
mare, now in childbed or next door, confound the slut!
Musu—amusingly translated the other day “don’t want
to,” literally cross, but always in the sense of stubbornness
and resistance—my wife’s little dark-brown mare, with a
white star on her forehead, whom I have been riding of
late to steady her—she has no vices, but is unused, skittish
and uneasy, and wants a lot of attention and humouring;
lastly (of saddle horses) Luna—not the Latin moon,
the Hawaiian overseer, but it’s pronounced the same—a
pretty little mare too, but scarce at all broken, a bad
bucker, and has to be ridden with a stock-whip and be
brought back with her rump criss-crossed like a clan
tartan; the two cart horses, now only used with pack-saddles;
two cows, one in the straw (I trust) to-morrow,
a third cow, the Jersey—whose milk and temper are
alike subjects of admiration—she gives good exercise to
the farming saunterer, and refreshes him on his return
with cream; two calves, a bull, and a cow; God knows
how many ducks and chickens, and for a wager not even
God knows how many cats; twelve horses, seven horses,
five kine: is not this Babylon the Great which I have
builded? Call it Subpriorsford.
Two nights ago the club had its first meeting; only
twelve were present, but it went very well. I was not
there, I had ridden down the night before after dinner on
my endless business, took a cup of tea in the mission like
an ass, then took a cup of coffee like a fool at Haggard’s,
then fell into a discussion with the American Consul....
I went to bed at Haggard’s, came suddenly broad awake,
and lay sleepless the live night. It felt chill, I had only a
sheet, and had to make a light and range the house for a
cover—I found one in the hall, a macintosh. So back
to my sleepless bed, and to lie there till dawn. In the
morning I had a longish ride to take in a day of a blinding,
staggering sun, and got home by eleven, our luncheon
hour, with my head rather swimmy; the only time I have
feared the sun since I was in Samoa. However, I got no
harm, but did not go to the club, lay off, lazied, played
the pipe, and read a novel by James Payn—sometimes
quite interesting, and in one place really very funny with
the quaint humour of the man. Much interested the other
day. As I rode past a house, I saw where a Samoan had
written a word on a board, and there was an ∀, perfectly
formed, but upside down. You never saw such a thing
in Europe; but it is as common as dirt in Polynesia. Men’s
names are tattooed on the forearm; it is common to find
a subverted letter tattooed there. Here is a tempting
problem for psychologists.
I am now on terms again with the German consulate,
I know not for how long; not, of course, with the President,
which I find a relief; still, with the Chief Justice
and the English consul. For Haggard, I have a genuine
affection; he is a loveable man.
Wearyful man! “Here is the yarn of Loudon Dodd,
not as he told it, but as it was afterwards written.”38 These
words were left out by some carelessness, and I think I
have been thrice tackled about them. Grave them in
your mind and wear them on your forehead.
The Lang story will have very little about the treasure;
the Master39 will appear; and it is to a great extent a
tale of Prince Charlie after the ’45, and a love story forbye:
the hero is a melancholy exile, and marries a young woman
who interests the prince, and there is the devil to pay. I
think the Master kills him in a duel, but don’t know yet,
not having yet seen my second heroine. No—the Master
doesn’t kill him, they fight, he is wounded, and the Master
plays deus ex machina. I think just now of calling it The
Tail of the Race; no—heavens! I never saw till this
moment—but of course nobody but myself would ever
understand Mill-Race, they would think of a quarter-mile.
So—I am nameless again. My melancholy young man is
to be quite a Romeo. Yes, I’ll name the book from him:
Dyce of Ythan—pronounce Eethan.
Dyce of Ythan
by R. L. S.
O, Shovel—Shovel waits his turn, he and his ancestors.
I would have tackled him before, but my State Trials
have never come. So that I have now quite planned:—
Dyce of Ythan. (Historical, 1750.)
Sophia Scarlet. (To-day.)
The Shovels of Newton French. (Historical, 1650 to 1830.)
And quite planned and part written:—
The Pearl Fisher. (To-day.) (With Lloyd: a machine.)40
David Balfour. (Historical, 1751.)
And, by a strange exception for R. L. S., all in the third
person except D. B.
I don’t know what day this is now (the 29th), but I
have finished my two chapters, ninth and tenth, of Samoa
in time for the mail, and feel almost at peace. The tenth
was the hurricane, a difficult problem; it so tempted one
to be literary; and I feel sure the less of that there is in
my little handbook, the more chance it has of some utility.
Then the events are complicated, seven ships to tell of,
and sometimes three of them together; O, it was quite
a job. But I think I have my facts pretty correct, and
for once, in my sickening yarn, they are handsome facts:
creditable to all concerned; not to be written of—and I
should think, scarce to be read—without a thrill. I doubt
I have got no hurricane into it, the intricacies of the yarn
absorbing me too much. But there—it’s done somehow,
and time presses hard on my heels. The book, with my
best expedition, may come just too late to be of use. In
which case I shall have made a handsome present of some
months of my life for nothing and to nobody. Well,
through Her the most ancient heavens are fresh and
strong.41
30th.—After I had written you, I re-read my hurricane,
which is very poor; the life of the journalist is hard,
another couple of writings and I could make a good thing,
I believe, and it must go as it is! But, of course, this
book is not written for honour and glory, and the few
who will read it may not know the difference. Very
little time. I go down with the mail shortly, dine
at the Chinese restaurant, and go to the club to dance
with islandresses. Think of my going out once a week
to dance.
Politics are on the full job again, and we don’t know
what is to come next. I think the whole treaty raj seems
quite played out! They have taken to bribing the faipule
men (parliament men) to stay in Mulinuu, we hear; but
I have not yet sifted the rumour. I must say I shall be
scarce surprised if it prove true; these rumours have the
knack of being right.—Our weather this last month has
been tremendously hot, not by the thermometer, which
sticks at 86°, but to the sensation: no rain, no wind, and
this the storm month. It looks ominous, and is certainly
disagreeable.
No time to finish.—Yours ever,
R. L. S.
To E. L. Burlingame
The first sentences of the following refer to A Footnote to History,
Chapter x. of which, relating to the hurricane of 1889, was first
published in the Scots Observer, edited by Mr. Henley.
[Vailima, March 1892.]
MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—Herewith Chapters IX. and X.,
and I am left face to face with the horrors and dilemmas
of the present regimen: pray for those that go down to
the sea in ships. I have promised Henley shall have a
chance to publish the hurricane chapter if he like, so
please let the slips be sent quam primum to C. Baxter,
W.S., 11 S. Charlotte Street, Edinburgh. I got on mighty
quick with that chapter—about five days of the toughest
kind of work. God forbid I should ever have such another
pirn to wind! When I invent a language, there shall be
a direct and an indirect pronoun differently declined—then
writing would be some fun.
Direct
He
Him
His |
Indirect
Tu
Tum
Tus |
Ex.: He seized tum by tus throat; but tu at the same
moment caught him by his hair. A fellow could write
hurricanes with an inflection like that! Yet there would
be difficulties too.
Please add to my former orders—
|
Le Chevalier Des Touches
Les Diabohques |
} |
by Barbey d’Aurevilly. |
Correspondence de Henri Beyle (Stendahl). |
Yours sincerely,
R. L. Stevenson.
To the Rev. S. J. Whitmee
In this letter the essential points of Stevenson’s policy for Samoa
are defined more clearly than anywhere else. His correspondent, an
experienced missionary who had been absent from the islands and
lately returned, and whom Stevenson describes as being of a nature
essentially “childlike and candid,” had been induced to support
the idea of a one-man power as necessary for putting an end to the
existing confusion, and to suggest the Chief Justice, Mr. Cedercrantz,
as the person to wield such power. In the present letter and
a subsequent conversation Stevenson was able to persuade his correspondent
to abandon at least that part of his proposal which concerned
the Chief Justice.
[Vailima] Sunday. Better Day, Better Deed.
April 24th, 1892.
Private and confidential.
DEAR MR. WHITMEE,—I have reflected long and fully
on your paper, and at your kind request give you the
benefit of my last thoughts.
I. I cannot bring myself to welcome your idea of one
man. I fear we are too far away from any moderative
influence; and suppose it to be true that the paper is
bought, we should not even have a voice. Could we be
sure to get a Gordon or a Lawrence, ah! very well.
But in this out-of-the-way place, are these extreme experiments
wise? Remember Baker; with much that he has
done, I am in full sympathy; and the man, though wholly
insincere, is a thousand miles from ill-meaning; and see
to what excesses he was forced or led.
II. But I willingly admit the idea is possible with the
right man, and this brings me with greater conviction to
my next point. I cannot endorse, and I would rather beg
of you to reconsider, your recommendation of the Chief
Justice. I told you the man has always attracted me, yet
as I have earnestly reconsidered the points against him, I
find objection growing....
But there is yet another argument I have to lay before
you. We are both to write upon this subject. Many of
our opinions coincide, and, as I said the other day, on
these we may reasonably suppose that we are not far
wrong. Now here is a point on which we shall directly
counter. No doubt but this will lessen the combined
weight of our arguments where they coincide. And to
avoid this effect, it might seem worth while to you to
modify or cancel the last paragraph of your article.
III. But I now approach what seems to me by far
the most important. White man here, white man there,
Samoa is to stand or fall (bar actual seizure) on the Samoan
question. And upon this my mind is now really made
up. I do not believe in Laupepa alone; I do not believe
in Mataafa alone. I know that their conjunction implies
peace; I am persuaded that their separation means either
war or paralysis. It is the result of the past, which we
cannot change, but which we must accept and use or
suffer by. I have now made up my mind to do all that
I may be able—little as it is—to effect a reconciliation
between these two men Laupepa and Mataafa; persuaded
as I am that there is the one door of hope. And it is my
intention before long to approach both in this sense.
Now, from the course of our interview, I was pleased to
see that you were, if not equally strong with myself, at
least inclined to much the same opinion. And in a carefully
weighed paper, such as that you read me, I own I
should be pleased to have this cardinal matter touched
upon. At home it is not, it cannot be, understood: Mataafa
is thought a rebel; the Germans profit by the thought to
pursue their career of vengeance for Fagalii; the two
men are perpetually offered as alternatives—they are no
such thing—they are complementary; authority, supposing
them to survive, will be impossible without both. They
were once friends, fools and meddlers set them at odds,
they must be friends again or have so much wisdom and
public virtue as to pretend a friendship. There is my
policy for Samoa. And I wish you would at least touch
upon that point, I care not how; because, although I am
far from supposing you feel it to be necessary in the same
sense or to the same degree as I do, I am well aware that
no man knows Samoa but must see its huge advantages.
Excuse this long and tedious lecture, which I see I have
to mark private and confidential, or I might get into deep
water, and believe me, yours very truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Charles Baxter
The maps herein bespoken do not adorn the ordinary editions of
Catriona, only the Edinburgh edition, for which they were executed
by Messrs. Bartholomew in a manner that would have rejoiced the
writer’s heart.
[Vailima] April 28, 1892.
MY DEAR CHARLES,—I have just written the dedication
of David Balfour to you, and haste to put a job in
your hands. This is a map of the environs of Edinburgh
circa 1750. It must contain Hope Park, Hunter’s Bog,
Calton Hill, the Mouter Hill, Lang Dykes, Nor’ Loch,
West Kirk, Village of Dean, pass down the water to
Stockbridge, Silver Mills, the two mill lakes there, with
a wood on the south side of the south one which I saw
marked on a plan in the British Museum, Broughton,
Picardy, Leith Walk, Leith, Pilrig, Lochend, Figgate
Whins. And I would like a piece in a corner, giving for
the same period Figgate Whins, Musselburgh, Inveresk,
Prestonpans, battlefield of Gladsmuir, Cockenzie, Gullane—which
I spell Gillane—Fidra, Dirleton, North Berwick
Law, Whitekirk, Tantallon Castle and Castleton, Scougal
and Auldhame, the Bass, the Glenteithy rocks, Satan’s
Bush, Wildfire rocks, and, if possible, the May. If need
were, I would not stick at two maps. If there is but
one, say, Plan to illustrate David Balfour’s adventures in
the Lothians. If two, call the first Plan to illustrate David
Balfour’s adventures about the city of Edinburgh, and the
second, Plan to illustrate David Balfour’s adventures in
East Lothian. I suppose there must be a map-maker
of some taste in Edinburgh; I wish few other names in,
but what I have given, as far as possible. As soon as
may be I will let you have the text, when you might
even find some amusement in seeing that the maps fill
the bill. If your map-maker be a poor creature, plainness
is best; if he were a fellow of some genuine go, he
might give it a little of the bird’s-eye quality. I leave
this to your good taste. If I have time I will copy the
dedication to go herewith; I am pleased with it. The
first map (suppose we take two) would go in at the beginning,
the second at Chapter XI. The topography is very
much worked into the story, and I have alluded in the
dedication to our common fancy for exploring Auld Reekie.
The list of books came duly, for which many thanks.
I am plunged to the nostrils in various business.—Yours
ever,
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin
[Vailima] May 1st, 1892.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—As I rode down last night about
six, I saw a sight I must try to tell you of. In front of
me, right over the top of the forest into which I was
descending, was a vast cloud. The front of it accurately
represented the somewhat rugged, long-nosed, and beetle-browed
profile of a man, crowned by a huge Kalmuck cap;
the flesh part was of a heavenly pink, the cap, the moustache,
the eyebrows were of a bluish grey; to see this
with its childish exactitude of design and colour, and
hugeness of scale—it covered at least 25°—held me spell-bound.
As I continued to gaze, the expression began to
change; he had the exact air of closing one eye, dropping
his jaw, and drawing down his nose; had the thing not
been so imposing, I could have smiled; and then almost
in a moment, a shoulder of leaden-coloured bank drove
in front and blotted it. My attention spread to the rest
of the cloud, and it was a thing to worship. It rose from
the horizon, and its top was within thirty degrees of the
zenith; the lower parts were like a glacier in shadow,
varying from dark indigo to a clouded white in exquisite
gradations. The sky behind, so far as I could see, was
all of a blue already enriched and darkened by the night,
for the hill had what lingered of the sunset. But the
top of my Titanic cloud flamed in broad sunlight, with
the most excellent softness and brightness of fire and
jewels, enlightening all the world. It must have been
far higher than Mount Everest, and its glory, as I gazed
up at it out of the night, was beyond wonder. Close by
rode the little crescent moon; and right over its western
horn, a great planet of about equal lustre with itself.
The dark woods below were shrill with that noisy business
of the birds’ evening worship. When I returned,
after eight, the moon was near down; she seemed little
brighter than before, but now that the cloud no longer
played its part of a nocturnal sun, we could see that sight,
so rare with us at home that it was counted a portent,
so customary in the tropics, of the dark sphere with its
little gilt band upon the belly. The planet had been
setting faster, and was now below the crescent. They
were still of an equal brightness.
I could not resist trying to reproduce this in words,
as a specimen of these incredibly beautiful and imposing
meteors of the tropic sky that make so much of my pleasure
here; though a ship’s deck is the place to enjoy
them. O what awful scenery, from a ship’s deck, in the
tropics! People talk about the Alps, but the clouds of
the trade wind are alone for sublimity.
Now to try and tell you what has been happening.
The state of these islands, and of Mataafa and Laupepa
(Malietoas ambo), had been much on my mind. I went
to the priests and sent a message to Mataafa, at a time
when it was supposed he was about to act. He did not
act, delaying in true native style, and I determined I
should go to visit him. I have been very good not to go
sooner; to live within a few miles of a rebel camp, to
be a novelist, to have all my family forcing me to go,
and to refrain all these months, counts for virtue. But
hearing that several people had gone and the government
done nothing to punish them, and having an errand
there which was enough to justify myself in my own
eyes, I half determined to go, and spoke of it with the
half-caste priest. And here (confound it) up came Laupepa
and his guards to call on me; we kept him to lunch, and
the old gentleman was very good and amiable. He asked
me why I had not been to see him? I reminded him a
law had been made, and told him I was not a small boy
to go and ask leave of the consuls, and perhaps be refused.
He told me to pay no attention to the law but come when
I would, and begged me to name a day to lunch. The
next day (I think it was) early in the morning, a man
appeared; he had metal buttons like a policeman—but
he was none of our Apia force; he was a rebel policeman,
and had been all night coming round inland through the
forest from Malie. He brought a letter addressed
|
I lana susuga
Misi Mea. |
To his Excellency
Mr. Thingumbob. |
(So as not to compromise me.) I can read Samoan now,
though not speak it. It was to ask me for last Wednesday.
My difficulty was great; I had no man here who was fit,
or who would have cared, to write for me; and I had
to postpone the visit. So I gave up half-a-day with a
groan, went down to the priests, arranged for Monday
week to go to Malie, and named Thursday as my day to
lunch with Laupepa. I was sharply ill on Wednesday,
mail day. But on Thursday I had to trail down and go
through the dreary business of a feast, in the King’s
wretched shanty, full in view of the President’s fine new
house; it made my heart burn.
This gave me my chance to arrange a private interview
with the king, and I decided to ask Mr. Whitmee to
be my interpreter. On Friday, being too much exhausted
to go down, I begged him to come up. He did. I told
him the heads of what I meant to say; and he not only
consented, but said, if we got on well with the king, he
would even proceed with me to Malie. Yesterday, in
consequence, I rode down to W.’s house by eight in the
morning; waited till ten; received a message that the
king was stopped by a meeting with the president and
faipule; made another engagement for seven at night;
came up; went down; waited till eight, and came away
again, bredouille, and a dead body. The poor, weak,
enslaved king had not dared to come to me even in secret.
Now I have to-day for a rest, and to-morrow to Malie.
Shall I be suffered to embark? It is very doubtful; they
are on the trail. On Thursday, a policeman came up to
me and began that a boy had been to see him, and said
I was going to see Mataafa.—“And what did you say?”
said I.—“I told him I did not know about where you
were going,” said he.—“A very good answer,” said I,
and turned away. It is lashing rain to-day, but to-morrow,
rain or shine, I must at least make the attempt; and I
am so weary, and the weather looks so bad. I could half
wish they would arrest me on the beach. All this bother
and pother to try and bring a little chance of peace; all
this opposition and obstinacy in people who remain here
by the mere forbearance of Mataafa, who has a great
force within six miles of their government buildings,
which are indeed only the residences of white officials.
To understand how I have been occupied, you must know
that “Misi Mea” has had another letter, and this time had
to answer himself; think of doing so in a language so
obscure to me, with the aid of a Bible, concordance, and
dictionary! What a wonderful Baboo compilation it
must have been! I positively expected to hear news of
its arrival in Malie by the sound of laughter. I doubt if
you will be able to read this scrawl, but I have managed
to scramble somehow up to date; and to-morrow, one
way or another, should be interesting. But as for me,
I am a wreck, as I have no doubt style and handwriting
both testify.
8 P.M.—Wonderfully rested; feel almost fit for to-morrow’s
dreary excursion—not that it will be dreary if
the weather favour, but otherwise it will be death; and
a native feast, and I fear I am in for a big one, is a thing
I loathe. I wonder if you can really conceive me as a
politician in this extra-mundane sphere—presiding at
public meetings, drafting proclamations, receiving mis-addressed
letters that have been carried all night through
tropical forests? It seems strange indeed, and to you,
who know me really, must seem stranger. I do not say
I am free from the itch of meddling, but God knows this
is no tempting job to meddle in; I smile at picturesque
circumstances like the Misi Mea (Monsieur Chose is the
exact equivalent) correspondence, but the business as a
whole bores and revolts me. I do nothing and say nothing;
and then a day comes, and I say “this can go
on no longer.”
9.30 P.M.—The wretched native dilatoriness finds me
out. News has just come that we must embark at six
to-morrow; I have divided the night in watches, and
hope to be called to-morrow at four and get under way
by five. It is a great chance if it be managed; but I
have given directions and lent my own clock to the boys,
and hope the best. If I get called at four we shall do it
nicely. Good-night; I must turn in.
May 3rd.—Well, we did get off by about 5.30, or, by’r
lady! quarter to six; myself on Donald, the huge grey
cart-horse, with a ship-bag across my saddle bow, Fanny
on Musu and Belle on Jack. We were all feeling pretty
tired and sick, and I looked like heaven knows what on
the cart-horse: “death on the pale horse,” I suggested—and
young Hunt the missionary, who met me to-day
on the same charger, squinted up at my perch and remarked,
“There’s a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft.”
The boat was ready and we set off down the lagoon about
seven, four oars, and Talolo, my cook, steering.
May 9th (Monday anyway).—And see what good resolutions
came to! Here is all this time past, and no speed
made. Well, we got to Malie and were received with the
most friendly consideration by the rebel chief. Belle and
Fanny were obviously thought to be my two wives; they
were served their kava together, as were Mataafa and
myself. Talolo utterly broke down as interpreter; long
speeches were made to me by Mataafa and his orators, of
which he could make nothing but they were “very much
surprised”—his way of pronouncing obliged—and as he
could understand nothing that fell from me except the
same form of words, the dialogue languished and all
business had to be laid aside. We had kava,42 and then
a dish of arrowroot; one end of the house was screened
off for us with a fine tapa, and we lay and slept, the three
of us, heads and tails, upon the mats till dinner. After
dinner his illegitimate majesty and myself had a walk, and
talked as well as my twopenny Samoan would admit.
Then there was a dance to amuse the ladies before the
house, and we came back by moonlight, the sky piled
full of high faint clouds that long preserved some of the
radiance of the sunset. The lagoon was very shallow; we
continually struck, for the moon was young and the light
baffling; and for a long time we were accompanied by,
and passed and repassed, a huge whale-boat from Savaii,
pulling perhaps twelve oars, and containing perhaps forty
people who sang in time as they went. So to the hotel,
where we slept, and returned the next Tuesday morning
on the three same steeds.
Meanwhile my business was still untransacted. And
on Saturday morning, I sent down and arranged with
Charlie Taylor to go down that afternoon. I had scarce
got the saddle-bags fixed and had not yet mounted, when
the rain began. But it was no use delaying now; off I
went in a wild waterspout to Apia; found Charlie (Salé)
Taylor—a sesquipedalian young half-caste—not yet ready,
had a snack of bread and cheese at the hotel while waiting
him, and then off to Malie. It rained all the way, seven
miles; the road, which begins in triumph, dwindles down
to a nasty, boggy, rocky footpath with weeds up to a
horseman’s knees; and there are eight pig fences to jump,
nasty beastly jumps—the next morning we found one all
messed with blood where a horse had come to grief—but
my Jack is a clever fencer; and altogether we made good
time, and got to Malie about dark. It is a village of very
fine native houses, high, domed, oval buildings, open at
the sides, or only closed with slatted Venetians. To be
sure, Mataafa’s is not the worst. It was already quite
dark within, only a little fire of cocoa-shell blazed in
the midst and showed us four servants; the chief was
in his chapel, whence we heard the sound of chaunting.
Presently he returned; Taylor and I had our soaking
clothes changed, family worship was held, kava brewed, I
was exhibited to the chiefs as a man who had ridden
through all that rain and risked deportation to serve their
master; they were bidden learn my face, and remember
upon all occasions to help and serve me. Then dinner,
and politics, and fine speeches until twelve at night—O,
and some more kava—when I could sit up no longer;
my usual bed-time is eight, you must remember. Then
one end of the house was screened off for me alone, and a
bed made—you never saw such a couch—I believe of
nearly fifty (half at least) fine mats, by Mataafa’s daughter,
Kalala. Here I reposed alone; and on the other side
of the tapa, Majesty and his household. Armed guards
and a drummer patrolled about the house all night; they
had no shift, poor devils; but stood to arms from sun-down
to sun-up.
About four in the morning, I was awakened by the
sound of a whistle pipe blown outside on the dark, very
softly and to a pleasing simple air; I really think I have
hit the first phrase:
Andante tranquillo
It sounded very peaceful, sweet and strange in the dark;
and I found this was a part of the routine of my rebel’s
night, and it was done (he said) to give good dreams. By
a little before six, Taylor and I were in the saddle again
fasting. My riding boots were so wet I could not get
them on, so I must ride barefoot. The morning was fair
but the roads very muddy, the weeds soaked us nearly to
the waist, Salé was twice spilt at the fences, and we got
to Apia a bedraggled enough pair. All the way along the
coast, the paté (small wooden drum) was beating in the
villages and the people crowding to the churches in their
fine clothes. Thence through the mangrove swamp,
among the black mud and the green mangroves, and the
black and scarlet crabs, to Mulinuu, to the doctor’s, where
I had an errand, and so to the inn to breakfast about nine.
After breakfast I rode home. Conceive such an outing,
remember the pallid brute that lived in Skerryvore like a
weevil in a biscuit, and receive the intelligence that I was
rather the better for my journey. Twenty miles’ ride,
sixteen fences taken, ten of the miles in a drenching rain,
seven of them fasting and in the morning chill, and six
stricken hours’ political discussions by an interpreter; to
say nothing of sleeping in a native house, at which many
of our excellent literati would look askance of itself.
You are to understand: if I take all this bother, it is
not only from a sense of duty, or a love of meddling—damn
the phrase, take your choice—but from a great
affection for Mataafa. He is a beautiful, sweet old fellow,
and he and I grew quite fulsome on Saturday night about
our sentiments. I had a messenger from him to-day
with a flannel undershirt which I had left behind like a
gibbering idiot; and perpetrated in reply another Baboo
letter. It rains again to-day without mercy; blessed,
welcome rains, making up for the paucity of the late wet
season; and when the showers slacken, I can hear my
stream roaring in the hollow, and tell myself that the
cacaos are drinking deep. I am desperately hunted to
finish my Samoa book before the mail goes; this last chapter
is equally delicate and necessary. The prayers of the
congregation are requested. Eheu! and it will be ended
before this letter leaves and printed in the States ere
you can read this scribble. The first dinner gong has
sounded; je vous salue, monsieur et cher confrère. Tofa,
soifua! Sleep! long life! as our Samoan salutation of
farewell runs.
Friday, May 13th.—Well, the last chapter, by far the
most difficult and ungrateful, is well under way, I have
been from six to seven hours upon it daily since I last
wrote; and that is all I have done forbye working at
Samoan rather hard, and going down on Wednesday
evening to the club. I make some progress now at the
language; I am teaching Belle, which clears and exercises
myself. I am particularly taken with the finesse of the
pronouns. The pronouns are all dual and plural, and the
first person, both in the dual and plural, has a special
exclusive and inclusive form. You can conceive what
fine effects of precision and distinction can be reached
in certain cases. Take Ruth, i. vv. 8 to 13, and imagine
how those pronouns come in; it is exquisitely elegant,
and makes the mouth of the littérateur to water. I am
going to exercitate my pupil over those verses to-day
for pronoun practice.
Tuesday.—Yesterday came yours. Well, well, if the
dears prefer a week, why, I’ll give them ten days, but
the real document, from which I have scarcely varied,
ran for one night.43 I think you seem scarcely fair to
Wiltshire, who had surely, under his beast-ignorant ways,
right noble qualities. And I think perhaps you scarce
do justice to the fact that this is a place of realism à
outrance; nothing extenuated or coloured. Looked at so,
is it not, with all its tragic features, wonderfully idyllic,
with great beauty of scene and circumstance? And will
you please to observe that almost all that is ugly is in the
whites? I’ll apologise for Papa Randal if you like; but
if I told you the whole truth—for I did extenuate there!—and
he seemed to me essential as a figure, and essential
as a pawn in the game, Wiltshire’s disgust for him being
one of the small, efficient motives in the story. Now it
would have taken a fairish dose to disgust Wiltshire.—Again,
the idea of publishing the Beach substantively is
dropped—at once, both on account of expostulation, and
because it measured shorter than I had expected. And
it was only taken up, when the proposed volume, Beach
de Mar, petered out. It petered out thus: the chief of
the short stories got sucked into Sophia Scarlet—and
Sophia is a book I am much taken with, and mean to
get to, as soon as—but not before—I have done David
Balfour and The Young Chevalier. So you see you are
like to hear no more of the Pacific or the nineteenth century
for a while. The Young Chevalier is a story of sentiment
and passion, which I mean to write a little differently
from what I have been doing—if I can hit the key; rather
more of a sentimental tremolo to it. It may thus help
to prepare me for Sophia, which is to contain three ladies,
and a kind of a love affair between the heroine and a
dying planter who is a poet! large orders for R. L. S.
O the German taboo is quite over; no soul attempts
to support the C. J. or the President, they are past hope;
the whites have just refused their taxes—I mean the
council has refused to call for them, and if the council
consented, nobody would pay; ’tis a farce, and the curtain
is going to fall briefly. Consequently in my History, I
say as little as may be of the two dwindling stars. Poor
devils! I liked the one, and the other has a little wife,
now lying in! There was no man born with so little
animosity as I. When I heard the C. J. was in low spirits
and never left his house, I could scarce refrain from going
to him.
It was a fine feeling to have finished the History;
there ought to be a future state to reward that grind!
It’s not literature, you know; only journalism, and
pedantic journalism. I had but the one desire, to get
the thing as right as might be, and avoid false concords—even
if that! And it was more than there was time
for. However, there it is: done. And if Samoa turns
up again, my book has to be counted with, being the only
narrative extant. Milton and I—if you kindly excuse the
juxtaposition—harnessed ourselves to strange waggons,
and I at least will be found to have plodded very soberly
with my load. There is not even a good sentence in it,
but perhaps—I don’t know—it may be found an honest,
clear volume.
Wednesday.—Never got a word set down, and continues
on Thursday, 19th May, his own marriage day as ever
was. News; yes. The C. J. came up to call on us! After
five months’ cessation on my side, and a decidedly painful
interchange of letters, I could not go down—could not—to
see him. My three ladies received him, however; he
was very agreeable as usual, but refused wine, beer, water,
lemonade, chocolate, and at last a cigarette. Then my
wife asked him, “So you refuse to break bread?” and
he waved his hands amiably in answer. All my three
ladies received the same impression that he had serious
matters in his mind: now we hear he is quite cock-a-hoop
since the mail came, and going about as before his troubles
darkened. But what did he want with me? ’Tis thought
he had received a despatch—and that he misreads it (so
we fully believe) to the effect that they are to have war
ships at command and can make their little war after
all. If it be so, and they do it, it will be the meanest
wanton slaughter of poor men for the salaries of two
white failures. But what was his errand with me?
Perhaps to warn me that unless I behave he now
hopes to be able to pack me off in the Curaçoa when
she comes.
I have celebrated my holiday from Samoa by a plunge
at the beginning of The Young Chevalier. I am afraid
my touch is a little broad in a love story; I can’t mean
one thing and write another. As for women, I am no
more in any fear of them; I can do a sort all right; age
makes me less afraid of a petticoat, but I am a little in
fear of grossness. However, this David Balfour’s love
affair, that’s all right—might be read out to a mother’s
meeting—or a daughters’ meeting. The difficulty in a
love yarn, which dwells at all on love, is the dwelling
on one string; it is manifold, I grant, but the root fact
is there unchanged, and the sentiment being very intense,
and already very much handled in letters, positively calls
for a little pawing and gracing. With a writer of my
prosaic literalness and pertinency of point of view, this
all shoves toward grossness—positively even toward the
far more damnable closeness. This has kept me off the
sentiment hitherto, and now I am to try: Lord! Of
course Meredith can do it, and so could Shakespeare;
but with all my romance, I am a realist and a prosaist,
and a most fanatical lover of plain physical sensations
plainly and expressly rendered; hence my perils. To do
love in the same spirit as I did (for instance) D. Balfour’s
fatigue in the heather; my dear sir, there were grossness—ready
made! And hence, how to sugar? However, I
have nearly done with Marie-Madeleine, and am in good
hopes of Marie-Salomé, the real heroine; the other is
only a prologuial heroine to introduce the hero.
Friday.—Anyway, the first prologuial episode is done,
and Fanny likes it. There are only four characters:
Francis Blair of Balmile (Jacobite Lord Gladsmuir) my
hero; the Master of Ballantrae; Paradou, a wine-seller
of Avignon; Marie-Madeleine his wife. These two last I
am now done with, and I think they are successful, and I
hope I have Balmile on his feet; and the style seems to
be found. It is a little charged and violent; sins on the
side of violence; but I think will carry the tale. I think
it is a good idea so to introduce my hero, being made
love to by an episodic woman. This queer tale—I mean
queer for me—has taken a great hold upon me. Where
the devil shall I go next? This is simply the tale of a
coup de tête of a young man and a young woman; with
a nearly, perhaps a wholly, tragic sequel, which I desire
to make thinkable right through, and sensible; to
make the reader, as far as I shall be able, eat and drink
and breathe it. Marie-Salomé des Saintes-Maries is, I
think, the heroine’s name; she has got to be yet: sursum
corda! So has the young Chevalier, whom I have not
yet touched, and who comes next in order. Characters:
Balmile, or Lord Gladsmuir, comme vous voulez; Prince
Charlie; Earl Marischal; Master of Ballantrae; and a
spy, and Dr. Archie Campbell, and a few nondescripts;
then, of women, Marie-Salomé and Flora Blair; seven at
the outside; really four full lengths, and I suppose a half-dozen
episodic profiles. How I must bore you with these
ineptitudes! Have patience. I am going to bed; it is
(of all hours) eleven. I have been forced in (since I began
to write to you) to blatter to Fanny on the subject of my
heroine, there being two cruces as to her life and history:
how came she alone? and how far did she go with the
Chevalier? The second must answer itself when I get
near enough to see. The first is a back-breaker. Yet I
know there are many reasons why a fille de famille, romantic,
adventurous, ambitious, innocent of the world, might run
from her home in these days; might she not have been
threatened with a convent? might there not be some
Huguenot business mixed in? Here am I, far from books;
if you can help me with a suggestion, I shall say God bless
you. She has to be new run away from a strict family,
well-justified in her own wild but honest eyes, and meeting
these three men, Charles Edward, Marischal, and Balmile,
through the accident of a fire at an inn. She must not run
from a marriage, I think; it would bring her in the wrong
frame of mind. Once I can get her, sola, on the highway,
all were well with my narrative. Perpend. And help if
you can.
Lafaele, long (I hope) familiar to you, has this day
received the visit of his son from Tonga; and the son
proves to be a very pretty, attractive young daughter!
I gave all the boys kava in honour of her arrival; along
with a lean, side-whiskered Tongan, dimly supposed to be
Lafaele’s step-father; and they have been having a good
time; in the end of my verandah, I hear Simi, my present
incapable steward, talking Tongan with the nondescript
papa. Simi, our out-door boy, burst a succession of blood-vessels
over our work, and I had to make a position for
the wreck of one of the noblest figures of a man I ever saw.
I believe I may have mentioned the other day how I had
to put my horse to the trot, the canter and (at last) the
gallop to run him down. In a photograph I hope to send
you (perhaps with this) you will see Simi standing in the
verandah in profile. As a steward, one of his chief points
is to break crystal; he is great on fracture—what do I
say?—explosion! He cleans a glass, and the shards
scatter like a comet’s bowels.
N.B.—If I should by any chance be deported, the first
of the rules hung up for that occasion is to communicate
with you by telegraph.—Mind, I do not fear it, but it is
possible.
Monday, 25th.—We have had a devil of a morning of
upset and bustle; the bronze candlestick Faauma has
returned to the family, in time to take her position of
step-mamma, and it is pretty to see how the child is at
once at home, and all her terrors ended.
27th. Mail day.—And I don’t know that I have
much to report. I may have to leave for Malie as soon as
these mail packets are made up. ’Tis a necessity (if it be
one) I rather deplore. I think I should have liked to
lazy; but I dare say all it means is the delay of a day
or so in harking back to David Balfour; that respectable
youth chides at being left (where he is now) in Glasgow
with the Lord Advocate, and after five years in the British
Linen, who shall blame him? I was all forenoon yesterday
down in Apia, dictating, and Lloyd typewriting, the conclusion
of Samoa; and then at home correcting till the
dinner bell; and in the evening again till eleven of the
clock. This morning I have made up most of my packets,
and I think my mail is all ready but two more, and the
tag of this. I would never deny (as D. B. might say) that
I was rather tired of it. But I have a damned good dose
of the devil in my pipe-stem atomy; I have had my little
holiday outing in my kick at The Young Chevalier, and I
guess I can settle to David Balfour to-morrow or Friday
like a little man. I wonder if any one had ever more
energy upon so little strength?—I know there is a frost;
the Samoa book can only increase that—I can’t help it,
that book is not written for me but for Miss Manners;
but I mean to break that frost inside two years, and pull
off a big success, and Vanity whispers in my ear that I
have the strength. If I haven’t, whistle ower the lave
o’t! I can do without glory and perhaps the time is not
far off when I can do without coin. It is a time coming
soon enough, anyway; and I have endured some two and
forty years without public shame, and had a good time
as I did it. If only I could secure a violent death, what
a fine success! I wish to die in my boots; no more Land
of Counterpane for me. To be drowned, to be shot, to
be thrown from a horse—ay, to be hanged, rather than
pass again through that slow dissolution.
I fancy this gloomy ramble is caused by a twinge of
age; I put on an under-shirt yesterday (it was the only
one I could find) that barely came under my trousers;
and just below it, a fine healthy rheumatism has now
settled like a fire in my hip. From such small causes do
these valuable considerations flow!
I shall now say adieu, dear Sir, having ten rugged
miles before me and the horrors of a native feast and
parliament without an interpreter, for to-day I go alone.—Yours
ever,
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin
Describing a family expedition to visit Mataafa at Malie.
[Vailima] Sunday, 29th May [1892].
How am I to overtake events? On Wednesday, as
soon as my mail was finished, I had a wild whirl to look
forward to. Immediately after dinner, Belle, Lloyd, and
I set out on horseback, they to the club, I to Haggard’s,
thence to the hotel, where I had supper ready for them.
All next day we hung round Apia with our whole house-crowd
in Sunday array, hoping for the mail steamer with
a menagerie on board. No such luck; the ship delayed;
and at last, about three, I had to send them home again,
a failure of a day’s pleasuring that does not bear to be
discussed. Lloyd was so sickened that he returned the
same night to Vailima, Belle and I held on, sat most of
the evening on the hotel verandah stricken silly with
fatigue and disappointment, and genuine sorrow for our
poor boys and girls, and got to bed with rather dismal
appreciations of the morrow.
These were more than justified, and yet I never had a
jollier day than Friday 27th. By 7.30 Belle and I had
breakfast; we had scarce done before my mother was at
the door on horseback, and a boy at her heels to take her
not very dashing charger home again. By 8.10 we were
all on the landing pier, and it was 9.20 before we had got
away in a boat with two inches of green wood on the keel
of her, no rudder, no mast, no sail, no boat flag, two defective
rowlocks, two wretched apologies for oars, and two
boys—one a Tongan half-caste, one a white lad, son of
the Tonga schoolmaster, and a sailor lad—to pull us.
All this was our first taste of the tender mercies of Taylor
(the sesquipedalian half-caste introduced two letters back,
I believe). We had scarce got round Mulinuu when Salé
Taylor’s heart misgave him; he thought we had missed
the tide; called a halt, and set off ashore to find canoes.
Two were found; in one my mother and I were embarked
with the two biscuit tins (my present to the feast), and
the bag with our dry clothes, on which my mother was
perched—and her cap was on the top of it—feminine hearts
please sympathise; all under the guidance of Salé. In
the other Belle and our guest; Tauilo, a chief-woman, the
mother of my cook, were to have followed. And the boys
were to have been left with the boat. But Tauilo refused.
And the four, Belle, Tauilo, Frank the sailor-boy, and
Jimmie the Tongan half-caste, set off in the boat across
that rapidly shoaling bay of the lagoon.
How long the next scene lasted, I could never tell.
Salé was always trying to steal away with our canoe and
leave the other four, probably for six hours, in an empty,
leaky boat, without so much as an orange or a cocoanut
on board, and under the direct rays of the sun. I had at
last to stop him by taking the spare paddle off the outrigger
and sticking it in the ground—depth, perhaps two
feet—width of the bay, say three miles. At last I bid him
land me and my mother and go back for the other ladies.
“The coast is so rugged,” said Salé.—“What?” I said,
“all these villages and no landing-place?”—“Such is
the nature of Samoans,” said he. Well, I’ll find a landing-place,
I thought; and presently I said, “Now we are
going to land there.”—“We can but try,” said the bland
Salé, with resignation. Never saw a better landing-place
in my life. Here the boat joined us. My mother and
Salé continued in the canoe alone, and Belle and I and
Tauilo set off on foot for Malie. Tauilo was about the
size of both of us put together and a piece over; she
used us like a nurse with children. I had started barefoot;
Belle had soon to pull off her gala shoes and stockings;
the mud was as deep as to our knees, and so slippery that
(moving, as we did, in Indian file, between dense scratching
tufts of sensitive) Belle and I had to take hands to support
each other, and Tauilo was steadying Belle from the
rear. You can conceive we were got up to kill, Belle in
an embroidered white dress and white hat, I in a suit of
Bedford cords hot from the Sydney tailors; and conceive
us, below, ink-black to the knees with adhesive clay, and
above, streaming with heat. I suppose it was better than
three miles, but at last we made the end of Malie. I asked
if we could find no water to wash our feet; and our nursemaid
guided us to a pool. We sat down on the pool side,
and our nursemaid washed our feet and legs for us—ladies
first, I suppose out of a sudden respect to the insane
European fancies: such a luxury as you can scarce imagine.
I felt a new man after it. But before we got to the King’s
house we were sadly muddied once more. It was 1 p.m.
when we arrived, the canoe having beaten us by about
five minutes, so we made fair time over our bog-holes.
But the war dances were over, and we came in time
to see only the tail end (some two hours) of the food presentation.
In Mataafa’s house three chairs were set for
us covered with fine mats. Of course, a native house
without the blinds down is like a verandah. All the green
in front was surrounded with sheds, some of flapping
canvas, some of green palm boughs, where (in three sides
of a huge oblong) the natives sat by villages in a fine glow
of many-hued array. There were folks in tapa, and folks
in patchwork; there was every colour of the rainbow in
a spot or a cluster; there were men with their heads
gilded with powdered sandal-wood, others with heads all
purple, stuck full of the petals of a flower. In the midst
there was a growing field of outspread food, gradually
covering acres; the gifts were brought in, now by
chanting deputations, now by carriers in a file; they were
brandished aloft and reclaimed over, with polite sacramental
exaggerations, by the official receiver. He, a
stalwart, well-oiled quadragenarian, shone with sweat from
his exertions, brandishing cooked pigs. At intervals, from
one of the squatted villages, an orator would arise. The
field was almost beyond the reach of any human speaking
voice; the proceedings besides continued in the midst;
yet it was possible to catch snatches of this elaborate and
cut-and-dry oratory—it was possible for me, for instance,
to catch the description of my gift and myself as the alii
Tusitala, O le alii o malo tetele—the chief Write Information,
the chief of the great Governments. Gay designation?
In the house, in our three curule chairs, we sat and looked
on. On our left a little group of the family. In front
of us, at our feet, an ancient Talking-man, crowned with
green leaves, his profile almost exactly Dante’s; Popo his
name. He had worshipped idols in his youth; he had
been full grown before the first missionary came hither
from Tahiti; this makes him over eighty. Near by him
sat his son and colleague. In the group on our left, his
little grandchild sat with her legs crossed and her hands
turned, the model already (at some three years old) of
Samoan etiquette. Still further off to our right, Mataafa
sat on the ground through all the business; and still I saw
his lips moving, and the beads of his rosary slip stealthily
through his hand. We had kava, and the King’s drinking
was hailed by the Popos (father and son) with a singular
ululation, perfectly new to my ears; it means, to the
expert, “Long live Tuiatua”; to the inexpert, is a mere
voice of barbarous wolves. We had dinner, retired a bit
behind the central pillar of the house; and, when the
King was done eating, the ululation was repeated. I had
my eyes on Mataafa’s face, and I saw pride and gratified
ambition spring to life there and be instantly sucked in
again. It was the first time, since the difference with
Laupepa, that Popo and his son had openly joined him,
and given him the due cry as Tuiatua—one of the eight
royal names of the islands, as I hope you will know before
this reaches you.
Not long after we had dined, the food-bringing was
over. The gifts (carefully noted and tallied as they came
in) were now announced by a humorous orator, who convulsed
the audience, introducing singing notes, now on the
name of the article, now on the number; six thousand
odd heads of taro, three hundred and nineteen cooked
pigs; and one thing that particularly caught me (by
good luck), a single turtle “for the king”—le tasi mo le
tupu. Then came one of the strangest sights I have yet
witnessed. The two most important persons there (bar
Mataafa) were Popo and his son. They rose, holding their
long shod rods of talking men, passed forth from the house,
broke into a strange dance, the father capering with outstretched
arms and rod, the son crouching and gambolling
beside him in a manner indescribable, and presently began
to extend the circle of this dance among the acres of cooked
food. Whatever they leaped over, whatever they called for,
became theirs. To see mediæval Dante thus demean himself
struck a kind of a chill of incongruity into our Philistine
souls; but even in a great part of the Samoan concourse,
these antique and (I understand) quite local manners
awoke laughter. One of my biscuit tins and a live calf
were among the spoils he claimed, but the large majority
of the cooked food (having once proved his dignity) he
re-presented to the king.
Then came the turn of le alii Tusitala. He would not
dance, but he was given—five live hens, four gourds of
oil, four fine tapas, a hundred heads of taro, two cooked
pigs, a cooked shark, two or three cocoanut branches
strung with kava, and the turtle, who soon after breathed
his last, I believe, from sunstroke. It was a royal present
for “the chief of the great powers.” I should say the
gifts were, on the proper signal, dragged out of the field
of food by a troop of young men, all with their lava-lavas
kilted almost into a loin-cloth. The art is to swoop on
the food-field, pick up with unerring swiftness the right
things and quantities, swoop forth again on the open, and
separate, leaving the gifts in a new pile: so you may see
a covey of birds in a corn-field. This reminds me of a very
inhumane but beautiful passage I had forgotten in its
place. The gift-giving was still in full swing, when there
came a troop of some ninety men all in tapa lava-lavas
of a purplish colour; they paused, and of a sudden there
went up from them high into the air a flight of live chickens,
which, as they came down again, were sent again into the
air, for perhaps a minute, from the midst of a singular
turmoil of flying arms and shouting voices; I assure you,
it was very beautiful to see, but how many chickens were
killed?
No sooner was my food set out than I was to be going.
I had a little serious talk with Mataafa on the floor, and
we went down to the boat, where we got our food aboard,
such a cargo—like the Swiss Family Robinson, we said.
However, a squall began, Tauilo refused to let us go, and
we came back to the house for half an hour or so, when
my ladies distinguished themselves by walking through a
Fono (council), my mother actually taking up a position
between Mataafa and Popo! It was about five when we
started—turtle, pigs, taro, etc., my mother, Belle, myself,
Tauilo, a portly friend of hers with the voice of an angel,
and a pronunciation so delicate and true that you could
follow Samoan as she sang, and the two tired boys Frank
and Jimmie, with the two bad oars and the two slippery
rowlocks to impel the whole. Salé Taylor took the canoe
and a strong Samoan to paddle him. Presently after he
went inshore, and passed us a little after, with his arms
folded, and two strong Samoans impelling him Apia-ward.
This was too much for Belle, who hailed, taunted him, and
made him return to the boat with one of the Samoans,
setting Jimmie instead in the canoe. Then began our
torment, Salé and the Samoan took the oars, sat on the
same thwart (where they could get no swing on the boat
had they tried), and deliberately ladled at the lagoon. We
lay enchanted. Night fell; there was a light visible on
shore; it did not move. The two women sang, Belle
joining them in the hymns she has learned at family
worship. Then a squall came up; we sat a while in roaring
midnight under rivers of rain, and, when it blew by,
there was the light again, immovable. A second squall
followed, one of the worst I was ever out in; we could
scarce catch our breath in the cold, dashing deluge. When
it went, we were so cold that the water in the bottom of
the boat (which I was then baling) seemed like a warm
footbath in comparison, and Belle and I, who were still
barefoot, were quite restored by laving in it.
All this time I had kept my temper, and refrained as
far as might be from any interference, for I saw (in our
friend’s mulish humour) he always contrived to twist it
to our disadvantage. But now came the acute point.
Young Frank now took an oar. He was a little fellow,
near as frail as myself, and very short; if he weighed nine
stone, it was the outside; but his blood was up. He
took stroke, moved the big Samoan forward to bow, and
set to work to pull him round in fine style. Instantly, a
kind of race competition—almost race hatred—sprang up.
We jeered the Samoan. Salé declared it was the trim of
the boat; “if this lady was aft” (Tauilo’s portly friend)
“he would row round Frank.” We insisted on her coming
aft, and Frank still rowed round the Samoan. When the
Samoan caught a crab (the thing was continual with
these wretched oars and rowlocks), we shouted and jeered;
when Frank caught one, Salé and the Samoan jeered and
yelled. But anyway the boat moved, and presently we
got up with Mulinuu, where I finally lost my temper,
when I found that Salé proposed to go ashore and make
a visit—in fact, we all three did. It is not worth while
going into, but I must give you one snatch of the subsequent
conversation as we pulled round Apia bay. “This
Samoan,” said Salé, “received seven German bullets in
the field of Fangalii.” “I am delighted to hear it,” said
Belle. “His brother was killed there,” pursued Salé;
and Belle, prompt as an echo, “Then there are no more
of the family? how delightful!” Salé was sufficiently
surprised to change the subject; he began to praise Frank’s
rowing with insufferable condescension: “But it is after
all not to be wondered at,” said he, “because he has been
for some time a sailor. My good man, is it three or five
years that you have been to sea?” And Frank, in a
defiant shout: “Two!” Whereupon, so high did the ill-feeling
run, that we three clapped and applauded and
shouted, so that the President (whose house we were then
passing) doubtless started at the sounds. It was nine when
we got to the hotel; at first no food was to be found, but
we skirmished up some bread and cheese and beer and
brandy; and (having changed our wet clothes for the
rather less wet in our bags) supped on the verandah.
On Saturday, 28th, I was wakened about 6.30, long
past my usual hour, by a benevolent passer-by. My
turtle lay on the verandah at my door, and the man woke
me to tell me it was dead, as it had been when we put
it on board the day before. All morning I ran the gauntlet
of men and women coming up to me: “Mr. Stevenson,
your turtle is dead.” I gave half of it to the hotel keeper,
so that his cook should cut it up; and we got a damaged
shell, and two splendid meals, beefsteak one day and soup
the next. The horses came for us about 9.30. It was
waterspouting; we were drenched before we got out of
the town; the road was a fine going Highland trout
stream; it thundered deep and frequent, and my mother’s
horse would not better on a walk. At last she took pity
on us, and very nobly proposed that Belle and I should
ride ahead. We were mighty glad to do so, for we were
cold. Presently, I said I should ride back for my mother,
but it thundered again; Belle is afraid of thunder, and I
decided to see her through the forest before I returned
for my other hen—I may say, my other wet hen. About
the middle of the wood, where it is roughest and steepest,
we met three pack-horses with barrels of lime-juice. I
piloted Belle past these—it is not very easy in such a road—and
then passed them again myself, to pilot my mother.
This effected, it began to thunder again, so I rode on hard
after Belle. When I caught up with her, she was singing
Samoan hymns to support her terrors! We were all back,
changed, and at table by lunch time, 11 A.M. Nor have
any of us been the worse for it sin-syne. That is pretty
good for a woman of my mother’s age and an invalid of
my standing; above all, as Tauilo was laid up with a
bad cold, probably increased by rage.
Friday, 3rd June.—On Wednesday the club could not
be held, and I must ride down town and to and fro all
afternoon delivering messages, then dined and rode up by
the young moon. I had plenty news when I got back;
there is great talk in town of my deportation: it is thought
they have written home to Downing Street requesting
my removal, which leaves me not much alarmed; what
I do rather expect is that H. J. Moors and I may be haled
up before the C. J. to stand a trial for lèse-majesty. Well,
we’ll try and live it through.
The rest of my history since Monday has been unadulterated
David Balfour. In season and out of season,
night and day, David and his innocent harem—let me be
just, he never has more than the two—are on my mind.
Think of David Balfour with a pair of fair ladies—very
nice ones too—hanging round him. I really believe David
is as good a character as anybody has a right to ask for
in a novel. I have finished drafting Chapter XX. to-day,
and feel it all ready to froth when the spigot is turned.
O, I forgot—and do forget. What did I mean? A
waft of cloud has fallen on my mind, and I will write no
more.
Wednesday, I believe, 8th June.—Lots of David, and
lots of David, and the devil any other news. Yesterday
we were startled by great guns firing a salute, and to-day
Whitmee (missionary) rode up to lunch, and we learned
it was the Curaçoa come in, the ship (according to rumour)
in which I was to be deported. I went down to meet my
fate, and the captain is to dine with me Saturday, so I
guess I am not going this voyage. Even with the particularity
with which I write to you, how much of my life
goes unexpressed; my troubles with a madman by the
name of ——, a genuine living lunatic, I believe, and jolly
dangerous; my troubles about poor ——, all these have
dropped out; yet for moments they were very instant,
and one of them is always present with me.
I have finished copying Chapter XXI. of David—“solus
cum sola; we travel together.” Chapter XXII., “Solus
cum sola; we keep house together,” is already drafted.
To the end of XXI. makes more than 150 pages of my
manuscript—damn this hair—and I only designed the book
to run to about 200; but when you introduce the female
sect, a book does run away with you. I am very curious
to see what you will think of my two girls. My own
opinion is quite clear; I am in love with both. I foresee
a few pleasant years of spiritual flirtations. The creator
(if I may name myself, for the sake of argument, by such
a name) is essentially unfaithful. For the duration of the
two chapters in which I dealt with Miss Grant, I totally
forgot my heroine, and even—but this is a flat secret—tried
to win away David. I think I must try some day to marry
Miss Grant. I’m blest if I don’t think I’ve got that hair
out! which seems triumph enough; so I conclude.
Tuesday.—Your infinitesimal correspondence has
reached me, and I have the honour to refer to it with
scorn. It contains only one statement of conceivable
interest, that your health is better; the rest is null, and
so far as disquisitory unsound. I am all right, but David
Balfour is ailing; this came from my visit to the man-of-war,
where I had a cup of tea, and the most of that night
walked the verandah with extraordinary convictions of
guilt and ruin, many of which (but not all) proved to have
fled with the day, taking David along with them; he
R.I.P. in Chapter XXII.
On Saturday I went down to the town, and fetched up
Captain Gibson to dinner; Sunday I was all day at Samoa,
and had a pile of visitors. Yesterday got my mail, including
your despicable sheet; was fooled with a visit
from the high chief Asi, went down at 4 P.M. to my Samoan
lesson from Whitmee—I think I shall learn from him, he does
not fool me with cockshot rules that are demolished next
day, but professes ignorance like a man; the truth is,
the grammar has still to be expiscated—dined with Haggard,
and got home about nine.
Wednesday.—The excellent Clarke up here almost all
day yesterday, a man I esteem and like to the soles of his
boots; I prefer him to any one in Samoa, and to most
people in the world; a real good missionary, with the
inestimable advantage of having grown up a layman.
Pity they all can’t get that! It recalls my old proposal,
which delighted Lady Taylor so much, that every divinity
student should be thirty years old at least before he was
admitted. Boys switched out of college into a pulpit,
what chance have they? That any should do well amazes
me, and the most are just what was to be expected.
Saturday.—I must tell you of our feast. It was long
promised to the boys, and came off yesterday in one of
their new houses. My good Simelé arrived from Savaii
that morning asking for political advice; then we had
Tauilo; Elena’s father, a talking man of Tauilo’s family;
Talolo’s cousin; and a boy of Simelé’s family, who attended
on his dignity; then Metu, the meat-man—you have
never heard of him, but he is a great person in our household—brought
a lady and a boy—and there was another
infant—eight guests in all. And we sat down thirty strong.
You should have seen our procession, going (about two
o’clock), all in our best clothes, to the hall of feasting!
All in our Sunday’s best. The new house had been
hurriedly finished; the rafters decorated with flowers;
the floor spread, native style, with green leaves; we had
given a big porker, twenty-five pounds of fresh beef, a
tin of biscuit, cocoanuts, etc. Our places were all arranged
with much care; the native ladies of the house facing
our party; the sides filled up by the men; the guests,
please observe: the two chief people, male and female,
were placed with our family, the rest between S. and the
native ladies. After the feast was over, we had kava, and
the calling of the kava was a very elaborate affair, and I
thought had like to have made Simelé very angry; he is
really a considerable chief, but he and Tauilo were not
called till after all our family, and the guests, I suppose
the principle being that he was still regarded as one of
the household. I forgot to say that our black boy did
not turn up when the feast was ready. Off went the two
cooks, found him, decorated him with huge red hibiscus
flowers—he was in a very dirty undershirt—brought him
back between them like a reluctant maid, and thrust him
into a place between Faauma and Elena, where he was
petted and ministered to. When his turn came in the
kava drinking—and you may be sure, in their contemptuous,
affectionate kindness for him, as for a good dog, it came
rather earlier than it ought—he was cried under a new
name. Aleki is what they make of his own name Arrick;
but instead of {the cup of “le ipu a} Aleki!” it was called “le ipu
a Vailima,” and it was explained that he had “taken
his chief-name”! a jest at which the plantation still
laughs. Kava done, I made a little speech, Henry translating.
If I had been well, I should have alluded to all,
but I was scarce able to sit up; so only alluded to my
guest of all this month, the Tongan, Tomas, and to Simelé,
partly for the jest of making him translate compliments
to himself. The talking man replied with many handsome
compliments to me, in the usual flood of Samoan
fluent neatness; and we left them to an afternoon of
singing and dancing. Must stop now, as my right
hand is very bad again. I am trying to write with my
left.
Sunday.—About half-past eight last night, I had gone
to my own room, Fanny and Lloyd were in Fanny’s, every
one else in bed, only two boys on the premises—the two
little brown boys Mitaiele (Michael), age I suppose 11 or
12, and the new steward, a Wallis islander, speaking no
English and about fifty words of Samoan, recently promoted
from the bush work, and a most good, anxious,
timid lad of 15 or 16—looks like 17 or 18, of course—they
grow fast here. In comes Mitaiele to Lloyd, and told
some rigmarole about Paatalise (the steward’s name) wanting
to go and see his family in the bush.—“But he has no
family in the bush,” said Lloyd. “No,” said Mitaiele.
They went to the boy’s bed (they sleep in the walled-in
compartment of the verandah, once my dressing-room)
and called at once for me. He lay like one asleep, talking
in drowsy tones but without excitement, and at times
“cheeping” like a frightened mouse; he was quite cool
to the touch, and his pulse not fast; his breathing seemed
wholly ventral; the bust still, the belly moving strongly.
Presently he got from his bed, and ran for the door, with
his head down not three feet from the floor and his body
all on a stretch forward, like a striking snake: I say
“ran,” but this strange movement was not swift. Lloyd
and I mastered him and got him back in bed. Soon there
was another and more desperate attempt to escape, in
which Lloyd had his ring broken. Then we bound him
to the bed humanely with sheets, ropes, boards, and pillows.
He lay there and sometimes talked, sometimes whispered,
sometimes wept like an angry child; his principal word
was “Faamolemole”—“Please”—and he kept telling us
at intervals that his family were calling him. During this
interval, by the special grace of God, my boys came home;
we had already called in Arrick, the black boy; now we
had that Hercules, Lafaele, and a man Savea, who comes
from Paatalise’s own island and can alone communicate
with him freely. Lloyd went to bed, I took the first watch,
and sat in my room reading, while Lafaele and Arrick
watched the madman. Suddenly Arrick called me; I
ran into the verandah; there was Paatalise free of all
his bonds and Lafaele holding him. To tell what followed
is impossible. We were five people at him—Lafaele and
Savea, very strong men, Lloyd, I and Arrick, and the
struggle lasted until 1 A.M. before we had him bound.
One detail for a specimen: Lloyd and I had charge of one
leg, we were both sitting on it and lo! we were both tossed
into the air—I, I dare say, a couple of feet. At last we
had him spread-eagled to the iron bedstead, by his wrists
and ankles, with matted rope; a most inhumane business,
but what could we do? it was all we could do to manage
it even so. The strength of the paroxysms had been steadily
increasing, and we trembled for the next. And now I
come to pure Rider Haggard. Lafaele announced that the
boy was very bad, and he would get “some medicine”
which was a family secret of his own. Some leaves were
brought mysteriously in; chewed, placed on the boy’s
eyes, dropped in his ears (see Hamlet) and stuck up his
nostrils; as he did this, the weird doctor partly smothered
the patient with his hand; and by about 2 A.M. he was
in a deep sleep, and from that time he showed no symptom
of dementia whatever. The medicine (says Lafaele) is
principally used for the wholesale slaughter of families;
he himself feared last night that his dose was fatal; only
one other person, on this island, knows the secret; and
she, Lafaele darkly whispers, has abused it. This remarkable
tree we must try to identify.
The man-of-war doctor came up to-day, gave us a
strait-waistcoat, taught us to bandage, examined the boy
and saw he was apparently well—he insisted on doing
his work all morning, poor lad, and when he first came
down kissed all the family at breakfast! The doctor was
greatly excited, as may be supposed, about Lafaele’s
medicine.
Tuesday.—All yesterday writing my mail by the hand
of Belle, to save my wrist. This is a great invention, to
which I shall stick, if it can be managed. We had some
alarm about Paatalise, but he slept well all night for a
benediction. This lunatic asylum exercise has no attractions
for any of us.
I don’t know if I remembered to say how much pleased
I was with Across the Plains in every way, inside and out,
and you and me. The critics seem to taste it, too, as well
as could be hoped, and I believe it will continue to bring
me in a few shillings a year for a while. But such books
pay only indirectly.
To understand the full horror of the mad scene, and
how well my boys behaved, remember that they believed
P.’s ravings, they knew that his dead family, thirty strong,
crowded the front verandah and called on him to come
to the other world. They knew that his dead brother had
met him that afternoon in the bush and struck him on
both temples. And remember! we are fighting the dead,
and they had to go out again in the black night, which is
the dead man’s empire. Yet last evening, when I thought
P. was going to repeat the performance, I sent down for
Lafaele, who had leave of absence, and he and his wife
came up about eight o’clock with a lighted brand. These
are the things for which I have to forgive my old cattle-man
his manifold shortcomings; they are heroic—so are
the shortcomings, to be sure.
It came over me the other day suddenly that this
diary of mine to you would make good pickings after I
am dead, and a man could make some kind of a book out
of it without much trouble. So, for God’s sake, don’t
lose them, and they will prove a piece of provision for my
“poor old family,” as Simelé calls it.
About my coming to Europe, I get more and more
doubtful, and rather incline to Ceylon again as place of
meeting. I am so absurdly well here in the tropics, that
it seems like affectation. Yet remember I have never once
stood Sydney. Anyway, I shall have the money for it all
ahead, before I think of such a thing.
We had a bowl of punch on your birthday, which my
incredible mother somehow knew and remembered.
By the time you receive this, my Samoan book will I
suppose be out and the worst known. If I am burned in
effigy for it no more need be said; if on the other hand
I get off cheap with the authorities, this is to say that,
supposing a vacancy to occur, I would condescend to accept
the office of H.B.M.’s consul with parts, pendicles and
appurtenances. There is a very little work to do except
some little entertaining, to which I am bound to say my
family and in particular the amanuensis who now guides
the pen look forward with delight; I with manly resignation.
The real reasons for the step would be three: 1st,
possibility of being able to do some good, or at least certainty
of not being obliged to stand always looking on
helplessly at what is bad: 2nd, larks for the family:
3rd, and perhaps not altogether least, a house in town
and a boat and a boat’s crew.44
But I find I have left out another reason: 4th, growing
desire on the part of the old man virulent for anything
in the nature of a salary—years seem to invest that idea
with new beauty.
I sometimes sit and yearn for anything in the nature
of an income that would come in—mine has all got to be
gone and fished for with the immortal mind of man. What
I want is the income that really comes in of itself while
all you have to do is just to blossom and exist and sit on
chairs. Think how beautiful it would be not to have to
mind the critics, and not even the darkest of the crowd—Sidney
Colvin. I should probably amuse myself with
works that would make your hair curl, if you had any left.
R. L. S.
To T. W. Dover
Stevenson’s correspondent in this case is an artisan, who had
been struck by the truth of a remark in his essay on Beggars that
it is only or mainly the poor who habitually give to the poor; and
who wrote to ask whether it was from experience that Stevenson
knew this.
Vailima Plantation, Upolu, Samoa,
June 20th, 1892.
SIR,—In reply to your very interesting letter, I cannot
fairly say that I have ever been poor, or known what it
was to want a meal. I have been reduced, however, to
a very small sum of money, with no apparent prospect
of increasing it; and at that time I reduced myself to
practically one meal a day, with the most disgusting consequences
to my health. At this time I lodged in the
house of a working-man, and associated much with others.
At the same time, from my youth up, I have always been
a good deal and rather intimately thrown among the
working-classes, partly as a civil engineer in out-of-the-way
places, partly from a strong and, I hope, not ill-favoured
sentiment of curiosity. But the place where,
perhaps, I was most struck with the fact upon which you
comment was the house of a friend, who was exceedingly
poor, in fact, I may say destitute, and who lived in the
attic of a very tall house entirely inhabited by persons
in varying stages of poverty. As he was also in ill-health,
I made a habit of passing my afternoon with him, and
when there it was my part to answer the door. The steady
procession of people begging, and the expectant and
confident manner in which they presented themselves,
struck me more and more daily; and I could not but
remember with surprise that though my father lived but
a few streets away in a fine house, beggars scarce came
to the door once a fortnight or a month. From that
time forward I made it my business to inquire, and in the
stories which I am very fond of hearing from all sorts
and conditions of men, learned that in the time of their
distress it was always from the poor they sought assistance,
and almost always from the poor they got it.
Trusting I have now satisfactorily answered your question,
which I thank you for asking, I remain, with sincere
compliments,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To E. L. Burlingame
Vailima, Summer 1892.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—First of all, you have all the
corrections on The Wrecker. I found I had made what I
meant and forgotten it, and was so careless as not to
tell you.
Second, of course, and by all means, charge corrections
on the Samoa book to me; but there are not near so
many as I feared. The Lord hath dealt bountifully with
me, and I believe all my advisers were amazed to see
how nearly correct I had got the truck, at least I was.
With this you will receive the whole revise and a type-written
copy of the last chapter. And the thing now is
Speed, to catch a possible revision of the treaty. I believe
Cassells are to bring it out, but Baxter knows, and the
thing has to be crammed through prestissimo, à la chasseur.
You mention the belated Barbeys; what about the
equally belated Pineros? And I hope you will keep your
bookshop alive to supplying me continuously with the
Saga Library. I cannot get enough of Sagas; I wish
there were nine thousand; talk about realism!
All seems to flourish with you; I also prosper; none
the less for being quit of that abhorred task, Samoa. I
could give a supper party here were there any one to sup.
Never was such a disagreeable task, but the thing had to
be told....
There, I trust I am done with this cursed chapter of
my career, bar the rotten eggs and broken bottles that
may follow, of course. Pray remember, speed is now all
that can be asked, hoped, or wished. I give up all hope
of proofs, revises, proof of the map, or sic like; and you
on your side will try to get it out as reasonably seemly
as may be.
Whole Samoa book herewith. Glory be to God.—Yours
very sincerely,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Sidney Colvin
The following consists of scraps merely, taken from a letter almost
entirely occupied with private family affairs.
[Vailima] Saturday, 2nd July 1892.
The character of my handwriting is explained, alas!
by scrivener’s cramp. This also explains how long I have
let the paper lie plain.
1 P.M.—I was busy copying David Balfour with my
left hand—a most laborious task—Fanny was down at
the native house superintending the floor, Lloyd down in
Apia, and Belle in her own house cleaning, when I heard
the latter calling on my name. I ran out on the verandah;
and there on the lawn beheld my crazy boy with an axe
in his hand and dressed out in green ferns, dancing. I
ran downstairs and found all my house boys on the back
verandah, watching him through the dining-room. I asked
what it meant?—“Dance belong his place,” they said.—“I
think this no time to dance,” said I. “Has he done
his work?”—“No,” they told me, “away bush all morning.”
But there they all stayed on the back verandah.
I went on alone through the dining-room, and bade him
stop. He did so, shouldered the axe, and began to walk
away; but I called him back, walked up to him, and
took the axe out of his unresisting hands. The boy is in
all things so good, that I can scarce say I was afraid; only
I felt it had to be stopped ere he could work himself
up by dancing to some craziness. Our house boys protested
they were not afraid; all I know is they were
all watching him round the back door and did not
follow me till I had the axe. As for the out boys,
who were working with Fanny in the native house, they
thought it a very bad business, and made no secret of
their fears.
Wednesday, 6th.—I have no account to give of my
stewardship these days, and there’s a day more to account
for than mere arithmetic would tell you. For we have
had two Monday Fourths, to bring us at last on the right
side of the meridian, having hitherto been an exception
in the world and kept our private date. Business has
filled my hours sans intermission.
Tuesday, 12th.—I am doing no work and my mind is
in abeyance. Fanny and Belle are sewing-machining in
the next room; I have been pulling down their hair, and
Fanny has been kicking me, and now I am driven out.
Austin I have been chasing about the verandah; now he
has gone to his lessons, and I make believe to write to
you in despair. But there is nothing in my mind; I
swim in mere vacancy, my head is like a rotten nut; I
shall soon have to begin to work again or I shall carry
away some part of the machinery. I have got your
insufficient letter, for which I scorn to thank you. I have
had no review by Gosse, none by Birrell; another time,
if I have a letter in the Times, you might send me the
text as well; also please send me a cricket bat and a
cake, and when I come home for the holidays, I should
like to have a pony.—I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Jacob Tonson.
P.S.—I am quite well; I hope you are quite well.
The world is too much with us, and my mother bids me
bind my hair and lace my bodice blue.
To Charles Baxter
Vailima Plantation, Upolu,
Samoan Islands, 18th July 1892.
MY DEAR CHARLES,— ... I have been now for some
time contending with powers and principalities, and I have
never once seen one of my own letters to the Times. So
when you see something in the papers that you think
might interest the exiles of Upolu, do not think twice,
out with your saxpence, and send it flying to Vailima.
Of what you say of the past, eh, man, it was a queer time,
and awful miserable, but there’s no sense in denying it
was awful fun. Do you mind the youth in highland garb
and the tableful of coppers? Do you mind the SIGNAL
of Waterloo Place?—Hey, how the blood stands to the
heart at such a memory!—Hae ye the notes o’t? Gie’s
them.—Gude’s sake, man, gie’s the notes o’t; I mind ye
made a tüne o’t an’ played it on your pinanny; gie’s the
notes. Dear Lord, that past.
Glad to hear Henley’s prospects are fair: his new
volume is the work of a real poet. He is one of those who
can make a noise of his own with words, and in whom
experience strikes an individual note. There is perhaps
no more genuine poet living, bar the Big Guns. In case
I cannot overtake an acknowledgment to himself by this
mail, please let him hear of my pleasure and admiration.
How poorly Kipling compares! He is all smart journalism
and cleverness: it is all bright and shallow and limpid,
like a business paper—a good one, s’entend; but there is
no blot of heart’s blood and the Old Night: there are no
harmonics, there is scarce harmony to his music; and in
Henley—all of these; a touch, a sense within sense, a
sound outside the sound, the shadow of the inscrutable,
eloquent beyond all definition. The First London Voluntary
knocked me wholly.—Ever yours affectionately, my
dear Charles,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Kind memories to your father and all friends.
To W. E. Henley
Vailima Plantation, Upolu, Samoa,
August 1st, 1892.
MY DEAR HENLEY,—It is impossible to let your new
volume pass in silence. I have not received the same
thrill of poetry since G. M.’s Joy of Earth volume and
Love in a Valley; and I do not know that even that was
so intimate and deep. Again and again, I take the book
down, and read, and my blood is fired as it used to be in
youth. Andante con moto in the Voluntaries, and the
thing about the trees at night (No. XXIV. I think) are up
to date my favourites. I did not guess you were so great
a magician; these are new tunes, this is an undertone
of the true Apollo; these are not verse, they are poetry—inventions,
creations, in language. I thank you for the
joy you have given me, and remain your old friend and
present huge admirer,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
The hand is really the hand of Esau, but under a course
of threatened scrivener’s cramp.
For the next edition of the Book of Verses, pray accept
an emendation. Last three lines of Echoes No. XLIV.
read—
“But life in act? How should the grave
Be victor over these,
Mother, a mother of men?”
|
The two vocatives scatter the effect of this inimitable
close. If you insist on the longer line, equip “grave”
with an epithet.
R. L. S.
To E. L. Burlingame
Accompanying the MS. of the article giving extracts from the
record kept by Robert Stevenson the elder of the trip on which Sir
Walter Scott sailed in his company on board the Northern Lights
yacht: printed in Scribner’s Magazine, 1893.
Vailima, Upolu, August 1st, ’92.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—Herewith My Grandfather. I
have had rather a bad time suppressing the old gentleman,
who was really in a very garrulous stage; as for
getting him in order, I could do but little towards that;
however, there are one or two points of interest which
may justify us in printing. The swinging of his stick and
not knowing the sailor of Coruiskin, in particular, and
the account of how he wrote the lives in the Bell Book
particularly please me. I hope my own little introduction
is not egoistic; or rather I do not care if it is. It was
that old gentleman’s blood that brought me to Samoa.
By the by, vols. vii., viii., and ix. of Adams’s History
have never come to hand; no more have the dictionaries.
Please send me Stonehenge on the Horse, Stories and
Interludes by Barry Pain, and Edinburgh Sketches and
Memoirs by David Masson. The Wrecker has turned up.
So far as I have seen, it is very satisfactory, but on pp.
548, 549, there has been a devil of a miscarriage. The
two Latin quotations instead of following each other being
separated (doubtless for printing considerations) by a
line of prose. My compliments to the printers; there is
doubtless such a thing as good printing, but there is such
a thing as good sense.
The sequel to Kidnapped, David Balfour by name, is
about three-quarters done and gone to press for serial
publication. By what I can find out it ought to be through
hand with that and ready for volume form early next
spring.—Yours very sincerely,
R. L. S.
To Andrew Lang
Mr. Andrew Lang had been supplying Stevenson with some
books and historical references for his proposed novel The Young
Chevalier.
[Vailima, August 1892.]
MY DEAR LANG,—I knew you would prove a trusty
purveyor. The books you have sent are admirable. I got
the name of my hero out of Brown—Blair of Balmyle—Francie
Blair. But whether to call the story Blair of
Balmyle, or whether to call it The Young Chevalier, I have
not yet decided. The admirable Cameronian tract—perhaps
you will think this a cheat—is to be boned into
David Balfour, where it will fit better, and really furnishes
me with a desired foothold over a boggy place.
Later; no, it won’t go in, and I fear I must give up
“the idolatrous occupant upon the throne,” a phrase
that overjoyed me beyond expression. I am in a deuce
of a flutter with politics, which I hate, and in which I
certainly do not shine; but a fellow cannot stand aside
and look on at such an exhibition as our government.
’Tain’t decent; no gent can hold a candle to it. But it’s
a grind to be interrupted by midnight messengers and
pass your days writing proclamations (which are never
proclaimed) and petitions (which ain’t petited) and letters
to the Times, which it makes my jaw yawn to re-read,
and all your time have your heart with David Balfour;
he has just left Glasgow this morning for Edinburgh, James
More has escaped from the castle; it is far more real to me
than the Behring Sea or the Baring brothers either—he
got the news of James More’s escape from the Lord Advocate,
and started off straight to comfort Catriona. You
don’t know her; she’s James More’s daughter, and a
respectable young wumman; the Miss Grants think so—the
Lord Advocate’s daughters—so there can’t be anything
really wrong. Pretty soon we all go to Holland,
and be hanged; thence to Dunkirk, and be damned;
and the tale concludes in Paris, and be Poll-parrotted.
This is the last authentic news. You are not a real hard-working
novelist; not a practical novelist; so you don’t
know the temptation to let your characters maunder.
Dumas did it, and lived. But it is not war; it ain’t
sportsmanlike, and I have to be stopping their chatter
all the time. Brown’s appendix is great reading.
My only grief is that I can’t
Use the idolatrous occupant.
|
Yours ever,
R. L. S.
Blessing and praising you for a useful (though idolatrous)
occupant of Kensington.
To Miss Adelaide Boodle
Samoa and the Samoans for children, continued after an eight
months’ pause.
Vailima Plantation, Samoan Islands,
August 14th, 1892.
MY DEAR MISS BOODLE,—The lean man is exceedingly
ashamed of himself, and offers his apologies to the little
girls in the cellar just above. If they will be so good as
to knock three times upon the floor, he will hear it on the
other side of his floor, and will understand that he is
forgiven. I believe I got you and the children—or rather
left you and the children—still on the road to the lean
man’s house. When you get up there a great part of the
forest has been cleared away. It comes back again pretty
quick, though not quite so high; but everywhere, except
where the weeders have been kept busy, young trees have
sprouted up, and the cattle and the horses cannot be seen
as they feed. In this clearing there are two or three
houses scattered about, and between the two biggest I
think the little girls in the cellar would first notice a sort
of thing like a gridiron on legs made of logs and wood.
Sometimes it has a flag flying on it made of rags of old
clothes. It is a fort (so I am told) built by the person
here who would be much the most interesting to the girls
in the cellar. This is a young gentleman of eleven years
of age answering to the name of Austin. It was after reading
a book about the Red Indians that he thought it more
prudent to create this place of strength. As the Red
Indians are in North America, and this fort seems to me
a very useless kind of building, I am anxious to hope that
the two may never be brought together. When Austin is
not engaged in building forts, nor on his lessons, which
are just as annoying to him as other children’s lessons are
to them, he walks sometimes in the bush, and if anybody
is with him, talks all the time. When he is alone I don’t
think he says anything, and I dare say he feels very lonely
and frightened, just as the lean man does, at the queer
noises and the endless lines of the trees. He finds the
strangest kinds of seeds, some of them bright coloured
like lollipops, or really like precious stones; some of them
in odd cases like tobacco-pouches. He finds and collects
all kinds of little shells with which the whole ground is
scattered, and which, though they are the shells of land
animals like our snails, are nearly of as many shapes and
colours as the shells on our sea-beaches. In the streams
that come running down out of the mountains, and which
are all as clear and bright as mirror glass, he sees eels
and little bright fish that sometimes jump together out
of the surface of the brook in a little knot of silver, and
fresh-water prawns which lie close under the stones, and
can be seen looking up at him with eyes of the colour of
a jewel. He sees all kinds of beautiful birds, some of them
blue and white, some of them blue and white and red,
and some of them coloured like our pigeons at home, and
these last the little girls in the cellar may like to know live
almost entirely on nutmegs as they fall ripe off the trees.
Another little bird he may sometimes see, as the lean man
saw him only this morning, a little fellow not so big as a
man’s hand, exquisitely neat, of a pretty bronze black like
ladies’ shoes, and who sticks up behind him (much as a
peacock does) his little tail shaped and fluted like a scallop
shell.
Here are a lot of curious and interesting things that
Austin sees round him every day; and when I was a
child at home in the old country I used to play and pretend
to myself that I saw things of the same kind. That
the rooms were full of orange and nutmeg trees, and the
cold town gardens outside the windows were alive with
parrots and with lions. What do the little girls in the
cellar think that Austin does? He makes believe just
the other way: he pretends that the strange great trees
with their broad leaves and slab-sided roots are European
oaks; and the places on the road up (where you and I
and the little girls in the cellar have already gone) he
calls by old-fashioned, far-away European names, just as
if you were to call the cellar stair and the corner of the
next street—if you could only manage to pronounce the
names—Upolu and Savaii. And so it is with all of us,
with Austin and the lean man and the little girls in the
cellar; wherever we are it is but a stage on the way to
somewhere else, and whatever we do, however well we
do it, it is only a preparation to do something else that
shall be different.
But you must not suppose that Austin does nothing
but build forts and walk among the woods and swim in
the rivers. On the contrary, he is sometimes a very busy
and useful fellow; and I think the little girls in the
cellar would have admired him very nearly as much as
he admired himself if they had seen him setting off on
horseback with his hand on his hip and his pockets full
of letters and orders, at the head of quite a procession of
huge white cart-horses with pack-saddles, and big brown
native men with nothing on but gaudy kilts. Mighty
well he managed all his commissions; and those who saw
him ordering and eating his single-handed luncheon in
the queer little Chinese restaurant on the beach declare
he looked as if the place, and the town, and the whole
archipelago belonged to him. But I am not going to let
you suppose that this great gentleman at the head of all
his horses and his men, like the King of France in the
old rhyme, would be thought much of a dandy on the
streets of London. On the contrary, if he could be seen
there with his dirty white cap, and his faded purple shirt,
and his little brown breeks that do not reach his knees,
and the bare shanks below, and the bare feet stuck in
the stirrup leathers, for he is not quite long enough to
reach the irons, I am afraid the little boys and girls in your
part of the town might feel very much inclined to give
him a penny in charity. So you see that a very, very big
man in one place might seem very small potatoes in
another, just as the king’s palace here (of which I told
you in my last) would be thought rather a poor place of
residence by a Surrey gipsy. And if you come to that,
even the lean man himself, who is no end of an important
person, if he were picked up from the chair where he is
now sitting, and slung down, feet foremost, in the neighbourhood
of Charing Cross, would probably have to escape
into the nearest shop, or take the consequences of being
mobbed. And the ladies of his family, who are very
pretty ladies, and think themselves uncommonly well-dressed
for Samoa, would (if the same thing were done
to them) be extremely glad to get into a cab.
I write to you by the hands of another, because I am
threatened again with scrivener’s cramp. My health is
beyond reproach; I wish I could say as much for my
wife’s, which is far from the thing. Give us some news
of yours, and even when none of us write, do not suppose
for a moment that we are forgetful of our old gamekeeper.
Our prettiest walk, an alley of really beautiful green
sward which leads through Fanny’s garden to the river
and the bridge and the beginning of the high woods on
the mountain-side, where the Tapu a fafine (or spirit of
the land) has her dwelling, and the work-boys fear to
go alone, is called by a name that I think our gamekeeper
has heard before—Adelaide Road.
With much love from all of us to yourself, and all
good wishes for your future, and the future of the children
in the cellar, believe me your affectionate friend,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Sidney Colvin
Vailima [August 1892].
MY DEAR COLVIN,—You will have no letter at all this
month and it is really not my fault. I have been saving
my hand as much as possible for Davy Balfour; only
this morning I was getting on first rate with him, when
about half-past nine there came a prick in the middle
of the ball of my thumb, and I had to take to the left
hand and two words a minute. I fear I slightly exaggerate
the speed of my left hand; about a word and a
half in the minute—which is dispiriting to the last degree.
Your last letter with the four excellent reviews and the
good news about The Wrecker was particularly welcome.
I have already written to Charles Baxter about the volume
form appearance of The Beach of Falesá. In spite of bad
thumbs and other interruptions I hope to send to Baxter
by this mail the whole first part (a good deal more than
half) of David Balfour ready for press. This is pretty
satisfactory, and I think ought to put us beyond the
reach of financial catastrophe for the year.
A cousin of mine, Graham Balfour, arrived along with
your last. It was rather a lark. Fanny, Belle and I stayed
down at the hotel two nights expecting the steamer, and
we had seven horses down daily for the party and the
baggage. These were on one occasion bossed by Austin,
age eleven. “I’m afraid I cannot do that now,” said he
in answer to some communication, “as I am taking charge
of the men here.” In the course of the forenoon he took
“his” men to get their lunch, and had his own by himself
at the Chinese restaurant. What a day for a boy.
The steamer came in at last on Saturday morning after
breakfast. We three were out at the place of anchorage
in the hotel boat as she came up, spotting rather anxiously
for our guest, whom none of us had ever seen. We chose
out some rather awful cads and tried to make up our
mind to them; they were the least offensive yet observed
among an awful crew of cabin passengers; but when the
Simon Pure appeared at last upon the scene he was as
nice a young fellow as you would want. Followed a time
of giddy glory—one crowded hour of glorious life—when
I figured about the deck with attendant shemales in the
character of the local celebrity, was introduced to the
least unpresentable of the ruffians on board, dogged about
the deck by a diminutive Hebrew with a Kodak, the
click of which kept time to my progress like a pair of
castanets, and filled up in the Captain’s room on iced
champagne at 8.30 of God’s morning. The Captain in
question, Cap. Morse, is a great South Sea character, like
the side of a house and the green-room of a music-hall,
but with all the saving qualities of the seaman. The
celebrity was a great success with this untutored observer.
He was kind enough to announce that he expected (rather
with awe) a much more “thoughtful” person; and I
think I pleased him much with my parting salutation,
“Well, Captain, I suppose you and I are the two most
notorious men in the Pacific.” I think it will enable you
to see the Captain if I tell you that he recited to us in
cold blood the words of a new comic song; doubtless a
tribute to my literary character. I had often heard of
Captain Morse and always had detested all that I was
told, and detested the man in confidence, just as you are
doing; but really he has a wonderful charm of strength,
loyalty, and simplicity. The whole celebrity business was
particularly characteristic; the Captain has certainly
never read a word of mine; and as for the Jew with the
Kodak, he had never heard of me till he came on board.
There was a third admirer who sent messages in to the
Captain’s cabin asking if the Lion would accept a gift
of Webster’s Unabridged. I went out to him and signified
a manly willingness to accept a gift of anything. He
stood and bowed before me, his eyes danced with excitement.
“Mr. Stevenson,” he said and his voice trembled,
“your name is very well known to me. I have been in
the publishing line in Canada and I have handled many
of your works for the trade.” “Come,” I said, “here’s
genuine appreciation.”
From this gaudy scene we descended into the hotel
boat with our new second cousin, got to horse and returned
to Vailima, passing shot of Kodak once more on
the Nulivae bridge, where the little Jew was posted with
his little Jew wife, each about three feet six in stature
and as vulgar as a lodging house clock.
We were just writing this when another passenger
from the ship arrived up here at Vailima. This is a nice
quiet simple blue-eyed little boy of Pennsylvania Quaker
folk. Threatened with consumption of my sort, he has
been sent here by his doctor on the strength of my case.
I am sure if the case be really parallel he could not have
been better done by. As we had a roast pig for dinner
we kept him for that meal; and the rain coming on just
when the moon should have risen kept him again for
the night. So you see it is now to-morrow.
Graham Balfour the new cousin and Lloyd are away
with Clark the Missionary on a school inspecting malaga,
really perhaps the prettiest little bit of opera in real life
that can be seen, and made all the prettier by the actors
being children. I have come to a collapse this morning
on D.B.: wrote a chapter one way, half re-copied it in
another, and now stand halting between the two like
Buridan’s donkey. These sorts of cruces always are to
me the most insoluble, and I should not wonder if D.B.
stuck there for a week or two. This is a bother, for I understand
McClure talks of beginning serial publication in
December. If this could be managed, what with D.B.,
the apparent success of The Wrecker, Falesá, and some
little pickings from Across the Plains—not to mention,
as quite hopeless, The History of Samoa—this should be
rather a profitable year, as it must be owned it has been
rather a busy one. The trouble is, if I miss the December
publication, it may take the devil and all of a time to
start another syndicate. I am really tempted to curse
my conscientiousness. If I hadn’t recopied Davie he
would now be done and dead and buried; and here I am
stuck about the middle, with an immediate publication
threatened and the fear before me of having after all to
scamp the essential business of the end. At the same
time, though I love my Davy, I am a little anxious to
get on again on The Young Chevalier. I have in nearly
all my works been trying one racket: to get out the facts
of life as clean and naked and sharp as I could manage
it. In this other book I want to try and megilp them
together in an atmosphere of sentiment, and I wonder
whether twenty-five years of life spent in trying this
one thing will not make it impossible for me to succeed
in the other. However it is the only way to attempt a
love story. You can’t tell any of the facts, and the only
chance is to paint an atmosphere.
It is a very warm morning—the parrot is asleep on
the door (she heard her name, and immediately awakened)—and
my brains are completely addled by having come
to grief over Davy.
Hurray! a subject discovered! The parrot is a little
white cockatoo of the small variety. It belongs to Belle,
whom it guards like a watch dog. It chanced that when
she was sick some months ago I came over and administered
some medicine. Unnecessary to say Belle bleated,
whereupon the parrot bounded upon me and buried his
neb in my backside. From that day on the little wretch
attacked me on every possible occasion, usually from the
rear, though she would also follow me along the verandah
and as I went downstairs attack my face. This was far
from funny. I am a person of average courage, but I
don’t think I was ever more cordially afraid of anything
than of this miserable atomy, and the deuce of it was
that I could not but admire her appalling courage and
there was no means of punishing such a thread-paper
creature without destroying it entirely. Act II. On
Graham’s arrival I gave him my room and came out to
Lloyd’s in the lower floor of Belle’s—I beg your pardon—the
parrot’s—house. The first morning I was to wake
Belle early so that breakfast should be seen to for our
guest. It was a mighty pretty dawn, the birds were
singing extraordinary strong, all was peace, and there
was the damned parrot hanging to the knob of Belle’s
door. Courage, my heart! On I went and Cockie buried
her bill in the joint of my thumb. I believe that Job
would have killed that bird; but I was more happily
inspired—I caught it up and flung it over the verandah
as far as I could throw. I must say it was violently done,
and I looked with some anxiety to see in what state of
preservation it would alight. Down it came however on
its two feet, uttered a few oaths in a very modified tone
of voice, and set forth on the return journey to its mansion.
Its wings being cut and its gait in walking having
been a circumstance apparently not thoroughly calculated
by its maker, it took about twenty-five minutes
to get home again. Now here is this remarkable point—that
bird has never bitten me since. When I have early
breakfast she and the cat come down and join me, and
she sits on the back of my chair. When I am at work
with the door shut she sits outside and demolishes the
door with that same beak which was so recently reddened
with my heart’s blood—and in the evening she does her
business all over my clothes in the most friendly manner
in the world. I ought to add a word about the parrot
and the cat. Three cats were brought by Belle from
Sydney. This one alone remains faithful and domestic.
One of the funniest things I have ever seen was Polly
and Maud over a piece of bacon. Polly stood on one
leg, held the bacon in the other, regarded Maudie with
a secret and sinister look and very slowly and quietly—far
too quietly for the word I have to use—gnashed her
bill at her. Maudie came up quite close; there she stuck—she
was afraid to come nearer, to go away she was
ashamed; and she assisted at the final and very deliberate
consumption of the bacon, making about as poor a
figure as a cat can make.
Next day.—Date totally unknown, or rather it is now
known but is reserved because it would certainly prove
inconsistent with dates previously given. I went down
about two o’clock in company with a couple of chance
visitors to Apia. It was smoking hot, not a sign of any
wind and the sun scorching your face. I found the great
Haggard in hourly expectation of Lady Jersey, surrounded
by crowds of very indifferent assistants, and I must
honestly say—the only time I ever saw him so—cross.
He directed my attention to all the new paint, his own
handiwork he said, and made me visit the bathroom which
he has just fixed up. I think I never saw a man more
miserable and happy at the same time. Had some hock
and a seltzer, went down town, met Fanny and Belle,
and so home in time for a magnificent dinner of
prawns and an eel cooked in oil, both from our own
river.
This morning the overseer—the new overseer Mr.
Austin Strong—went down in charge of the pack-horses
and a squad of men, himself riding a white horse with
extreme dignity and what seemed to onlookers a perhaps
somewhat theatrical air of command. He returned triumphantly,
all his commissions apparently executed with
success, bringing us a mail—not your mail, Colonial ways—and
the news of Lady Jersey’s arrival and reception
among flying flags and banging guns.
As soon as I had concluded my flattering description
of Polly she bit one of my toes to the blood. But put
not your trust in shemales, though to say the truth she
looks more like a Russian colonel.
Aug. 15th.—On the Saturday night Fanny and I went
down to Haggard’s to dine and be introduced to Lady
Jersey. She is there with her daughter Lady Margaret
and her brother Captain Leigh, a very nice kind of glass-in-his-eye
kind of fellow. It is to be presumed I made a
good impression; for the meeting has had a most extraordinary
sequel. Fanny and I slept in Haggard’s billiard
room, which happens to be Lloyd’s bungalow. In the
morning she and I breakfasted in the back parts with
Haggard and Captain Leigh, and it was then arranged
that the Captain should go with us to Malie on the Tuesday
under a false name; so that Government House at
Sydney might by no possibility be connected with a
rebel camp. On Sunday afternoon up comes Haggard
in a state of huge excitement: Lady J. insists on going
too, in the character of my cousin; I write her a letter
under the name of Miss Amelia Balfour, proposing the
excursion; and this morning up comes a copy of verses
from Amelia. I wrote to Mataafa announcing that I
should bring two cousins instead of one, that the second
was a lady, unused to Samoan manners, and it would
be a good thing if she could sleep in another house with
Ralala. Sent a copy of this to Amelia, and at the same
time made all arrangements, dating my letter 1745. We
shall go on ahead on the Malie Road; she is to follow
with Haggard and Captain Leigh, and overtake us at
the ford of the Gasi-gasi, whence Haggard will return and
the rest of us pursue our way to the rebeldom.
This lark is certainly huge. It is all nonsense that
it can be concealed; Miss Amelia Balfour will be at once
identified with the Queen of Sydney, as they call her;
and I would not in the least wonder if the visit proved
the signal of war. With this I have no concern, and the
thing wholly suits my book and fits my predilections for
Samoa. What a pity the mail leaves, and I must leave
this adventure to be continued in our next! But I need
scarcely say that all this is deadly private—I expect it
all to come out, not without explosion; only it must not
be through me or you. We had a visit yesterday from
a person by the name of Count Nerli, who is said to be
a good painter. Altogether the aristocracy clusters thick
about us. In which radiant light, as the mail must now
be really put up, I leave myself until next month,—Yours
ever,
R. L. S.
To the Countess of Jersey
Following up the last letter, Stevenson here tells the story of
the visit paid to Apia by the Countess of Jersey, who had come
over from Sydney with her brother Captain Leigh and her young
daughter Lady Margaret Villiers. “A warm friendship,” writes
Lady Jersey, “was the immediate result; we constantly met,
either in the hospitable abode of our host Mr. Bazett Haggard, or
in Mr. Stevenson’s delightful mountain home, and passed many
happy hours in riding, walking, and conversation.” The previous
letter has shown how it was arranged that the party should pay a
visit of curiosity to the “rebel king,” or more properly the rival
claimant to the kingly power, Mataafa, in his camp at Malie, and
how Stevenson at once treated the adventure as a chapter out of
a Waverley novel. “The wife of the new Governor of New South
Wales,” writes Lady Jersey on her part, “could not pay such a
visit in her own name, so Mr. Stevenson adopted me as his cousin,
‘Amelia Balfour.’ This transparent disguise was congenial to his
romantic instincts, and he writes concerning the arrangements
made for the expedition, carefully dating his letter ‘Aug. 14, 1745.’”
August 14, 1745.
To Miss Amelia Balfour—my dear cousin,—We
are going an expedition to leeward on Tuesday morning.
If a lady were perhaps to be encountered on horseback—say,
towards the Gasi-gasi river—about six A.M., I
think we should have an episode somewhat after the
style of the ’45. What a misfortune, my dear cousin,
that you should have arrived while your cousin Graham
was occupying my only guest-chamber—for Osterley Park
is not so large in Samoa as it was at home—but happily
our friend Haggard has found a corner for you!
The King over the Water—the Gasi-gasi water—will
be pleased to see the clan of Balfour mustering so thick
around his standard.
I have (one serious word) been so lucky as to get a
really secret interpreter, so all is for the best in our little
adventure into the Waverley Novels.—I am, your affectionate
cousin,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Observe the stealth with which I have blotted my
signature, but we must be political à outrance.
To the Countess of Jersey
MY DEAR COUSIN,—I send for your information a copy of
my last letter to the gentleman in question. ’Tis thought
more wise, in consideration of the difficulty and peril of
the enterprise, that we should leave the town in the afternoon,
and by several detachments. If you would start
for a ride with the Master of Haggard and Captain Lockhart
of Lee, say at three o’clock of the afternoon, you
would make some rencounters by the wayside which
might be agreeable to your political opinions. All present
will be staunch.
The Master of Haggard might extend his ride a little,
and return through the marsh and by the nuns’ house
(I trust that has the proper flavour), so as a little to
diminish the effect of separation.—I remain your affectionate
cousin to command,
O Tusitala.
P.S.—It is to be thought this present year of grace
will be historical.
To Sidney Colvin
This letter tells without preface the story of the expedition
planned in the preceding.
[Vailima, August 1892.]
MY DEAR COLVIN,—This is Friday night, the (I believe)
18th or 20th August or September. I shall probably
regret to-morrow having written you with my own hand
like the Apostle Paul. But I am alone over here in the
workman’s house, where I and Belle and Lloyd and Austin
are pigging; the rest are at cards in the main residence.
I have not joined them because “belly belong me” has
been kicking up, and I have just taken 15 drops of laudanum.
On Tuesday, the party set out—self in white cap,
velvet coat, cords and yellow half boots, Belle in a white
kind of suit and white cap to match mine, Lloyd in white
clothes and long yellow boots and a straw hat, Graham
in khakis and gaiters, Henry (my old overseer) in blue
coat and black kilt, and the great Lafaele with a big
ship-bag on his saddle-bow. We left the mail at the P.O.,
had lunch at the hotel, and about 1.50 set out westward
to the place of tryst. This was by a little shrunken brook
in a deep channel of mud, on the far side of which, in a
thicket of low trees, all full of moths of shadow and butterflies
of sun, we lay down to await her ladyship. Whisky
and water, then a sketch of the encampment for which
we all posed to Belle, passed off the time until 3.30. Then
I could hold on no longer. 30 minutes late. Had the
secret oozed out? Were they arrested? I got my horse,
crossed the brook again, and rode hard back to the Vaea
cross roads, whence I was aware of white clothes glancing
in the other long straight radius of the quadrant. I turned
at once to return to the place of tryst; but D. overtook
me, and almost bore me down, shouting “Ride, ride!”
like a hero in a ballad. Lady Margaret and he were only
come to shew the place; they returned, and the rest of
our party, reinforced by Captain Leigh and Lady Jersey,
set on for Malie. The delay was due to D.’s infinite
precautions, leading them up lanes, by back ways, and
then down again to the beach road a hundred yards
further on.
It was agreed that Lady Jersey existed no more; she
was now my cousin Amelia Balfour. That relative and
I headed the march; she is a charming woman, all of us
like her extremely after trial on this somewhat rude and
absurd excursion. And we Amelia’d or Miss Balfour’d
her with great but intermittent fidelity. When we came
to the last village, I sent Henry on ahead to warn the
King of our approach and amend his discretion, if that
might be. As he left I heard the villagers asking which
was the great lady? And a little further, at the borders
of Malie itself, we found the guard making a music of
bugles and conches. Then I knew the game was up and
the secret out. A considerable guard of honour, mostly
children, accompanied us; but, for our good fortune, we
had been looked for earlier, and the crowd was gone.
Dinner at the king’s; he asked me to say grace, I
could think of none—never could; Graham suggested
Benedictus Benedicat, at which I leaped. We were nearly
done, when old Popo inflicted the Atua howl (of which
you have heard already) right at Lady Jersey’s shoulder.
She started in fine style.—“There,” I said, “we have
been giving you a chapter of Scott, but this goes beyond
the Waverley Novels.” After dinner, kava. Lady J.
was served before me, and the king drank last; it was
the least formal kava I ever saw in that house,—no names
called, no show of ceremony. All my ladies are well
trained, and when Belle drained her bowl, the King was
pleased to clap his hands. Then he and I must retire
for our private interview, to another house. He gave
me his own staff and made me pass before him; and in
the interview, which was long and delicate, he twice
called me afioga. Ah, that leaves you cold, but I am
Samoan enough to have been moved. Susuga is my
accepted rank; to be called afioga—Heavens! what an
advance—and it leaves Europe cold. But it staggered
my Henry. The first time it was complicated “lana
susuga ma lana afioga—his excellency and his majesty”
the next time plain Majesty. Henry then begged to
interrupt the interview and tell who he was—he is a
small family chief in Savaii, not very small—“I do not
wish the king,” says he, “to think me a boy from Apia.”
On our return to the palace, we separated. I had asked
for the ladies to sleep alone—that was understood; but
that Tusitala—his afioga Tusitala—should go out with
the other young men, and not sleep with the highborn
females of his family—was a doctrine received with difficulty.
Lloyd and I had one screen, Graham and Leigh
another, and we slept well.
In the morning I was first abroad before dawn; not
very long, already there was a stir of birds. A little after,
I heard singing from the King’s chapel—exceeding good—and
went across in the hour when the east is yellow
and the morning bank is breaking up, to hear it nearer.
All about the chapel, the guards were posted, and all
saluted Tusitala. I could not refrain from smiling: “So
there is a place too,” I thought, “where sentinels salute
me.” Mine has been a queer life.
Breakfast was rather a protracted business. And that
was scarce over when we were called to the great house
(now finished—recall your earlier letters) to see a royal
kava. This function is of rare use; I know grown Samoans
who have never witnessed it. It is, besides, as you are to
hear, a piece of prehistoric history, crystallised in figures,
and the facts largely forgotten; an acted hieroglyph.
The house is really splendid; in the rafters in the midst,
two carved and coloured model birds are posted; the
only thing of the sort I have ever remarked in Samoa,
the Samoans being literal observers of the second commandment.
At one side of the egg our party sat. a=Mataafa,
b = Lady J., c = Belle, d = Tusitala, e =Graham,
f = Lloyd, g = Captain Leigh, h = Henry, i = Popo. The x’s
round are the high chiefs, each man in his historical
position. One side of the house is set apart for the king
alone; we were allowed there as his guests and Henry
as our interpreter. It was a huge trial to the lad, when
a speech was made to me which he must translate, and
I made a speech in answer which he had to orate, full-breathed,
to that big circle; he blushed through his dark
skin, but looked and acted like a gentleman and a young
fellow of sense; then the kava came to the king; he
poured one drop in libation, drank another, and flung
the remainder outside the house behind him. Next came
the turn of the old shapeless stone marked T. It stands
for one of the king’s titles, Tamasoalii; Mataafa is Tamasoalii
this day, but cannot drink for it; and the stone
must first be washed with water, and then have the bowl
emptied on it. Then—the order I cannot recall—came
the turn of y and z, two orators of the name of Malietoa;
the first took his kava down plain, like an ordinary man;
the second must be packed to bed under a big sheet of
tapa, and be massaged by anxious assistants and rise on
his elbow groaning to drink his cup. W., a great hereditary
war man, came next; five times the cup-bearers
marched up and down the house and passed the cup on,
five times it was filled and the general’s name and titles
heralded at the bowl, and five times he refused it (after
examination) as too small. It is said this commemorates
a time when Malietoa at the head of his army suffered
much for want of supplies. Then this same military gentleman
must drink five cups, one from each of the great
names: all which took a precious long time. He acted
very well, haughtily and in a society tone outlining the
part. The difference was marked when he subsequently
made a speech in his own character as a plain God-fearing
chief. A few more high chiefs, then Tusitala; one more,
and then Lady Jersey; one more, and then Captain Leigh,
and so on with the rest of our party—Henry of course
excepted. You see in public, Lady Jersey followed me—just
so far was the secret kept.
Then we came home; Belle, Graham, and Lloyd to
the Chinaman’s, I with Lady Jersey, to lunch; so, severally
home. Thursday I have forgotten: Saturday, I began
again on Davie; on Sunday, the Jersey party came up
to call and carried me to dinner. As I came out, to ride
home, the search-lights of the Curaçoa were lightening on
the horizon from many miles away, and next morning
she came in. Tuesday was huge fun: a reception at
Haggard’s. All our party dined there; Lloyd and I, in
the absence of Haggard and Leigh, had to play aide-de-camp
and host for about twenty minutes, and I presented
the population of Apia at random but (luck helping) without
one mistake. Wednesday we had two middies to
lunch. Thursday we had Eeles and Hoskyn (lieutenant
and doctor—very, very nice fellows—simple, good and
not the least dull) to dinner. Saturday, Graham and I
lunched on board; Graham, Belle, Lloyd dined at the
G.’s; and Austin and the whole of our servants went with
them to an evening entertainment; the more bold returning
by lantern-light. Yesterday, Sunday, Belle and I were
off by about half past eight, left our horses at a public
house, and went on board the Curaçoa, in the wardroom
skiff; were entertained in the wardroom; thence on deck
to the service, which was a great treat; three fiddles
and a harmonium and excellent choir, and the great
ship’s company joining: on shore in Haggard’s big
boat to lunch with the party. Thence all together
to Vailima, where we read aloud a Ouida Romance
we have been secretly writing; in which Haggard
was the hero, and each one of the authors had to
draw a portrait of him or herself in a Ouida light.
Leigh, Lady J., Fanny, R. L. S., Belle and Graham
were the authors.
In the midst of this gay life, I have finally recopied
two chapters, and drafted for the first time three of
Davie Balfour. But it is not a life that would continue
to suit me, and if I have not continued to write to you,
you will scarce wonder. And to-day we all go down again
to dinner, and to-morrow they all come up to lunch! The
world is too much with us. But it now nears an end,
to-day already the Curaçoa has sailed; and on Saturday
or Sunday Lady Jersey will follow them in the mail
steamer. I am sending you a wire by her hands as far
as Sydney, that is to say either you or Cassell, about
Falesá: I will not allow it to be called Uma in
book form, that is not the logical name of the story.
Nor can I have the marriage contract omitted; and
the thing is full of misprints abominable. In the picture,
Uma is rot; so is the old man and the negro;
but Wiltshire is splendid, and Case will do. It seems
badly illuminated, but this may be printing. How have
I seen this first number? Not through your attention,
guilty one! Lady Jersey had it, and only mentioned
it yesterday.45
I ought to say how much we all like the Jersey party.
Leigh is very amusing in his way. Lady Margaret is a
charming girl. And Lady Jersey is in all ways admirable,
so unfussy, so plucky, so very kind and gracious. My
boy Henry was enraptured with the manners of the
Tamaitai Sili (chief lady). Among our other occupations,
I did a bit of a supposed epic describing our tryst at the
ford of the Gasegase; and Belle and I made a little book
of caricatures and verses about incidents on the visit.
Tuesday.—The wild round of gaiety continues. After
I had written to you yesterday, the brain being wholly
extinct, I played piquet all morning with Graham. After
lunch down to call on the U.S. consul, hurt in a steeplechase;
thence back to the new girls’ school which Lady
J. was to open, and where my ladies met me. Lady J.
is really an orator, with a voice of gold; the rest of us
played our unremarked parts; missionaries, Haggard,
myself, a Samoan chief, holding forth in turn; myself
with (at least) a golden brevity. Thence, Fanny, Belle,
and I to town, to our billiard room in Haggard’s back
garden, where we found Lloyd and where Graham joined
us. The three men first dressed, with the ladies in a
corner; and then, to leave them a free field, we went off
to Haggard and Leigh’s quarters, whereafter all to dinner,
where our two parties, a brother of Colonel Kitchener’s,
a passing globe-trotter, and Clarke the missionary. A
very gay evening, with all sorts of chaff and mirth, and a
moonlit ride home, and to bed before 12.30. And now
to-day, we have the Jersey-Haggard troupe to lunch, and
I must pass the morning dressing ship.
Thursday, Sept. 1st.—I sit to write to you now, 7.15,
all the world in bed except myself, accounted for, and
Belle and Graham, down at Haggard’s at dinner. Not
a leaf is stirring here; but the moon overhead (now of
a good bigness) is obscured and partly revealed in a whirling
covey of thin storm-clouds. By Jove, it blows above.
From 8 till 11.15 on Tuesday, I dressed ship, and in
particular cleaned crystal, my specialty. About 11.30
the guests began to arrive before I was dressed, and
between while I had written a parody for Lloyd to sing.
Yesterday, Wednesday, I had to start out about 3 for
town, had a long interview with the head of the German
Firm about some work in my new house, got over to
Lloyd’s billiard-room about six, on the way whither I met
Fanny and Belle coming down with one Kitchener, a
brother of the Colonel’s. Dined in the billiard-room,
discovered we had forgot to order oatmeal; whereupon
in the moonlit evening, I set forth in my tropical array,
mess jacket and such, to get the oatmeal, and meet a
young fellow C.—and not a bad young fellow either, only
an idiot—as drunk as Crœsus. He wept with me, he
wept for me; he talked like a bad character in an impudently
bad farce; I could have laughed aloud to hear,
and could make you laugh by repeating, but laughter
was not uppermost.
This morning at about seven, I set off after the lost
sheep. I could have no horse; all that could be mounted—we
have one girth-sore and one dead-lame in the establishment—were
due at a picnic about 10.30. The morning
was very wet, and I set off barefoot, with my trousers
over my knees, and a macintosh. Presently I had to
take a side path in the bush; missed it; came forth in a
great oblong patch of taro solemnly surrounded by forest—no soul,
no sign, no sound—and as I stood there at a
loss, suddenly between the showers out broke the note of
a harmonium and a woman’s voice singing an air that I
know very well, but have (as usual) forgot the name of.
’Twas from a great way off, but seemed to fill the world.
It was strongly romantic, and gave me a point which
brought me, by all sorts of forest wading, to an open
space of palms. These were of all ages, but mostly at
that age when the branches arch from the ground level,
range themselves, with leaves exquisitely green. The
whole interspace was overgrown with convolvulus, purple,
yellow and white, often as deep as to my waist, in which
I floundered aimlessly. The very mountain was invisible
from here. The rain came and went; now in sunlit April
showers, now with the proper tramp and rattle of the
tropics. All this while I met no sight or sound of man,
except the voice which was now silent, and a damned
pig-fence that headed me off at every corner. Do you
know barbed wire? Think of a fence of it on rotten posts,
and you barefoot. But I crossed it at last with my heart
in my mouth and no harm done. Thence at last to C.’s.:
no C. Next place I came to was in the zone of woods.
They offered me a buggy and set a black boy to wash my
legs and feet. “Washum legs belong that fellow whiteman”
was the command. So at last I ran down my son
of a gun in the hotel, sober, and with no story to tell;
penitent, I think. As I sat and looked at him, I knew
from my inside the biggest truth in life: there is only
one thing that we cannot forgive, and that is ugliness—our
ugliness. There is no ugliness, no beauty; only
that which makes me (ipse) sicken or rejoice. And poor C.
makes me sicken. Yet, according to canons, he is not
amiss. Home, by buggy and my poor feet, up three
miles of root, boulder, gravel, and liquid mud, slipping
back at every step.
Sunday, Sept. 4th.—Hope you will be able to read a
word of the last, no joke writing by a bad lantern with
a groggy hand and your glasses mislaid. Not that the
hand is not better, as you see by the absence of the
amanuensis hitherto. Mail came Friday, and a communication
from yourself much more decent than usual, for
which I thank you. Glad the Wrecker should so hum;
but Lord, what fools these mortals be!
So far yesterday, the citation being wrung from me
by remembrance of many reviews. I have now received
all Falesá, and my admiration for that tale rises; I believe
it is in some ways my best work; I am pretty sure, at
least, I have never done anything better than Wiltshire.
Monday, 13th September 1892.—On Wednesday the
Spinsters of Apia gave a ball to a select crowd. Fanny,
Belle, Lloyd, and I rode down, met Haggard by the way
and joined company with him. Dinner with Haggard,
and thence to the ball. The Chief Justice appeared; it
was immediately remarked, and whispered from one to
another, that he and I had the only red sashes in the
room,—and they were both of the hue of blood, sir, blood.
He shook hands with myself and all the members of my
family. Then the cream came, and I found myself in
the same set of a quadrille with his honour. We dance
here in Apia a most fearful and wonderful quadrille, I
don’t know where the devil they fished it from; but it
is rackety and prancing and embraceatory beyond words;
perhaps it is best defined in Haggard’s expression of a
gambado. When I and my great enemy found ourselves
involved in this gambol, and crossing hands, and kicking
up, and being embraced almost in common by large and
quite respectable females, we—or I—tried to preserve
some rags of dignity, but not for long. The deuce of it
is that, personally, I love this man; his eye speaks to me,
I am pleased in his society. We exchanged a glance, and
then a grin; the man took me in his confidence; and
through the remainder of that prance we pranced for each
other. Hard to imagine any position more ridiculous; a
week before he had been trying to rake up evidence against
me by brow-beating and threatening a half-white interpreter;
that very morning I had been writing most
villainous attacks upon him for the Times; and we meet
and smile, and—damn it!—like each other. I do my
best to damn the man and drive him from these islands;
but the weakness endures—I love him. This is a thing
I would despise in anybody else; but he is so jolly insidious
and ingratiating! No, sir, I can’t dislike him; but if I
don’t make hay of him, it shall not be for want of trying.
Yesterday, we had two Germans and a young American
boy at lunch; and in the afternoon, Vailima was in a
state of siege; ten white people on the front verandah,
at least as many brown in the cook-house, and countless
blacks to see the black boy Arrick.
Which reminds me, Arrick was sent Friday was a
week to the German Firm with a note, and was not home
on time. Lloyd and I were going bedward, it was late
with a bright moon—ah, poor dog, you know no such
moons as these!—when home came Arrick with his head
in a white bandage and his eyes shining. He had had a
fight with other blacks, Malaita boys; many against one,
and one with a knife: “I KNICKED ’EM DOWN, three
four!” he cried; and had himself to be taken to the
doctor’s and bandaged. Next day, he could not work,
glory of battle swelled too high in his threadpaper breast;
he had made a one-stringed harp for Austin, borrowed
it, came to Fanny’s room, and sang war-songs and danced
a war dance in honour of his victory. And it appears,
by subsequent advices, that it was a serious victory
enough; four of his assailants went to hospital, and one
is thought in danger. All Vailima rejoiced at this news.
Five more chapters of David, 22 to 27, go to Baxter.
All love affair; seems pretty good to me. Will it do for
the young person? I don’t know: since the Beach, I
know nothing, except that men are fools and hypocrites,
and I know less of them than I was fond enough to fancy.
To Mrs. Charles Fairchild
[Vailima, August 1892.]
MY DEAR MRS. FAIRCHILD,—Thank you a thousand
times for your letter. You are the Angel of (the sort of)
Information (that I care about): I appoint you successor
to the newspaper press; and I beg of you, whenever you
wish to gird at the age, or think the bugs out of proportion
to the roses, or despair, or enjoy any cosmic or epochal
emotion, to sit down again and write to the Hermit of
Samoa. What do I think of it all? Well, I love the
romantic solemnity of youth; and even in this form,
although not without laughter, I have to love it still.
They are such ducks! But what are they made of? We
were just as solemn as that about atheism and the stars
and humanity; but we were all for belief anyway—we
held atheism and sociology (of which none of us, nor
indeed anybody, knew anything) for a gospel and an iron
rule of life; and it was lucky enough, or there would have
been more windows broken. What is apt to puzzle one
at first sight in the New Youth is that, with such rickety
and risky problems always at heart, they should not
plunge down a Niagara of Dissolution. But let us remember
the high practical timidity of youth. I was a
particularly brave boy—this I think of myself, looking
back—and plunged into adventures and experiments, and
ran risks that it still surprises me to recall. But, dear me,
what a fear I was in of that strange blind machinery in
the midst of which I stood; and with what a compressed
heart and what empty lungs I would touch a new crank
and await developments! I do not mean to say I do
not fear life still; I do; and that terror (for an adventurer
like myself) is still one of the chief joys of living.
But it was different indeed while I was yet girt with
the priceless robes of inexperience; then the fear was
exquisite and infinite. And so, when you see all these
little Ibsens, who seem at once so dry and so excitable,
and faint in swathes over a play (I suppose—for a wager)
that would seem to me merely tedious, smile behind your
hand, and remember the little dears are all in a blue funk.
It must be very funny, and to a spectator like yourself I
almost envy it. But never get desperate; human nature
is human nature; and the Roman Empire, since the
Romans founded it and made our European human nature
what it is, bids fair to go on and to be true to itself. These
little bodies will all grow up and become men and women,
and have heaps of fun; nay, and are having it now; and
whatever happens to the fashion of the age, it makes no
difference—there are always high and brave and amusing
lives to be lived; and a change of key, however exotic,
does not exclude melody. Even Chinamen, hard as we
find it to believe, enjoy being Chinese. And the Chinaman
stands alone to be unthinkable; natural enough, as
the representative of the only other great civilisation.
Take my people here at my doors; their life is a very good
one; it is quite thinkable, quite acceptable to us. And
the little dears will be soon skating on the other foot;
sooner or later, in each generation, the one-half of them
at least begin to remember all the material they had
rejected when first they made and nailed up their little
theory of life; and these become reactionaries or conservatives,
and the ship of man begins to fill upon the
other tack.
Here is a sermon, by your leave! It is your own fault,
you have amused and interested me so much by your
breath of the New Youth, which comes to me from so far
away, where I live up here in my mountain, and secret
messengers bring me letters from rebels, and the government
sometimes seizes them, and generally grumbles in
its beard that Stevenson should really be deported. O
my life is the more lively, never fear!
It has recently been most amusingly varied by a visit
from Lady Jersey. I took her over mysteriously (under
the pseudonym of my cousin, Miss Amelia Balfour) to visit
Mataafa, our rebel; and we had great fun, and wrote a
Ouida novel on our life here, in which every author had
to describe himself in the Ouida glamour, and of which—for
the Jerseys intend printing it—I must let you have a
copy. My wife’s chapter, and my description of myself,
should, I think, amuse you. But there were finer touches
still; as when Belle and Lady Jersey came out to brush
their teeth in front of the rebel King’s palace, and the
night guard squatted opposite on the grass and watched
the process; or when I and my interpreter, and the King
with his secretary, mysteriously disappeared to conspire.—Ever
yours sincerely,
R. L. Stevenson.
To the Children in the Cellar
This time the children in the Kilburn cellar are addressed direct,
with only a brief word at the end to their instructress.
Vailima Plantation, Samoan Islands,
September 4th, 1892.
DEAR CHILDREN IN THE CELLAR,—I told you before
something of the black boys who come here for work on
the plantations, and some of whom run away and live a
wild life in the forests of the islands. Now I want to tell
you of one who lived in the house of the lean man. Like
the rest of them here, he is a little fellow, and when he
goes about in old, battered, cheap European clothes, looks
very small and shabby. When first he came he was as
lean as a tobacco-pipe, and his smile (like that of almost
all the others) was the sort that makes you half wish to
smile yourself, and half wish to cry. However, the boys
in the kitchen took him in hand and fed him up. They
would set him down alone to table and wait upon him
till he had his fill, which was a good long time to wait;
and the first thing we noticed was that his little stomach
began to stick out like a pigeon’s breast; and then the
food got a little wider spread and he started little calves
to his legs; and last of all he began to get quite saucy
and impudent, so that we could know what sort of a fellow
he really was when he was no longer afraid of being thrashed.
He is really what you ought to call a young man, though I
suppose nobody in the whole wide world has any idea of
his age; and, as far as his behaviour goes, you can only
think of him as a big little child with a good deal of sense.
When Austin built his fort against the Indians, Arick (for
that is the black boy’s name) liked nothing so much as to
help him. And this is very funny, when you think that of
all the dangerous savages in this island Arick is one of the
most dangerous. The other day, besides, he made Austin
a musical instrument of the sort they use in his own
country, a harp with only one string. He took a stick
about three feet long, and perhaps four inches round.
The under side he hollowed out in a deep trench to serve
as sounding box; the two ends of the upper side he made
to curve upward like the ends of a canoe, and between
these he stretched the single string. He plays upon it
with a match or a little piece of stick, and sings to it
songs of his own country, of which no person here can
understand a single word, and which are very likely all
about fighting with his enemies in battle, and killing them,
and I am sorry to say cooking them in a ground oven
and eating them for supper when the fight is over.
For Arick is really what you might call a savage, though
a savage is a very different person in reality, and a very
much nicer, from what he is made to appear in little books.
He is the sort of person that everybody smiles to, or makes
faces at, or gives a smack to as he goes by; the sort of
person that all the girls on the plantation give the best
seat to, and help first, and love to decorate with flowers
and ribbons, and yet all the while are laughing at him;
the sort of person who likes best to play with Austin, and
whom Austin perhaps (when he is allowed) likes best to
play with. He is all grins and giggles, and little steps out
of dances, and little droll ways, to attract people’s attention
and set them laughing. And yet when you come to
look at him closer, you will find that his body is all covered
with scars. This was when he was a child. There was a
war, as is the way in these wild islands, between his village
and the next, much as if there were war in London between
one street and another; and all the children ran about
playing in the middle of the trouble, and I dare say took
no more notice of the war than you children in London
do of a general election. But sometimes, at general elections,
English children may get run over by processions
in the street; and it chanced that as little Arick was
running about in the bush, and very busy about his playing,
he ran into the midst of the warriors on the other side.
These speared him with a poisoned spear; and his own
people, when they had found him lying for dead, and in
order to cure him of the poison, cut him up with knives
that were probably made of fish-bones.
This is a very savage piece of child-life, and Arick, for
all his good-nature, is still a very savage person. I have
told you how the black boys sometimes run away from
the plantations, and live behind alone in the forest, building
little sheds to protect them from the rain, and sometimes
planting little gardens of food, but for the most
part living the best they can upon the nuts of the trees
and yams that they dig with their hands out of the earth.
I do not think there can be anywhere in the world people
more wretched than these runaways. They cannot return,
for they would only return to be punished. They can
never hope to see again their own land or their own people—indeed,
I do not know what they can hope, but just to
find enough yams every day to keep them from starvation.
And in the wet season of the year, which is our summer
and your winter, and the rain falls day after day far harder
and louder than the loudest thunder-plump that ever fell
in England, and the noon is sometimes so dark that the
lean man is glad to light his lamp to write by, I can think
of nothing so dreary as the state of these poor runaway
slaves in the houseless bush. You are to remember,
besides, that the people of this island hate and fear them
because they are cannibals, sit and tell tales of them about
their lamps at night in their own comfortable houses, and
are sometimes afraid to lie down to sleep if they think
there is a lurking black boy in the neighbourhood. Well
now, Arick is of their own race and language, only he is
a little more lucky because he has not run away; and how
do you think that he proposed to help them? He asked
if he might not have a gun. “What do you want with a
gun, Arick?” was asked. And he said quite simply, and
with his nice good-natured smile, that if he had a gun he
would go up into the high bush and shoot black boys as
men shoot pigeons. He said nothing about eating them,
nor do I think he really meant to. I think all he wanted
was to clear the property of vermin as gamekeepers at
home kill weasels, or housewives mice.
The other day he was sent down on an errand to the
German Firm where many of the black boys live. It was
very late when he came home on a bright moonlight night.
He had a white bandage round his head, his eyes shone,
and he could scarcely speak for excitement. It seems
some of the black boys who were his enemies at home
had attacked him, and one with a knife. By his own
account he had fought very well, but the odds were heavy;
the man with the knife had cut him both in the head and
back, he had been struck down, and if some of the black
boys of his own side had not come to the rescue, he must
certainly have been killed. I am sure no Christmas-box
could make any of you children so happy as this fight
made Arick. A great part of the next day he neglected
his work to play upon the one-stringed harp and sing songs
about his great victory. And to-day, when he is gone upon
his holiday, he has announced that he is going back to the
German Firm to have another battle and another triumph.
I do not think he will go all the same, or I should be more
uneasy, for I do not want to have my Arick killed; and
there is no doubt that if he begins to fight again, he will
be likely to go on with it very far. For I have seen him
once when he saw, or thought he saw, an enemy. It was
one of our dreadful days of rain, the sound of it like a great
waterfall or like a tempest of wind blowing in the forest;
and there came to our door two runaway black boys
seeking work. In such weather as that my enemy’s dog
(as Shakespeare says) should have had a right to shelter.
But when Arick saw these two poor rogues coming with
their empty bellies and drenched clothes, and one of them
with a stolen cutlass in his hand, through that world of
falling water, he had no thought of pity in his heart.
Crouching behind one of the pillars of the verandah, which
he held in his two hands, his mouth drew back into a
strange sort of smile, his eyes grew bigger and bigger, and his
whole face was just like the one word Murder in big capitals.
Now I have told you a great deal too much about poor
Arick’s savage nature, and now I must tell you about a
great amusement he had the other day. There came an
English ship of war in the harbour, and the officers very
good naturedly gave an entertainment of songs and dances
and a magic-lantern, to which Arick and Austin were
allowed to go. At the door of the hall there were crowds
of black boys waiting and trying to peep in, the way
children at home lie about and peep under the tent
of a circus; and you may be sure Arick was a very proud
person when he passed them all by and entered the hall
with his ticket. I wish I knew what he thought of the
whole performance; but the housekeeper of the lean man,
who sat just in front of him, tells me what seemed to
startle him the most. The first thing was when two of
the officers came out with blackened faces like Christy
minstrel boys and began to dance. Arick was sure that
they were really black and his own people, and he was
wonderfully surprised to see them dance this new European
style of dance. But the great affair was the magic-lantern.
The hall was made quite dark, which was very
little to Arick’s taste. He sat there behind the housekeeper,
nothing to be seen of him but eyes and teeth,
and his heart beating finely in his little scarred breast.
And presently there came out on the white sheet that great
bright eye of light that I am sure all you children must
have often seen. It was quite new to Arick, he had no
idea what would happen next; and in his fear and excitement,
he laid hold with his little slim black fingers like a
bird’s claws on the neck of the housekeeper in front of
him. All through the rest of the show, as one picture
followed another on the white sheet, he sat there gasping
and clutching at the housekeeper’s neck, and goodness
knows whether he were more pleased or frightened. Doubtless
it was a very fine thing to see all these bright pictures
coming out and dying away again one after another; but
doubtless it was rather alarming also, for how was it done?
And at last, when there appeared upon the screen the head
of a black woman (as it might be his own mother or sister),
and the black woman of a sudden began to roll her eyes,
the fear or the excitement, whichever it was, wrung out
of him a loud shuddering sob. And I think we all ought
to admire his courage when, after an evening spent in
looking on at such wonderful miracles, he and Austin set
out alone through the forest to the lean man’s house. It
was late at night and pitch dark when some of the party
overtook the little white boy and the big black boy marching
among the trees with their lantern. I have told you
the wood has an ill name, and all the people of the island
believe it to be full of devils; but even if you do not
believe in the devils, it is a pretty dreadful place to walk
in by the moving light of a lantern, with nothing about
you but a curious whirl of shadows and the black night
above and beyond. But Arick kept his courage up, and
I dare say Austin’s too, with a perpetual chatter, so that
the people coming after heard his voice long before they
saw the shining of the lantern.
My dear Miss Boodle,—will I be asking too much that
you should send me back my letters to the Children, or
copies, if you prefer; I have an idea that they may perhaps
help in time to make up a book on the South Seas
for children. I have addressed the Cellar so long this time
that you must take this note for yourself and excuse,
yours most sincerely,
R. L. Stevenson.
To Sidney Colvin
Thursday, 15th September [1892].
MY DEAR COLVIN,—On Tuesday, we had our young
adventurer46 ready, and Fanny, Belle, he and I set out
about three of a dark, deadly hot, and deeply unwholesome
afternoon. Belle had the lad behind her; I had a
pint of champagne in either pocket, a parcel in my hands,
and as Jack had a girth sore and I rode without a girth,
I might be said to occupy a very unstrategic position.
On the way down, a little dreary, beastly drizzle beginning
to come out of the darkness, Fanny put up an umbrella,
her horse bounded, reared, cannoned into me, cannoned
into Belle and the lad, and bolted for home. It really
might and ought to have been an A1 catastrophe; but
nothing happened beyond Fanny’s nerves being a good
deal shattered; of course, she could not tell what had
happened to us until she got her horse mastered.
Next day, Haggard went off to the Commission and
left us in charge of his house; all our people came down
in wreaths of flowers; we had a boat for them; Haggard
had a flag in the Commission boat for us; and when at
last the steamer turned up, the young adventurer was
carried on board in great style, with a new watch and
chain, and about three pound ten of tips, and five big
baskets of fruit as free-will offerings to the captain. Captain
Morse had us all to lunch; champagne flowed, so did
compliments; and I did the affable celebrity life-sized.
It made a great send-off for the young adventurer. As
the boat drew off, he was standing at the head of the
gangway, supported by three handsome ladies—one of
them a real full-blown beauty, Madame Green, the singer—and
looking very engaging himself, between smiles and
tears. Not that he cried in public. My, but we were a
tired crowd! However, it is always a blessing to get
home, and this time it was a sort of wonder to ourselves
that we got back alive. Casualties: Fanny’s back jarred,
horse incident; Belle, bad headache, tears, and champagne;
self, idiocy, champagne, fatigue; Lloyd, ditto,
ditto. As for the adventurer, I believe he will have a
delightful voyage for his little start in life. But there is
always something touching in a mite’s first launch.
Date unknown.—I am now well on with the third part
of the Débâcle.47 The two first I liked much; the second
completely knocking me; so far as it has gone, this third
part appears the ramblings of a dull man who has forgotten
what he has to say—he reminds me of an M.P. But Sedan
was really great, and I will pick no holes. The batteries
under fire, the red-cross folk, the county charge—perhaps,
above all, Major Bouroche and the operations, all beyond
discussion; and every word about the Emperor splendid.
September 30th.—David Balfour done, and its author
along with it, or nearly so. Strange to think of even our
doctor here repeating his nonsense about debilitating
climate. Why, the work I have been doing the last twelve
months, in one continuous spate, mostly with annoying
interruptions and without any collapse to mention, would
be incredible in Norway. But I have broken down now,
and will do nothing as long as I possibly can. With David
Balfour I am very well pleased; in fact these labours of
the last year—I mean Falesá and D. B., not Samoa, of
course—seem to me to be nearer what I mean than anything
I have ever done; nearer what I mean by fiction;
the nearest thing before was Kidnapped. I am not forgetting
the Master of Ballantrae, but that lacked all pleasurableness,
and hence was imperfect in essence. So you see,
if I am a little tired, I do not repent.
The third part of the Débâcle may be all very fine; but
I cannot read it. It suffers from impaired vitality, and
uncertain aim; two deadly sicknesses. Vital—that’s what
I am at, first: wholly vital, with a buoyancy of life. Then
lyrical, if it may be, and picturesque, always with an epic
value of scenes, so that the figures remain in the mind’s
eye for ever.
October 8th.—Suppose you sent us some of the catalogues
of the parties what vends statutes? I don’t want
colossal Herculeses, but about quarter size and less. If
the catalogues were illustrated it would probably be found
a help to weak memories. These may be found to alleviate
spare moments, when we sometimes amuse ourselves by
thinking how fine we shall make the palace if we do not
go pop. Perhaps in the same way it might amuse you
to send us any pattern of wall paper that might strike
you as cheap, pretty, and suitable for a room in a hot and
extremely bright climate. It should be borne in mind that
our climate can be extremely dark too. Our sitting-room
is to be in varnished wood. The room I have particularly
in mind is a sort of bed and sitting-room, pretty large, lit
on three sides, and the colour in favour of its proprietor
at present is a topazy yellow. But then with what colour
to relieve it? For a little work-room of my own at the
back, I should rather like to see some patterns of unglossy—well,
I’ll be hanged if I can describe this red—it’s not
Turkish and it’s not Roman and it’s not Indian, but it
seems to partake of the two last, and yet it can’t be either
of them, because it ought to be able to go with vermillion.
Ah, what a tangled web we weave—anyway, with what
brains you have left choose me and send me some—many—patterns
of this exact shade.
A few days ago it was Haggard’s birthday and we had
him and his cousin to dinner—bless me if I ever told you
of his cousin!—he is here anyway, and a fine, pleasing
specimen, so that we have concluded (after our own happy
experience) that the climate of Samoa must be favourable
to cousins.48 Then we went out on the verandah in a lovely
moonlight, drinking port, hearing the cousin play and
sing, till presently we were informed that our boys had
got up a siva in Lafaele’s house to which we were invited.
It was entirely their own idea. The house, you must
understand, is one-half floored, and one-half bare earth,
and the daïs stands a little over knee high above the level
of the soil. The daïs was the stage, with three footlights.
We audience sat on mats on the floor, and the cook and
three of our work-boys, sometimes assisted by our two
ladies, took their places behind the footlights and began
a topical Vailima song. The burden was of course that
of a Samoan popular song about a white man who objects
to all that he sees in Samoa. And there was of course a
special verse for each one of the party—Lloyd was called
the dancing man (practically the Chief’s handsome son) of
Vailima; he was also, in his character I suppose of overseer,
compared to a policeman—Belle had that day been the
almoner in a semi-comic distribution of wedding rings
and thimbles (bought cheap at an auction) to the whole
plantation company, fitting a ring on every man’s finger,
and a ring and a thimble on both the women’s. This was
very much in character with her native name Teuila, the
adorner of the ugly—so of course this was the point of
her verse and at a given moment all the performers displayed
the rings upon their fingers. Pelema (the cousin—our
cousin) was described as watching from the house
and whenever he saw any boy not doing anything, running
and doing it himself. Fanny’s verse was less intelligible,
but it was accompanied in the dance with a pantomime
of terror well-fitted to call up her haunting, indefatigable
and diminutive presence in a blue gown.
To Gordon Browne
Vailima, Samoa [Autumn 1892].
To the Artist who did the illustrations to “Uma.”
DEAR SIR,—I only know you under the initials G. B.,
but you have done some exceedingly spirited and satisfactory
illustrations to my story The Beach of Falesá, and
I wish to write and thank you expressly for the care and
talent shown. Such numbers of people can do good black
and whites! So few can illustrate a story, or apparently
read it. You have shown that you can do both, and your
creation of Wiltshire is a real illumination of the text.
It was exactly so that Wiltshire dressed and looked, and
you have the line of his nose to a nicety. His nose is an
inspiration. Nor should I forget to thank you for Case,
particularly in his last appearance. It is a singular fact—which
seems to point still more directly to inspiration
in your case—that your missionary actually resembles the
flesh-and-blood person from whom Mr. Tarleton was
drawn. The general effect of the islands is all that could
be wished; indeed I have but one criticism to make, that
in the background of Case taking the dollar from Mr. Tarleton’s
head—head—not hand, as the fools have printed it—the
natives have a little too much the look of Africans.
But the great affair is that you have been to the pains
to illustrate my story instead of making conscientious
black and whites of people sitting talking. I doubt if you
have left unrepresented a single pictorial incident. I am
writing by this mail to the editor in the hopes that I may
buy from him the originals, and I am, dear sir, your very
much obliged,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Miss Morse
The next is an answer to an acknowledgment from a lady in the
United States, one of many similar which he from time to time
received, of help and encouragement derived from his writings.
Vailima, Samoan Islands, October 7th, 1892.
DEAR MADAM,—I have a great diffidence in answering
your valued letter. It would be difficult for me to express
the feelings with which I read it—and am now trying to
re-read it as I dictate this.
You ask me to forgive what you say “must seem a
liberty,” and I find that I cannot thank you sufficiently or
even find a word with which to qualify your letter. Dear
Madam, such a communication even the vainest man
would think a sufficient reward for a lifetime of labour.
That I should have been able to give so much help and
pleasure to your sister is the subject of my grateful wonder.
That she, being dead, and speaking with your pen,
should be able to repay the debt with such a liberal interest,
is one of those things that reconcile us with the world and
make us take hope again. I do not know what I have
done to deserve so beautiful and touching a compliment;
and I feel there is but one thing fit for me to say here, that
I will try with renewed courage to go on in the same path,
and to deserve, if not to receive, a similar return from
others.
You apologise for speaking so much about yourselves.
Dear Madam, I thought you did so too little. I should
have wished to have known more of those who were so
sympathetic as to find a consolation in my work, and so
graceful and so tactful as to acknowledge it in such a
letter as was yours.
Will you offer to your mother the expression of a sympathy
which (coming from a stranger) must seem very
airy, but which yet is genuine; and accept for yourself
my gratitude for the thought which inspired you to write
to me and the words which you found to express it.
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Miss Taylor
Lady Taylor had died soon after the settlement of the Stevenson
family at Vailima. The second paragraph refers to a test which
had been set before an expert in the reading of character by handwriting.
Vailima, Samoan Islands, October 7th, 1892.
MY DEAR IDA,—I feel very much the implied reproof
in yours just received; but I assure you there is no fear
of our forgetting either Una or yourself, or your dear
mother, who was one of the women I have most admired
and loved in the whole of my way through life. The truth
is that Fanny writes to nobody and that I am on the whole
rather overworked. I compose lots of letters to lots of
unforgotten friends, but when it comes to taking the pen
between my fingers there are many impediments. Hence
it comes that I am now writing to you by an amanuensis,
at which I know you will be very angry. Well, it was
Hobson’s choice. A little while ago I had very bad
threatenings of scrivener’s cramp; and if Belle (Fanny’s
daughter, of whom you remember to have heard) had
not taken up the pen for my correspondence, I doubt you
would never have heard from me again except in the way
of books. I wish you and Una would be so good as to
write to us now and then even without encouragement.
An unsolicited letter would be almost certain (sooner or
later, depending on the activity of the conscience) to
produce some sort of an apology for an answer.
All this upon one condition: that you send me your
friend’s description of my looks, age and character. The
character of my work I am not so careful about. But
did you ever hear of anything so tantalizing as for you
to tell me the story and not send me your notes? I
expect it was a device to extract an answer; and, as you
see, it has succeeded. Let me suggest (if your friend be
handy) that the present letter would be a very delicate
test. It is in one person’s handwriting, it expresses the
ideas of another, of the writer herself you know nothing.
I should be very curious to know what the sibyl will make
of such a problem.
If you carry out your design of settling in London you
must be sure and let us have the new address. I swear
we shall write some time—and if the interval be long you
must just take it on your own head for prophesying horrors.
You remember how you always said we were but an encampment
of Bedouins, and that you would awake some
morning to find us fled for ever. Nothing unsettled me
more than these ill-judged remarks. I was doing my
best to be a sedentary semi-respectable man in a suburban
villa; and you were always shaking your head at me and
assuring me (what I knew to be partly true) that it was all
a farce. Even here, when I have sunk practically all that
I possess, and have good health and my fill of congenial
fighting, and could not possibly get away if I wanted ever
so—even here and now the recollection of these infidel
prophesies rings in my ears like an invitation to the sea.
Tu l’as voulu!
I know you want some of our news, and it is all so far
away that I know not when to begin. We have a big
house and we are building another—pray God that we can
pay for it. I am just reminded that we have no less than
eight several places of habitation in this place, which was
a piece of uncleared forest some three years ago. I think
there are on my pay rolls at the present moment thirteen
human souls, not counting two washerwomen who come
and go. In addition to this I am at daggers drawn with
the Government, have had my correspondence stopped and
opened by the Chief Justice—it was correspondence with
the so-called Rebel King,—and have had boys examined
and threatened with deportation to betray the secrets of
my relations with the same person. In addition to this
I might direct attention to those trifling exercises of the
fancy, my literary works, and I hope you won’t think that
I am likely to suffer from ennui. Nor is Fanny any less
active. Ill or well, rain or shine, a little blue indefatigable
figure is to be observed howking about certain patches of
garden. She comes in heated and bemired up to the eyebrows,
late for every meal. She has reached a sort of
tragic placidity. Whenever she plants anything new the
boys weed it up. Whenever she tries to keep anything
for seed the house-boys throw it away. And she has
reached that pitch of a kind of noble dejection that she
would almost say she did not mind. Anyway, her cabbages
have succeeded. Talolo (our native cook, and a
very good one too) likened them the other day to the
head of a German; and even this hyperbolical image was
grudging. I remember all the trouble you had with
servants at the Roost. The most of them were nothing
to the trances that we have to go through here at times,
when I have to hold a bed of justice, and take evidence
which is never twice the same, and decide, practically
blindfold, and after I have decided have the accuser take
back the accusation in block and beg for mercy for the
culprit. Conceive the annoyance of all this when you
are very fond of both.—Your affectionate friend,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To E. L. Burlingame
Vailima Plantation, Samoan Islands,
Oct. 10th, 1892.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—It is now, as you see, the
10th of October, and there has not reached the Island of
Upolu one single copy, or rag of a copy, of the Samoa
book. I lie; there has come one, and that in the pocket
of a missionary man who is at daggers drawn with me,
who lends it to all my enemies, conceals it from all my
friends, and is bringing a lawsuit against me on the strength
of expressions in the same which I have forgotten, and
now cannot see. This is pretty tragic, I think you will
allow; and I was inclined to fancy it was the fault of the
Post Office. But I hear from my sister-in-law Mrs. Sanchez
that she is in the same case, and has received no Footnote.
I have also to consider that I had no letter from you last
mail, although you ought to have received by that time
“My Grandfather and Scott,” and “Me and my Grandfather.”
Taking one consideration with another, therefore,
I prefer to conceive that No. 743 Broadway has fallen
upon gentle and continuous slumber, and is become an
enchanted palace among publishing houses. If it be not
so, if the Footnotes were really sent, I hope you will fall
upon the Post Office with all the vigour you possess.
How does The Wrecker go in the States? It seems to be
doing exceptionally well in England.—Yours sincerely,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Sidney Colvin
This letter contains the first announcement of the scheme of
Weir of Hermiston.
Vailima, October 28th, 1892.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—This is very late to begin the
monthly budget, but I have a good excuse this time, for
I have had a very annoying fever with symptoms of sore
arm, and in the midst of it a very annoying piece of business
which suffered no delay or idleness....
The consequence of all this was that my fever got very
much worse and your letter has not been hitherto written.
But, my dear fellow, do compare these little larky fevers
with the fine, healthy, prostrating colds of the dear old
dead days at home. Here was I, in the middle of a pretty
bad one, and I was able to put it in my pocket, and go
down day after day, and attend to and put my strength
into this beastly business. Do you see me doing that
with a catarrh? And if I had done so, what would have
been the result?
Last night, about four o’clock, Belle and I set off to
Apia, whither my mother had preceded us. She was at
the Mission; we went to Haggard’s. There we had to
wait the most unconscionable time for dinner. I do not
wish to speak lightly of the Amanuensis, who is unavoidably
present, but I may at least say for myself that I was
as cross as two sticks. Dinner came at last, we had the
tinned soup which is usually the pièce de resistance in the
halls of Haggard, and we pitched into it. Followed an
excellent salad of tomatoes and crayfish, a good Indian
curry, a tender joint of beef, a dish of pigeons, a pudding,
cheese and coffee. I was so over-eaten after this “hunger
and burst” that I could scarcely move; and it was my
sad fate that night in the character of the local author to
eloquute before the public—“Mr. Stevenson will read a
selection from his own works”—a degrading picture. I
had determined to read them the account of the hurricane;
I do not know if I told you that my book has never
turned up here, or rather only one copy has, and that
in the unfriendly hands of ——. It has therefore only
been seen by enemies; and this combination of mystery
and evil report has been greatly envenomed by some ill-judged
newspaper articles from the States. Altogether this
specimen was listened to with a good deal of uncomfortable
expectation on the part of the Germans, and when it
was over was applauded with unmistakable relief. The
public hall where these revels came off seems to be unlucky
for me; I never go there but to some stone-breaking job.
Last time it was the public meeting of which I must have
written you; this time it was this uneasy but not on the
whole unsuccessful experiment. Belle, my mother, and I
rode home about midnight in a fine display of lightning
and witch-fires. My mother is absent, so that I may dare
to say that she struck me as voluble. The Amanuensis
did not strike me the same way; she was probably thinking,
but it was really rather a weird business, and I saw
what I have never seen before, the witch-fires gathered
into little bright blue points almost as bright as a night-light.
Saturday.—This is the day that should bring your
letter; it is gray and cloudy and windless; thunder rolls
in the mountain; it is a quarter past six, and I am alone,
sir, alone in this workman’s house, Belle and Lloyd having
been down all yesterday to meet the steamer; they were
scarce gone with most of the horses and all the saddles,
than there began a perfect picnic of the sick and maim;
Iopu with a bad foot, Faauma with a bad shoulder, Fanny
with yellow spots. It was at first proposed to carry all
these to the doctor, particularly Faauma, whose shoulder
bore an appearance of erysipelas, that sent the amateur
below. No horses, no saddle. Now I had my horse and
I could borrow Lafaele’s saddle; and if I went alone I
could do a job that had long been waiting; and that was
to interview the doctor on another matter. Off I set in
a hazy moonlight night; windless, like to-day; the thunder
rolling in the mountain, as to-day; in the still groves, these
little mushroom lamps glowing blue and steady, singly
or in pairs. Well, I had my interview, said everything as
I had meant, and with just the result I hoped for. The
doctor and I drank beer together and discussed German
literature until nine, and we parted the best of friends.
I got home to a silent house of sleepers, only Fanny awaiting
me; we talked awhile, in whispers, on the interview;
then, I got a lantern and went across to the workman’s
house, now empty and silent, myself sole occupant. So
to bed, prodigious tired but mighty content with my
night’s work, and to-day, with a headache and a chill,
have written you this page, while my new novel waits.
Of this I will tell you nothing, except the various names
under consideration. First, it ought to be called—but of
course that is impossible—
Braxfield.49
Then it is to be called either
Weir of Hermiston,
The Lord-Justice Clerk,
The Two Kirsties of the Cauldstaneslap,
or
The Four Black Brothers.
Characters:
|
Adam Weir, Lord-Justice Clerk, called Lord Hermiston.
Archie, his son.
Aunt Kirstie Elliott, his housekeeper at Hermiston.
Elliott of the Cauldstaneslap, her brother.
Kirstie Elliott, his daughter. |
|
Jim,
Gib,
Hob
&
Dandie, |
} |
his sons. |
|
Patrick Innes, a young advocate.
The Lord-Justice General. |
Scene, about Hermiston in the Lammermuirs and in
Edinburgh. Temp. 1812. So you see you are to have
another holiday from copra! The rain begins softly on
the iron roof, and I will do the reverse and—dry up.
Sunday.—Yours with the diplomatic private opinion
received. It is just what I should have supposed. Ça
m’est bien égal.—The name is to be
The Lord-Justice Clerk.
None others are genuine. Unless it be
Lord-Justice Clerk Hermiston.
Nov. 2nd.—On Saturday we expected Captain Morse of
the Alameda to come up to lunch, and on Friday with
genuine South Sea hospitality had a pig killed. On the
Saturday morning no pig. Some of the boys seemed to
give a doubtful account of themselves; our next neighbour
below in the wood is a bad fellow and very intimate
with some of our boys, for whom his confounded house is
like a fly-paper for flies. To add to all this, there was on
the Saturday a great public presentation of food to the
king and parliament men, an occasion on which it is
almost dignified for a Samoan to steal anything, and
entirely dignified for him to steal a pig.
(The Amanuensis went to the talolo, as it is called, and
saw something so very pleasing she begs to interrupt the
letter to tell it. The different villagers came in in bands—led
by the maid of the village, followed by the young
warriors. It was a very fine sight, for some three thousand
people are said to have assembled. The men wore
nothing but magnificent head-dresses and a bunch of
leaves, and were oiled and glistening in the sunlight. One
band had no maid but was led by a tiny child of about
five—a serious little creature clad in a ribbon of grass and
a fine head-dress, who skipped with elaborate leaps in
front of the warriors, like a little kid leading a band of
lions.
A. M.)
The A.M. being done, I go on again. All this made it
very possible that even if none of our boys had stolen the
pig, some of them might know the thief. Besides, the
theft, as it was a theft of meat prepared for a guest, had
something of the nature of an insult, and “my face,” in
native phrase, “was ashamed.” Accordingly, we determined
to hold a bed of justice. It was done last night
after dinner. I sat at the head of the table, Graham on
my right hand, Henry Simelé at my left, Lloyd behind
him. The house company sat on the floor around the
walls—twelve all told. I am described as looking as like
Braxfield as I could manage with my appearance; Graham,
who is of a severe countenance, looked like Rhadamanthus;
Lloyd was hideous to the view; and Simelé had
all the fine solemnity of a Samoan chief. The proceedings
opened by my delivering a Samoan prayer, which may be
translated thus—“Our God, look down upon us and shine
into our hearts. Help us to be far from falsehood so that
each one of us may stand before Thy Face in his integrity.”—Then,
beginning with Simelé, every one came up to the
table, laid his hand on the Bible, and repeated clause by
clause after me the following oath—I fear it may sound
even comic in English, but it is a very pretty piece of
Samoan, and struck direct at the most lively superstitions
of the race. “This is the Holy Bible here that I am
touching. Behold me, O God! If I know who it was
that took away the pig, or the place to which it was taken,
or have heard anything relating to it, and shall not declare
the same—be made an end of by God this life of mine!”
They all took it with so much seriousness and firmness that
(as Graham said) if they were not innocent they would
make invaluable witnesses. I was so far impressed by
their bearing that I went no further, and the funny and
yet strangely solemn scene came to an end.
Sunday, Nov. 6th.—Here is a long story to go back
upon, and I wonder if I have either time or patience for
the task?
Wednesday I had a great idea of match-making, and
proposed to Henry that Faalé would make a good wife
for him. I wish I had put this down when it was fresher
in my mind, it was so interesting an interview. My
gentleman would not tell if I were on or not. “I do not
know yet; I will tell you next week. May I tell the sister
of my father? No, better not, tell her when it is done.”—“But
will not your family be angry if you marry without
asking them?”—“My village? What does my
village want? Mats!” I said I thought the girl would
grow up to have a great deal of sense, and my gentleman
flew out upon me; she had sense now, he said.
Thursday, we were startled by the note of guns, and
presently after heard it was an English warship. Graham
and I set off at once, and as soon as we met any towns-folk
they began crying to me that I was to be arrested.
It was the Vossische Zeitung article which had been quoted
in a paper. Went on board and saw Captain Bourke;
he did not even know—not even guess—why he was here;
having been sent off by cablegram from Auckland. It is
hoped the same ship that takes this off Europewards may
bring his orders and our news. But which is it to be?
Heads or tails? If it is to be German, I hope they will
deport me; I should prefer it so; I do not think that I
could bear a German officialdom, and should probably
have to leave sponte mea, which is only less picturesque
and more expensive.
8th.—Mail day. All well, not yet put in prison, whatever
may be in store for me. No time even to sign this
lame letter.
To J. M. Barrie
Vailima Plantation, Samoan Islands,
November 1st, 1892.
DEAR MR. BARRIE,—I can scarce thank you sufficiently
for your extremely amusing letter. No, The Auld Licht
Idyls never reached me—I wish it had, and I wonder
extremely whether it would not be good for me to have a
pennyworth of the Auld Licht pulpit. It is a singular
thing that I should live here in the South Seas under conditions
so new and so striking, and yet my imagination so
continually inhabit that cold old huddle of grey hills from
which we come. I have just finished David Balfour; I
have another book on the stocks, The Young Chevalier,
which is to be part in France and part in Scotland, and
to deal with Prince Charlie about the year 1749; and
now what have I done but begun a third which is to be
all moorland together, and is to have for a centre-piece a
figure that I think you will appreciate—that of the immortal
Braxfield—Braxfield himself is my grand premier, or, since
you are so much involved in the British drama, let me say
my heavy lead....
Your descriptions of your dealings with Lord Rintoul
are frightfully unconscientious. You should never write
about anybody until you persuade yourself at least for the
moment that you love him, above all anybody on whom
your plot revolves. It will always make a hole in the
book; and, if he has anything to do with the mechanism,
prove a stick in your machinery. But you know all this
better than I do, and it is one of your most promising
traits that you do not take your powers too seriously.
The Little Minister ought to have ended badly; we all
know it did; and we are infinitely grateful to you for the
grace and good feeling with which you lied about it. If
you had told the truth, I for one could never have forgiven
you. As you had conceived and written the earlier
parts, the truth about the end, though indisputably true
to fact, would have been a lie, or what is worse, a discord
in art. If you are going to make a book end badly, it
must end badly from the beginning. Now your book
began to end well. You let yourself fall in love with, and
fondle, and smile at your puppets. Once you had done
that, your honour was committed—at the cost of truth
to life you were bound to save them. It is the blot on
Richard Feverel, for instance, that it begins to end well;
and then tricks you and ends ill. But in that case there
is worse behind, for the ill-ending does not inherently issue
from the plot—the story had, in fact, ended well after the
great last interview between Richard and Lucy—and the
blind, illogical bullet which smashes all has no more to
do between the boards than a fly has to do with the room
into whose open window it comes buzzing. It might have
so happened; it needed not; and unless needs must, we
have no right to pain our readers. I have had a heavy
case of conscience of the same kind about my Braxfield
story. Braxfield—only his name is Hermiston—has a son
who is condemned to death; plainly, there is a fine tempting
fitness about this; and I meant he was to hang. But
now on considering my minor characters, I saw there were
five people who would—in a sense who must—break prison
and attempt his rescue. They were capable, hardy folks,
too, who might very well succeed. Why should they not
then? Why should not young Hermiston escape clear
out of the country? and be happy, if he could, with his——. But
soft! I will not betray my secret or my heroine.
Suffice it to breathe in your ear that she was what Hardy
calls (and others in their plain way don’t) a Pure Woman.50
Much virtue in a capital letter, such as yours was.
Write to me again in my infinite distance. Tell me
about your new book. No harm in telling me; I am too
far off to be indiscreet; there are too few near me who
would care to hear. I am rushes by the riverside, and the
stream is in Babylon: breathe your secrets to me fearlessly;
and if the Trade Wind caught and carried them
away, there are none to catch them nearer than Australia,
unless it were the Tropic Birds. In the unavoidable
absence of my amanuensis, who is buying eels for dinner,
I have thus concluded my dispatch, like St. Paul, with my
own hand.
And in the inimitable words of Lord Kames, Faur ye
weel, ye bitch.—Yours very truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To E. L. Burlingame
Vailima Plantation, Nov. 2nd, 1892.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—In the first place, I have to
acknowledge receipt of your munificent cheque for three
hundred and fifty dollars. Glad you liked the Scott voyage;
rather more than I did upon the whole. As the
proofs have not turned up at all, there can be no question
of returning them, and I am therefore very much pleased
to think you have arranged not to wait. The volumes of
Adams arrived along with yours of October 6th. One of
the dictionaries has also blundered home, apparently from
the Colonies; the other is still to seek. I note and sympathise
with your bewilderment as to Falesá. My own
direct correspondence with Mr. Baxter is now about three
months in abeyance. Altogether you see how well it
would be if you could do anything to wake up the Post
Office. Not a single copy of the Footnote has yet reached
Samoa, but I hear of one having come to its address in
Hawaii. Glad to hear good news of Stoddard.—Yours
sincerely,
R. L. Stevenson.
P.S.—Since the above was written an aftermath of
post matter came in, among which were the proofs of My
Grandfather. I shall correct and return them, but as I
have lost all confidence in the Post Office, I shall mention
here: first galley, 4th line from the bottom, for “AS”
read “OR.”
Should I ever again have to use my work without
waiting for proofs, bear in mind this golden principle.
From a congenital defect, I must suppose, I am unable to
write the word OR—wherever I write it the printer unerringly
puts AS—and those who read for me had better,
wherever it is possible, substitute or for as. This the more
so since many writers have a habit of using as which is
death to my temper and confusion to my face.
R. L. S.
To Lieutenant Eeles
The following is addressed to one of Stevenson’s best friends
among the officers of H.M.S. the Curaçoa, which had been for some
time on the South Pacific station.
Vailima Plantation, Upolu, Samoan Islands,
November 15th, 1892.
DEAR EELES,—In the first place, excuse me writing to
you by another hand, as that is the way in which alone
all my correspondence gets effected. Before I took to
this method, or rather before I found a victim, it simply
didn’t get effected.
Thank you again and again, first for your kind thought
of writing to me, and second for your extremely amusing
and interesting letter. You can have no guess how immediately
interesting it was to our family. First of all, the
poor soul at Nukufetau is an old friend of ours, and we
have actually treated him ourselves on a former visit to
the island. I don’t know if Hoskin would approve of our
treatment; it consisted, I believe, mostly in a present of
stout and a recommendation to put nails in his watertank.
We also (as you seem to have done) recommended him to
leave the island; and I remember very well how wise and
kind we thought his answer. He had half-caste children
(he said) who would suffer and perhaps be despised if he
carried them elsewhere; if he left them there alone, they
would almost certainly miscarry; and the best thing
was that he should stay and die with them. But the cream
of the fun was your meeting with Buckland. We not only
know him, but (as the French say) we don’t know anybody
else; he is our intimate and adored original; and—prepare
your mind—he was, is, and ever will be, Tommy
Haddon!51 As I don’t believe you to be inspired, I
suspect you to have suspected this. At least it was a
mighty happy suspicion. You are quite right: Tommy
is really “a good chap,” though about as comic as they
make them.
I was extremely interested in your Fiji legend, and
perhaps even more so in your capital account of the
Curaçoa’s misadventure. Alas! we have nothing so thrilling
to relate. All hangs and fools on in this isle of mis-government,
without change, though not without novelty,
but wholly without hope, unless perhaps you should consider
it hopeful that I am still more immediately threatened
with arrest. The confounded thing is, that if it
comes off, I shall be sent away in the Ringarooma instead
of the Curaçoa. The former ship burst upon us by the
run—she had been sent off by despatch and without orders—and
to make me a little more easy in my mind she
brought newspapers clamouring for my incarceration.
Since then I have had a conversation with the German
Consul. He said he had read a review of my Samoa book,
and if the review were fair, must regard it as an insult,
and one that would have to be resented. At the same
time, I learn that letters addressed to the German squadron
lie for them here in the Post Office. Reports are current
of other English ships being on the way—I hope to goodness
yours will be among the number. And I gather from
one thing and another that there must be a holy row going
on between the powers at home, and that the issue (like
all else connected with Samoa) is on the knees of the
gods. One thing, however, is pretty sure—if that issue
prove to be a German protectorate, I shall have to tramp.
Can you give us any advice as to a fresh field of energy?
We have been searching the atlas, and it seems difficult
to fill the bill. How would Rarotonga do? I forget if
you have been there. The best of it is that my new house
is going up like winking, and I am dictating this letter
to the accompaniment of saws and hammers. A hundred
black boys and about a score draught oxen perished, or
at least barely escaped with their lives, from the mud
holes on our road, bringing up the materials. It will be
a fine legacy to H.I.G.M.’s protectorate, and doubtless the
Governor will take it for his country house.52 The Ringarooma
people, by the way, seem very nice. I liked Stansfield
particularly.
Our middy53 has gone up to San Francisco in pursuit
of the phantom Education. We have good word of him,
and I hope he will not be in disgrace again, as he was
when the hope of the British Navy—need I say that I
refer to Admiral Burney?—honoured us last. The next
time you come, as the new house will be finished, we shall
be able to offer you a bed. Nares and Meiklejohn may
like to hear that our new room is to be big enough to
dance in. It will be a very pleasant day for me to see the
Curaçoa in port again and at least a proper contingent of
her officers “skipping in my ’all.”
We have just had a feast on my birthday at which we
had three of the Ringaroomas, and I wish they had been
three Curaçoas—say yourself, Hoskin, and Burney the
ever Great. (Consider this an invitation.) Our boys had
got the thing up regardless. There were two huge sows—O,
brutes of animals that would have broken down a
hansom cab—four smaller pigs, two barrels of beef, and
a horror of vegetables and fowls. We sat down between
forty and fifty in a big new native house behind the kitchen
that you have never seen, and ate and public spoke till all
was blue. Then we had about half an hour’s holiday
with some beer and sherry and brandy and soda to restrengthen
the European heart, and then out to the old
native house to see a siva. Finally, all the guests were
packed off in a trackless black night and down a road that
was rather fitted for the Curaçoa than any human pedestrian,
though to be sure I do not know the draught of the Curaçoa.
My ladies one and all desire to be particularly remembered
to our friends on board, and all look forward, as I do
myself, in the hope of your return.—Yours sincerely,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
And let me hear from you again!
To Charles Baxter
The following extract gives a hint of Stevenson’s intended
management of one of the most difficult points in the plot of Weir
of Hermiston.
1st Dec. ’92.
...I have a novel on the stocks to be called The
Justice-Clerk. It is pretty Scotch, the Grand Premier is
taken from Braxfield—(Oh, by the by, send me Cockburn’s
Memorials)—and some of the story is—well—queer.
The heroine is seduced by one man, and finally disappears
with the other man who shot him.... Mind you, I
expect The Justice-Clerk to be my masterpiece. My
Braxfield is already a thing of beauty and a joy for ever,
and so far as he has gone far my best character.
[Later.]—Second thought. I wish Pitcairn’s Criminal
Trials quam primum. Also, an absolutely correct text of
the Scots judiciary oath.
Also, in case Pitcairn does not come down late
enough, I wish as full a report as possible of a Scotch
murder trial between 1790-1820. Understand, the fullest
possible.
Is there any book which would guide me as to the
following facts?
The Justice-Clerk tries some people capitally on circuit.
Certain evidence cropping up, the charge is transferred to
the J.-C.’s own son. Of course, in the next trial the J.-C.
is excluded, and the case is called before the Lord-Justice
General.
Where would this trial have to be? I fear in Edinburgh,
which would not suit my view. Could it be again
at the circuit town?
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Sidney Colvin
[Nov. 30, 1892.]
MY DEAR COLVIN,—Another grimy little odd and end
of paper, for which you shall be this month repaid in
kind, and serve you jolly well right.... This is a strange
life I live, always on the brink of deportation, men’s lives
in the scale—and, well, you know my character: if I
were to pretend to you that I was not amused, you would
justly scorn me. The new house is roofed; it will be a
braw house, and what is better, I have my yearly bill in,
and I find I can pay for it. For all which mercies, etc.
I must have made close on £4,000 this year all told; but,
what is not so pleasant, I seem to have come near to
spending them. I have been in great alarm, with this new
house on the cards, all summer, and came very near to
taking in sail, but I live here so entirely on credit, that I
determined to hang on.
Dec. 1st.—I was saying yesterday that my life was
strange and did not think how well I spoke. Yesterday
evening I was briefed to defend a political prisoner before
the Deputy Commissioner. What do you think of that
for a vicissitude?
Dec. 3rd.—Now for a confession. When I heard you
and Cassells had decided to print The Bottle Imp along
with Falesá, I was too much disappointed to answer.
The Bottle Imp was the pièce de résistance for my volume,
Island Nights’ Entertainments. However, that volume
might have never got done; and I send you two others
in case they should be in time.
First have The Beach of Falesá.
Then a fresh false title: Island Nights’ Entertainments;
and then
The Bottle Imp: a cue from an old melodrama.
The Isle of Voices.
The Waif Woman; a cue from a saga.
Of course these two others are not up to the mark of The
Bottle Imp; but they each have a certain merit, and they
fit in style. By saying “a cue from an old melodrama”
after the B. I., you can get rid of my note. If this is in
time, it will be splendid, and will make quite a volume.
Should you and Cassells prefer, you can call the whole
volume I. N. E.—though the Beach of Falesá is the child
of a quite different inspiration. They all have a queer
realism, even the most extravagant, even the Isle of Voices;
the manners are exact.
Should they come too late, have them type-written
and return to me here the type-written copies.
Sunday, Dec 4th.—3rd start,—But now more humbly
and with the aid of an Amanuensis. First one word about
page 2. My wife protests against The Waif Woman and
I am instructed to report the same to you.54...
Dec. 5th.—A horrid alarm rises that our October mail
was burned crossing the Plains. If so, you lost a beautiful
long letter—I am sure it was beautiful though I remember
nothing about it—and I must say I think it
serves you properly well. That I should continue writing
to you at such length is simply a vicious habit for which
I blush. At the same time, please communicate at once
with Charles Baxter whether you have or have not received
a letter posted here Oct. 12th, as he is going to cable me
the fate of my mail.
Now to conclude my news. The German Firm have
taken my book like angels, and the result is that Lloyd
and I were down there at dinner on Saturday, where we
partook of fifteen several dishes and eight distinct forms
of intoxicating drink. To the credit of Germany, I must
say there was not a shadow of a headache the next morning.
I seem to have done as well as my neighbours, for
I hear one of the clerks expressed the next morning a
gratified surprise that Mr. Stevenson stood his drink so
well. It is a strange thing that any race can still find
joy in such athletic exercises. I may remark in passing
that the mail is due and you have had far more than
you deserve.
R. L. S.
To Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin
December 5th, 1892.
MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN,— ... So much said, I come
with guilty speed to what more immediately concerns
myself. Spare us a month or two for old sake’s sake,
and make my wife and me happy and proud. We are
only fourteen days from San Francisco, just about a
month from Liverpool; we have our new house almost
finished. The thing can be done; I believe we can make
you almost comfortable. It is the loveliest climate in the
world, our political troubles seem near an end. It can
be done, it must! Do, please, make a virtuous effort,
come and take a glimpse of a new world I am sure you
do not dream of, and some old friends who do often dream
of your arrival.
Alas, I was just beginning to get eloquent, and there
goes the lunch bell, and after lunch I must make up the
mail.
Do come. You must not come in February or March—bad
months. From April on it is delightful.—Your
sincere friend,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Henry James
December 5th, 1892.
MY DEAR JAMES,—How comes it so great a silence has
fallen? The still small voice of self-approval whispers
me it is not from me. I have looked up my register, and
find I have neither written to you nor heard from you
since June 22nd, on which day of grace that invaluable
work began. This is not as it should be. How to get
back? I remember acknowledging with rapture The
Lesson of the Master, and I remember receiving Marbot:
was that our last relation?
Hey, well! anyway, as you may have probably gathered
from the papers, I have been in devilish hot water, and
(what may be new to you) devilish hard at work. In
twelve calendar months I finished The Wrecker, wrote all
of Falesá but the first chapter, (well, much of) The History
of Samoa, did something here and there to my Life of my
Grandfather, and began And Finished David Balfour.
What do you think of it for a year? Since then I may
say I have done nothing beyond draft three chapters of
another novel, The Justice-Clerk, which ought to be a
snorter and a blower—at least if it don’t make a spoon,
it will spoil the horn of an Aurochs (if that’s how it should
be spelt).
On the hot water side it may entertain you to know
that I have been actually sentenced to deportation by my
friends on Mulinuu, C.J. Cedercrantz, and Baron Senfft
von Pilsach. The awful doom, however, declined to fall,
owing to Circumstances over Which. I only heard of it
(so to speak) last night. I mean officially, but I had
walked among rumours. The whole tale will be some
day put into my hand, and I shall share it with humorous
friends.
It is likely, however, by my judgment, that this epoch
of gaiety in Samoa will soon cease; and the fierce white
light of history will beat no longer on Yours Sincerely
and his fellows here on the beach. We ask ourselves
whether the reason will more rejoice over the end of a
disgraceful business, or the unregenerate man more sorrow
over the stoppage of the fun. For, say what you please,
it has been a deeply interesting time. You don’t know
what news is, nor what politics, nor what the life of man,
till you see it on so small a scale and with your own liberty
on the board for stake. I would not have missed it for
much. And anxious friends beg me to stay at home and
study human nature in Brompton drawing-rooms! Farceurs!
And anyway you know that such is not my talent.
I could never be induced to take the faintest interest in
Brompton qua Brompton or a drawing-room qua a drawing-room.
I am an Epick Writer with a k to it, but without
the necessary genius.
Hurry up with another book of stories. I am now
reduced to two of my contemporaries, you and Barrie—O,
and Kipling—you and Barrie and Kipling are now my
Muses Three. And with Kipling, as you know, there are
reservations to be made. And you and Barrie don’t
write enough. I should say I also read Anstey when he
is serious, and can almost always get a happy day out
of Marion Crawford—ce n’est pas toujours la guerre, but
it’s got life to it and guts, and it moves. Did you read
the Witch of Prague? Nobody could read it twice, of
course; and the first time even it was necessary to skip.
E pur si muove. But Barrie is a beauty, the Little Minister
and the Window in Thrums, eh? Stuff in that young
man; but he must see and not be too funny. Genius in
him, but there’s a journalist at his elbow—there’s the
risk. Look, what a page is the glove business in the
Window! knocks a man flat; that’s guts, if you please.
Why have I wasted the little time that is left with a
sort of naked review article? I don’t know, I’m sure.
I suppose a mere ebullition of congested literary talk. I
am beginning to think a visit from friends would be due.
Wish you could come!
Let us have your news anyway, and forgive this silly
stale effusion.—Yours ever,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To J. M. Barrie
[Vailima, December 1892.]
DEAR J. M. BARRIE,—You will be sick of me soon; I
cannot help it. I have been off my work for some time,
and re-read the Edinburgh Eleven, and had a great mind
to write a parody and give you all your sauce back again,
and see how you would like it yourself. And then I read
(for the first time—I know not how) the Window in
Thrums; I don’t say that it is better than the Minister;
it’s less of a tale—and there is a beauty, a material beauty,
of the tale ipse, which clever critics nowadays long and
love to forget; it has more real flaws; but somehow it is—well,
I read it last anyway, and it’s by Barrie. And he’s
the man for my money. The glove is a great page; it is
startlingly original, and as true as death and judgment.
Tibbie Birse in the Burial is great, but I think it was a
journalist that got in the word “official.” The same
character plainly had a word to say to Thomas Haggard.
Thomas affects me as a lie—I beg your pardon; doubtless
he was somebody you knew; that leads people so far
astray. The actual is not the true.
I am proud to think you are a Scotchman—though
to be sure I know nothing of that country, being only an
English tourist, quo’ Gavin Ogilvy. I commend the hard
case of Mr. Gavin Ogilvy to J. M. Barrie, whose work is
to me a source of living pleasure and heartfelt national
pride. There are two of us now that the Shirra might
have patted on the head. And please do not think when
I thus seem to bracket myself with you, that I am wholly
blinded with vanity. Jess is beyond my frontier line;
I could not touch her skirt; I have no such glamour of
twilight on my pen. I am a capable artist; but it begins
to look to me as if you were a man of genius. Take care
of yourself for my sake. It’s a devilish hard thing for a
man who writes so many novels as I do, that I should get
so few to read. And I can read yours, and I love them.
A pity for you that my amanuensis is not on stock
to-day, and my own hand perceptibly worse than usual.—Yours,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
December 5th, 1892.
P.S.—They tell me your health is not strong. Man,
come out here and try the Prophet’s chamber. There’s
only one bad point to us—we do rise early. The Amanuensis
states that you are a lover of silence—and that
ours is a noisy house—and she is a chatterbox—I am not
answerable for these statements, though I do think there
is a touch of garrulity about my premises. We have so
little to talk about, you see. The house is three miles
from town, in the midst of great silent forests. There is
a burn close by, and when we are not talking you can
hear the burn, and the birds, and the sea breaking on the
coast three miles away and six hundred feet below us,
and about three times a month a bell—I don’t know
where the bell is, nor who rings it; it may be the bell in
Hans Andersen’s story for all I know. It is never hot
here—86 in the shade is about our hottest—and it is
never cold except just in the early mornings. Take it
for all in all, I suppose this island climate to be by far
the healthiest in the world—even the influenza entirely
lost its sting. Only two patients died, and one was a man
nearly eighty, and the other a child below four months.
I won’t tell you if it is beautiful, for I want you to come
here and see for yourself. Everybody on the premises
except my wife has some Scotch blood in their veins—I
beg your pardon—except the natives—and then my wife
is a Dutchwoman—and the natives are the next thing
conceivable to Highlanders before the forty-five. We
would have some grand cracks!
R. L. S.
Come, it will broaden your mind, and be the making
of me.
To Charles Baxter
This correspondent had lately been on a tour in Sweden.
[Vailima] December 28th, 1892.
MY DEAR CHARLES,—Your really decent letter to hand.
And here I am answering it, to the merry note of the
carpenter’s hammer, in an upper room of the New House.
This upper floor is almost done now, but the Grrrrrreat
’All below is still unlined; it is all to be varnished redwood.
I paid a big figure but do not repent; the trouble
has been so minimised, the work has been so workmanlike,
and all the parties have been so obliging. What a
pity when you met the Buried Majesty of Sweden—the
sovereign of my Cedercrantz—you did not breathe in his
ear a word of Samoa!
O Sovereign of my Cedercrantz,
Conceive how his plump carcase pants
To leave the spot he now is tree’d in,
And skip with all the dibbs to Sweden.
O Sovereign of my Cedercrantz,
The lowly plea I now advantz;
Remove this man of light and leadin’
From us to more congenial Sweden.
|
This kind of thing might be kept up a Lapland night.
“Let us bury the great joke”—Shade of Tennyson, forgive!
I am glad to say, you can scarce receive the second
bill for the house until next mail, which gives more room
to turn round in. Yes, my rate of expenditure is hellish.
It is funny, it crept up and up; and when we sat upon
one vent another exploded. Lloyd and I grew grey over
the monthly returns; but every damned month, there
is a new extra. However, we always hope the next will
prove less recalcitrant; in which faith we advance
trembling.
The desiderated advertisement, I think I have told
you, was mighty near supplied: that is, if deportation
would suit your view: the ship was actually sought to be
hired. Yes, it would have been an advertisement, and
rather a lark, and yet a blooming nuisance. For my
part, I shall try to do without.
No one has thought fit to send me Atalanta55; and I
have no proof at all of D. Balfour, which is far more
serious. How about the D. B. map? As soon as there
is a proof it were well I should see it to accord the text
thereto—or t’other way about if needs must. Remember
I had to go much on memory in writing that work. Did
you observe the dedication? and how did you like it?
If it don’t suit you, I am to try my hand again.—Yours
ever,
R. L. S.
Editors and publishers (since those days we have been déniaisés
with a vengeance) had actually been inclined to shy at the terms
of the fraudulent marriage contract, which is the pivot of the whole
story; see below, p. 187.
For a lively account of this plantation and its history, see Lord
Pembroke’s South Sea Bubbles, chap. i.
The native wife of a carpenter in Apia.
The sequel to Kidnapped, published in the following year under
the title Catriona.
Most of the work on the plantations in Samoa is done by “black
boys,” i.e. imported labourers from other (Melanesian) islands.
By Howard Pyle.
In answer to the obvious remark that the length and style of
The Wrecker, then running in Scribner’s Magazine, were out of
keeping with what professed at the outset to be a spoken yarn.
Of Ballantrae: the story is the unfinished Young Chevalier.
Afterwards changed into The Ebb Tide.
Wordsworth’s Ode to Duty, a shade misquoted.
“Kava, properly Ava, is a drink more or less intoxicating, made
from the root of the Piper Methysticum, a Pepper plant. The root
is grated: formerly it was chewed by fair damsels. The root thus
broken up is rubbed about in a great pail, with water slowly added.
A strainer of bark cloth is plunged into it at times, and wrung out
so as to carry away the small fragments of root. The drink is
made and used in ceremony. Every detail is regulated by rules, and
the manner of the mixture of the water, the straining, the handling
of the cup, the drinking out of it and returning, should all be done
according to a well-established manner and in certain cadences.” I
borrow this explanation from the late Mr. Lafarge’s notes to his
catalogue of South Sea Drawings. It may serve to make clearer
several passages in later letters of the present collection. Readers
of the late Lord Pembroke’s South Sea Bubbles will remember the
account of this beverage and its preparation in Chap. viii. of that
volume.
Referring to the marriage contract in the Beach of Falesá: see
above, p. 152.
This about the consulship was only a passing notion on the
part of R. L. S. No vacancy occurred, and in his correspondence
he does not recur to the subject.
I had not cared to send him the story as thus docked and rechristened
in its serial shape.
Austin Strong, on his way to school in California.
By Émile Zola.
The reference is to the writer’s maternal cousin, Mr. Graham
Balfour (Samoicè, “Pelema”), who during these months and again
later was an inmate of the home at Vailima: see above, p. 223.
Robert MacQueen, Lord Braxfield, the “Hanging Judge,”
(1722-1799). This historical personage furnished the conception of
the chief character, but by no means the details or incidents of the
story, which is indeed dated some years after his death.
The allusion is to Tess: a book R. L. S. did not like.
A character in The Wrecker.
Exactly what in the end actually happened.
Austin Strong.
This tale was withheld from the volume accordingly.
The magazine in which Catriona first appeared in this country,
under the title David Balfour.
January-December 1893
By the New Year of 1893 the fine addition to the house
at Vailima was finished, and its pleasantness and comfort
went far to console Stevenson for the cost. But the year
was on the whole a less fortunate one for the inmates
than the last. A proclamation concerning penalties for
sedition in the Samoan Islands, which from its tenor could
have been aimed at no one else but Stevenson, had been
issued at the close of 1892 by the High Commissioner at
Fiji; and with its modification and practical withdrawal,
by order of the Foreign Office at home, the last threat of
unpleasant consequences in connection with his political
action disappeared. But a sharp second attack of influenza
in January lowered his vitality, and from a trip
which the family took for the sake of change to Sydney,
in the month of February, they returned with health
unimproved. In April the illness of Mrs. Stevenson
caused her husband some weeks of acute distress and
anxiety. In August he suffered the chagrin of witnessing
the outbreak of the war which he had vainly striven to
prevent between the two rival kings, and the defeat and
banishment of Mataafa, whom he knew to be the one
man of governing capacity among the native chiefs, and
whom, in the interest alike of whites and natives, he had
desired to see the Powers not crush, but conciliate. On
the other hand, he had the satisfaction of seeing the Chief
Justice and President removed from the posts they had
so incompetently filled, and superseded by new and better
men. The task imposed by the three Powers upon these
officials was in truth an impossible one; but their characters
and endeavours earned respect, and with the American
Chief Justice in particular, Mr. C. J. Ide (whom he had
already known as one of the Land Commissioners), and
with his family the Vailima household lived on terms of
cordial friendship. In September Stevenson took a health-trip
to Honolulu, which again turned out unsuccessful.
For some weeks he was down with a renewed attack of
fever and prostration, and his wife had to come from
Samoa to nurse and fetch him home. Later in the autumn
he mended again.
During no part of the year were Stevenson’s working
powers up to the mark. In the early summer he finished
The Ebb Tide, but on a plan much abridged from its
original intention, and with an unusual degree of strain
and effort. With St. Ives and his own family history he
made fair progress, but both of these he regarded as in a
manner holiday tasks, not calling for any very serious
exercise of his powers. In connection with the latter, he
took an eager interest, as his correspondence will show,
in the researches which friends and kinsmen undertook
for him in Scotland. He fell into arrears in regard to
one or two magazine stories for which he had contracted;
and with none of his more ambitious schemes of romance,
Sophia Scarlet, The Young Chevalier, Heathercat, and Weir
of Hermiston, did he feel himself well able to cope. This
falling-off of his power of production brought with it no
small degree of inward strain and anxiety. He had not
yet put by any provision for his wife and step-family
(the income from the moderate fortune left by his father
naturally going to his mother during her life). His earnings
had since 1887 been considerable, at the rate of
£4,000 a year or thereabouts; but his building expenses
and large mode of life at Vailima, together with his habitual
generosity, which scarce knew check or limit, towards the
less fortunate of his friends and acquaintances in various
parts of the world, made his expenditure about equal to
his income. The idea originally entertained of turning
part of the Vailima estate into a profitable plantation
turned out chimerical. The thought began to haunt him,
What if his power of earning were soon to cease? And
occasional signs of inward depression and life-weariness
began to appear in his correspondence. But it was only in
writing, and then but rarely, that he let such signs appear:
to those about him he retained the old affectionate charm
and inspiring gaiety undiminished, fulfilling without failure
the words of his own prayer, “Give us to awake with
smiles, give us to labour smiling; as the sun lightens the
world, so let our loving-kindness make bright this house
of our habitation.”
To Sidney Colvin
[Vailima] January 1893.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—You are properly paid at last, and
it is like you will have but a shadow of a letter. I have
been pretty thoroughly out of kilter; first a fever that
would neither come on nor go off, then acute dyspepsia,
in the weakening grasp of which I get wandering between
the waking state and one of nightmare. Why the devil
does no one send me Atalanta? And why are there no
proofs of D. Balfour? Sure I should have had the whole,
at least the half, of them by now; and it would be all
for the advantage of the Atalantans. I have written to
Cassell & Co. (matter of Falesá) “you will please arrange
with him” (meaning you). “What he may decide I shall
abide.” So consider your hand free, and act for me without
fear or favour. I am greatly pleased with the illustrations.
It is very strange to a South-Seayer to see
Hawaiian women dressed like Samoans, but I guess that’s
all one to you in Middlesex. It’s about the same as if
London city men were shown going to the Stock Exchange
as pifferari; but no matter, none will sleep worse for it.
I have accepted Cassell’s proposal as an amendment to
one of mine; that D. B. is to be brought out first under
the title Catriona without pictures; and, when the hour
strikes, Kidnapped and Catriona are to form vols. I. and II.
of the heavily illustrated Adventures of David Balfour at
7s. 6d. each, sold separately.
——’s letter was vastly sly and dry and shy.56 I am
not afraid now. Two attempts have been made, both
have failed, and I imagine these failures strengthen me.
Above all this is true of the last, where my weak point
was attempted. On every other, I am strong. Only
force can dislodge me, for public opinion is wholly on
my side. All races and degrees are united in heartfelt
opposition to the Men of Mulinuu. The news of the fighting
was of no concern to mortal man; it was made much
of because men love talk of battles, and because the
Government pray God daily for some scandal not their
own; but it was only a brisk episode in a clan fight
which has grown apparently endemic in the west of
Tutuila. At the best it was a twopenny affair, and never
occupied my mind five minutes.
I am so weary of reports that are without foundation
and threats that go without fulfilment, and so much
occupied besides by the raging troubles of my own wame,
that I have been very slack on politics, as I have been in
literature. With incredible labour, I have rewritten the
First Chapter of the Justice-Clerk; it took me about ten
days, and requires another athletic dressing after all.
And that is my story for the month. The rest is grunting
and grutching.
Consideranda for The Beach:—
I. Whether to add one or both the tales I sent you?
II. Whether to call the whole volume Island Nights’
Entertainments?
III. Whether, having waited so long, it would not be
better to give me another mail, in case I could add another
member to the volume and a little better justify the
name?
If I possibly can draw up another story, I will. What
annoyed me about the use of The Bottle Imp was that I
had always meant it for the centre-piece of a volume of
Märchen which I was slowly to elaborate. You always
had an idea that I depreciated the B. I.; I can’t think
wherefore; I always particularly liked it—one of my
best works, and ill to equal; and that was why I loved
to keep it in portfolio till I had time to grow up to some
other fruit of the same venue. However, that is disposed
of now, and we must just do the best we can.
I am not aware that there is anything to add; the
weather is hellish, waterspouts, mists, chills, the foul
fiend’s own weather, following on a week of expurgated
heaven; so it goes at this bewildering season. I write
in the upper floor of my new house, of which I will send
you some day a plan to measure. ’Tis an elegant structure,
surely, and the proid of me oi. Was asked to pay for it
just now, and genteelly refused, and then agreed, in view
of general good-will, to pay a half of what is still due.
24th January 1893.—This ought to have gone last
mail and was forgotten. My best excuse is that I was
engaged in starting an influenza, to which class of exploit
our household has been since then entirely dedicated.
We had eight cases, one of them very bad, and one—mine—complicated
with my old friend Bluidy Jack.57
Luckily neither Fanny, Lloyd, or Belle took the confounded
thing, and they were able to run the household
and nurse the sick to admiration.
Some of our boys behaved like real trumps. Perhaps
the prettiest performance was that of our excellent Henry
Simelé, or, as we sometimes call him, Davy Balfour.
Henry, I maun premeese, is a chief; the humblest Samoan
recoils from emptying slops as you would from cheating
at cards; now the last nights of our bad time, when we
had seven down together, it was enough to have made
anybody laugh or cry to see Henry going the rounds with
a slop-bucket and going inside the mosquito net of each
of the sick, Protestant and Catholic alike, to pray with
them.
I must tell you that in my sickness I had a huge alleviation
and began a new story. This I am writing by
dictation, and really think it is an art I can manage to
acquire. The relief is beyond description; it is just like
a school-treat to me, and the amanuensis bears up extraordinar’.
The story is to be called St. Ives; I give you
your choice whether or not it should bear the sub-title,
“Experiences of a French prisoner in England.”
We were just getting on splendidly with it, when this
cursed mail arrived and requires to be attended to. It
looks to me very like as if St. Ives would be ready before
any of the others, but you know me and how impossible
it is I should predict. The Amanuensis has her head
quite turned and believes herself to be the author of this
novel (and is to some extent)—and as the creature (!) has not
been wholly useless in the matter (I told you so! A.M.) I
propose to foster her vanity by a little commemoration
gift! The name of the hero is Anne de St. Yves—he
Englishes his name to St. Ives during his escape. It is
my idea to get a ring made which shall either represent
Anne or A. S. Y. A., of course, would be Amethyst and
S. Sapphire, which is my favourite stone anyway and was
my father’s before me. But what would the ex-Slade professor
do about the letter Y? Or suppose he took the other
version, how would he meet the case, the two N.’s? These
things are beyond my knowledge, which it would perhaps
be more descriptive to call ignorance. But I place the
matter in the meanwhile under your consideration and
beg to hear your views. I shall tell you on some other
occasion and when the A.M. is out of hearing how very
much I propose to invest in this testimonial; but I may as
well inform you at once that I intend it to be cheap, sir,
damned cheap! My idea of running amanuenses is by
praise, not pudding, flattery and not coins! I shall send
you when the time is ripe a ring to measure by.
To resume our sad tale. After the other seven were
almost wholly recovered Henry lay down to influenza on
his own account. He is but just better and it looks as
though Fanny were about to bring up the rear. As for
me, I am all right, though I was reduced to dictating Anne
in the deaf-and-dumb alphabet, which I think you will
admit is a comble.
Politics leave me extraordinary cold. It seems that so
much of my purpose has come off, and Cedercrantz and
Pilsach are sacked. The rest of it has all gone to water.
The triple-headed ass at home, in his plenitude of ignorance,
prefers to collect the taxes and scatter the Mataafas
by force or the threat of force. It may succeed, and I
suppose it will. It is none the less for that expensive,
harsh, unpopular and unsettling. I am young enough to
have been annoyed, and altogether eject and renegate
the whole idea of political affairs. Success in that field
appears to be the organisation of failure enlivened with
defamation of character; and, much as I love pickles and
hot water (in your true phrase) I shall take my pickles
in future from Crosse and Blackwell and my hot water
with a dose of good Glenlivat.
Do not bother at all about the wall-papers. We have
had the whole of our new house varnished, and it looks
beautiful. I wish you could see the hall; poor room, it
had to begin life as an infirmary during our recent visitation;
but it is really a handsome comely place, and when
we get the furniture, and the pictures, and what is so
very much more decorative, the picture frames, will look
sublime.
Jan. 30th.—I have written to Charles asking for Rowlandson’s
Syntax and Dance of Death out of our house,
and begging for anything about fashions and manners
(fashions particularly) for 1814. Can you help? Both
the Justice Clerk and St. Ives fall in that fated year.
Indeed I got into St. Ives while going over the Annual
Register for the other. There is a kind of fancy list of
Chaps. of St. Ives. (It begins in Edinb Castle.) I. Story
of a lion rampant (that was a toy he had made, and given
to a girl visitor). II. Story of a pair of scissors. III. St.
Ives receives a bundle of money. IV. St. Ives is shown
a house. V. The Escape. VI. The Cottage (Swanston
Cottage). VII. The Hen-house. VIII. Three is company
and four none. IX. The Drovers. X. The Great North
Road. XI. Burchell Fenn. XII. The covered cart. XIII.
The doctor. XIV. The Luddites. XV. Set a thief to
catch a thief. XVI. M. le Comte de Kérouaille (his uncle,
the rich émigré, whom he finds murdered). XVII. The
cousins. XVIII. Mr. Sergeant Garrow. XIX. A meeting
at the Ship, Dover. XX. Diane. XXI. The Duke’s Prejudices.
XXII. The False Messenger. XXIII. The gardener’s
ladder. XXIV. The officers. XXV. Trouble with
the Duke. XXVI. Fouquet again. XXVII. The Aeronaut.
XXVIII. The True-Blooded Yankee. XXIX. In France. I
don’t know where to stop. Apropos, I want a book about
Paris, and the first return of the émigrés and all up to the
Cent Jours: d’ye ken anything in my way? I want in
particular to know about them and the Napoleonic functionaries
and officers, and to get the colour and some vital
details of the business of exchange of departments from
one side to the other.58 Ten chapters are drafted, and
VIII. re-copied by me, but will want another dressing for
luck. It is merely a story of adventure, rambling along;
but that is perhaps the guard that “sets my genius best,”
as Alan might have said. I wish I could feel as easy about
the other! But there, all novels are a heavy burthen while
they are doing, and a sensible disappointment when they
are done.
For God’s sake, let me have a copy of the new German
Samoa White Book.
R. L. S.
To Charles Baxter
Telling how the projected tale, The Pearl Fisher, had been cut
down and in its new form was to be called The Schooner Farallone
(afterwards changed to The Ebb Tide).
[Vailima, February 1893.]
MY DEAR CHARLES,—I have had the influenza, as I
believe you know: this has been followed by two goes of
my old friend Bloodie Jacke, and I have had fefe—the
island complaint—for the second time in two months.
All this, and the fact that both my womenkind require
to see a doctor: and some wish to see Lord Jersey before
he goes home: all send me off on a month’s holiday to
Sydney. I may get my mail: or I may not: depends
on freight, weather, and the captain’s good-nature—he is
one of those who most religiously fear Apia harbour: it
is quite a superstition with American captains. (Odd
note: American sailors, who make British hair grey by
the way they carry canvas, appear to be actually more
nervous when it comes to coast and harbour work.) This
is the only holiday I have had for more than 2 years; I
dare say it will be as long again before I take another.
And I am going to spend a lot of money. Ahem!
On the other hand, you can prepare to dispose of the
serial rights of the Schooner Farallone: a most grim and
gloomy tale. It will run to something between Jekyll and
Hyde and Treasure Island. I will not commit myself
beyond this, but I anticipate from 65 to 70,000 words,
could almost pledge myself not shorter than 65,000, but
won’t. The tale can be sent as soon as you have made
arrangements; I hope to finish it in a month; six weeks,
bar the worst accidents, for certain. I should say this is
the butt end of what was once The Pearl Fisher. There
is a peculiarity about this tale in its new form: it ends
with a conversion! We have been tempted rather to call
it The Schooner Farallone: a tract by R. L. S. and L.O.
It would make a boss tract; the three main characters—and
there are only four—are barats, insurance frauds,
thieves and would-be murderers; so the company’s good.
Devil a woman there, by good luck; so it’s “pure.” ’Tis
a most—what’s the expression?—unconventional work.
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin
At Sea, s.s. Mariposa, Feb. 19th, ’93.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—You will see from this heading that
I am not dead yet nor likely to be. I was pretty considerably
out of sorts, and that is indeed one reason why Fanny,
Belle, and I have started out for a month’s lark. To be
quite exact, I think it will be about five weeks before we
get home. We shall stay between two and three in Sydney.
Already, though we only sailed yesterday, I am feeling as
fit as a fiddle. Fanny ate a whole fowl for breakfast, to
say nothing of a tower of hot cakes. Belle and I floored
another hen betwixt the pair of us, and I shall be no sooner
done with the present amanuensing racket than I shall put
myself outside a pint of Guinness. If you think this looks
like dying of consumption in Apia I can only say I differ
from you. In the matter of David, I have never yet received
my proofs at all, but shall certainly wait for your
suggestions. Certainly, Chaps. 17 to 20 are the hitch,
and I confess I hurried over them with both wings spread.
This is doubtless what you complain of. Indeed, I placed
my single reliance on Miss Grant. If she couldn’t ferry
me over, I felt I had to stay there.
About Island Nights’ Entertainments all you say is
highly satisfactory. Go in and win.
The extracts from the Times I really cannot trust
myself to comment upon. They were infernally satisfactory;
so, and perhaps still more so, was a letter I had
at the same time from Lord Pembroke. If I have time as
I go through Auckland, I am going to see Sir George
Grey.
Now I really think that’s all the business. I have been
rather sick and have had two small hemorrhages, but the
second I believe to have been accidental. No good denying
that this annoys, because it do. However, you must
expect influenza to leave some harm, and my spirits,
appetite, peace on earth and goodwill to men are all on a
rising market. During the last week the amanuensis was
otherwise engaged, whereupon I took up, pitched into,
and about one half demolished another tale, once intended
to be called The Pearl Fisher, but now razeed and called
The Schooner Farallone.59 We had a capital start, the
steamer coming in at sunrise, and just giving us time to
get our letters ere she sailed again. The manager of the
German Firm (O strange, changed days!) danced attendance
upon us all morning; his boat conveyed us to and
from the steamer.
Feb. 21st.—All continues well. Amanuensis bowled
over for a day, but afoot again and jolly; Fanny enormously
bettered by the voyage; I have been as jolly as
a sand-boy as usual at sea. The Amanuensis sits opposite
to me writing to her offspring. Fanny is on deck. I have
just supplied her with the Canadian Pacific Agent, and
so left her in good hands. You should hear me at table
with the Ulster purser and a little punning microscopist
called Davis. Belle does some kind of abstruse Boswell-ising;
after the first meal, having gauged the kind of jests
that would pay here, I observed, “Boswell is Barred
during this cruise.”
23rd.—We approach Auckland and I must close my
mail. All goes well with the trio. Both the ladies are
hanging round a beau—the same—that I unearthed for
them: I am general provider, and especially great in the
beaux business. I corrected some proofs for Fanny
yesterday afternoon, fell asleep over them in the saloon—and
the whole ship seems to have been down beholding
me. After I woke up, had a hot bath, a whisky punch
and a cigarette, and went to bed, and to sleep too, at
8.30; a recrudescence of Vailima hours. Awoke to-day,
and had to go to the saloon clock for the hour—no sign
of dawn—all heaven grey rainy fog. Have just had breakfast,
written up one letter, register and close this.
To Sidney Colvin
|
Bad pen, bad ink,
bad light, bad
blotting-paper. |
S.S. Mariposa, at Sea.
Apia due by daybreak to-morrow,
9 p.m. [March 1st, 1893.] |
MY DEAR COLVIN,—Have had an amusing but tragic
holiday, from which we return in disarray. Fanny quite
sick, but I think slowly and steadily mending; Belle in
a terrific state of dentistry troubles which now seem
calmed; and myself with a succession of gentle colds out
of which I at last succeeded in cooking up a fine pleurisy.
By stopping and stewing in a perfectly airless state-room
I seem to have got rid of the pleurisy. Poor Fanny had
very little fun of her visit, having been most of the time
on a diet of maltine and slops—and this while the rest of
us were rioting on oysters and mushrooms. Belle’s only
devil in the hedge was the dentist. As for me, I was
entertained at the General Assembly of the Presbyterian
Church, likewise at a sort of artistic club; made speeches
at both, and may therefore be said to have been, like
Saint Paul, all things to all men. I have an account of
the latter racket which I meant to have enclosed in this....
Had some splendid photos taken, likewise a medallion
by a French sculptor; met Graham, who returned
with us as far as Auckland. Have seen a good deal too
of Sir George Grey; what a wonderful old historic figure
to be walking on your arm and recalling ancient events
and instances! It makes a man small, and yet the extent
to which he approved what I had done—or rather have
tried to do—encouraged me. Sir George is an expert at
least, he knows these races: he is not a small employé
with an ink-pot and a Whitaker.
Take it for all in all, it was huge fun: even Fanny had
some lively sport at the beginning; Belle and I all through.
We got Fanny a dress on the sly, gaudy black velvet and
Duchesse lace. And alas! she was only able to wear it
once. But we’ll hope to see more of it at Samoa; it really
is lovely. Both dames are royally outfitted in silk stockings,
etc. We return, as from a raid, with our spoils and
our wounded. I am now very dandy: I announced two
years ago that I should change. Slovenly youth, all right—not
slovenly age. So really now I am pretty spruce;
always a white shirt, white necktie, fresh shave, silk
socks, O a great sight!—No more possible.
R. L. S.
To Charles Baxter
Of the books mentioned below, Dr. Syntax’s Tour and Rowlandson’s
Dance of Death had been for use in furnishing customs and
manners in the English part of St. Ives; Pitcairn is Pitcairn’s
Criminal Trials of Scotland from 1488 to 1624. As to the name of
Stevenson and its adoption by some members of the proscribed clan
of Macgregor, Stevenson had been greatly interested by the facts
laid before him by his correspondent here mentioned, Mr. Macgregor
Stevenson of New York, and had at first delightedly welcomed the
idea that his own ancestors might have been fellow-clansmen of
Rob Roy. But further correspondence on the subject of his own
descent held with a trained genealogist, his namesake Mr. J. Horne
Stevenson of Edinburgh, convinced him that the notion must be
abandoned.
[April 1893.]
... About The Justice-Clerk, I long to go at it, but
will first try to get a short story done. Since January I
have had two severe illnesses, my boy, and some heartbreaking
anxiety over Fanny; and am only now convalescing.
I came down to dinner last night for the first
time, and that only because the service had broken down,
and to relieve an inexperienced servant. Nearly four
months now I have rested my brains; and if it be true
that rest is good for brains, I ought to be able to pitch in
like a giant refreshed. Before the autumn, I hope to send
you some Justice-Clerk, or Weir of Hermiston, as Colvin
seems to prefer; I own to indecision. Received Syntax,
Dance of Death, and Pitcairn, which last I have read from
end to end since its arrival, with vast improvement. What
a pity it stops so soon! I wonder is there nothing that
seems to prolong the series? Why doesn’t some young
man take it up? How about my old friend Fountainhall’s
Decisions? I remember as a boy that there was some
good reading there. Perhaps you could borrow me that,
and send it on loan; and perhaps Laing’s Memorials
therewith; and a work I’m ashamed to say I have never
read, Balfour’s Letters.... I have come by accident,
through a correspondent, on one very curious and interesting
fact—namely, that Stevenson was one of the names
adopted by the Macgregors at the proscription. The
details supplied by my correspondent are both convincing
and amusing; but it would be highly interesting to find
out more of this.
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin
These notes are in reply to a set of queries and suggestions as to
points that seemed to need clearing in the tale of Catriona, as first
published in Atalanta under the title David Balfour.
[Vailima] April 1893.
1. Slip 3. Davie would be attracted into a similar
dialect, as he is later—e.g. with Doig, chapter XIX. This
is truly Scottish.
4, to lightly; correct; “to lightly” is a good regular
Scots verb.
15. See Allan Ramsay’s works.
15, 16. Ay, and that is one of the pigments with
which I am trying to draw the character of Prestongrange.
’Tis a most curious thing to render that kind, insignificant
mask. To make anything precise is to risk my effect.
And till the day he died, Davie was never sure of what
P. was after. Not only so; very often P. didn’t know
himself. There was an element of mere liking for Davie;
there was an element of being determined, in case of
accidents, to keep well with him. He hoped his Barbara
would bring him to her feet, besides, and make him manageable.
That was why he sent him to Hope Park with them.
But Davie cannot know; I give you the inside of Davie,
and my method condemns me to give only the outside
both of Prestongrange and his policy.
- -I’ll give my mind to the technicalities. Yet to me
they seem a part of the story, which is historical, after all.
- -I think they wanted Alan to escape. But when or
where to say so? I will try.
- -20, Dean. I’ll try and make that plainer.
Chap. XIII., I fear it has to go without blows. If I
could get the pair—No, can’t be.
- -XIV. All right, will abridge.
- -XV. I’d have to put a note to every word; and
he who can’t read Scots can never enjoy Tod Lapraik.
- -XVII. Quite right. I can make this plainer, and
will.
- -XVIII. I know, but I have to hurry here; this is
the broken back of my story; some business briefly
transacted, I am leaping for Barbara’s apron-strings.
Slip 57. Quite right again; I shall make it plain.
Chap. XX. I shall make all these points clear. About
Lady Prestongrange (not Lady Grant, only Miss Grant,
my dear, though Lady Prestongrange, quoth the dominie)
I am taken with your idea of her death, and have a good
mind to substitute a featureless aunt.
Slip 78. I don’t see how to lessen this effect. There
is really not much said of it; and I know Catriona did it.
But I’ll try.
—89. I know. This is an old puzzle of mine. You
see C.’s dialect is not wholly a bed of roses. If only I
knew the Gaelic. Well, I’ll try for another expression.
The end. I shall try to work it over. James was at
Dunkirk ordering post-horses for his own retreat. Catriona
did have her suspicions aroused by the letter, and careless
gentleman, I told you so—or she did at least.—Yes,
the blood money.—I am bothered about the portmanteau;
it is the presence of Catriona that bothers me; the rape
of the pockmantie is historic....
To me, I own, it seems in the proof a very pretty piece
of workmanship. David himself I refuse to discuss; he
is. The Lord Advocate I think a strong sketch of a very
difficult character, James More, sufficient; and the two
girls very pleasing creatures. But O dear me, I came
near losing my heart to Barbara! I am not quite so
constant as David, and even he—well, he didn’t know it,
anyway! Tod Lapraik is a piece of living Scots: if I
had never writ anything but that and Thrawn Janet, still
I’d have been a writer. The defects of D. B. are inherent,
I fear. But on the whole, I am far indeed from being
displeased with the tailie. One thing is sure, there has
been no such drawing of Scots character since Scott;
and even he never drew a full length like Davie, with his
shrewdness and simplicity, and stockishness and charm.
Yet, you’ll see, the public won’t want it; they want more
Alan! Well, they can’t get it. And readers of Tess can have
no use for my David, and his innocent but real love affairs.
I found my fame much grown on this return to civilisation.
Digito monstrari is a new experience; people all
looked at me in the streets in Sydney; and it was very
queer. Here, of course, I am only the white chief in the
Great House to the natives; and to the whites, either an
ally or a foe. It is a much healthier state of matters.
If I lived in an atmosphere of adulation, I should end by
kicking against the pricks. O my beautiful forest, O my
beautiful shining, windy house, what a joy it was to behold
them again! No chance to take myself too seriously here.
The difficulty of the end is the mass of matter to be
attended to, and the small time left to transact it in. I
mean from Alan’s danger of arrest. But I have just seen
my way out, I do believe.
Easter Sunday.—I have now got as far as slip 28, and
finished the chapter of the law technicalities. Well, these
seemed to me always of the essence of the story, which is
the story of a cause célèbre; moreover, they are the justification
of my inventions; if these men went so far (granting
Davie sprung on them) would they not have gone so
much further? But of course I knew they were a difficulty;
determined to carry them through in a conversation;
approached this (it seems) with cowardly anxiety;
and filled it with gabble, sir, gabble. I have left all my
facts, but have removed 42 lines. I should not wonder
but what I’ll end by re-writing it. It is not the technicalities
that shocked you, it was my bad art. It is very
strange that X. should be so good a chapter and IX. and
XI. so uncompromisingly bad. It looks as if XI. also would
have to be re-formed. If X. had not cheered me up, I
should be in doleful dumps, but X. is alive anyway, and
life is all in all.
Thursday, April 5th.—Well, there’s no disguise possible;
Fanny is not well, and we are miserably anxious....
Friday, 7th.—I am thankful to say the new medicine
relieved her at once. A crape has been removed from the
day for all of us. To make things better, the morning is
ah! such a morning as you have never seen; heaven
upon earth for sweetness, freshness, depth upon depth
of unimaginable colour, and a huge silence broken at this
moment only by the far-away murmur of the Pacific and
the rich piping of a single bird. You can’t conceive what
a relief this is; it seems a new world. She has such
extraordinary recuperative power that I do hope for the
best. I am as tired as man can be. This is a great trial
to a family, and I thank God it seems as if ours was going
to bear it well. And O! if it only lets up, it will be but
a pleasant memory. We are all seedy, bar Lloyd: Fanny,
as per above; self nearly extinct; Belle, utterly overworked
and bad toothache; Cook, down with a bad foot;
Butler, prostrate with a bad leg. Eh, what a faim’ly!
Sunday.—Grey heaven, raining torrents of rain; occasional
thunder and lightning. Everything to dispirit; but
my invalids are really on the mend. The rain roars like
the sea; in the sound of it there is a strange and ominous
suggestion of an approaching tramp; something nameless
and measureless seems to draw near, and strikes me
cold, and yet is welcome. I lie quiet in bed to-day, and
think of the universe with a good deal of equanimity.
I have, at this moment, but the one objection to it; the
fracas with which it proceeds. I do not love noise; I am
like my grandfather in that; and so many years in these
still islands has ingrained the sentiment perhaps. Here
are no trains, only men pacing barefoot. No cars or carriages;
at worst the rattle of a horse’s shoes among the
rocks. Beautiful silence; and so soon as this robustious
rain takes off, I am to drink of it again by oceanfuls.
April 16th.—Several pages of this letter destroyed as
beneath scorn; the wailings of a crushed worm; matter
in which neither you nor I can take stock. Fanny is distinctly
better, I believe all right now; I too am mending,
though I have suffered from crushed wormery, which is
not good for the body, and damnation to the soul. I feel
to-night a baseless anxiety to write a lovely poem à propos
des bottes de ma grand’mère, qui etaient à revers. I see I
am idiotic. I’ll try the poem.
17th.—The poem did not get beyond plovers and lovers.
I am still, however, harassed by the unauthentic Muse;
if I cared to encourage her—but I have not the time, and
anyway we are at the vernal equinox. It is funny enough,
but my pottering verses are usually made (like the God-gifted
organ voice’s) at the autumnal; and this seems to
hold at the Antipodes. There is here some odd secret
of Nature. I cannot speak of politics; we wait and
wonder. It seems (this is partly a guess) Ide won’t take
the C. J. ship, unless the islands are disarmed; and that
England hesitates and holds off. By my own idea, strongly
corroborated by Sir George, I am writing no more letters.
But I have put as many irons in against this folly of the
disarming as I could manage. It did not reach my ears
till nearly too late. What a risk to take! What an expense
to incur! And for how poor a gain! Apart from the
treachery of it. My dear fellow, politics is a vile and a
bungling business. I used to think meanly of the plumber;
but how he shines beside the politician!
Thursday.—A general, steady advance; Fanny really
quite chipper and jolly—self on the rapid mend, and with
my eye on forests that are to fall—and my finger on the axe,
which wants stoning.
Saturday, 22.—Still all for the best; but I am having
a heartbreaking time over David. I have nearly all
corrected. But have to consider The Heather on Fire, The
Wood by Silvermills, and the last chapter. They all seem
to me off colour; and I am not fit to better them
yet. No proof has been sent of the title, contents, or
dedication.
To A. Conan Doyle
The reference in the postscript here is, I believe, to the Journals
of the Society for Psychical Research.
Vailima, Apia, Samoa, April 5th, 1893.
DEAR SIR,—You have taken many occasions to make
yourself very agreeable to me, for which I might in
decency have thanked you earlier. It is now my turn; and
I hope you will allow me to offer you my compliments on
your very ingenious and very interesting adventures of
Sherlock Holmes. That is the class of literature that I
like when I have the toothache. As a matter of fact, it
was a pleurisy I was enjoying when I took the volume
up; and it will interest you as a medical man to know
that the cure was for the moment effectual. Only the one
thing troubles me; can this be my old friend Joe Bell?—I
am, yours very truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
P.S.—And lo, here is your address supplied me here
in Samoa! But do not take mine, O frolic fellow Spookist,
from the same source; mine is wrong.
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin
The outbreak of hostilities was at this date imminent between
Mulinuu (the party of Laupepa, recognised and supported by the
Three Powers) and Malie (the party of Mataafa).
[Vailima] 25th April [1893].
MY DEAR COLVIN,—To-day early I sent down to Maben
(Secretary of State) an offer to bring up people from Malie,
keep them in my house, and bring them down day by
day for so long as the negotiation should last. I have a
favourable answer so far. This I would not have tried,
had not old Sir George Grey put me on my mettle; “Never
despair,” was his word; and “I am one of the few people
who have lived long enough to see how true that is.” Well,
thereupon I plunged in; and the thing may do me great
harm, but yet I do not think so—for I think jealousy will
prevent the trial being made. And at any rate it is another
chance for this distracted archipelago of children, sat upon
by a clique of fools. If, by the gift of God, I can do—I am
allowed to try to do—and succeed: but no, the prospect
is too bright to be entertained.
To-day we had a ride down to Tanugamanono, and then
by the new wood paths. One led us to a beautiful clearing,
with four native houses; taro, yams, and the like,
excellently planted, and old Folau—“the Samoan Jew”—sitting
and whistling there in his new-found and well-deserved
well-being. It was a good sight to see a Samoan
thus before the world. Further up, on our way home, we
saw the world clear, and the wide die of the shadow lying
broad; we came but a little further, and found in the
borders of the bush a banyan. It must have been 150
feet in height; the trunk, and its acolytes, occupied a
great space; above that, in the peaks of the branches,
quite a forest of ferns and orchids were set; and over all
again the huge spread of the boughs rose against the
bright west, and sent their shadow miles to the eastward.
I have not often seen anything more satisfying than this
vast vegetable.
Sunday.—A heavenly day again! the world all dead
silence, save when, from far down below us in the woods,
comes up the crepitation of the little wooden drum that
beats to church. Scarce a leaf stirs; only now and again
a great, cool gush of air that makes my papers fly, and
is gone.—The king of Samoa has refused my intercession
between him and Mataafa; and I do not deny this is a
good riddance to me of a difficult business, in which I
might very well have failed. What else is to be done for
these silly folks?
May 12th.—And this is where I had got to, before the
mail arrives with, I must say, a real gentlemanly letter
from yourself. Sir, that is the sort of letter I want!
Now, I’ll make my little proposal.60 I will accept Child’s
Play and Pan’s Pipes. Then I want Pastoral, The Manse,
The Islet, leaving out if you like all the prefacial matter
and beginning at I. Then the portrait of Robert Hunter,
beginning “Whether he was originally big or little,” and
ending “fearless and gentle.” So much for Mem. and
Portraits. Beggars, sections I. and II., Random Memories
II., and Lantern Bearers; I’m agreeable. These are my
selections. I don’t know about Pulvis et Umbra either,
but must leave that to you. But just what you please.
About Davie I elaborately wrote last time, but still
Davie is not done; I am grinding singly at The Ebb Tide,
as we now call the Farallone; the most of it will go this
mail. About the following, let there be no mistake: I
will not write the abstract of Kidnapped; write it who
will, I will not. Boccaccio must have been a clever fellow
to write both argument and story; I am not, et je me récuse.
We call it The Ebb Tide: a Trio and Quartette; but
that secondary name you may strike out if it seems dull
to you. The book, however, falls in two halves, when
the fourth character appears. I am on p. 82 if you want
to know, and expect to finish on I suppose 110 or so; but
it goes slowly, as you may judge from the fact that this
three weeks past, I have only struggled from p. 58 to p.
82: twenty-four pages, et encore sure to be re-written, in
twenty-one days. This is no prize-taker; not much
Waverley Novels about this!
May 16th.—I believe it will be ten chapters of The
Ebb Tide that go to you; the whole thing should be
completed in I fancy twelve; and the end will follow
punctually next mail. It is my great wish that this
might get into The Illustrated London News for Gordon
Browne to illustrate. For whom, in case he should get
the job, I give you a few notes. A purao is a tree giving
something like a fig with flowers. He will find some
photographs of an old marine curiosity shop in my collection,
which may help him. Attwater’s settlement is to
be entirely overshadowed everywhere by tall palms; see
photographs of Fakarava: the verandahs of the house
are 12 ft. wide. Don’t let him forget the Figure Head,
for which I have a great use in the last chapter. It stands
just clear of the palms on the crest of the beach at the
head of the pier; the flag-staff not far off; the pier he
will understand is perhaps three feet above high water,
not more at any price. The sailors of the Farallone are
to be dressed like white sailors of course. For other
things, I remit this excellent artist to my photographs.
I can’t think what to say about the tale, but it seems
to me to go off with a considerable bang; in fact, to be
an extraordinary work: but whether popular! Attwater
is a no end of a courageous attempt, I think you will
admit; how far successful is another affair. If my island
ain’t a thing of beauty, I’ll be damned. Please observe
Wiseman and Wishart; for incidental grimness, they
strike me as in it. Also, kindly observe the Captain and
Adar; I think that knocks spots. In short, as you see,
I’m a trifle vainglorious. But O, it has been such a
grind! The devil himself would allow a man to brag a
little after such a crucifixion! And indeed I’m only
bragging for a change before I return to the darned thing
lying waiting for me on p. 88, where I last broke down.
I break down at every paragraph, I may observe; and
lie here and sweat, till I can get one sentence wrung out
after another. Strange doom; after having worked so
easily for so long! Did ever anybody see such a story
of four characters?
Later, 2.30.—It may interest you to know that I am
entirely tapu, and live apart in my chambers like a caged
beast. Lloyd has a bad cold, and Graham and Belle are
getting it. Accordingly, I dwell here without the light
of any human countenance or voice, and strap away at
The Ebb Tide until (as now) I can no more. Fanny can
still come, but is gone to glory now, or to her garden.
Page 88 is done, and must be done over again to-morrow,
and I confess myself exhausted. Pity a man who can’t
work on along when he has nothing else on earth to do!
But I have ordered Jack, and am going for a ride in the
bush presently to refresh the machine; then back to a
lonely dinner and durance vile. I acquiesce in this hand
of fate; for I think another cold just now would just
about do for me. I have scarce yet recovered the two
last.
May 18th.—My progress is crabwise, and I fear only
IX. chapters will be ready for the mail. I am on p. 88
again, and with half an idea of going back again to 85.
We shall see when we come to read: I used to regard
reading as a pleasure in my old light days. All the house
are down with the iffluenza in a body, except Fanny and
me. The Iffluenza appears to become endemic here, but
it has always been a scourge in the islands. Witness the
beginning of The Ebb Tide, which was observed long before
the Iffle had distinguished himself at home by such Napoleonic
conquests. I am now of course “quite a recluse,”
and it is very stale, and there is no amanuensis to carry
me over my mail, to which I shall have to devote many
hours that would have been more usefully devoted to
The Ebb Tide. For you know you can dictate at all hours
of the day and at any odd moment; but to sit down
and write with your red right hand is a very different
matter.
May 20th.—Well, I believe I’ve about finished the
thing, I mean as far as the mail is to take it. Chapter X.
is now in Lloyd’s hands for remarks, and extends in its
present form to p. 93 incl. On the 12th of May, I see
by looking back, I was on p. 82, not for the first time;
so that I have made 11 pages in nine livelong days. Well!
up a high hill he heaved a huge round stone. But this
Flaubert business must be resisted in the premises. Or
is it the result of iffluenza? God forbid. Fanny is down
now, and the last link that bound me to my fellow men
is severed. I sit up here, and write, and read Renan’s
Origines, which is certainly devilish interesting; I read
his Nero yesterday, it is very good, O, very good! But
he is quite a Michelet; the general views, and such a
piece of character painting, excellent; but his method
sheer lunacy. You can see him take up the block which
he had just rejected, and make of it the corner-stone: a
maddening way to deal with authorities; and the result
so little like history that one almost blames oneself for
wasting time. But the time is not wasted; the conspectus
is always good, and the blur that remains on the mind
is probably just enough. I have been enchanted with
the unveiling of Revelations. Grigsby! what a lark!
And how picturesque that return of the false Nero! The
Apostle John is rather discredited. And to think how
one had read the thing so often, and never understood
the attacks upon St. Paul! I remember when I was a
child, and we came to the Four Beasts that were all
over eyes, the sickening terror with which I was filled. If
that was Heaven, what, in the name of Davy Jones and
the aboriginal night-mare, could Hell be? Take it for
all in all, L’Antéchrist is worth reading. The Histoire
d’ Israël did not surprise me much; I had read those
Hebrew sources with more intelligence than the New
Testament, and was quite prepared to admire Ahab
and Jezebel, etc. Indeed, Ahab has always been
rather a hero of mine; I mean since the years of
discretion.
May 21st.—And here I am back again on p. 85! the
last chapter demanding an entire revision, which accordingly
it is to get. And where my mail is to come in, God
knows! This forced, violent, alembicated style is most
abhorrent to me; it can’t be helped; the note was struck
years ago on the Janet Nicoll, and has to be maintained
somehow; and I can only hope the intrinsic horror and
pathos, and a kind of fierce glow of colour there is to it,
and the surely remarkable wealth of striking incident,
may guide our little shallop into port. If Gordon
Browne is to get it, he should see the Brassey photographs
of Papeete. But mind, the three waifs were
never in the town; only on the beach and in the
calaboose. By George, but it’s a good thing to illustrate
for a man like that! Fanny is all right again.
False alarm! I was down yesterday afternoon at Papauta,
and heard much growling of war, and the delightful
news that the C. J. and the President are going to
run away from Mulinuu and take refuge in the Tivoli
hotel.
23rd. Mail day.—The Ebb Tide, all but (I take it)
fifteen pages, is now in your hands—possibly only about
eleven pp. It is hard to say. But there it is, and you
can do your best with it. Personally, I believe I would
in this case make even a sacrifice to get Gordon Browne
and copious illustration. I guess in ten days I shall have
finished with it; then I go next to D. Balfour, and get
the proofs ready: a nasty job for me, as you know. And
then? Well, perhaps I’ll take a go at the family history.
I think that will be wise, as I am so much off work. And
then, I suppose, Weir of Hermiston, but it may be anything.
I am discontented with The Ebb Tide, naturally;
there seems such a veil of words over it; and I like more
and more naked writing; and yet sometimes one has a
longing for full colour and there comes the veil again.
The Young Chevalier is in very full colour, and I fear
it for that reason.—Ever,
R. L. S.
To S. R. Crockett
Glencorse Church in the Pentlands, mentioned by Stevenson with
so much emotion in the course of this letter, served him for the
scene of Chapter VI. in Weir of Hermiston, where his old associations
and feelings in connection with the place have so admirably inspired
him.
Vailima, Samoa, May 17th, 1893.
DEAR MR. CROCKETT,—I do not owe you two letters,
nor yet nearly one, sir! The last time I heard of you,
you wrote about an accident, and I sent you a letter to
my lawyer, Charles Baxter, which does not seem to have
been presented, as I see nothing of it in his accounts.
Query, was that lost? I should not like you to think I
had been so unmannerly and so inhuman. If you have
written since, your letter also has miscarried, as is much
the rule in this part of the world, unless you register.
Your book is not yet to hand, but will probably follow
next month. I detected you early in the Bookman, which
I usually see, and noted you in particular as displaying
a monstrous ingratitude about the footnote. Well, mankind
is ungrateful; “Man’s ingratitude to man makes
countless thousands mourn,” quo’ Rab—or words to that
effect. By the way, an anecdote of a cautious sailor:
“Bill, Bill,” says I to him, “or words to that effect.”
I shall never take that walk by the Fisher’s Tryst
and Glencorse. I shall never see Auld Reekie. I shall
never set my foot again upon the heather. Here I am
until I die, and here will I be buried. The word is out
and the doom written. Or, if I do come, it will be a
voyage to a further goal, and in fact a suicide; which,
however, if I could get my family all fixed up in the
money way, I might, perhaps, perform, or attempt. But
there is a plaguey risk of breaking down by the way;
and I believe I shall stay here until the end comes like
a good boy, as I am. If I did it, I should put upon my
trunks: “Passenger to—Hades.”
How strangely wrong your information is! In the
first place, I should never carry a novel to Sydney; I
should post it from here. In the second place, Weir of
Hermiston is as yet scarce begun. It’s going to be excellent,
no doubt; but it consists of about twenty pages.
I have a tale, a shortish tale in length, but it has proved
long to do, The Ebb Tide, some part of which goes home
this mail. It is by me and Mr. Osbourne, and is really
a singular work. There are only four characters, and
three of them are bandits—well, two of them are, and
the third is their comrade and accomplice. It sounds
cheering, doesn’t it? Barratry, and drunkenness, and
vitriol, and I cannot tell you all what, are the beams
of the roof. And yet—I don’t know—I sort of think
there’s something in it. You’ll see (which is more than
I ever can) whether Davis and Attwater come off or not.
Weir of Hermiston is a much greater undertaking,
and the plot is not good, I fear; but Lord Justice-Clerk
Hermiston ought to be a plum. Of other schemes, more
or less executed, it skills not to speak.
I am glad to hear so good an account of your activity
and interests, and shall always hear from you with
pleasure; though I am, and must continue, a mere sprite
of the inkbottle, unseen in the flesh. Please remember
me to your wife and to the four-year-old sweetheart, if
she be not too engrossed with higher matters. Do you
know where the road crosses the burn under Glencorse
Church? Go there, and say a prayer for me: moriturus
salutat. See that it’s a sunny day; I would like it to be
a Sunday, but that’s not possible in the premises; and
stand on the right-hand bank just where the road goes
down into the water, and shut your eyes, and if I don’t
appear to you! well, it can’t be helped, and will be
extremely funny.
I have no concern here but to work and to keep an
eye on this distracted people. I live just now wholly
alone in an upper room of my house, because the whole
family are down with influenza, bar my wife and myself.
I get my horse up sometimes in the afternoon and have
a ride in the woods; and I sit here and smoke and write,
and rewrite, and destroy, and rage at my own impotence,
from six in the morning till eight at night, with trifling
and not always agreeable intervals for meals.
I am sure you chose wisely to keep your country
charge. There a minister can be something, not in a
town. In a town, the most of them are empty houses—and
public speakers. Why should you suppose your
book will be slated because you have no friends? A
new writer, if he is any good, will be acclaimed generally
with more noise than he deserves. But by this time you
will know for certain.—I am, yours sincerely,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
P.S.—Be it known to this fluent generation that I,
R. L. S., in the forty-third of my age and the twentieth
of my professional life, wrote twenty-four pages in twenty-one
days, working from six to eleven, and again in the
afternoon from two to four or so, without fail or interruption.
Such are the gifts the gods have endowed us
withal: such was the facility of this prolific writer!
R. L. S.
To Augustus St. Gaudens
Vailima, Samoa, May 29th, 1893.
MY DEAR GOD-LIKE SCULPTOR,—I wish in the most
delicate manner in the world to insinuate a few commissions:—
No. 1. Is for a couple of copies of my medallion, as
gilt-edged and high-toned as it is possible to make them.
One is for our house here, and should be addressed as
above. The other is for my friend Sidney Colvin, and
should be addressed—Sidney Colvin, Esq., Keeper of the
Print Room, British Museum, London.
No. 2. This is a rather large order, and demands some
explanation. Our house is lined with varnished wood of
a dark ruddy colour, very beautiful to see; at the same
time, it calls very much for gold; there is a limit to
picture frames, and really you know there has to be a
limit to the pictures you put inside of them. Accordingly,
we have had an idea of a certain kind of decoration, which,
I think, you might help us to make practical. What we
want is an alphabet of gilt letters (very much such as
people play with), and all mounted on spikes like drawing-pins;
say two spikes to each letter, one at top, and
one at bottom. Say that they were this height, I
and that you chose a model of some really exquisitely
fine, clear type from some Roman monument, and that
they were made either of metal or some composition gilt—the
point is, could not you, in your land of wooden
houses, get a manufacturer to take the idea and manufacture
them at a venture, so that I could get two or
three hundred pieces or so at a moderate figure? You
see, suppose you entertain an honoured guest, when he
goes he leaves his name in gilt letters on your walls; an
infinity of fun and decoration can be got out of hospitable
and festive mottoes; and the doors of every room can
be beautified by the legend of their names. I really
think there is something in the idea, and you might be
able to push it with the brutal and licentious manufacturer,
using my name if necessary, though I should think
the name of the god-like sculptor would be more germane.
In case you should get it started, I should tell you that
we should require commas in order to write the Samoan
language, which is full of words written thus: la’u, ti’e ti’e.
As the Samoan language uses but a very small proportion
of the consonants, we should require a double or treble
stock of all vowels, and of F, G, L, U, N, P, S, T, and V.
The other day in Sydney, I think you might be interested
to hear, I was sculpt a second time by a man
called ——, as well as I can remember and read. I mustn’t
criticise a present, and he had very little time to do it
in. It is thought by my family to be an excellent likeness
of Mark Twain. This poor fellow, by the by, met
with the devil of an accident. A model of a statue which
he had just finished with a desperate effort was smashed
to smithereens on its way to exhibition.
Please be sure and let me know if anything is likely
to come of this letter business, and the exact cost of each
letter, so that I may count the cost before ordering.—
Yours sincerely,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Sidney Colvin
Relating the toilsome completion of The Ebb Tide, and beginning
of the account of his grandfather, Robert Stevenson, in History of a
Family of Engineers.
[Vailima] 29th May [1893].
MY DEAR COLVIN,—Still grinding at Chap. XI. I began
many days ago on p. 93, and am still on p. 93, which
is exhilarating, but the thing takes shape all the same
and should make a pretty lively chapter for an end of
it. For XIII. is only a footnote ad explicandum.
June the 1st.—Back on p. 93. I was on 100 yesterday,
but read it over and condemned it.
10 a.m.—I have worked up again to 97, but how?
The deuce fly away with literature, for the basest sport
in creation. But it’s got to come straight! and if possible,
so that I may finish D. Balfour in time for the same
mail. What a getting upstairs! This is Flaubert out-done.
Belle, Graham, and Lloyd leave to-day on a malaga
down the coast; to be absent a week or so: this leaves
Fanny, me, and ——, who seems a nice, kindly fellow.
June 2nd.—I am nearly dead with dyspepsia, over-smoking,
and unremunerative overwork. Last night, I
went to bed by seven; woke up again about ten for a
minute to find myself light-headed and altogether off my
legs; went to sleep again, and woke this morning fairly
fit. I have crippled on to p. 101, but I haven’t read it
yet, so do not boast. What kills me is the frame of mind
of one of the characters; I cannot get it through. Of
course that does not interfere with my total inability to
write; so that yesterday I was a living half-hour upon a
single clause and have a gallery of variants that would
surprise you. And this sort of trouble (which I cannot
avoid) unfortunately produces nothing when done but
alembication and the far-fetched. Well, read it with
mercy!
8 a.m.—Going to bed. Have read it, and believe the
chapter practically done at last. But Lord! it has been
a business.
June 3rd, 8.15.—The draft is finished, the end of
Chapter XII. and the tale, and I have only eight pages
wiederzuarbeiten. This is just a cry of joy in passing.
10.30.—Knocked out of time. Did 101 and 102. Alas,
no more to-day, as I have to go down town to a meeting.
Just as well though, as my thumb is about done up.
Sunday, June 4th.—Now for a little snippet of my life.
Yesterday, 12.30, in a heavenly day of sun and trade, I
mounted my horse and set off. A boy opens my gate
for me. “Sleep and long life! A blessing on your
journey,” says he. And I reply “Sleep, long life! A
blessing on the house!” Then on, down the lime lane,
a rugged, narrow, winding way, that seems almost as if
it was leading you into Lyonesse, and you might see the
head and shoulders of a giant looking in. At the corner
of the road I meet the inspector of taxes, and hold a
diplomatic interview with him; he wants me to pay
taxes on the new house; I am informed I should not
till next year; and we part, re infecta, he promising to
bring me decisions, I assuring him that, if I find any
favouritism, he will find me the most recalcitrant tax-payer
on the island. Then I have a talk with an old
servant by the wayside. A little further I pass two
children coming up. “Love!” say I; “are you two
chiefly-proceeding inland?” and they say, “Love! yes!”
and the interesting ceremony is finished. Down to the
post office, where I find Vitrolles and (Heaven reward
you!) the White Book, just arrived per Upolu, having
gone the wrong way round, by Australia; also six copies
of Island Nights’ Entertainments. Some of Weatherall’s
illustrations are very clever; but O Lord! the lagoon!
I did say it was “shallow,” but, O dear, not so shallow
as that a man could stand up in it! I had still an hour
to wait for my meeting, so Postmaster Davis let me sit
down in his room and I had a bottle of beer in, and read
A Gentleman of France. Have you seen it coming out
in Longman’s? My dear Colvin! ’tis the most exquisite
pleasure; a real chivalrous yarn, like the Dumas’ and
yet unlike. Thereafter to the meeting of the five newspaper
proprietors. Business transacted, I have to gallop
home and find the boys waiting to be paid at the doorstep.
Monday, 5th.—Yesterday, Sunday, the Rev. Dr. Brown,
secretary to the Wesleyan Mission, and the man who
made the war in the Western Islands and was tried for
his life in Fiji, came up, and we had a long, important
talk about Samoa. O, if I could only talk to the home
men! But what would it matter? none of them know,
none of them care. If we could only have Macgregor
here with his schooner, you would hear of no more troubles
in Samoa. That is what we want; a man that knows
and likes the natives, qui paye de sa personne, and is not
afraid of hanging when necessary. We don’t want bland
Swedish humbugs, and fussy, footering German barons.
That way the maelstrom lies, and we shall soon be
in it.
I have to-day written 103 and 104, all perfectly wrong,
and shall have to rewrite them. This tale is devilish,
and Chapter XI. the worst of the lot. The truth is of
course that I am wholly worked out; but it’s nearly
done, and shall go somehow according to promise. I go
against all my gods, and say it is not worth while to
massacre yourself over the last few pages of a rancid
yarn, that the reviewers will quite justly tear to bits.
As for D. B., no hope, I fear, this mail, but we’ll see what
the afternoon does for me.
4.15.—Well, it’s done. Those tragic 16 pp. are at last
finished, and I have put away thirty-two pages of chips,
and have spent thirteen days about as nearly in Hell as
a man could expect to live through. It’s done, and of
course it ain’t worth while, and who cares? There it is,
and about as grim a tale as was ever written, and as
grimy, and as hateful.
SACRED
TO THE MEMORY
OF
J. L. HUISH,
BORN 1856, AT HACKNEY,
LONDON
Accidentally killed upon this
Island,
10th September 1889.
|
Tuesday, 6th.—I am exulting to do nothing. It pours
with rain from the westward, very unusual kind of weather;
I was standing out on the little verandah in front of my
room this morning, and there went through me or over
me a wave of extraordinary and apparently baseless
emotion. I literally staggered. And then the explanation
came, and I knew I had found a frame of mind and
body that belonged to Scotland, and particularly to the
neighbourhood of Callander. Very odd these identities
of sensation, and the world of connotations implied; highland
huts, and peat smoke, and the brown, swirling rivers,
and wet clothes, and whisky, and the romance of the
past, and that indescribable bite of the whole thing at a
man’s heart, which is—or rather lies at the bottom of—a
story.
I don’t know if you are a Barbey d’Aurévilly-an. I
am. I have a great delight in his Norman stories. Do
you know the Chevalier des Touches and L’Ensorcelée?
They are admirable, they reek of the soil and the past.
But I was rather thinking just now of Le Rideau Cramoisi,
and its adorable setting of the stopped coach, the dark
street, the home-going in the inn yard, and the red blind
illuminated. Without doubt, there was an identity of
sensation; one of those conjunctions in life that had
filled Barbey full to the brim, and permanently bent his
memory.
I wonder exceedingly if I have done anything at all
good; and who can tell me? and why should I wish to
know? In so little a while, I, and the English language,
and the bones of my descendants, will have ceased to be
a memory! And yet—and yet—one would like to leave
an image for a few years upon men’s minds—for fun.
This is a very dark frame of mind, consequent on overwork
and the conclusion of the excruciating Ebb Tide.
Adieu.
What do you suppose should be done with The Ebb
Tide? It would make a volume of 200 pp.; on the other
hand, I might likely have some more stories soon: The
Owl, Death in the Pot, The Sleeper Awakened; all these
are possible. The Owl might be half as long; The Sleeper
Awakened, ditto; Death in the Pot a deal shorter, I believe.
Then there’s the Go-Between, which is not impossible
altogether. The Owl, The Sleeper Awakened, and the
Go-Between end reasonably well; Death in the Pot is an
ungodly massacre. O, well, The Owl only ends well in so
far as some lovers come together, and nobody is killed
at the moment, but you know they are all doomed, they
are Chouan fellows.61
Friday, 9th.—Well, the mail is in; no Blue-book,
depressing letter from C.; a long, amusing ramble from
my mother; vast masses of Romeike; they are going
to war now; and what will that lead to? and what has
driven them to it but the persistent misconduct of these
two officials? I know I ought to rewrite the end of this
bloody Ebb Tide: well, I can’t. C’est plus fort que moi;
it has to go the way it is, and be jowned to it! From
what I make out of the reviews,62 I think it would be
better not to republish The Ebb Tide: but keep it for
other tales, if they should turn up. Very amusing how
the reviews pick out one story and damn the rest! and
it is always a different one. Be sure you send me the
article from Le Temps. Talking of which, ain’t it manners
in France to acknowledge a dedication? I have never
heard a word from Le Sieur Bourget.
Saturday, 17th.—Since I wrote this last, I have written
a whole chapter of my Grandfather, and read it to-night;
it was on the whole much appreciated, and I kind of
hope it ain’t bad myself. ’Tis a third writing, but it
wants a fourth. By next mail, I believe I might send
you 3 chapters. That is to say Family Annals, The Service
of the Northern Lights, and The Building of the Bell Rock.
Possibly even 4—A Houseful of Boys. I could finish my
Grandfather very easy now; my father and Uncle Alan
stop the way. I propose to call the book: Northern Lights:
Memoirs of a Family of Engineers. I tell you, it is going
to be a good book. My idea in sending MS. would be to
get it set up; two proofs to me, one to Professor Swan,
Ardchapel, Helensburgh—mark it private and confidential—one
to yourself; and come on with criticisms! But I’ll
have to see. The total plan of the book is this—
| I. |
Domestic Annals. |
|
| II. |
The Service of the Northern Lights. |
|
| III. |
The Building of the Bell Rock. |
|
| IV. |
A Houseful of Boys (or the Family in Baxter’s Place). |
There will be an Introduction ‘The Surname of Stevenson’ which has proved a mighty
queer subject of inquiry. But, Lord! if I were among libraries. |
| V. |
Education of an Engineer. |
| VI. |
The Grandfather. |
| VII. |
Alan Stevenson. |
| VIII. |
Thomas Stevenson. |
Sunday, 18th.—I shall put in this envelope the end
of the ever-to-be-execrated Ebb Tide, or Stevenson’s
Blooming Error. Also, a paper apart for David Balfour.
The slips must go in another enclosure, I suspect, owing
to their beastly bulk. Anyway, there are two pieces of
work off my mind, and though I could wish I had rewritten
a little more of David, yet it was plainly to be
seen it was impossible. All the points indicated by you
have been brought out; but to rewrite the end, in my
present state of over-exhaustion and fiction-phobia, would
have been madness; and I let it go as it stood. My grandfather
is good enough for me, these days. I do not work
any less; on the whole, if anything, a little more. But
it is different.
The slips go to you in four packets; I hope they are
what they should be, but do not think so. I am at a
pitch of discontent with fiction in all its form—or my
forms—that prevents me being able to be even interested.
I have had to stop all drink; smoking I am trying to
stop also. It annoys me dreadfully: and yet if I take
a glass of claret, I have a headache the next day! O,
and a good headache too; none of your trifles.
Well, sir, here’s to you, and farewell.—Yours ever,
R. L. S.
To Edmund Gosse
June 10th, 1893.
MY DEAR GOSSE,—My mother tells me you never
received the very long and careful letter that I sent you
more than a year ago; or is it two years?
I was indeed so much surprised at your silence that
I wrote to Henry James and begged him to inquire if
you had received it; his reply was an (if possible) higher
power of the same silence; whereupon I bowed my head
and acquiesced. But there is no doubt the letter was
written and sent; and I am sorry it was lost, for it contained,
among other things, an irrecoverable criticism of
your father’s Life, with a number of suggestions for another
edition, which struck me at the time as excellent.
Well, suppose we call that cried off, and begin as
before? It is fortunate indeed that we can do so, being
both for a while longer in the day. But, alas! when I
see “works of the late J. A. S.,”63 I can see no help and
no reconciliation possible. I wrote him a letter, I think,
three years ago, heard in some roundabout way that he
had received it, waited in vain for an answer (which had
probably miscarried), and in a humour between frowns
and smiles wrote to him no more. And now the strange,
poignant, pathetic, brilliant creature is gone into the
night, and the voice is silent that uttered so much excellent
discourse; and I am sorry that I did not write
to him again. Yet I am glad for him; light lie the turf!
The Saturday is the only obituary I have seen, and I
thought it very good upon the whole. I should be half
tempted to write an In Memoriam, but I am submerged
with other work. Are you going to do it? I
very much admire your efforts that way; you are our
only academician.
So you have tried fiction? I will tell you the truth:
when I saw it announced, I was so sure you would send
it to me, that I did not order it! But the order goes
this mail, and I will give you news of it. Yes, honestly,
fiction is very difficult; it is a terrible strain to carry
your characters all that time. And the difficulty of according
the narrative and the dialogue (in a work in the third
person) is extreme. That is one reason out of half a dozen
why I so often prefer the first. It is much in my mind
just now, because of my last work, just off the stocks
three days ago, The Ebb Tide: a dreadful, grimy business
in the third person, where the strain between a vilely
realistic dialogue and a narrative style pitched about
(in phrase) ‘four notes higher’ than it should have
been, has sown my head with grey hairs; or I believe
so—if my head escaped, my heart has them.
The truth is, I have a little lost my way, and stand
bemused at the cross-roads. A subject? Ay, I have
dozens; I have at least four novels begun, they are none
good enough; and the mill waits, and I’ll have to take
second best. The Ebb Tide I make the world a present of;
I expect, and, I suppose, deserve to be torn to pieces;
but there was all that good work lying useless, and I
had to finish it!
All your news of your family is pleasant to hear. My
wife has been very ill, but is now better; I may say I am
ditto, The Ebb Tide having left me high and dry, which
is a good example of the mixed metaphor. Our home, and
estate, and our boys, and the politics of the island, keep
us perpetually amused and busy; and I grind away with
an odd, dogged, down sensation—and an idea in petto that
the game is about played out. I have got too realistic,
and I must break the trammels—I mean I would if I could;
but the yoke is heavy. I saw with amusement that Zola
says the same thing; and truly the Débâcle was a mighty
big book, I have no need for a bigger, though the last part
is a mere mistake in my opinion. But the Emperor, and
Sedan, and the doctor at the ambulance, and the horses
in the field of battle, Lord, how gripped it is! What an
epical performance! According to my usual opinion, I
believe I could go over that book and leave a masterpiece
by blotting and no ulterior art. But that is an old
story, ever new with me. Taine gone, and Renan, and
Symonds, and Tennyson, and Browning; the suns go
swiftly out, and I see no suns to follow, nothing but a
universal twilight of the demi-divinities, with parties like
you and me and Lang beating on toy drums and playing
on penny whistles about glow-worms. But Zola is big
anyway; he has plenty in his belly; too much, that is
all; he wrote the Débâcle and he wrote La Bête humaine,
perhaps the most excruciatingly silly book that I ever
read to an end. And why did I read it to an end, W. E. G.?
Because the animal in me was interested in the lewdness.
Not sincerely, of course, my mind refusing to partake in
it; but the flesh was slightly pleased. And when it was
done, I cast it from me with a peal of laughter, and forgot
it, as I would forget a Montépin. Taine is to me perhaps
the chief of these losses; I did luxuriate in his Origines;
it was something beyond literature, not quite so good,
if you please, but so much more systematic, and the
pages that had to be “written” always so adequate.
Robespierre, Napoleon, were both excellent good.
June 18th, ’93.—Well, I have left fiction wholly, and
gone to my Grandfather, and on the whole found peace.
By next month my Grandfather will begin to be quite
grown up. I have already three chapters about as good
as done; by which, of course, as you know, I mean till
further notice or the next discovery. I like biography far
better than fiction myself: fiction is too free. In biography
you have your little handful of facts, little bits of
a puzzle, and you sit and think, and fit ’em together this
way and that, and get up and throw ’em down, and say
damn, and go out for a walk. And it’s real soothing;
and when done, gives an idea of finish to the writer that
is very peaceful. Of course, it’s not really so finished as
quite a rotten novel; it always has and always must
have the incurable illogicalities of life about it, the fathoms
of slack and the miles of tedium. Still, that’s where the
fun comes in; and when you have at last managed to
shut up the castle spectre (dulness), the very outside of
his door looks beautiful by contrast. There are pages in
these books that may seem nothing to the reader; but you
remember what they were, you know what they might have
been, and they seem to you witty beyond comparison.
In my Grandfather I’ve had (for instance) to give up the
temporal order almost entirely; doubtless the temporal
order is the great foe of the biographer; it is so tempting,
so easy, and lo! there you are in the bog!—Ever
yours,
R. L. Stevenson.
With all kind messages from self and wife to you and
yours. My wife is very much better, having been the
early part of this year alarmingly ill. She is now all right,
only complaining of trifles, annoying to her, but happily
not interesting to her friends. I am in a hideous state,
having stopped drink and smoking; yes, both. No wine,
no tobacco; and the dreadful part of it is that—looking
forward—I have—what shall I say?—nauseating intimations
that it ought to be for ever.
To Henry James
Vailima Plantation, Samoan Islands,
June 17th, 1893.
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,—I believe I have neglected a
mail in answering yours. You will be very sorry to hear
that my wife was exceedingly ill, and very glad to hear
that she is better. I cannot say that I feel any more
anxiety about her. We shall send you a photograph of
her taken in Sydney in her customary island habit as she
walks and gardens and shrilly drills her brown assistants.
She was very ill when she sat for it, which may a little
explain the appearance of the photograph. It reminds me
of a friend of my grandmother’s who used to say when
talking to younger women, “Aweel, when I was young,
I wasnae just exactly what ye wad call bonny, but I was
pale, penetratin’, and interestin’.” I would not venture to
hint that Fanny is “no bonny,” but there is no doubt
but that in this presentment she is “pale, penetratin’, and
interestin’.”
As you are aware, I have been wading deep waters and
contending with the great ones of the earth, not wholly
without success. It is, you may be interested to hear, a
dreary and infuriating business. If you can get the fools
to admit one thing, they will always save their face by
denying another. If you can induce them to take a step
to the right hand, they generally indemnify themselves
by cutting a caper to the left. I always held (upon no
evidence whatever, from a mere sentiment or intuition)
that politics was the dirtiest, the most foolish, and the
most random of human employments. I always held, but
now I know it! Fortunately, you have nothing to do
with anything of the kind, and I may spare you the horror
of further details.
I received from you a book by a man by the name of
Anatole France. Why should I disguise it? I have no
use for Anatole. He writes very prettily, and then afterwards?
Baron Marbot was a different pair of shoes. So
likewise is the Baron de Vitrolles, whom I am now perusing
with delight. His escape in 1814 is one of the best pages
I remember anywhere to have read. But Marbot and
Vitrolles are dead, and what has become of the living?
It seems as if literature were coming to a stand. I am
sure it is with me; and I am sure everybody will say so
when they have the privilege of reading The Ebb Tide. My
dear man, the grimness of that story is not to be depicted
in words. There are only four characters, to be sure, but
they are such a troop of swine! And their behaviour is
really so deeply beneath any possible standard, that on
a retrospect I wonder I have been able to endure them
myself until the yarn was finished. Well, there is always
one thing; it will serve as a touchstone. If the admirers
of Zola admire him for his pertinent ugliness and pessimism,
I think they should admire this; but if, as I have long
suspected, they neither admire nor understand the man’s
art, and only wallow in his rancidness like a hound in offal,
then they will certainly be disappointed in The Ebb Tide.
Alas! poor little tale, it is not even rancid.
By way of an antidote or febrifuge, I am going on at
a great rate with my History of the Stevensons, which I
hope may prove rather amusing, in some parts at least.
The excess of materials weighs upon me. My grandfather
is a delightful comedy part; and I have to treat
him besides as a serious and (in his way) a heroic figure,
and at times I lose my way, and I fear in the end will
blur the effect. However, à la grâce de Dieu! I’ll make
a spoon or spoil a horn. You see, I have to do the Building
of the Bell Rock by cutting down and packing my grand-sire’s
book, which I rather hope I have done, but do not
know. And it makes a huge chunk of a very different
style and quality between Chapters II. and IV. And it
can’t be helped! It is just a delightful and exasperating
necessity. You know, the stuff is really excellent
narrative: only, perhaps there’s too much of it! There
is the rub. Well, well, it will be plain to you that my
mind is affected; it might be with less. The Ebb Tide
and Northern Lights are a full meal for any plain man.
I have written and ordered your last book, The Real
Thing, so be sure and don’t send it. What else are you
doing or thinking of doing? News I have none, and don’t
want any. I have had to stop all strong drink and all
tobacco, and am now in a transition state between the
two, which seems to be near madness. You never smoked,
I think, so you can never taste the joys of stopping it.
But at least you have drunk, and you can enter perhaps
into my annoyance when I suddenly find a glass of claret
or a brandy-and-water give me a splitting headache the
next morning. No mistake about it; drink anything, and
there’s your headache. Tobacco just as bad for me. If
I live through this breach of habit, I shall be a white-livered
puppy indeed. Actually I am so made, or so
twisted, that I do not like to think of a life without the
red wine on the table and the tobacco with its lovely little
coal of fire. It doesn’t amuse me from a distance. I
may find it the Garden of Eden when I go in, but I don’t
like the colour of the gate-posts. Suppose somebody said
to you, you are to leave your home, and your books, and
your clubs, and go out and camp in mid-Africa, and command
an expedition, you would howl, and kick, and flee.
I think the same of a life without wine and tobacco; and
if this goes on, I’ve got to go and do it, sir, in the living
flesh!
I thought Bourget was a friend of yours? And I
thought the French were a polite race? He has taken
my dedication with a stately silence that has surprised
me into apoplexy. Did I go and dedicate my book64 to
the nasty alien, and the ‘norrid Frenchman, and the
Bloody Furrineer? Well, I wouldn’t do it again; and
unless his case is susceptible of explanation, you might
perhaps tell him so over the walnuts and the wine, by
way of speeding the gay hours. Sincerely, I thought my
dedication worth a letter.
If anything be worth anything here below! Do you
know the story of the man who found a button in his
hash, and called the waiter? “What do you call that?”
says he. “Well,” said the waiter, “what d’you expect?
Expect to find a gold watch and chain?” Heavenly
apologue, is it not? I expected (rather) to find a gold
watch and chain; I expected to be able to smoke to excess
and drink to comfort all the days of my life; and I am
still indignantly staring on this button! It’s not even a
button; it’s a teetotal badge!—Ever yours,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Sidney Colvin
Saturday, 24th (?) June [1893].
MY DEAR COLVIN,—Yesterday morning, after a day of
absolute temperance, I awoke to the worst headache I
had had yet. Accordingly, temperance was said farewell
to, quinine instituted, and I believe my pains are soon to
be over. We wait, with a kind of sighing impatience, for
war to be declared, or to blow finally off, living in the
meanwhile in a kind of children’s hour of firelight and
shadow and preposterous tales; the king seen at night
galloping up our road upon unknown errands and covering
his face as he passes our cook; Mataafa daily surrounded
(when he awakes) with fresh “white man’s boxes” (query,
ammunition?) and professing to be quite ignorant of
where they come from; marches of bodies of men across
the island; concealment of ditto in the bush; the coming
on and off of different chiefs; and such a mass of ravelment
and rag-tag as the devil himself could not unwind.
Wednesday, 28 June.—Yesterday it rained with but
little intermission, but I was jealous of news. Graham
and I got into the saddle about 1 o’clock and off down
to town. In town, there was nothing but rumours going;
in the night drums had been beat, the men had run to
arms on Mulinuu from as far as Vaiala, and the alarm
proved false. There were no signs of any gathering in
Apia proper, and the Secretary of State had no news to
give. I believed him, too, for we are brither Scots. Then
the temptation came upon me strong to go on to the ford
and see the Mataafa villages, where we heard there was
more afoot. Off we rode. When we came to Vaimusu, the
houses were very full of men, but all seemingly unarmed.
Immediately beyond is that river over which we passed
in our scamper with Lady Jersey; it was all solitary.
Three hundred yards beyond is a second ford; and there—I
came face to face with war. Under the trees on the
further bank sat a picket of seven men with Winchesters;
their faces bright, their eyes ardent. As we came up, they
did not speak or move; only their eyes followed us. The
horses drank, and we passed the ford. “Talofa!” I said,
and the commandant of the picket said “Talofa”; and
then, when we were almost by, remembered himself and
asked where we were going. “To Faamuiná,” I said, and
we rode on. Every house by the wayside was crowded with
armed men. There was the European house of a Chinaman
on the right-hand side: a flag of truce flying over the
gate—indeed we saw three of these in what little way we
penetrated into Mataafa’s lines—all the foreigners trying
to protect their goods; and the Chinaman’s verandah
overflowed with men and girls and Winchesters. By the
way we met a party of about ten or a dozen marching
with their guns and cartridge-belts, and the cheerful
alacrity and brightness of their looks set my head turning
with envy and sympathy. Arrived at Vaiusu, the houses
about the malae (village green) were thronged with men,
all armed. On the outside of the council-house (which
was all full within) there stood an orator; he had his
back turned to his audience, and seemed to address the
world at large; all the time we were there his strong voice
continued unabated, and I heard snatches of political
wisdom rising and falling.
The house of Faamuiná stands on a knoll in the malae.
Thither we mounted, a boy ran out and took our horses,
and we went in. Faamuiná was there himself, his wife
Palepa, three other chiefs, and some attendants; and here
again was this exulting spectacle as of people on their
marriage day. Faamuiná (when I last saw him) was an
elderly, limping gentleman, with much of the debility of
age; it was a bright-eyed boy that greeted me; the lady
was no less excited; all had cartridge-belts. We stayed
but a little while to smoke a selui; I would not have kava
made, as I thought my escapade was already dangerous
(perhaps even blameworthy) enough. On the way back,
we were much greeted, and on coming to the ford, the
commandant came and asked me if there were many on
the other side. “Very many,” said I; not that I knew,
but I would not lead them on the ice. “That is well!”
said he, and the little picket laughed aloud as we splashed
into the river. We returned to Apia, through Apia, and
out to windward as far as Vaiala, where the word went
that the men of the Vaimauga had assembled. We met
two boys carrying pigs, and saw six young men busy cooking
in a cook-house; but no sign of an assembly; no arms,
no blackened faces. (I forgot! As we turned to leave
Faamuiná’s, there ran forward a man with his face blackened,
and the back of his lava-lava girded up so as to show
his tattooed hips naked; he leaped before us, cut a wonderful
caper, and flung his knife high in the air, and caught
it. It was strangely savage and fantastic and high-spirited.
I have seen a child doing the same antics long before in
a dance, so that it is plainly an accepted solemnity. I
should say that for weeks the children have been playing
with spears.) Up by the plantation I took a short cut,
which shall never be repeated, through grass and weeds
over the horses’ heads and among rolling stones; I thought
we should have left a horse there, but fortune favoured
us. So home, a little before six, in a dashing squall of
rain, to a bowl of kava and dinner. But the impression
on our minds was extraordinary; the sight of that picket
at the ford, and those ardent, happy faces whirls in my
head; the old aboriginal awoke in both of us and knickered
like a stallion.
It is dreadful to think that I must sit apart here and
do nothing; I do not know if I can stand it out. But
you see, I may be of use to these poor people, if I keep
quiet, and if I threw myself in, I should have a bad job
of it to save myself. There; I have written this to you;
and it is still but 7.30 in the day, and the sun only about
one hour up; can I go back to my old grandpapa, and
men sitting with Winchesters in my mind’s eye? No;
war is a huge entraînement; there is no other temptation
to be compared to it, not one. We were all wet, we had
been about five hours in the saddle, mostly riding hard;
and we came home like schoolboys, with such a lightness
of spirits, and I am sure such a brightness of eye, as you
could have lit a candle at!
Do you appreciate the height and depth of my temptation?
that I have about nine miles to ride, and I can
become a general officer? and to-night I might seize
Mulinuu and have the C. J. under arrest? And yet I
stay here! It seems incredible, so huge is the empire of
prudence and the second thought.
Thursday, 29th.—I had two priests to luncheon yesterday:
the Bishop and Père Rémy. They were very
pleasant, and quite clean too, which has been known
sometimes not to be—even with bishops. Monseigneur is
not unimposing; with his white beard and his violet
girdle he looks splendidly episcopal, and when our three
waiting lads came up one after another and kneeled before
him in the big hall, and kissed his ring, it did me good
for a piece of pageantry. Rémy is very engaging; he is
a little, nervous, eager man, like a governess, and brimful
of laughter and small jokes. So is the bishop indeed, and
our luncheon party went off merrily—far more merrily
than many a German spread, though with so much less
liquor. One trait was delicious. With a complete ignorance
of the Protestant that I would scarce have imagined,
he related to us (as news) little stories from the gospels,
and got the names all wrong! His comments were delicious,
and to our ears a thought irreverent. “Ah! il connaissait
son monde, allez!” “Il était fin, notre Seigneur!” etc.
Friday.—Down with Fanny and Belle, to lunch at the
International. Heard there about the huge folly of the
hour, all the Mulinuu ammunition having been yesterday
marched openly to vaults in Matafele; and this morning,
on a cry of protest from the whites, openly and humiliatingly
disinterred and marched back again. People spoke of
it with a kind of shrill note that did not quite satisfy me.
They seemed not quite well at ease. Luncheon over, we
rode out on the Malie road. All was quiet in Vaiusu, and
when we got to the second ford, alas! there was no picket—which
was just what Belle had come to sketch. On through
quite empty roads; the houses deserted, never a gun to
be seen; and at last a drum and a penny whistle playing
in Vaiusu, and a cricket match on the malae! Went up
to Faamuiná’s; he is a trifle uneasy, though he gives us
kava. I cannot see what ails him, then it appears that
he has an engagement with the Chief Justice at half-past
two to sell a piece of land. Is this the reason why war
has disappeared? We ride back, stopping to sketch here
and there the fords, a flag of truce, etc. I ride on to
Public Hall Committee and pass an hour with my committees
very heavily. To the hotel to dinner, then to the
ball, and home by eleven, very tired. At the ball I heard
some news, of how the chief of Letonu said that I was
the source of all this trouble, and should be punished, and
my family as well. This, and the rudeness of the man at
the ford of the Gase-gase, looks but ill; I should have said
that Faamuiná, as he approached the first ford, was spoken
to by a girl, and immediately said good-bye and plunged
into the bush; the girl had told him there was a war
party out from Mulinuu; and a little further on, as we
stopped to sketch a flag of truce, the beating of drums
and the sound of a bugle from that direction startled us.
But we saw nothing, and I believe Mulinuu is (at least
at present) incapable of any act of offence. One good
job, these threats to my home and family take away all
my childish temptation to go out and fight. Our force
must be here, to protect ourselves. I see panic rising
among the whites; I hear the shrill note of it in their voices,
and they talk already about a refuge on the war ships.
There are two here, both German; and the Orlando is
expected presently.
Sunday, 9th July.—Well, the war has at last begun.
For four or five days, Apia has been filled by these poor
children with their faces blacked, and the red handkerchief
about their brows, that makes the Malietoa uniform,
and the boats have been coming in from the windward,
some of them 50 strong, with a drum and a bugle on board—the
bugle always ill-played—and a sort of jester leaping
and capering on the sparred nose of the boat, and the
whole crew uttering from time to time a kind of menacing
ululation. Friday they marched out to the bush; and
yesterday morning we heard that some had returned to
their houses for the night, as they found it “so uncomfortable.”
After dinner a messenger came up to me with
a note, that the wounded were arriving at the Mission
House. Fanny, Lloyd and I saddled and rode off with a
lantern; it was a fine starry night, though pretty cold.
We left the lantern at Tanugamanono, and then down in
the starlight. I found Apia, and myself, in a strange state
of flusteration; my own excitement was gloomy and (I
may say) truculent; others appeared imbecile; some
sullen. The best place in the whole town was the hospital.
A longish frame-house it was, with a big table in the middle
for operations, and ten Samoans, each with an average
of four sympathisers, stretched along the walls. Clarke
was there, steady as a die; Miss Large, little spectacled
angel, showed herself a real trump; the nice, clean,
German orderlies in their white uniforms looked and
meant business. (I hear a fine story of Miss Large—a
cast-iron teetotaller—going to the public-house for a
bottle of brandy.)
The doctors were not there when I arrived; but presently
it was observed that one of the men was going cold.
He was a magnificent Samoan, very dark, with a noble
aquiline countenance, like an Arab, I suppose, and was
surrounded by seven people, fondling his limbs as he
lay: he was shot through both lungs. And an orderly
was sent to the town for the (German naval) doctors, who
were dining there. Meantime I found an errand of my
own. Both Clarke and Miss Large expressed a wish to
have the public hall, of which I am chairman, and I set
off down town, and woke people out of their beds, and
got a committee together, and (with a great deal of difficulty
from one man, whom we finally overwhelmed) got
the public hall for them. Bar the one man, the committee
was splendid, and agreed in a moment to share the expense
if the shareholders object. Back to the hospital about
11.30; found the German doctors there. Two men were
going now, one that was shot in the bowels—he was dying
rather hard, in a gloomy stupor of pain and laudanum,
silent, with contorted face. The chief, shot through the
lungs, was lying on one side, awaiting the last angel; his
family held his hands and legs: they were all speechless,
only one woman suddenly clasped his knee, and “keened”
for the inside of five seconds, and fell silent again. Went
home, and to bed about two A.M. What actually passed
seems undiscoverable; but the Mataafas were surely driven
back out of Vaitele; that is a blow to them, and the resistance
was far greater than had been anticipated—which is
a blow to the Laupepas. All seems to indicate a long
and bloody war.
Frank’s house in Mulinuu was likewise filled with
wounded; many dead bodies were brought in; I hear
with certainty of five, wrapped in mats; and a pastor goes
to-morrow to the field to bring others. The Laupepas
brought in eleven heads to Mulinuu, and to the great
horror and consternation of the native mind, one proved
to be a girl, and was identified as that of a Taupou—or
Maid of the Village—from Savaii. I hear this morning, with
great relief, that it has been returned to Malie, wrapped
in the most costly silk handkerchiefs, and with an apologetic
embassy. This could easily happen. The girl was of
course attending on her father with ammunition, and got
shot; her hair was cut short to make her father’s war
head-dress—even as our own Sina’s is at this moment;
and the decollator was probably, in his red flurry of fight,
wholly unconscious of her sex. I am sorry for him in the
future; he must make up his mind to many bitter jests—perhaps
to vengeance. But what an end to one chosen
for her beauty and, in the time of peace, watched over by
trusty crones and hunchbacks!
Evening.—Can I write or not? I played lawn tennis
in the morning, and after lunch down with Graham to
Apia. Ulu, he that was shot in the lungs, still lives; he
that was shot in the bowels is gone to his fathers, poor,
fierce child! I was able to be of some very small help,
and in the way of helping myself to information, to prove
myself a mere gazer at meteors. But there seems no
doubt the Mataafas for the time are scattered; the most
of our friends are involved in this disaster, and Mataafa
himself—who might have swept the islands a few months
ago—for him to fall so poorly, doubles my regret. They
say the Taupou had a gun and fired; probably an excuse
manufactured ex post facto. I go down to-morrow at 12,
to stay the afternoon, and help Miss Large. In the
hospital to-day, when I first entered it, there were no
attendants; only the wounded and their friends, all
equally sleeping and their heads poised upon the wooden
pillows. There is a pretty enough boy there, slightly
wounded, whose fate is to be envied: two girls, and one
of the most beautiful, with beaming eyes, tend him and
sleep upon his pillow. In the other corner, another young
man, very patient and brave, lies wholly deserted. Yet
he seems to me far the better of the two; but not so
pretty! Heavens, what a difference that makes; in our
not very well proportioned bodies and our finely hideous
faces, the 1-32nd—rather the 1-64th—this way or that!
Sixteen heads in all at Mulinuu. I am so stiff I can
scarce move without a howl.
Monday, 10th.—Some news that Mataafa is gone to
Savaii by way of Manono: this may mean a great deal
more warfaring, and no great issue. (When Sosimo came
in this morning with my breakfast he had to lift me up.
It is no joke to play lawn tennis after carrying your right
arm in a sling so many years.) What a hard, unjust
business this is! On the 28th, if Mataafa had moved,
he could have still swept Mulinuu. He waited, and I
fear he is now only the stick of a rocket.
Wednesday, 12th.—No more political news; but many
rumours. The government troops are off to Manono; no
word of Mataafa. O, there is a passage in my mother’s
letter which puzzles me as to a date. Is it next Christmas
you are coming? or the Christmas after? This is most
important, and must be understood at once. If it is
next Christmas, I could not go to Ceylon, for lack of gold,
and you would have to adopt one of the following alternatives:
1st, either come straight on here and pass a
month with us; ’tis the rainy season, but we have often
lovely weather. Or (2nd) come to Hawaii and I will
meet you there. Hawaii is only a week’s sail from S.
Francisco, making only about sixteen days on the heaving
ocean; and the steamers run once a fortnight, so that
you could turn round; and you could thus pass a day
or two in the States—a fortnight even—and still see me.
But I have sworn to take no further excursions till I
have money saved to pay for them; and to go to Ceylon
and back would be torture unless I had a lot. You must
answer this at once, please; so that I may know what
to do. We would dearly like you to come on here. I’ll
tell you how it can be done; I can come up and meet
you at Hawaii, and if you had at all got over your sea-sickness,
I could just come on board and we could return
together to Samoa, and you could have a month of our
life here, which I believe you could not help liking. Our
horses are the devil, of course, miserable screws, and
some of them a little vicious. I had a dreadful fright—the
passage in my mother’s letter is recrossed and I see
it says the end of /94: so much the better, then; but
I would like to submit to you my alternative plan. I
could meet you at Hawaii, and reconduct you to Hawaii,
so that we could have a full six weeks together and I
believe a little over, and you would see this place of mine,
and have a sniff of native life, native foods, native houses—and
perhaps be in time to see the German flag raised,
who knows?—and we could generally yarn for all we
were worth. I should like you to see Vailima; and I
should be curious to know how the climate affected you.
It is quite hit or miss; it suits me, it suits Graham, it
suits all our family; others it does not suit at all. It is
either gold or poison. I rise at six, the rest at seven;
lunch is at 12; at five we go to lawn tennis till dinner
at six; and to roost early.
A man brought in a head to Mulinuu in great glory;
they washed the black paint off, and behold! it was his
brother. When I last heard he was sitting in his house,
with the head upon his lap, and weeping. Barbarous
war is an ugly business; but I believe the civilised is
fully uglier; but Lord! what fun!
I should say we now have definite news that there
are three women’s heads; it was difficult to get it out
of the natives, who are all ashamed, and the women all
in terror of reprisals. Nothing has been done to punish
or disgrace these hateful innovators. It was a false report
that the head had been returned.
Thursday, 13th.—Maatafa driven away from Savaii.
I cannot write about this, and do not know what should
be the end of it.
Monday, 17th.—Haggard and Ahrens (a German clerk)
to lunch yesterday. There is no real certain news yet:
I must say, no man could swear to any result; but the
sky looks horribly black for Mataafa and so many of our
friends along with him. The thing has an abominable, a
beastly, nightmare interest. But it’s wonderful generally
how little one cares about the wounded; hospital sights,
etc.; things that used to murder me. I was far more
struck with the excellent way in which things were managed;
as if it had been a peep-show; I held some of the
things at an operation, and did not care a dump.
Tuesday, 18th.—Sunday came the Katoomba, Captain
Bickford, C.M.G. Yesterday, Graham and I went down
to call, and find he has orders to suppress Mataafa at
once, and has to go down to-day before daybreak to
Manono. He is a very capable, energetic man; if he
had only come ten days ago, all this would have gone
by; but now the questions are thick and difficult. (1)
Will Mataafa surrender? (2) Will his people allow themselves
to be disarmed? (3) What will happen to them
if they do? (4) What will any of them believe after
former deceptions? The three consuls were scampering
on horseback to Leulumoega to the king; no Cusack-Smith,
without whose accession I could not send a letter
to Mataafa. I rode up here, wrote my letter in the sweat
of the concordance and with the able-bodied help of
Lloyd—and dined. Then down in continual showers and
pitchy darkness, and to Cusack-Smith’s; not returned.
Back to the inn for my horse, and to C.-S.’s, when I find
him just returned and he accepts my letter. Thence home,
by 12.30, jolly tired and wet. And to-day have been in
a crispation of energy and ill-temper, raking my wretched
mail together. It is a hateful business, waiting for the
news; it may come to a fearful massacre yet.—Yours
ever,
R. L. S.
To James S. Stevenson
This is addressed to a very remote cousin in quest of information
about the origins of the family.
Vailima, Samoa, June 19th, 1893.
DEAR MR. STEVENSON,—I am reminded by coming
across some record of relations between my grandfather,
Robert Stevenson, C.E., Edinburgh, and Robert Stevenson,
Esq., Secretary to the Royal Exchange, Glasgow, and
I presume a son of Hugh Stevenson who died in Tobago
16th April 1774, that I have not yet consulted my cousins
in Glasgow.
I am engaged in writing a Life of my grandfather, my
uncle Alan, and my father, Thomas, and I find almost
inconceivable difficulty in placing and understanding their
(and my) descent.
Might I ask if you have any material to go upon?
The smallest notes would be like found gold to me; and
an old letter invaluable.
I have not got beyond James Stevenson and Jean
Keir his spouse, to whom Robert the First (?) was born
in 1675. Could you get me further back? Have you
any old notes of the trouble in the West Indian business
which took Hugh and Alan to their deaths? How had
they acquired so considerable a business at an age so
early? You see how the queries pour from me; but I
will ask nothing more in words. Suffice it to say that
any information, however insignificant, as to our common
forbears, will be very gratefully received. In case you
should have any original documents, it would be better
to have copies sent to me in this outlandish place, for the
expense of which I will account to you as soon as you
let me know the amount, and it will be wise to register
your letter.—Believe me, in the old, honoured Scottish
phrase, your affectionate cousin,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Henry James
Apia, July 1893.
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,—Yes. Les Trophées is, on the
whole, a book.65 It is excellent; but is it a life’s work?
I always suspect you of a volume of sonnets up your
sleeve; when is it coming down? I am in one of my
moods of wholesale impatience with all fiction and all
verging on it, reading instead, with rapture, Fountainhall’s
Decisions. You never read it: well, it hasn’t much
form, and is inexpressibly dreary, I should suppose, to
others—and even to me for pages. It’s like walking in
a mine underground, and with a damned bad lantern,
and picking out pieces of ore. This, and war, will be my
excuse for not having read your (doubtless) charming
work of fiction. The revolving year will bring me round
to it; and I know, when fiction shall begin to feel a little
solid to me again, that I shall love it, because it’s James.
Do you know, when I am in this mood, I would rather
try to read a bad book? It’s not so disappointing, anyway.
And Fountainhall is prime, two big folio volumes,
and all dreary, and all true, and all as terse as an obituary;
and about one interesting fact on an average in twenty
pages, and ten of them unintelligible for technicalities.
There’s literature, if you like! It feeds; it falls about
you genuine like rain. Rain: nobody has done justice to
rain in literature yet: surely a subject for a Scot. But
then you can’t do rain in that ledger-book style that I
am trying for—or between a ledger-book and an old
ballad. How to get over, how to escape from, the besotting
particularity of fiction. “Roland approached the
house; it had green doors and window blinds; and
there was a scraper on the upper step.” To hell with
Roland and the scraper!—Yours ever,
R. L. S.
To A. Conan Doyle
Vailima, July 12, 1893.
MY DEAR DR. CONAN DOYLE,—The White Company has
not yet turned up; but when it does—which I suppose
will be next mail—you shall hear news of me. I have a
great talent for compliment, accompanied by a hateful,
even a diabolic frankness.
Delighted to hear I have a chance of seeing you and
Mrs. Doyle; Mrs. Stevenson bids me say (what is too
true) that our rations are often spare. Are you Great
Eaters? Please reply.
As to ways and means, here is what you will have to
do. Leave San Francisco by the down mail, get off at
Samoa, and twelve days or a fortnight later, you can
continue your journey to Auckland per Upolu, which
will give you a look at Tonga and possibly Fiji by the
way. Make this a first part of your plans. A fortnight,
even of Vailima diet, could kill nobody.
We are in the midst of war here; rather a nasty business,
with the head-taking; and there seems signs of
other trouble. But I believe you need make no change
in your design to visit us. All should be well over; and
if it were not, why! you need not leave the steamer.—Yours
very truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Charles Baxter
19th July ’93.
... We are in the thick of war—see Illustrated
London News—we have only two outside boys left to us.
Nothing is doing, and per contra little paying.... My
life here is dear; but I can live within my income for
a time at least—so long as my prices keep up—and it
seems a clear duty to waste none of it on gadding about.
... My Life of my family fills up intervals, and should
be an excellent book when it is done, but big, damnably
big.
My dear old man, I perceive by a thousand signs that
we grow old, and are soon to pass away; I hope with
dignity; if not, with courage at least. I am myself very
ready; or would be—will be—when I have made a little
money for my folks. The blows that have fallen upon
you are truly terrifying; I wish you strength to bear
them. It is strange, I must seem to you to blaze in a
Birmingham prosperity and happiness; and to myself I
seem a failure. The truth is, I have never got over the
last influenza yet, and am miserably out of heart and
out of kilter. Lungs pretty right, stomach nowhere,
spirits a good deal overshadowed; but we’ll come through
it yet, and cock our bonnets. (I confess with sorrow that
I am not yet quite sure about the intellects; but I hope
it is only one of my usual periods of non-work. They are
more unbearable now, because I cannot rest. No rest
but the grave for Sir Walter! O the words ring in a man’s
head.)
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin
[Vailima] August 1893.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—Quite impossible to write. Your
letter is due to-day; a nasty, rainy-like morning with
huge blue clouds, and a huge indigo shadow on the sea,
and my lamp still burning at near 7. Let me humbly
give you news. Fanny seems on the whole the most, or
the only, powerful member of the family; for some days
she has been the Flower of the Flock. Belle is begging
for quinine. Lloyd and Graham have both been down
with “belly belong him” (Black Boy speech). As for me,
I have to lay aside my lawn tennis, having (as was to be
expected) had a smart but eminently brief hemorrhage.
I am also on the quinine flask. I have been re-casting
the beginning of the Hanging Judge or Weir of Hermiston;
then I have been cobbling on my Grandfather, whose last
chapter (there are only to be four) is in the form of pieces
of paper, a huge welter of inconsequence, and that glimmer
of faith (or hope) which one learns at this trade, that
somehow and some time, by perpetual staring and glowering
and re-writing, order will emerge. It is indeed a queer
hope; there is one piece for instance that I want in—I
cannot put it one place for a good reason—I cannot put
it another for a better—and every time I look at it, I turn
sick and put the MS. away.
Well, your letter hasn’t come, and a number of others
are missing. It looks as if a mail-bag had gone on, so
I’ll blame nobody, and proceed to business.
It looks as if I was going to send you the first three
chapters of my Grandfather.... If they were set up,
it would be that much anxiety off my mind. I have a
strange feeling of responsibility, as if I had my ancestors’
souls in my charge, and might miscarry with them.
There’s a lot of work gone into it, and a lot more is
needed. Still Chapter I. seems about right to me, and
much of Chapter II. Chapter III. I know nothing of, as
I told you. And Chapter IV. is at present all ends and
beginnings; but it can be pulled together.
This is all I have been able to screw up to you for
this month, and I may add that it is not only more than
you deserve, but just about more than I was equal to.
I have been and am entirely useless; just able to tinker
at my Grandfather. The three chapters—perhaps also a
little of the fourth—will come home to you next mail
by the hand of my cousin Graham Balfour, a very nice
fellow whom I recommend to you warmly—and whom I
think you will like. This will give you time to consider
my various and distracted schemes.
All our wars are over in the meantime, to begin again
as soon as the war-ships leave. Adieu.
R. L. S.
To A. Conan Doyle
Vailima, August 23rd, 1893.
MY DEAR DR. CONAN DOYLE,—I am reposing after a
somewhat severe experience upon which I think it my
duty to report to you. Immediately after dinner this
evening it occurred to me to re-narrate to my native
overseer Simelé your story of The Engineer’s Thumb.
And, sir, I have done it. It was necessary, I need hardly
say, to go somewhat farther afield than you have done.
To explain (for instance) what a railway is, what a steam
hammer, what a coach and horse, what coining, what a
criminal, and what the police. I pass over other and no
less necessary explanations. But I did actually succeed;
and if you could have seen the drawn, anxious features
and the bright, feverish eyes of Simelé, you would have
(for the moment at least) tasted glory. You might perhaps
think that, were you to come to Samoa, you might
be introduced as the Author of The Engineer’s Thumb.
Disabuse yourself. They do not know what it is to make
up a story. The Engineer’s Thumb (God forgive me) was
narrated as a piece of actual and factual history. Nay,
and more, I who write to you have had the indiscretion
to perpetrate a trifling piece of fiction entitled The Bottle
Imp. Parties who come up to visit my unpretentious
mansion, after having admired the ceilings by Vanderputty
and the tapestry by Gobbling, manifest towards
the end a certain uneasiness which proves them to be
fellows of an infinite delicacy. They may be seen to
shrug a brown shoulder, to roll up a speaking eye, and
at last secret burst from them: “Where is the bottle?”
Alas, my friends (I feel tempted to say), you will find
it by the Engineer’s Thumb! Talofa-soifua.
O a’u, o lau uo moni, O Tusitala.
More commonly known as
R. L. Stevenson.
Have read the Refugees; Condé and old P. Murat
very good; Louis xiv. and Louvois with the letter bag
very rich. You have reached a trifle wide perhaps; too
many celebrities? Though I was delighted to re-encounter
my old friend Du Chaylu. Old Murat is perhaps your
high-water mark; ’tis excellently human, cheerful and
real. Do it again. Madame de Maintenon struck me as
quite good. Have you any document for the decapitation?
It sounds steepish. The devil of all that first
part is that you see old Dumas; yet your Louis XIV. is
distinctly good. I am much interested with this book,
which fulfils a good deal, and promises more. Question:
How far a Historical Novel should be wholly episodic?
I incline to that view, with trembling. I shake hands
with you on old Murat.
R. L. S.
To Augustus St. Gaudens
Mr. St. Gaudens’ large medallion portrait in bronze, executed
from sittings given in 1887, had at last found its way to Apia, but
not yet to Vailima.
Vailima, September 1893.
MY DEAR ST. GAUDENS,—I had determined not to
write to you till I had seen the medallion, but it looks
as if that might mean the Greek Kalends or the day
after to-morrow. Reassure yourself, your part is done,
it is ours that halts—the consideration of conveyance
over our sweet little road on boys’ backs, for we cannot
very well apply the horses to this work; there is only
one; you cannot put it in a panier; to put it on the
horse’s back we have not the heart. Beneath the beauty
of R. L. S., to say nothing of his verses, which the publishers
find heavy enough, and the genius of the god-like
sculptor, the spine would snap and the well-knit limbs
of the (ahem) cart-horse would be loosed by death. So
you are to conceive me, sitting in my house, dubitative,
and the medallion chuckling in the warehouse of the
German firm, for some days longer; and hear me meanwhile
on the golden letters.
Alas! they are all my fancy painted, but the price is
prohibitive. I cannot do it. It is another day-dream
burst. Another gable of Abbotsford has gone down,
fortunately before it was builded, so there’s nobody
injured—except me. I had a strong conviction that I
was a great hand at writing inscriptions, and meant to
exhibit and test my genius on the walls of my house;
and now I see I can’t. It is generally thus. The Battle
of the Golden Letters will never be delivered. On making
preparation to open the campaign, the King found himself
face to face with invincible difficulties, in which the
rapacity of a mercenary soldiery and the complaints of
an impoverished treasury played an equal part.—Ever
yours,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
I enclose a bill for the medallion; have been trying to
find your letter, quite in vain, and therefore must request
you to pay for the bronze letters yourself and let me
know the damage.
R. L. S.
To James S. Stevenson
Vailima Plantation, Island of Upolu,
Samoa, Sept. 4th, 1893.
MY DEAR COUSIN,—I thank you cordially for your
kinsmanlike reply to my appeal. Already the notes
from the family Bible have spared me one blunder, which
I had from some notes in my grandfather’s own hand;
and now, like the daughters of the horseleech, my voice
is raised again to put you to more trouble. “Nether
Carsewell, Neilston,” I read. My knowledge of Scotland
is fairly wide, but it does not include Neilston.
However, I find by the (original) Statistical Account,
it is a parish in Renfrew. Do you know anything of it?
Have you identified Nether Carsewell? Have the Neilston
parish registers been searched? I see whole vistas of
questions arising, and here am I in Samoa!
I shall write by this mail to my lawyer to have the
records searched, and to my mother to go and inquire
in the parish itself. But perhaps you may have some
further information, and if so I should be glad of it. If
you have not, pray do not trouble to answer. As to
your father’s blunder of “Stevenson of Cauldwell,” it is
now explained: Carsewell may have been confounded
with Cauldwell: and it seems likely our man may have
been a tenant or retainer of Mure of Cauldwell, a very
ancient and honourable family, who seems to have been
at least a neighbouring laird to the parish of Neilston.
I was just about to close this, when I observed again
your obliging offer of service, and I take you promptly
at your word.
Do you think that you or your son could find a day
to visit Neilston and try to identify Nether Carsewell,
find what size of a farm it is, to whom it belonged, etc.?
I shall be very much obliged. I am pleased indeed to
learn some of my books have given pleasure to your
family; and with all good wishes, I remain, your affectionate
cousin,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
The registers I shall have seen to, through my lawyer.
To George Meredith
Sept. 5th,1893,
Vailima Plantation, Upolu, Samoa.
MY DEAR MEREDITH,—I have again and again taken
up the pen to write to you, and many beginnings have
gone into the waste paper basket (I have one now—for
the second time in my life—and feel a big man on the
strength of it). And no doubt it requires some decision
to break so long a silence. My health is vastly restored,
and I am now living patriarchally in this place six hundred
feet above the sea on the shoulder of a mountain of 1500.
Behind me, the unbroken bush slopes up to the backbone
of the island (3 to 4000) without a house, with no inhabitants
save a few runaway black boys, wild pigs and cattle,
and wild doves and flying foxes, and many parti-coloured
birds, and many black, and many white: a very eerie,
dim, strange place and hard to travel. I am the head of
a household of five whites, and of twelve Samoans, to all
of whom I am the chief and father: my cook comes to
me and asks leave to marry—and his mother, a fine old
chief woman, who has never lived here, does the same.
You may be sure I granted the petition. It is a life of
great interest, complicated by the Tower of Babel, that
old enemy. And I have all the time on my hands for
literary work.
My house is a great place; we have a hall fifty feet
long with a great redwood stair ascending from it, where
we dine in state—myself usually dressed in a singlet
and a pair of trousers—and attended on by servants in
a single garment, a kind of kilt—also flowers and leaves—and
their hair often powdered with lime. The European
who came upon it suddenly would think it was a dream.
We have prayers on Sunday night—I am a perfect pariah
in the island not to have them oftener, but the spirit is
unwilling and the flesh proud, and I cannot go it more.
It is strange to see the long line of the brown folk crouched
along the wall with lanterns at intervals before them in
the big shadowy hall, with an oak cabinet at one end of
it and a group of Rodin’s (which native taste regards as
prodigieusement leste) presiding over all from the top—and
to hear the long rambling Samoan hymn rolling up (God
bless me, what style)! But I am off business to-day, and
this is not meant to be literature.
I have asked Colvin to send you a copy of Catriona,
which I am sometimes tempted to think is about my
best work. I hear word occasionally of the Amazing
Marriage. It will be a brave day for me when I get hold
of it. Gower Woodseer is now an ancient, lean, grim,
exiled Scot, living and labouring as for a wager in the
tropics; still active, still with lots of fire in him, but
the youth—ah, the youth where is it? For years after I
came here, the critics (those genial gentlemen) used to
deplore the relaxation of my fibre and the idleness to
which I had succumbed. I hear less of this now; the
next thing is they will tell me I am writing myself out!
and that my unconscientious conduct is bringing their
grey hairs with sorrow to the dust. I do not know—I
mean I do know one thing. For fourteen years I have
not had a day’s real health; I have wakened sick and
gone to bed weary; and I have done my work unflinchingly.
I have written in bed, and written out of it,
written in hemorrhages, written in sickness, written torn
by coughing, written when my head swam for weakness;
and for so long, it seems to me I have won my wager
and recovered my glove. I am better now, have been
rightly speaking since first I came to the Pacific; and
still, few are the days when I am not in some physical
distress. And the battle goes on—ill or well, is a trifle;
so as it goes. I was made for a contest, and the Powers
have so willed that my battlefield should be this dingy,
inglorious one of the bed and the physic bottle. At least
I have not failed, but I would have preferred a place of
trumpetings and the open air over my head.
This is a devilish egotistical yarn. Will you try to
imitate me in that if the spirit ever moves you to reply?
And meantime be sure that away in the midst of the
Pacific there is a house on a wooded island where the
name of George Meredith is very dear, and his memory
(since it must be no more) is continually honoured.—Ever
your friend,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Remember me to Mariette, if you please; and my
wife sends her most kind remembrances to yourself.
R. L. S.
To Charles Baxter
Finished on the way to Honolulu for a health change which
turned out unfortunate. With the help of Mr. J.H. Stevenson and
other correspondents he had now, as we have seen, been able (regretfully
giving up the possibility of a Macgregor lineage) to identify his
forbears as having about 1670 been tenant farmers at Nether Carsewell
in Renfrewshire. The German government at home had taken
his Footnote to History much less kindly than his German neighbours
on the spot, and the Tauchnitz edition had been confiscated and
destroyed and its publisher fined.
[Vailima, and s.s. Mariposa, September 1893.]
MY DEAR CHARLES,—Here is a job for you. It
appears that about 1665, or earlier, James Stevenson
{in of} Nether Carsewell, parish of Neilston, flourished.
Will you kindly send an able-bodied reader to compulse
the parish registers of Neilston, if they exist or go back
as far? Also could any trace be found through Nether-Carsewell?
I expect it to have belonged to Mure of
Cauldwell. If this be so, might not the Cauldwell charter
chest contain some references to their Stevenson tenantry?
Perpend upon it. But clap me on the judicious, able-bodied
reader on the spot. Can I really have found the
tap-root of my illustrious ancestry at last? Souls of my
fathers! What a giggle-iggle-orious moment! I have
drawn on you for £400. Also I have written to Tauchnitz
announcing I should bear one-half part of his fines and
expenses, amounting to £62, 10s. The £400 includes
£160 which I have laid out here in land. Vanu Manutagi—the
vale of crying birds (the wild dove)—is now mine:
it was Fanny’s wish and she is to buy it from me again
when she has made that much money.
Will you please order for me through your bookseller
the Mabinogion of Lady Charlotte Guest—if that be her
name—and the original of Cook’s voyages lately published?
Also, I see announced a map of the Great North
Road: you might see what it is like: if it is highly
detailed, or has any posting information, I should like it.
This is being finished on board the Mariposa going
north. I am making the run to Honolulu and back for
health’s sake. No inclination to write more.—As ever,
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin
On a first reading of the incomplete MS. of The Ebb Tide, without
its concluding chapters, which are the strongest, dislike of the three
detestable—or rather two detestable and one contemptible—chief
characters had made me unjust to the imaginative force and vividness
of the treatment.
[Vailima] 23rd August.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—Your pleasing letter re The Ebb
Tide, to hand. I propose, if it be not too late, to delete
Lloyd’s name. He has nothing to do with the last half.
The first we wrote together, as the beginning of a long
yarn. The second is entirely mine; and I think it rather
unfair on the young man to couple his name with so
infamous a work. Above all, as you had not read the
two last chapters, which seem to me the most ugly and
cynical of all.
You will see that I am not in a good humour; and I
am not. It is not because of your letter, but because of
the complicated miseries that surround me and that I
choose to say nothing of.... Life is not all Beer and
Skittles. The inherent tragedy of things works itself
out from white to black and blacker, and the poor things
of a day look ruefully on. Does it shake my cast-iron
faith? I cannot say it does. I believe in an ultimate
decency of things; ay, and if I woke in hell, should still
believe it! But it is hard walking, and I can see my
own share in the missteps, and can bow my head to the
result, like an old, stern, unhappy devil of a Norseman,
as my ultimate character is....
Well, il faut cultiver son jardin. That last expression
of poor, unhappy human wisdom I take to my heart and
go to St. Ives.
24th Aug.—And did, and worked about 2 hours and
got to sleep ultimately and “a’ the clouds has blawn
away.” “Be sure we’ll have some pleisand weather,
When a’ the clouds (storms?) has blawn (gone?) away.”
Verses that have a quite inexplicable attraction for me,
and I believe had for Burns. They have no merit, but
are somehow good. I am now in a most excellent humour.
I am deep in St. Ives which, I believe, will be the next
novel done. But it is to be clearly understood that I
promise nothing, and may throw in your face the very last
thing you expect—or I expect. St. Ives will (to my mind)
not be wholly bad. It is written in rather a funny style;
a little stilted and left-handed; the style of St. Ives;
also, to some extent, the style of R. L. S. dictating. St.
Ives is unintellectual, and except as an adventure novel,
dull. But the adventures seem to me sound and pretty
probable; and it is a love story. Speed his wings!
Sunday night.—De cœur un peu plus dispos, monsieur et
cher confrère, je me remets à vous écrire. St. Ives is now in
the 5th chapter copying; in the 14th chapter of the
dictated draft. I do not believe I shall end by disliking it.
Monday.—Well, here goes again for the news. Fanny
is very well indeed, and in good spirits; I am in good
spirits, but not very well; Lloyd is in good spirits and
very well; Belle has a real good fever which has put her
pipe out wholly. Graham goes back this mail. He takes
with him three chapters of The Family, and is to go to
you as soon as he can. He cannot be much the master
of his movements, but you grip him when you can and
get all you can from him, as he has lived about six months
with us and he can tell you just what is true and what is
not—and not the dreams of dear old Ross.66 He is a good
fellow, is he not?
Since you rather revise your views of The Ebb Tide,
I think Lloyd’s name might stick, but I’ll leave it to
you. I’ll tell you just how it stands. Up to the discovery
of the champagne, the tale was all planned between
us and drafted by Lloyd; from that moment he has had
nothing to do with it except talking it over. For we
changed our plan, gave up the projected Monte Cristo,
and cut it down for a short story. My impression—(I beg
your pardon—this is a local joke—a firm here had on its
beer labels, “sole importers”)—is that it will never be
popular, but might make a little succès de scandale. However,
I’m done with it now, and not sorry, and the crowd
may rave and mumble its bones for what I care.
Hole essential.67 I am sorry about the maps; but I
want ’em for next edition, so see and have proofs sent.
You are quite right about the bottle and the great Huish,
I must try to make it clear. No, I will not write a play
for Irving nor for the devil. Can you not see that the work
of falsification which a play demands is of all tasks the
most ungrateful? And I have done it a long while—and
nothing ever came of it.
Consider my new proposal, I mean Honolulu. You
would get the Atlantic and the Rocky Mountains, would
you not? for bracing. And so much less sea! And then
you could actually see Vailima, which I would like you
to, for it’s beautiful and my home and tomb that is to
be; though it’s a wrench not to be planted in Scotland—that
I can never deny—if I could only be buried in the
hills, under the heather and a table tombstone like the
martyrs, where the whaups and plovers are crying! Did
you see a man who wrote the Stickit Minister,68 and dedicated
it to me, in words that brought the tears to my eyes
every time I looked at them. “Where about the graves
of the martyrs the whaups are crying. His heart remembers
how.” Ah, by God, it does! Singular that I should
fulfil the Scots destiny throughout, and live a voluntary
exile, and have my head filled with the blessed, beastly
place all the time!
And now a word as regards the delusions of the dear
Ross, who remembers, I believe, my letters and Fanny’s
when we were first installed, and were really hoeing a
hard row. We have salad, beans, cabbages, tomatoes,
asparagus, kohl-rabi, oranges, limes, barbadines, pine-apples,
Cape gooseberries—galore; pints of milk and
cream; fresh meat five days a week. It is the rarest
thing for any of us to touch a tin; and the gnashing of
teeth when it has to be done is dreadful—for no one who
has not lived on them for six months knows what the
Hatred of the Tin is. As for exposure, my weakness is
certainly the reverse; I am sometimes a month without
leaving the verandah—for my sins, be it said! Doubtless,
when I go about and, as the Doctor says, “expose myself
to malaria,” I am in far better health; and I would do
so more too—for I do not mean to be silly—but the difficulties
are great. However, you see how much the dear
Doctor knows of my diet and habits! Malaria practically
does not exist in these islands; it is a negligeable quantity.
What really bothers us a little is the mosquito affair—the
so-called elephantiasis—ask Ross about it. A real romance
of natural history, quoi!
Hi! stop! you say The Ebb Tide is the “working out
of an artistic problem of a kind.” Well, I should just
bet it was! You don’t like Attwater. But look at my
three rogues; they’re all there, I’ll go bail. Three types
of the bad man, the weak man, and the strong man with
a weakness, that are gone through and lived out.
Yes, of course I was sorry for Mataafa, but a good
deal sorrier and angrier about the mismanagement of all
the white officials. I cannot bear to write about that.
Manono all destroyed, one house standing in Apolima,
the women stripped, the prisoners beaten with whips—and
the women’s heads taken—all under white auspices.
And for upshot and result of so much shame to the white
powers—Tamasese already conspiring! as I knew and
preached in vain must be the case! Well, well, it is no
fun to meddle in politics!
I suppose you’re right about Simon.69 But it is Symon
throughout in that blessed little volume my father bought
for me in Inverness in the year of grace ’81, I believe—the
trial of James Stewart, with the Jacobite pamphlet
and the dying speech appended—out of which the whole
of Davie has already been begotten, and which I felt it
a kind of loyalty to follow. I really ought to have it
bound in velvet and gold, if I had any gratitude! and the
best of the lark is, that the name of David Balfour is not
anywhere within the bounds of it. A pretty curious instance
of the genesis of a book. I am delighted at your
good word for David; I believe the two together make
up much the best of my work and perhaps of what is in
me. I am not ashamed of them, at least. There is one
hitch; instead of three hours between the two parts, I fear
there have passed three years over Davie’s character; but do
not tell anybody; see if they can find it out for themselves;
and no doubt his experiences in Kidnapped would go far
to form him. I would like a copy to go to G. Meredith.
Wednesday.—Well, here is a new move. It is likely I
may start with Graham next week and go to Honolulu
to meet the other steamer and return: I do believe a
fortnight at sea would do me good; yet I am not yet
certain. The crowded up-steamer sticks in my throat.
Tuesday, 12th Sept.—Yesterday was perhaps the brightest
in the annals of Vailima. I got leave from Captain
Bickford to have the band of the Katoomba come up, and
they came, fourteen of ’em, with drum, fife, cymbals and
bugles, blue jackets, white caps, and smiling faces. The
house was all decorated with scented greenery above and
below. We had not only our own nine out-door workers,
but a contract party that we took on in charity to pay
their war-fine; the band besides, as it came up the mountain,
had collected a following of children by the way,
and we had a picking of Samoan ladies to receive them.
Chicken, ham, cake and fruits were served out with coffee
and lemonade, and all the afternoon we had rounds of
claret negus flavoured with rum and limes. They played
to us, they danced, they sang, they tumbled. Our boys
came in the end of the verandah and gave them a dance
for a while. It was anxious work getting this stopped
once it had begun, but I knew the band was going on a
programme. Finally they gave three cheers for Mr. and
Mrs. Stevens, shook hands, formed up and marched off
playing—till a kicking horse in the paddock put their
pipes out something of the suddenest—we thought the
big drum was gone, but Simelé flew to the rescue. And
so they wound away down the hill with ever another
call of the bugle, leaving us extinct with fatigue, but perhaps
the most contented hosts that ever watched the
departure of successful guests. Simply impossible to tell
how well these blue-jackets behaved; a most interesting
lot of men; this education of boys for the navy is making
a class, wholly apart—how shall I call them?—a kind of
lower-class public school boy, well-mannered, fairly intelligent,
sentimental as a sailor. What is more shall be writ
on board ship if anywhere.
Please send Catriona to G. Meredith.
S.S. Mariposa.—To-morrow I reach Honolulu. Good-morning
to your honour.
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin
In the interval between the last letter and this, the writer had
been down with a sharp and prolonged attack of fever at Honolulu,
and Mrs. Stevenson had come from Samoa to nurse and take him
home.
Waikiki, Honolulu, H. I., Oct. 23rd, 1893.
DEAR COLVIN,—My wife came up on the steamer and
we go home together in 2 days. I am practically all right,
only sleepy and tired easily, slept yesterday from 11 to
11.45, from 1 to 2.50, went to bed at 8 P.M., and with an
hour’s interval slept till 6 A.M., close upon 14 hours out of
the 24. We sail to-morrow. I am anxious to get home,
though this has been an interesting visit, and politics have
been curious indeed to study. We go to P.P.C. on the
“Queen” this morning; poor, recluse lady, abreuvée
d’injures qu’elle est. Had a rather annoying lunch on
board the American man-of-war, with a member of the
P.G. (provisional government); and a good deal of anti-royalist
talk, which I had to sit out—not only for my host’s
sake, but my fellow guests. At last, I took the lead and
changed the conversation.
R. L. S.
I am being busted here by party named Hutchinson.70
Seems good.
[Vailima—November.]—Home again, and found all well,
thank God. I am perfectly well again and ruddier than
the cherry. Please note that 8000 is not bad for a volume
of short stories;71 the Merry Men did a good deal worse;
the short story never sells. I hope Catriona will do; that is
the important. The reviews seem mixed and perplexed,
and one had the peculiar virtue to make me angry. I
am in a fair way to expiscate my family history. Fanny
and I had a lovely voyage down, with our new C.J. and
the American Land Commissioner, and on the whole, and
for these disgusting steamers, a pleasant ship’s company.
I cannot understand why you don’t take to the Hawaii
scheme. Do you understand? You cross the Atlantic in
six days, and go from ’Frisco to Honolulu in seven. Thirteen
days at sea in all.—I have no wish to publish The Ebb
Tide as a book, let it wait. It will look well in the portfolio.
I would like a copy, of course, for that end; and
to “look upon’t again”—which I scarce dare.
[Later.]—This is disgraceful. I have done nothing;
neither work nor letters. On the Mé (May) day, we had
a great triumph; our Protestant boys, instead of going
with their own villages and families, went of their own
accord in the Vailima uniform; Belle made coats for them
on purpose to complete the uniform, they having bought
the stuff; and they were hailed as they marched in as the
Tama-ona—the rich man’s children. This is really a score;
it means that Vailima is publicly taken as a family. Then
we had my birthday feast a week late, owing to diarrhœa
on the proper occasion. The feast was laid in the Hall,
and was a singular mass of food: 15 pigs, 100 lbs. beef,
100 lbs. pork, and the fruit and filigree in a proportion.
We had sixty horse-posts driven in the gate paddock;
how many guests I cannot guess, perhaps 150. They came
between three and four and left about seven. Seumanu
gave me one of his names; and when my name was called
at the ava drinking, behold, it was Au mai taua ma manu-vao!
You would scarce recognise me, if you heard me
thus referred to!
Two days after, we hired a carriage in Apia, Fanny,
Belle, Lloyd and I, and drove in great style, with a native
outrider, to the prison; a huge gift of ava and tobacco
under the seats. The prison is now under the pule of an
Austrian, Captain Wurmbrand, a soldier of fortune in
Servia and Turkey, a charming, clever, kindly creature,
who is adored “by his chiefs” (as he calls them) meaning
our political prisoners. And we came into the yard, walled
about with tinned iron, and drank ava with the prisoners
and the captain. It may amuse you to hear how it is
proper to drink ava. When the cup is handed you, you
reach your arm out somewhat behind you, and slowly pour
a libation, saying with somewhat the manner of prayer,
“Ia taumafa e le atua. Ua matagofie le fesilafaga nei.”
“Be it (high-chief) partaken of by the God. How (high
chief) beautiful to view is this (high chief) gathering.”
This pagan practice is very queer. I should say that the
prison ava was of that not very welcome form that we
elegantly call spit-ava, but of course there was no escape,
and it had to be drunk. Fanny and I rode home, and I
moralised by the way. Could we ever stand Europe again?
did she appreciate that if we were in London, we should
be actually jostled in the street? and there was nobody
in the whole of Britain who knew how to take ava like a
gentleman? ’Tis funny to be thus of two civilisations—or,
if you like, of one civilisation and one barbarism.
And, as usual, the barbarism is the more engaging.
Colvin, you have to come here and see us in our
{native mortal} spot. I just don’t seem to be able to make
up my mind to your not coming. By this time, you will
have seen Graham, I hope, and he will be able to tell you
something about us, and something reliable. I shall feel
for the first time as if you knew a little about Samoa after
that. Fanny seems to be in the right way now. I must
say she is very, very well for her, and complains scarce
at all. Yesterday, she went down sola(at least accompanied
by a groom) to pay a visit; Belle, Lloyd and I
went a walk up the mountain road—the great public highway
of the island, where you have to go single file. The
object was to show Belle that gaudy valley of the Vaisigano
which the road follows. If the road is to be made and
opened, as our new Chief Justice promises, it will be one
of the most beautiful roads in the world. But the point
is this: I forgot I had been three months in civilisation,
wearing shoes and stockings, and I tell you I suffered on
my soft feet; coming home, down hill, on that stairway
of loose stones, I could have cried. O yes, another story,
I knew I had. The house boys had not been behaving
well, so the other night I announced a fono, and Lloyd and
I went into the boys’ quarters, and I talked to them I
suppose for half an hour, and Talolo translated; Lloyd
was there principally to keep another ear on the interpreter;
else there may be dreadful misconceptions. I rubbed all
their ears, except two whom I particularly praised; and
one man’s wages I announced I had cut down by one half.
Imagine his taking this smiling! Ever since, he has been
specially attentive and greets me with a face of really
heavenly brightness. This is another good sign of their
really and fairly accepting me as a chief. When I first
came here, if I had fined a man a sixpence, he would have
quit work that hour, and now I remove half his income,
and he is glad to stay on—nay, does not seem to entertain
the possibility of leaving. And this in the face of one
particular difficulty—I mean our house in the bush, and
no society, and no women society within decent reach.
I think I must give you our staff in a tabular form.
HOUSE
+ o Sosimo, provost and butler, and my valet.
o Misifolo, who is Fanny and Belle’s chamberlain. |
KITCHEN
+ o Talolo, provost and chief cook.
+ o Iopu, second cook.
Tali, his wife, no wages.
Ti’a, Samoan cook.
Feiloa’i, his child, no wages, likewise no work—Belle’s pet.
+ o Leuelu, Fanny’s boy, gardener, odd jobs.
In APIA
+ Eliga, washman and daily errand man. |
OUTSIDE
+ o Henry Simelé, provost and overseer of outside boys.
Lū.
Tasi Sele.
Maiele.
Pulu, who is also our talking man and cries the ava. |
The crosses mark out the really excellent boys. Ti’a is
the man who has just been fined ½ his wages; he is a
beautiful old man, the living image of “Fighting Gladiator,”
my favourite statue—but a dreadful humbug. I
think we keep him on a little on account of his looks.
This sign o marks those who have been two years or upwards
in the family. I note all my old boys have the
cross of honour, except Misifolo; well, poor dog, he does
his best, I suppose. You should see him scour. It is a
remark that has often been made by visitors: you never
see a Samoan run, except at Vailima. Do you not suppose
that makes me proud?
I am pleased to see what a success The Wrecker was,
having already in little more than a year outstripped The
Master of Ballantrae.
About David Balfour in two volumes, do see that they
make it a decent-looking book, and tell me, do you think
a little historical appendix would be of service? Lang
bleats for one, and I thought I might address it to him as
a kind of open letter.
Dec. 4th.—No time after all. Good-bye.
R. L. S.
To J. Horne Stevenson
The following refers again to the introduction to the history of
his own family which Stevenson was then preparing under the title
A Family of Engineers. The correspondent was a specialist in
genealogical research. I give this letter as a sample of many which
passed between these two namesakes on this subject; omitting the
remainder as too technical to be of general interest.
Vailima, Samoa, November 5th, 1893.
MY DEAR STEVENSON,—A thousand thanks for your
voluminous and delightful collections. Baxter—so soon
as it is ready—will let you see a proof of my introduction,
which is only sent out as a sprat to catch whales. And
you will find I have a good deal of what you have, only
mine in a perfectly desultory manner, as is necessary to
an exile. My uncle’s pedigree is wrong; there was never
a Stevenson of Caldwell, of course, but they were tenants
of the Mures; the farm held by them is in my introduction;
and I have already written to Charles Baxter to
have a search made in the Register House. I hope he will
have had the inspiration to put it under your surveillance.
Your information as to your own family is intensely interesting,
and I should not wonder but what you and we and
old John Stevenson, “land labourer in the parish of
Dailly,” came all of the same stock. Ayrshire—and probably
Cunningham—seems to be the home of the race—our
part of it. From the distribution of the name—which
your collections have so much extended without essentially
changing my knowledge of—we seem rather pointed to a
British origin. What you say of the Engineers is fresh to
me, and must be well thrashed out. This introduction of
it will take a long while to walk about!—as perhaps I may
be tempted to let it become long; after all, I am writing
this for my own pleasure solely. Greetings to you and
other Speculatives of our date, long bygone, alas!—Yours
very sincerely,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
P.S.—I have a different version of my grandfather’s
arms—or my father had if I could find it.
R. L. S.
To John P——n
The next two numbers are in answer to letters of appreciation
received from two small boys in England, whose mother desires
that they should remain nameless.
Vailima, Samoa, December 3rd, 1893.
DEAR JOHNNIE,—Well, I must say you seem to be a
tremendous fellow! Before I was eight I used to write
stories—or dictate them at least—and I had produced an
excellent history of Moses, for which I got £1 from an
uncle; but I had never gone the length of a play, so you
have beaten me fairly on my own ground. I hope you
may continue to do so, and thanking you heartily for
your nice letter, I shall beg you to believe me yours truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Russell P——n
Vailima, Samoa, December 3rd, 1893.
DEAR RUSSELL,—I have to thank you very much for
your capital letter, which came to hand here in Samoa
along with your mother’s. When you “grow up and
write stories like me,” you will be able to understand that
there is scarce anything more painful than for an author
to hold a pen; he has to do it so much that his heart
sickens and his fingers ache at the sight or touch of it;
so that you will excuse me if I do not write much, but
remain (with compliments and greetings from one Scot
to another—though I was not born in Ceylon—you’re
ahead of me there).—Yours very truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Alison Cunningham
Vailima, December 5, 1893.
MY DEAREST CUMMY,—This goes to you with a Merry
Christmas and a Happy New Year. The Happy New
Year anyway, for I think it should reach you about Noor’s
Day. I dare say it may be cold and frosty. Do you
remember when you used to take me out of bed in the
early morning, carry me to the back windows, show me
the hills of Fife, and quote to me
“A’ the hills are covered wi’ snaw,
An’ winter’s noo come fairly”?
|
There is not much chance of that here! I wonder how
my mother is going to stand the winter. It she can, it
will be a very good thing for her. We are in that part
of the year which I like the best—the Rainy or Hurricane
Season. “When it is good, it is very, very good; and
when it is bad, it is horrid,” and our fine days are certainly
fine like heaven; such a blue of the sea, such green
of the trees, and such crimson of the hibiscus flowers, you
never saw; and the air as mild and gentle as a baby’s
breath, and yet not hot!
The mail is on the move, and I must let up.—With
much love, I am, your laddie,
R. L. S.
To Charles Baxter
The following quotes the extract, from Fountainhall’s “Decisions
of the Lords of Council, etc.,” which suggested to Stevenson the
romance of Cameronian days and the Darien adventure of which,
under the title of Heathercat, he only lived to write the first few
introductory chapters (see vol. xxi. p. 177, of this edition).
6th December 1893.
“October 25, 1685.—At Privy Council, George Murray,
Lieutenant of the King’s Guard, and others, did, on the
21st of September last, obtain a clandestine order of Privy
Council to apprehend the person of Janet Pringle, daughter
to the late Clifton, and she having retired out of the way
upon information, he got an order against Andrew Pringle,
her uncle, to produce her.... But she having married
Andrew Pringle, her uncle’s son (to disappoint all their
designs of selling her), a boy of thirteen years old.” But
my boy is to be fourteen, so I extract no further.—Fountainhall,
i. 320.
“May 6, 1685.—Wappus Pringle of Clifton was still
alive after all, and in prison for debt, and transacts with
Lieutenant Murray, giving security for 7000 marks.”—i.
372.
No, it seems to have been her brother who had succeeded.
MY DEAR CHARLES.—The above is my story, and I
wonder if any light can be thrown on it. I prefer the
girl’s father dead; and the question is, How in that case
could Lieutenant George Murray get his order to “apprehend”
and his power to “sell” her in marriage?
Or—might Lieutenant G. be her tutor, and she fugitive
to the Pringles, and on the discovery of her whereabouts
hastily married?
A good legal note on these points is very ardently
desired by me; it will be the corner-stone of my novel.
This is for—I am quite wrong to tell you—for you will
tell others—and nothing will teach you that all my schemes
are in the air, and vanish and reappear again like shapes
in the clouds—it is for Heathercat: whereof the first
volume will be called The Killing Time, and I believe I
have authorities ample for that. But the second volume
is to be called (I believe) Darien, and for that I want, I
fear, a good deal of truck:—
Darien Papers,
Carstairs Papers,
Marchmont Papers,
Jerviswoode Correspondence,
|
I hope may do me. Some sort of general history of the
Darien affair (if there is a decent one, which I misdoubt),
it would also be well to have—the one with most details,
if possible. It is singular how obscure to me this decade
of Scots history remains, 1690-1700—a deuce of a want
of light and grouping to it! However, I believe I shall be
mostly out of Scotland in my tale; first in Carolina, next
in Darien. I want also—I am the daughter of the horseleech
truly—“Black’s new large map of Scotland,” sheets
3, 4, and 5, a 7s. 6d. touch. I believe, if you can get the
Caldwell Papers,
they had better come also; and if there be any reasonable
work—but no, I must call a halt....
I fear the song looks doubtful, but I’ll consider of it,
and I can promise you some reminiscences which it will
amuse me to write, whether or not it will amuse the public
to read of them. But it’s an unco business to supply
deid-heid coapy.
To J. M. Barrie
Vailima, Samoa, December 7th, 1893.
MY DEAR BARRIE,—I have received duly the magnum
opus, and it really is a magnum opus.72 It is a beautiful
specimen of Clark’s printing, paper sufficient, and the
illustrations all my fancy painted. But the particular
flower of the flock to whom I have hopelessly lost my
heart is Tibby Birse. I must have known Tibby Birse
when she was a servant’s mantua-maker in Edinburgh
and answered to the name of Miss Broddie. She used to
come and sew with my nurse, sitting with her legs crossed
in a masculine manner; and swinging her foot emphatically,
she used to pour forth a perfectly unbroken stream
of gossip. I didn’t hear it, I was immersed in far more
important business with a box of bricks, but the recollection
of that thin, perpetual, shrill sound of a voice has
echoed in my ears sinsyne. I am bound to say she was
younger than Tibbie, but there is no mistaking that and
the indescribable and eminently Scottish expression.
I have been very much prevented of late, having carried
out thoroughly to my own satisfaction two considerable
illnesses, had a birthday, and visited Honolulu, where
politics are (if possible) a shade more exasperating than
they are with us. I am told that it was just when I was
on the point of leaving that I received your superlative
epistle about the cricket eleven. In that case it is impossible
I should have answered it, which is inconsistent with
my own recollection of the fact. What I remember is,
that I sat down under your immediate inspiration and
wrote an answer in every way worthy. If I didn’t, as it
seems proved that I couldn’t, it will never be done now.
However, I did the next best thing, I equipped my cousin
Graham Balfour with a letter of introduction, and from
him, if you know how—for he is rather of the Scottish
character—you may elicit all the information you can
possibly wish to have as to us and ours. Do not be bluffed
off by the somewhat stern and monumental first impression
that he may make upon you. He is one of the best fellows
in the world, and the same sort of fool that we are, only
better-looking, with all the faults of Vailimans and some
of his own—I say nothing about virtues.
I have lately been returning to my wallowing in the
mire. When I was a child, and indeed until I was nearly
a man, I consistently read Covenanting books. Now that
I am a grey-beard—or would be, if I could raise the beard—I
have returned, and for weeks back have read little
else but Wodrow, Walker, Shields, etc. Of course this is
with an idea of a novel, but in the course of it I made a
very curious discovery. I have been accustomed to hear
refined and intelligent critics—those who know so much
better what we are than we do ourselves,—trace down
my literary descent from all sorts of people, including
Addison, of whom I could never read a word. Well,
laigh i’ your lug, sir—the clue was found. My style is
from the Covenanting writers. Take a particular case—the
fondness for rhymes. I don’t know of any English
prose-writer who rhymes except by accident, and then a
stone had better be tied around his neck and himself cast
into the sea. But my Covenanting buckies rhyme all the
time—a beautiful example of the unconscious rhyme above
referred to.
Do you know, and have you really tasted, these delightful
works? If not, it should be remedied; there is enough
of the Auld Licht in you to be ravished.
I suppose you know that success has so far attended
my banners—my political banners I mean, and not my
literary. In conjunction with the Three Great Powers I
have succeeded in getting rid of My President and My
Chief-Justice. They’ve gone home, the one to Germany,
the other to Souwegia. I hear little echoes of footfalls of
their departing footsteps through the medium of the newspapers....
Whereupon I make you my salute with the firm remark
that it is time to be done with trifling and give us a great
book, and my ladies fall into line with me to pay you a
most respectful courtesy, and we all join in the cry, “Come
to Vailima!”
My dear sir, your soul’s health is in it—you will never
do the great book, you will never cease to work in L.,
etc., till you come to Vailima.
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To R. Le Gallienne
Vailima, Samoa, December 28th, 1893.
DEAR MR. LE GALLIENNE,—I have received some time
ago, through our friend Miss Taylor, a book of yours.
But that was by no means my first introduction to your
name. The same book had stood already on my shelves;
I had read articles of yours in the Academy; and by a
piece of constructive criticism (which I trust was sound)
had arrived at the conclusion that you were “Log-roller.”
Since then I have seen your beautiful verses to your wife.
You are to conceive me, then, as only too ready to make
the acquaintance of a man who loved good literature
and could make it. I had to thank you, besides, for a
triumphant exposure of a paradox of my own: the literary-prostitute
disappeared from view at a phrase of yours—“The
essence is not in the pleasure but the sale.” True
you are right, I was wrong; the author is not the whore
but the libertine; and yet I shall let the passage stand.
It is an error, but it illustrated the truth for which I was
contending, that literature—painting—all art, are no
other than pleasures, which we turn into trades.
And more than all this, I had, and I have to thank
you for the intimate loyalty you have shown to myself;
for the eager welcome you give to what is good—for the
courtly tenderness with which you touch on my defects.
I begin to grow old; I have given my top note, I fancy;—and
I have written too many books. The world begins
to be weary of the old booth; and if not weary, familiar
with the familiarity that breeds contempt. I do not
know that I am sensitive to criticism, if it be hostile; I
am sensitive indeed, when it is friendly; and when I read
such criticism as yours, I am emboldened to go on and
praise God.
You are still young, and you may live to do much.
The little artificial popularity of style in England tends,
I think, to die out; the British pig returns to his true
love, the love of the styleless, of the shapeless, of the
slapdash and the disorderly. There is trouble coming, I
think; and you may have to hold the fort for us in evil
days.
Lastly, let me apologise for the crucifixion that I am
inflicting on you (bien à contre-cœur) by my bad writing.
I was once the best of writers; landladies, puzzled as to
my “trade,” used to have their honest bosoms set at rest
by a sight of a page of manuscript.—“Ah,” they would
say, “no wonder they pay you for that”;—and when I
sent it in to the printers, it was given to the boys! I was
about thirty-nine, I think, when I had a turn of scrivener’s
palsy; my hand got worse; and for the first time, I received
clean proofs. But it has gone beyond that now.
I know I am like my old friend James Payn, a terror to
correspondents; and you would not believe the care with
which this has been written.—Believe me to be, very sincerely
yours,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Mrs. A. Baker
The next is in answer to a request for permission to print some
of the writings of R. L. S. in Braille type for the use of the blind.
December 1893.
DEAR MADAM,—There is no trouble, and I wish I could
help instead. As it is, I fear I am only going to put you
to trouble and vexation. This Braille writing is a kind
of consecration, and I would like if I could to have your
copy perfect. The two volumes are to be published as
Vols. I. and II. of The Adventures of David Balfour. 1st,
Kidnapped; 2nd, Catriona. I am just sending home a
corrected Kidnapped for this purpose to Messrs. Cassell,
and in order that I may if possible be in time, I send it
to you first of all. Please, as soon as you have noted the
changes, forward the same to Cassell and Co., La Belle
Sauvage Yard, Ludgate Hill.
I am writing to them by this mail to send you
Catriona.
You say, dear madam, you are good enough to say, it
is “a keen pleasure” to you to bring my book within the
reach of the blind.
Conceive then what it is to me! and believe me,
sincerely yours,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
I was a barren tree before,
I blew a quenchèd coal,
I could not, on their midnight shore,
The lonely blind console.
A moment, lend your hand, I bring
My sheaf for you to bind,
And you can teach my words to sing
In the darkness of the blind.
|
R .L. S.
To Henry James
Apia, December, 1893.
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,—The mail has come upon me
like an armed man three days earlier than was expected;
and the Lord help me! It is impossible I should answer
anybody the way they should be. Your jubilation over
Catriona did me good, and still more the subtlety and
truth of your remark on the starving of the visual sense
in that book. ’Tis true, and unless I make the greater
effort—and am, as a step to that, convinced of its necessity—it
will be more true I fear in the future. I hear people
talking, and I feel them acting, and that seems to me to
be fiction. My two aims may be described as—
1st. War to the adjective.
2nd. Death to the optic nerve.
|
Admitted we live in an age of the optic nerve in literature.
For how many centuries did literature get along
without a sign of it? However, I’ll consider your letter.
How exquisite is your character of the critic in Essays
in London! I doubt if you have done any single thing
so satisfying as a piece of style and of insight—Yours
ever,
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin
Recounting a scene of gratitude for bounty shown by him to the
prisoners in Apia gaol.
[Vailima, December 1893.]
MY DEAR COLVIN,—One page out of my picture book
I must give you. Fine burning day; ½ past two P.M.
We four begin to rouse up from reparatory slumbers,
yawn, and groan, get a cup of tea, and miserably dress:
we have had a party the day before, X’mas Day, with all
the boys absent but one, and latterly two; we had cooked
all day long, a cold dinner, and lo! at two our guests
began to arrive, though dinner was not till six; they
were sixteen, and fifteen slept the night and breakfasted.
Conceive, then, how unwillingly we climb on our horses
and start off in the hottest part of the afternoon to ride
4½ miles, attend a native feast in the gaol, and ride four
and a half miles back. But there is no help for it. I am
a sort of father of the political prisoners, and have charge
d’âmes in that riotously absurd establishment, Apia Gaol.
The twenty-three (I think it is) chiefs act as under gaolers.
The other day they told the Captain of an attempt to
escape. One of the lesser political prisoners the other day
effected a swift capture, while the Captain was trailing
about with the warrant; the man came to see what was
wanted; came, too, flanked by the former gaoler; my
prisoner offers to show him the dark cell, shoves him in,
and locks the door. “Why do you do that?” cries the
former gaoler. “A warrant,” says he. Finally, the chiefs
actually feed the soldiery who watch them!
The gaol is a wretched little building, containing a
little room, and three cells, on each side of a central passage;
it is surrounded by a fence of corrugated iron, and
shows, over the top of that, only a gable end with the
inscription O le Fale Puipui. It is on the edge of the
mangrove swamp, and is reached by a sort of causeway
of turf. When we drew near, we saw the gates standing
open and a prodigious crowd outside—I mean prodigious
for Apia, perhaps a hundred and fifty people. The two
sentries at the gate stood to arms passively, and there
seemed to be a continuous circulation inside and out.
The captain came to meet us; our boy, who had been
sent ahead was there to take the horses; and we passed
inside the court which was full of food, and rang continuously
to the voice of the caller of gifts; I had to
blush a little later when my own present came, and I
heard my one pig and eight miserable pine-apples being
counted out like guineas. In the four corners of the yard
and along one wall, there are make-shift, dwarfish, Samoan
houses or huts, which have been run up since Captain
Wurmbrand came to accommodate the chiefs. Before that
they were all crammed into the six cells, and locked in
for the night, some of them with dysentery. They are
wretched constructions enough, but sanctified by the presence
of chiefs. We heard a man corrected loudly to-day
for saying “Fale” of one of them; “Maota,” roared the
highest chief present—“palace.” About eighteen chiefs,
gorgeously arrayed, stood up to greet us, and led us into
one of these maotas, where you may be sure we had to
crouch, almost to kneel, to enter, and where a row of
pretty girls occupied one side to make the ava (kava).
The highest chief present was a magnificent man, as high
chiefs usually are; I find I cannot describe him; his
face is full of shrewdness and authority; his figure like
Ajax; his name Auilua. He took the head of the building
and put Belle on his right hand. Fanny was called
first for the ava (kava). Our names were called in English
style, the high-chief wife of Mr. St—(an unpronounceable
something); Mrs. Straw, and the like. And when we
went into the other house to eat, we found we were seated
alternately with chiefs about the—table, I was about to
say, but rather floor. Everything was to be done European
style with a vengeance! We were the only whites
present, except Wurmbrand, and still I had no suspicion
of the truth. They began to take off their ulas (necklaces
of scarlet seeds) and hang them about our necks;
we politely resisted, and were told that the king (who had
stopped off their siva) had sent down to the prison a message
to the effect that he was to give a dinner to-morrow, and
wished their second-hand ulas for it. Some of them were
content; others not. There was a ring of anger in the
boy’s voice, as he told us we were to wear them past the
king’s house. Dinner over, I must say they are moderate
eaters at a feast, we returned to the ava house; and then
the curtain drew suddenly up upon the set scene. We
took our seats, and Auilua began to give me a present,
recapitulating each article as he gave it out, with some
appropriate comment. He called me several times “their
only friend,” said they were all in slavery, had no money,
and these things were all made by the hands of their
families—nothing bought; he had one phrase, in which
I heard his voice rise up to a note of triumph: “This is
a present from the poor prisoners to the rich man.” Thirteen
pieces of tapa, some of them surprisingly fine, one I
think unique; thirty fans of every shape and colour; a
kava cup, etc., etc. At first Auilua conducted the business
with weighty gravity; but before the end of the
thirty fans, his comments began to be humorous. When
it came to a little basket, he said: “Here was a little basket
for Tusitala to put sixpence in, when he could get hold
of one”—with a delicious grimace. I answered as best
as I was able through a miserable interpreter; and all
the while, as I went on, I heard the crier outside in the
court calling my gift of food, which I perceived was to be
Gargantuan. I had brought but three boys with me. It
was plain that they were wholly overpowered. We proposed
to send for our gifts on the morrow; but no, said
the interpreter, that would never do; they must go away
to-day, Mulinuu must see my porters taking away the
gifts,—“make ’em jella,” quoth the interpreter. And I
began to see the reason of this really splendid gift; one
half, gratitude to me—one half, a wipe at the king.
And now, to introduce darker colours, you must know
this visit of mine to the gaol was just a little bit risky;
we had several causes for anxiety; it might have been put
up, to connect with a Tamasese rising. Tusitala and his
family would be good hostages. On the other hand, there
were the Mulinuu people all about. We could see the
anxiety of Captain Wurmbrand, no less anxious to have
us go, than he had been to see us come; he was deadly
white and plainly had a bad headache, in the noisy scene.
Presently, the noise grew uproarious; there was a rush at
the gate—a rush in, not a rush out—where the two sentries
still stood passive; Auilua leaped from his place (it was
then that I got the name of Ajax for him) and the next
moment we heard his voice roaring and saw his mighty
figure swaying to and fro in the hurly-burly. As the
deuce would have it, we could not understand a word of
what was going on. It might be nothing more than the
ordinary “grab racket” with which a feast commonly
concludes; it might be something worse. We made what
arrangements we could for my tapa, fans, etc., as well as
for my five pigs, my masses of fish, taro, etc., and with
great dignity, and ourselves laden with ulas and other
decorations, passed between the sentries among the howling
mob to our horses. All’s well that ends well. Owing
to Fanny and Belle, we had to walk; and, as Lloyd said,
“he had at last ridden in a circus.” The whole length of
Apia we paced our triumphal progress, past the king’s
palace, past the German firm at Sogi—you can follow it
on the map—amidst admiring exclamations of “Mawaia”—beautiful—it
may be rendered “O my! ain’t they
dandy”—until we turned up at last into our road as the
dusk deepened into night. It was really exciting. And
there is one thing sure: no such feast was ever made for
a single family, and no such present ever given to a single
white man. It is something to have been the hero of it.
And whatever other ingredients there were, undoubtedly
gratitude was present. As money value I have actually
gained on the transaction!
Your note arrived; little profit, I must say. Scott has
already put his nose in, in St. Ives, sir; but his appearance
is not yet complete; nothing is in that romance, except
the story. I have to announce that I am off work, probably
for six months. I must own that I have overworked
bitterly—overworked—there, that’s legible. My hand is
a thing that was, and in the meanwhile so are my brains.
And here, in the very midst, comes a plausible scheme
to make Vailima pay, which will perhaps let me into considerable
expense just when I don’t want it. You know
the vast cynicism of my view of affairs, and how readily
and (as some people say) with how much gusto I take
the darker view?
Why do you not send me Jerome K. Jerome’s paper,
and let me see The Ebb Tide as a serial? It is always
very important to see a thing in different presentments.
I want every number. Politically we begin the new year
with every expectation of a bust in 2 or 3 days, a bust
which may spell destruction to Samoa. I have written to
Baxter about his proposal.73
The correspondent whose letter I had sent on was a high official
at the Foreign Office: the subject, Stevenson and Samoa.
Hemorrhage from the lungs.
Vitrolle’s Mémoires and the “1814” and “1815” of M. Henri
Houssaye were sent accordingly.
Ultimately The Ebb Tide.
For a volume of selected Essays, containing the pick of Virginibus
Puerisque, Memories and Portraits, and Across the Plains.
The Owl was to be a Breton story of the Revolution; Death in
the Pot, a tale of the Sta. Lucia mountains in California; the scene
of The Go-Between was laid in the Pacific Islands; of The Sleeper
Awakened I know nothing.
Of Island Nights’ Entertainments.
John Addington Symonds.
Across the Plains.
Volume of sonnets by José Maria de Hérédia.
Dr. Fairfax Ross, a distinguished physician of Sydney, and
friend of the Stevenson family, who during a visit to England this
summer had conveyed to me no very reassuring impression as to
the healthfulness of the island life and climate.
W. Hole, R.S.A.: essential for the projected illustrations to
Kidnapped and Catriona.
Mr. S. R. Crockett. The words quoted from this gentleman’s
dedication were worked by Stevenson into a very moving and metrically
original set of verses, addressed to him in acknowledgment
(Songs of Travel, xlii.).
Simon Fraser, the Master of Lovat, in Catriona: the spelling
of his name.
The bust was exhibited in the New Gallery Summer Exhibition,
1895.
Island Nights’ Entertainments.
The Window in Thrums, with illustrations by W. Hole, R.S.A.
Hodder and Stoughton. 1892.
The scheme of the Edinburgh Edition.
January-December 1894
This new year began for Stevenson with an illness which
seemed to leave none of the usual lowering consequences,
and for Samoa with fresh rumours of war, which were not
realised until the autumn, and then—at least in the shape
of serious hostilities—in the district of Atua only and not
in his own. On the whole Stevenson’s bodily health and
vigour kept at a higher level than during the previous year.
But for serious imaginative writing he found himself still
unfit, and the sense that his old facility had for the time
being failed him caused him much inward misgiving. In
his correspondence the misgiving mood was allowed to
appear pretty freely; but in personal intercourse his high
spirits seemed to his family and visitors as unfailing as
ever. Several things happened during the year to give
him peculiar pleasure: first, at the beginning of the year,
the news of Mr. Baxter’s carefully prepared scheme of the
Edinburgh Edition, and of its acceptance by the publishers
concerned. On this subject much correspondence naturally
passed between him and Mr. Baxter and myself, over
and above that which is here published; and finally he
resolved to leave all the details of the execution to us.
By the early autumn the financial success of the scheme
was fully assured and made known to him by cable; but
he did not seem altogether to realise the full measure of
relief from money anxieties which the assurance was
meant to convey to him. Other pleasurable circumstances
were the return of Mr. Graham Balfour after a prolonged
absence; the visit of a spirited and accomplished young
English man of business and of letters, Mr. Sidney Lysaght
(see below, pp. 385, 388, etc.); and the frequent society
of the officers of H.M.S. Curaçoa, with whom he was on
terms of particular regard and cordiality. Lastly, he was
very deeply touched and gratified by the action of the
native political prisoners, towards whom he had shown
much thoughtful kindness during their months of detention,
in volunteering as a testimony of gratitude after
their release to re-make with their own hands the branch
road leading to his house: “the Road of Loving Hearts,”
as it came to be christened. Soon afterwards, the anniversaries
of his own birthday and of the American Thanks-giving
feast brought evidences hardly less welcome, after
so much contention and annoyance as the island affairs
and politics had involved him in, of the honour and affection
in which he was held by all that was best in the white
community. By each succeeding mail came stronger
proofs from home of the manner in which men of letters
of the younger generation had come to regard him as a
master, an example, and a friend.
But in spite of all these causes of pleasure, his letters
showed that his old invincible spirit of inward cheerfulness
was beginning not infrequently to give way to moods of
depression and overstrained feeling. The importunity of
these moods was no doubt due to some physical premonition
that his vital powers, so frail from the cradle and always
with so cheerful a courage overtaxed, were near exhaustion.
During the first months of the year he attempted
little writing; in the late spring and early summer his
work was chiefly on the annals of his family and on the
tale St. Ives. The latter he found uphill work: after the
first ten or twelve chapters, which are in his happiest vein,
the narrative, as he himself was painfully aware, began
to flag. Towards the end of October he gave it up for
the time being and turned to a more arduous task, the
tragic Weir of Hermiston. On this theme he felt his
inspiration return, and during the month of November
and the first days of December wrought once more at the
full pitch of his powers and in the conscious delight of
their exercise. On the third of December, after a morning
of happy work and pleasant correspondence, he was
seen gazing long and wistfully toward the forest-clad
mountain, on a ledge of which he had desired that he
should be buried. In the afternoon he brought his morning’s
work to his wife, the most exacting of his critics;
asked her whether it was not well done; and in her glow
of admiring assent found his confirmation and his reward.
Nevertheless she could not throw off an oppressive sense
of coming calamity. He was reassuring her with gay and
laughing talk when the sudden rupture of a blood-vessel
in the brain laid him almost in a moment unconscious at
her feet; and before two hours were over he had passed
away. All the world knows how his body was carried by
the loving hands of his native servants to the burial-place
of his choice, and rests there with the words of his own
requiem engraved on his tomb—the words which we have
seen him putting on paper when he was at grips with
death fifteen years before in California—
“Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.”
|
To Charles Baxter
Mr. Baxter, after much preliminary consideration and inquiry,
had matured and submitted to Stevenson the scheme of the Edinburgh
edition, to which this letter is his reply. The paper on
Treasure Island appeared in the Idler for August 1889, and was
afterwards reprinted in the miscellany My First Book (Chatto and
Windus, 1894). See Edinburgh edition, Miscellanies, vol. iv. p. 285.
1st January ’94.
MY DEAR CHARLES,—I am delighted with your idea, and
first, I will here give an amended plan and afterwards give
you a note of some of the difficulties.
[Plan of the Edinburgh edition—14 vols.]
... It may be a question whether my Times letters
might not be appended to the Footnote with a note of the
dates of discharge of Cedercrantz and Pilsach.
I am particularly pleased with this idea of yours, because
I am come to a dead stop. I never can remember
how bad I have been before, but at any rate I am bad
enough just now, I mean as to literature; in health I am
well and strong. I take it I shall be six months before
I’m heard of again, and this time I could put in to some
advantage in revising the text and (if it were thought
desirable) writing prefaces. I do not know how many of
them might be thought desirable. I have written a paper
on Treasure Island, which is to appear shortly. Master
of Ballantrae—I have one drafted. The Wrecker is quite
sufficiently done already with the last chapter, but I suppose
an historic introduction to David Balfour is quite
unavoidable. Prince Otto I don’t think I could say anything
about, and Black Arrow don’t want to. But it is
probable I could say something to the volume of Travels.
In the verse business I can do just what I like better than
anything else, and extend Underwoods with a lot of unpublished
stuff. À propos, if I were to get printed off a
very few poems which are somewhat too intimate for the
public, could you get them run up in some luxuous manner,
so that fools might be induced to buy them in just a sufficient
quantity to pay expenses and the thing remain still
in a manner private? We could supply photographs of
the illustrations—and the poems are of Vailima and the
family—I should much like to get this done as a surprise
for Fanny.
R. L. S.
To H. B. Baildon
Vailima, January 15th, 1894.
MY DEAR BAILDON,—Last mail brought your book and
its Dedication. “Frederick Street and the gardens, and
the short-lived Jack o’ Lantern,” are again with me—and
the note of the east wind, and Froebel’s voice, and the
smell of soup in Thomson’s stair. Truly, you had no need
to put yourself under the protection of any other saint,
were that saint our Tamate himself! Yourself were enough,
and yourself coming with so rich a sheaf.
For what is this that you say about the Muses? They
have certainly never better inspired you than in “Jael and
Sisera,” and “Herodias and John the Baptist,” good stout
poems, fiery and sound. “’Tis but a mask and behind it
chuckles the God of the Garden,” I shall never forget.
By the by, an error of the press, page 49, line 4, “No
infant’s lesson are the ways of God.” The is dropped.
And this reminds me you have a bad habit which is to
be comminated in my theory of letters. Same page, two
lines lower: “But the vulture’s track” is surely as fine
to the ear as “But vulture’s track,” and this latter version
has a dreadful baldness. The reader goes on with a sense
of impoverishment, of unnecessary sacrifice; he has been
robbed by footpads, and goes scouting for his lost article!
Again, in the second Epode, these fine verses would surely
sound much finer if they began, “As a hardy climber who
has set his heart,” than with the jejune “As hardy climber.”
I do not know why you permit yourself this licence with
grammar; you show, in so many pages, that you are
superior to the paltry sense of rhythm which usually dictates
it—as though some poetaster had been suffered to
correct the poet’s text. By the way, I confess to a heartfelt
weakness for Auriculas.—Believe me the very grateful
and characteristic pick-thank, but still sincere and affectionate,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To W. H. Low
Vailima, January 15th, 1894.
MY DEAR LOW,— ... Pray you, stoop your proud
head, and sell yourself to some Jew magazine, and make
the visit out. I assure you, this is the spot for a sculptor
or painter. This, and no other—I don’t say to stay
there, but to come once and get the living colour into them.
I am used to it; I do not notice it; rather prefer my
grey, freezing recollections of Scotland; but there it is,
and every morning is a thing to give thanks for, and
every night another—bar when it rains, of course.
About The Wrecker—rather late days, and I still suspect
I had somehow offended you; however, all’s well
that ends well, and I am glad I am forgiven—did you
not fail to appreciate the attitude of Dodd? He was a
fizzle and a stick, he knew it, he knew nothing else, and
there is an undercurrent of bitterness in him. And then
the problem that Pinkerton laid down: why the artist
can do nothing else? is one that continually exercises
myself. He cannot: granted. But Scott could. And
Montaigne. And Julius Caesar. And many more. And
why can’t R. L. S.? Does it not amaze you? It does
me. I think of the Renaissance fellows, and their all-round
human sufficiency, and compare it with the ineffable
smallness of the field in which we labour and in which we
do so little. I think David Balfour a nice little book,
and very artistic, and just the thing to occupy the leisure
of a busy man; but for the top flower of a man’s life
it seems to me inadequate. Small is the word; it is a
small age, and I am of it. I could have wished to be
otherwise busy in this world. I ought to have been able
to build lighthouses and write David Balfours too. Hinc
illae lacrymae. I take my own case as most handy, but
it is as illustrative of my quarrel with the age. We take
all these pains, and we don’t do as well as Michael Angelo
or Leonardo, or even Fielding, who was an active magistrate,
or Richardson, who was a busy bookseller. J’ai
honte pour nous; my ears burn.
I am amazed at the effect which this Chicago exhibition
has produced upon you and others. It set Mrs. Fairchild
literally mad—to judge by her letters. And I wish
I had seen anything so influential. I suppose there was
an aura, a halo, some sort of effulgency about the place;
for here I find you louder than the rest. Well, it may
be there is a time coming; and I wonder, when it comes,
whether it will be a time of little, exclusive, one-eyed
rascals like you and me, or parties of the old stamp who
can paint and fight, and write and keep books of double
entry, and sculp, and scalp. It might be. You have a
lot of stuff in the kettle, and a great deal of it Celtic.
I have changed my mind progressively about England:
practically the whole of Scotland is Celtic, and the western
half of England, and all Ireland, and the Celtic blood
makes a rare blend for art. If it is stiffened up with Latin
blood, you get the French. We were less lucky: we
had only Scandinavians, themselves decidedly artistic, and
the Low-German lot. However, that is a good starting-point,
and with all the other elements in your crucible,
it may come to something great very easily. I wish you
would hurry up and let me see it. Here is a long while
I have been waiting for something good in art; and what
have I seen? Zola’s Débâcle and a few of Kipling’s tales.
Are you a reader of Barbey d’Aurévilly? He is a never-failing
source of pleasure to me, for my sins, I suppose.
What a work is the Rideau Cramoisi! and L’Ensorcelée!
and Le Chevalier Des Touches!
This is degenerating into mere twaddle. So please
remember us all most kindly to Mrs. Low, and believe
me ever yours,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
P.S.—Were all your privateers voiceless in the war of
1812? Did no one of them write memoirs? I shall have
to do my privateer from chic, if you can’t help me.74 My
application to Scribner has been quite in vain. See if
you can get hold of some historic sharp in the club, and
tap him; they must some of them have written memoirs
or notes of some sort; perhaps still unprinted; if that
be so, get them copied for me.
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin
Vailima, Jan. 29th, 1894.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—I had fully intended for your education
and moral health to fob you off with the meanest
possible letter this month, and unfortunately I find I will
have to treat you to a good long account of matters here.
I believe I have told you before about Tui-ma-le-alii-fano
and my taking him down to introduce him to the Chief
Justice. Well, Tui came back to Vailima one day in the
blackest sort of spirits, saying the war was decided, that
he also must join in the fight, and that there was no hope
whatever of success. He must fight as a point of honour
for his family and country; and in his case, even if he
escaped on the field of battle, deportation was the least
to be looked for. He said he had a letter of complaint
from the Great Council of A’ana which he wished to lay
before the Chief Justice; and he asked me to accompany
him as if I were his nurse. We went down about dinner
time; and by the way received from a lurking native
the famous letter in an official blue envelope gummed up
to the edges. It proved to be a declaration of war, quite
formal, but with some variations that really made you
bounce. White residents were directly threatened, bidden
to have nothing to do with the King’s party, not to receive
their goods in their houses, etc., under pain of an accident.
However, the Chief Justice took it very wisely and mildly,
and between us, he and I and Tui made up a plan which
has proved successful—so far. The war is over—fifteen
chiefs are this morning undergoing a curious double process
of law, comparable to a court martial; in which their
complaints are to be considered, and if possible righted,
while their conduct is to be criticised, perhaps punished.
Up to now, therefore, it has been a most successful policy;
but the danger is before us. My own feeling would decidedly
be that all would be spoiled by a single execution.
The great hope after all lies in the knotless, rather flaccid
character of the people. These are no Maoris. All the
powers that Cedercrantz let go by disuse the new C. J.
is stealthily and boldly taking back again; perhaps some
others also. He has shamed the chiefs in Mulinuu into
a law against taking heads, with a punishment of six
years’ imprisonment and, for a chief, degradation. To
him has been left the sole conduct of this anxious and
decisive inquiry. If the natives stand it, why, well! But
I am nervous.
To H. B. Baildon
Vailima, January 30th, 1894.
MY DEAR BAILDON,—“Call not blessed.”—Yes, if I
could die just now, or say in half a year, I should have
had a splendid time of it on the whole. But it gets a
little stale, and my work will begin to senesce; and
parties to shy bricks at me; and now it begins to look
as if I should survive to see myself impotent and forgotten.
It’s a pity suicide is not thought the ticket in the best
circles.
But your letter goes on to congratulate me on having
done the one thing I am a little sorry for; a little—not
much—for my father himself lived to think that I had
been wiser than he. But the cream of the jest is that I
have lived to change my mind; and think that he was
wiser than I. Had I been an engineer, and literature my
amusement, it would have been better perhaps. I pulled
it off, of course, I won the wager, and it is pleasant while
it lasts; but how long will it last? I don’t know, say
the Bells of Old Bow.
All of which goes to show that nobody is quite sane
in judging himself. Truly, had I given way and gone in
for engineering, I should be dead by now. Well, the
gods know best.
... I hope you got my letter about the Rescue.—Adieu.
R. L. S.
True for you about the benefit: except by kisses,
jests, song, et hoc genus omne, man cannot convey benefit
to another. The universal benefactor has been there
before him.
To Sidney Colvin
Feb. 1894.
DEAR COLVIN,—By a reaction, when your letter is a
little decent, mine is to be naked and unashamed. We
have been much exercised. No one can prophesy here,
of course, and the balance still hangs trembling, but I
think it will go for peace.
The mail was very late this time: hence the paltriness
of this note. When it came and I had read it, I
retired with The Ebb Tide and read it all before I slept.
I did not dream it was near as good; I am afraid I think
it excellent. A little indecision about Attwater, not
much. It gives me great hope, as I see I can work in
that constipated, mosaic manner, which is what I have
to do just now with Weir of Hermiston.
We have given a ball; I send you a paper describing
the event. We have two guests in the house, Captain-Count
Wurmbrand and Monsieur Albert de Lautreppe.
Lautreppe is awfully nice—a quiet, gentlemanly fellow,
gonflé de rêves, as he describes himself—once a sculptor
in the atelier of Henry Crosse, he knows something of
art, and is really a resource to me.
Letter from Meredith very kind. Have you seen no
more of Graham?
What about my Grandfather? The family history
will grow to be quite a chapter.
I suppose I am growing sensitive; perhaps, by living
among barbarians, I expect more civility. Look at this
from the author of a very interesting and laudatory
critique. He gives quite a false description of something
of mine, and talks about my “insolence.” Frankly, I
supposed “insolence” to be a tapu word. I do not use
it to a gentleman, I would not write it of a gentleman:
I may be wrong, but I believe we did not write it of a
gentleman in old days, and in my view he (clever fellow
as he is) wants to be kicked for applying it to me. By
writing a novel—even a bad one—I do not make myself
a criminal for anybody to insult. This may amuse you.
But either there is a change in journalism, too gradual
for you to remark it on the spot, or there is a change in
me. I cannot bear these phrases; I long to resent them.
My forbears, the tenant farmers of the Mures, would
not have suffered such expressions unless it had been
from Cauldwell, or Rowallan, or maybe Auchendrane.
My Family Pride bristles. I am like the negro, “I just
heard last night” who my great, great, great, great
grandfather was.—Ever yours,
R. L. S.
To J. H. Bates
The next is to a correspondent in Cincinnati, who had been the
founder of an R. L. S. Society in that city, “originally,” he writes
me, under date April 7, 1895, “the outcome of a boyish fancy, but
it has now grown into something more substantial.”
Vailima, Samoa, March 25th, 1894.
MY DEAR MR. JOE H. BATES,—I shall have the greatest
pleasure in acceding to your complimentary request. I
shall think it an honour to be associated with your chapter,
and I need not remind you (for you have said it yourself)
how much depends upon your own exertions whether
to make it to me a real honour or only a derision. This
is to let you know that I accept the position that you
have seriously offered to me in a quite serious spirit. I
need scarce tell you that I shall always be pleased to
receive reports of your proceedings; and if I do not
always acknowledge them, you are to remember that I
am a man very much occupied otherwise, and not at
all to suppose that I have lost interest in my chapter.
In this world, which (as you justly say) is so full of
sorrow and suffering, it will always please me to remember
that my name is connected with some efforts after alleviation,
nor less so with purposes of innocent recreation
which, after all, are the only certain means at our disposal
for bettering human life.
With kind regards, to yourself, to Mr. L. C. Congdon,
to E. M. G. Bates, and to Mr. Edward Hugh Higlee Bates,
and the heartiest wishes for the future success of the
chapter, believe me, yours cordially.
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To William Archer
Vailima, Samoa, March 27th, 1894.
MY DEAR ARCHER,—Many thanks for your Theatrical
World. Do you know, it strikes me as being really very
good? I have not yet read much of it, but so far as I
have looked, there is not a dull and not an empty page
in it. Hazlitt, whom you must often have thought of,
would have been pleased. Come to think of it, I shall
put this book upon the Hazlitt shelf. You have acquired
a manner that I can only call august; otherwise, I should
have to call it such amazing impudence. The Bauble Shop
and Becket are examples of what I mean. But it “sets
you weel.”
Marjorie Fleming I have known, as you surmise, for
long. She was possibly—no, I take back possibly—she
was one of the greatest works of God. Your note about
the resemblance of her verses to mine gave me great
joy, though it only proved me a plagiarist. By the by,
was it not over The Child’s Garden of Verses that we first
scraped acquaintance? I am sorry indeed to hear that
my esteemed correspondent Tomarcher has such poor
taste in literature.75 I fear he cannot have inherited this
trait from his dear papa. Indeed, I may say I know it,
for I remember the energy of papa’s disapproval when
the work passed through his hands on its way to a second
birth, which none regrets more than myself. It is an
odd fact, or perhaps a very natural one; I find few greater
pleasures than reading my own works, but I never, O
I never read The Black Arrow. In that country Tomarcher
reigns supreme. Well, and after all, if Tomarcher likes
it, it has not been written in vain.
We have just now a curious breath from Europe.
A young fellow just beginning letters, and no fool, turned
up here with a letter of introduction in the well-known
blue ink and decorative hieroglyphs of George Meredith.
His name may be known to you. It is Sidney Lysaght.
He is staying with us but a day or two, and it is strange
to me and not unpleasant to hear all the names, old and
new, come up again. But oddly the new are so much
more in number. If I revisited the glimpses of the moon
on your side of the ocean, I should know comparatively
few of them.
My amanuensis deserts me—I should have said you,
for yours is the loss, my script having lost all bond with
humanity. One touch of nature makes the whole world
kin: that nobody can read my hand. It is a humiliating
circumstance that thus evens us with printers!
You must sometimes think it strange—or perhaps it
is only I that should so think it—to be following the old
round, in the gas lamps and the crowded theatres, when
I am away here in the tropical forest and the vast
silences!
My dear Archer, my wife joins me in the best wishes
to yourself and Mrs. Archer, not forgetting Tom; and
I am yours very cordially,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Sidney Colvin
Partly concerning a fresh rising, this time of the partisans of
Tamasese from the district of Atua, which had occurred and was
after some time suppressed; partly in reference to the visit of Mr.
Sidney Lysaght; partly in reply to a petition that his letters might
be less entirely taken up with native affairs, of relatively little
meaning to his correspondent.
[Vailima, April 1894.]
MY DEAR COLVIN,—This is the very day the mail goes,
and I have as yet written you nothing. But it was just
as well—as it was all about my “blacks and chocolates,”
and what of it had relation to whites you will read some
of in the Times. It means, as you will see, that I have
at one blow quarrelled with all the officials of Samoa,
the Foreign Office, and I suppose her Majesty the Queen
with milk and honey blest. But you’ll see in the Times.
I am very well indeed, but just about dead and mighty
glad the mail is near here, and I can just give up all hope
of contending with my letters, and lie down for the
rest of the day. These Times letters are not easy to write.
And I dare say the consuls say, “Why, then, does he
write them?”
I had miserable luck with St. Ives; being already
half-way through it, a book I had ordered six months
ago arrives at last, and I have to change the first half
of it from top to bottom! How could I have dreamed
the French prisoners were watched over like a female
charity school, kept in a grotesque livery, and shaved
twice a week? And I had made all my points on the
idea that they were unshaved and clothed anyhow. However,
this last is better business; if only the book had
come when I ordered it! À propos, many of the books
you announce don’t come as a matter of fact. When
they are of any value, it is best to register them. Your
letter, alas! is not here; I sent it down to the
cottage, with all my mail, for Fanny; on Sunday night
a boy comes up with a lantern and a note from Fanny,
to say the woods are full of Atuas and I must bring a
horse down that instant, as the posts are established
beyond her on the road, and she does not want to have
the fight going on between us. Impossible to get a horse;
so I started in the dark on foot, with a revolver, and
my spurs on my bare feet, leaving directions that the
boy should mount after me with the horse. Try such
an experience on Our Road once, and do it, if you please,
after you have been down town from nine o’clock till
six, on board the ship-of-war lunching, teaching Sunday
School (I actually do) and making necessary visits; and
the Saturday before, having sat all day from ½-past six
to ½-past four, scriving at my Times letter. About half-way
up, just in fact at “point” of the outposts, I met
Fanny coming up. Then all night long I was being
wakened with scares that really should be looked into,
though I knew there was nothing in them and no bottom
to the whole story; and the drums and shouts and cries
from Tanugamanono and the town keeping up an all-night
corybantic chorus in the moonlight—the moon rose
late—and the search-light of the war-ship in the harbour
making a jewel of brightness as it lit up the bay of Apia
in the distance. And then next morning, about eight
o’clock, a drum coming out of the woods and a party of
patrols who had been in the woods on our left front (which
is our true rear) coming up to the house, and meeting
there another party who had been in the woods on our
right {front rear} which is Vaea Mountain, and 43 of them
being entertained to ava and biscuits on the verandah,
and marching off at last in single file for Apia. Briefly,
it is not much wonder if your letter and my whole mail
was left at the cottage, and I have no means of seeing
or answering particulars.
The whole thing was nothing but a bottomless scare;
it was obviously so; you couldn’t make a child believe
it was anything else, but it has made the consuls sit up.
My own private scares were really abominably annoying;
as for instance after I had got to sleep for the ninth time
perhaps—and that was no easy matter either, for I had
a crick in my neck so agonising that I had to sleep sitting
up—I heard noises as of a man being murdered in the
boys’ house. To be sure, said I, this is nothing again,
but if a man’s head was being taken, the noises would
be the same! So I had to get up, stifle my cries of agony
from the crick, get my revolver, and creep out stealthily
to the boys’ house. And there were two of them sitting
up, keeping watch of their own accord like good boys,
and whiling the time over a game of Sweepi (Cascino—the
whist of our islanders)—and one of them was our champion
idiot, Misifolo, and I suppose he was holding bad
cards, and losing all the time—and these noises were his
humorous protests against Fortune!
Well, excuse this excursion into my “blacks and
chocolates.” It is the last. You will have heard from
Lysaght how I failed to write last mail. The said Lysaght
seems to me a very nice fellow. We were only sorry he
could not stay with us longer. Austin came back from
school last week, which made a great time for the Amanuensis,
you may be sure. Then on Saturday, the Curaçoa
came in—same commission, with all our old friends;
and on Sunday, as already mentioned, Austin and I
went down to service and had lunch afterwards in the
wardroom. The officers were awfully nice to Austin;
they are the most amiable ship in the world; and after
lunch we had a paper handed round on which we were
to guess, and sign our guess, of the number of leaves on
the pine-apple; I never saw this game before, but it seems
it is much practised in the Queen’s Navee. When all
have betted, one of the party begins to strip the pine-apple
head, and the person whose guess is furthest out
has to pay for the sherry. My equanimity was disturbed
by shouts of The American Commodore, and I found that
Austin had entered and lost about a bottle of sherry!
He turned with great composure and addressed me. “I
am afraid I must look to you, Uncle Louis.” The Sunday
School racket is only an experiment which I took up at
the request of the late American Land Commissioner; I
am trying it for a month, and if I do as ill as I believe,
and the boys find it only half as tedious as I do, I think
it will end in a month. I have carte blanche, and say what
I like; but does any single soul understand me?
Fanny is on the whole very much better. Lloyd has
been under the weather, and goes for a month to the
South Island of New Zealand for some skating, save the
mark! I get all the skating I want among officials.
Dear Colvin, please remember that my life passes
among my “blacks or chocolates.” If I were to do as
you propose, in a bit of a tiff, it would cut you off entirely
from my life. You must try to exercise a trifle of imagination,
and put yourself, perhaps with an effort, into some
sort of sympathy with these people, or how am I to write
to you? I think you are truly a little too Cockney with
me.—Ever yours,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To W. B. Yeats
Vailima, Samoa, April 14, 1894.
DEAR SIR,—Long since when I was a boy I remember
the emotions with which I repeated Swinburne’s poems
and ballads. Some ten years ago, a similar spell was
cast upon me by Meredith’s Love in the Valley; the
stanzas beginning “When her mother tends her” haunted
me and made me drunk like wine; and I remember waking
with them all the echoes of the hills about Hyères. It
may interest you to hear that I have a third time fallen
in slavery: this is to your poem called the Lake Isle of
Innisfree. It is so quaint and airy, simple, artful, and
eloquent to the heart—but I seek words in vain. Enough
that “always night and day I hear lake water lapping
with low sounds on the shore,” and am, yours gratefully,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To George Meredith
The young lady referred to in the following is Mr. Meredith’s
daughter, now Mrs. H. Sturgis; the bearer of the introduction, Mr.
Sidney Lysaght, author of The Marplot and One of the Grenvilles.
It is only in the first few chapters of Mr. Meredith’s Amazing Marriage
that the character of Gower Woodseer has been allowed to
retain any likeness to that of R. L. S.
Vailima, Samoa, April 17th, 1894.
MY DEAR MEREDITH,—Many good things have the
gods sent to me of late. First of all there was a letter
from you by the kind hand of Mariette, if she is not too
great a lady to be remembered in such a style; and then
there came one Lysaght with a charming note of introduction
in the well-known hand itself. We had but a
few days of him, and liked him well. There was a sort
of geniality and inward fire about him at which I warmed
my hands. It is long since I have seen a young man who
has left in me such a favourable impression; and I find
myself telling myself, “O, I must tell this to Lysaght,”
or, “This will interest him,” in a manner very unusual
after so brief an acquaintance. The whole of my family
shared in this favourable impression, and my halls have
re-echoed ever since, I am sure he will be amused to know,
with Widdicombe Fair.
He will have told you doubtless more of my news
than I could tell you myself; he has your European
perspective, a thing long lost to me. I heard with a great
deal of interest the news of Box Hill. And so I understand
it is to be enclosed! Allow me to remark, that
seems a far more barbaric trait of manners than the most
barbarous of ours. We content ourselves with cutting off
an occasional head.
I hear we may soon expect The Amazing Marriage.
You know how long, and with how much curiosity, I
have looked forward to the book. Now, in so far as you
have adhered to your intention, Gower Woodseer will be
a family portrait, age twenty-five, of the highly respectable
and slightly influential and fairly aged Tusitala.
You have not known that gentleman; console yourself,
he is not worth knowing. At the same time, my dear
Meredith, he is very sincerely yours—for what he is worth,
for the memories of old times, and in the expectation of
many pleasures still to come. I suppose we shall never
see each other again; flitting youths of the Lysaght
species may occasionally cover these unconscionable
leagues and bear greetings to and fro. But we ourselves
must be content to converse on an occasional sheet of
notepaper, and I shall never see whether you have grown
older, and you shall never deplore that Gower Woodseer
should have declined into the pantaloon Tusitala. It is
perhaps better so. Let us continue to see each other as
we were, and accept, my dear Meredith, my love and
respect.
Robert Louis Stevenson.
P.S.—My wife joins me in the kindest messages to
yourself and Mariette.
To Charles Baxter
[Vailima], April 17, ’94.
MY DEAR CHARLES,—St. Ives is now well on its way
into the second volume. There remains no mortal doubt
that it will reach the three-volume standard.
I am very anxious that you should send me—
1st. Tom and Jerry, a cheap edition.
2nd. The book by Ashton—the Dawn of the Century, I
think it was called—which Colvin sent me, and which has
miscarried, and
3rd. If it is possible, a file of the Edinburgh Courant
for the years 1811, 1812, 1813, or 1814. I should not care
for a whole year. If it were possible to find me three
months, winter months by preference, it would do my
business not only for St. Ives, but for the Justice-Clerk as
well. Suppose this to be impossible, perhaps I could get
the loan of it from somebody; or perhaps it would be
possible to have some one read a file for me and make
notes. This would be extremely bad, as unhappily one
man’s food is another man’s poison, and the reader would
probably leave out everything I should choose. But if
you are reduced to that, you might mention to the man
who is to read for me that balloon ascensions are in the
order of the day.
4th. It might be as well to get a book on balloon ascension,
particularly in the early part of the century.
........
III. At last this book has come from Scribner, and,
alas! I have the first six or seven chapters of St. Ives to
recast entirely. Who could foresee that they clothed the
French prisoners in yellow? But that one fatal fact—and
also that they shaved them twice a week—damns the
whole beginning. If it had been sent in time, it would
have saved me a deal of trouble....
I have had a long letter from Dr. Scott Dalgleish,
25 Mayfield Terrace, asking me to put my name down to
the Ballantyne Memorial Committee. I have sent him a
pretty sharp answer in favour of cutting down the memorial
and giving more to the widow and children. If there is
to be any foolery in the way of statues or other trash,
please send them a guinea; but if they are going to take
my advice and put up a simple tablet with a few heartfelt
words, and really devote the bulk of the subscriptions to
the wife and family, I will go to the length of twenty
pounds, if you will allow me (and if the case of the family
be at all urgent), and at least I direct you to send ten
pounds. I suppose you had better see Scott Dalgleish
himself on the matter. I take the opportunity here to
warn you that my head is simply spinning with a multitude
of affairs, and I shall probably forget a half of my
business at last.
R. L. S.
To Mrs. Sitwell
[Vailima, April 1894.]
MY DEAR FRIEND,—I have at last got some photographs,
and hasten to send you, as you asked, a portrait of Tusitala.
He is a strange person; not so lean, say experts,
but infinitely battered; mighty active again on the whole;
going up and down our break-neck road at all hours of
the day and night on horseback; holding meetings with
all manner of chiefs; quite a political personage—God
save the mark!—in a small way, but at heart very conscious
of the inevitable flat failure that awaits every one.
I shall never do a better book than Catriona, that is my
high-water mark, and the trouble of production increases
on me at a great rate—and mighty anxious about how I
am to leave my family: an elderly man, with elderly preoccupations,
whom I should be ashamed to show you for
your old friend; but not a hope of my dying soon and
cleanly, and “winning off the stage.” Rather I am daily
better in physical health. I shall have to see this business
out, after all; and I think, in that case, they should
have—they might have—spared me all my ill-health this
decade past, if it were not to unbar the doors. I have
no taste for old age, and my nose is to be rubbed in it in
spite of my face. I was meant to die young, and the gods
do not love me.
This is very like an epitaph, bar the handwriting,
which is anything but monumental, and I dare say I had
better stop. Fanny is down at her own cottage planting
or deplanting or replanting, I know not which, and she
will not be home till dinner, by which time the mail will
be all closed, else she would join me in all good messages
and remembrances of love. I hope you will congratulate
Burne Jones from me on his baronetcy. I cannot make
out to be anything but raspingly, harrowingly sad; so I
will close, and not affect levity which I cannot feel. Do
not altogether forget me; keep a corner of your memory
for the exile
Louis.
To Charles Baxter
[Vailima, May 1894.]
MY DEAR CHARLES,—My dear fellow, I wish to assure
you of the greatness of the pleasure that this Edinburgh
Edition gives me. I suppose it was your idea to give it
that name. No other would have affected me in the same
manner. Do you remember, how many years ago—I
would be afraid to hazard a guess—one night when I communicated
to you certain intimations of early death and
aspiration after fame? I was particularly maudlin;
and my remorse the next morning on a review of my
folly has written the matter very deeply in my mind; from
yours it may easily have fled. If any one at that moment
could have shown me the Edinburgh Edition, I suppose
I should have died. It is with gratitude and wonder that
I consider “the way in which I have been led.” Could
a more preposterous idea have occurred to us in those
days when we used to search our pockets for coppers,
too often in vain, and combine forces to produce the threepence
necessary for two glasses of beer, or wander down
the Lothian Road without any, than that I should be
strong and well at the age of forty-three in the island of
Upolu, and that you should be at home bringing out the
Edinburgh Edition? If it had been possible, I should
almost have preferred the Lothian Road Edition, say,
with a picture of the old Dutch smuggler on the covers.
I have now something heavy on my mind. I had always
a great sense of kinship with poor Robert Fergusson—so
clever a boy, so wild, of such a mixed strain, so unfortunate,
born in the same town with me, and, as I always felt,
rather by express intimation than from evidence, so like
myself. Now the injustice with which the one Robert is
rewarded and the other left out in the cold sits heavy on
me, and I wish you could think of some way in which I
could do honour to my unfortunate namesake. Do you
think it would look like affectation to dedicate the whole
edition to his memory? I think it would. The sentiment
which would dictate it to me is too abstruse; and
besides, I think my wife is the proper person to receive the
dedication of my life’s work. At the same time, it is very
odd—it really looks like the transmigration of souls—I feel
that I must do something for Fergusson; Burns has been
before me with the gravestone. It occurs to me you
might take a walk down the Canongate and see in what
condition the stone is. If it be at all uncared for, we
might repair it, and perhaps add a few words of
inscription.
I must tell you, what I just remembered in a flash as
I was walking about dictating this letter—there was in the
original plan of the Master of Ballantrae a sort of introduction
describing my arrival in Edinburgh on a visit to
yourself and your placing in my hands the papers of the
story. I actually wrote it, and then condemned the idea—as
being a little too like Scott, I suppose. Now I must
really find the MS. and try to finish it for the E.E. It
will give you, what I should so much like you to have,
another corner of your own in that lofty monument.
Suppose we do what I have proposed about Fergusson’s
monument, I wonder if an inscription like this would look
arrogant—
This stone originally erected
by Robert Burns has been
repaired at the
charges of Robert Louis Stevenson,
and is by him re-dedicated to
the memory of Robert Fergusson,
as the gift of one Edinburgh
lad to another.
|
In spacing this inscription I would detach the names
of Fergusson and Burns, but leave mine in the text.
Or would that look like sham modesty, and is it better
to bring out the three Roberts?
To Sidney Colvin
Vailima, May 18th, 1894.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—Your proposals for the Edinburgh
Edition are entirely to my mind. About the Amateur
Emigrant, it shall go to you by this mail well slashed.
If you like to slash some more on your own account, I
give you permission. ’Tis not a great work; but since
it goes to make up the two first volumes as proposed, I
presume it has not been written in vain.76—Miscellanies.
I see with some alarm the proposal to print Juvenilia;
does it not seem to you taking myself a little too much
as Grandfather William? I am certainly not so young as
I once was—a lady took occasion to remind me of the
fact no later agone than last night. “Why don’t you
leave that to the young men, Mr. Stevenson?” said she—but
when I remember that I felt indignant at even John
Ruskin when he did something of the kind I really feel
myself blush from head to heel. If you want to make up
the first volume, there are a good many works which I
took the trouble to prepare for publication and which have
never been republished. In addition to Roads and Dancing
Children, referred to by you, there is An Autumn Effect
in the Portfolio, and a paper on Fontainebleau—Forest
Notes is the name of it—in Cornhill. I have no objection
to any of these being edited, say with a scythe, and reproduced.
But I heartily abominate and reject the idea of
reprinting The Pentland Rising. For God’s sake let me
get buried first.
Tales and Fantasies. Vols. I. and II. have my hearty
approval. But I think III. and IV. had better be crammed
into one as you suggest. I will reprint none of the stories
mentioned. They are below the mark. Well, I dare say
the beastly Body-Snatcher has merit, and I am unjust to
it from my recollections of the Pall Mall. But the other
two won’t do. For vols. V. and VI., now changed into
IV. and V., I propose the common title of South Sea Yarns.
There! These are all my differences of opinion. I agree
with every detail of your arrangement, and, as you see,
my objections have turned principally on the question of
hawking unripe fruit. I dare say it is all pretty green,
but that is no reason for us to fill the barrow with trash.
Think of having a new set of type cast, paper especially
made, etc., in order to set up rubbish that is not fit for
the Saturday Scotsman. It would be the climax of
shame.
I am sending you a lot of verses, which had best, I
think, be called Underwoods Book III., but in what order
are they to go? Also, I am going on every day a little,
till I get sick of it, with the attempt to get The Emigrant
compressed into life; I know I can—or you can after me—do
it. It is only a question of time and prayer and
ink, and should leave something, no, not good, but not
all bad—a very genuine appreciation of these folks. You
are to remember besides there is that paper of mine on
Bunyan in the Magazine of Art. O, and then there’s
another thing in Seeley called some spewsome name, I
cannot recall it.
Well—come, here goes for Juvenilia. Dancing Infants,
Roads, An Autumn Effect, Forest Notes (but this should
come at the end of them, as it’s really rather riper), the
t’other thing from Seeley, and I’ll tell you, you may put
in my letter to the Church of Scotland—it’s not written
amiss, and I dare say The Philosophy of Umbrellas might
go in, but there I stick—and remember that was a collaboration
with James Walter Ferrier. O, and there was
a little skit called The Charity Bazaar, which you might
see; I don’t think it would do. Now, I do not think
there are two other words that should be printed.—By
the way, there is an article of mine called The Day after
To-morrow in the Contemporary which you might find
room for somewhere; it’s no’ bad.
Very busy with all these affairs and some native ones
also.
To R. A. M. Stevenson
[Vailima, June 17th, 1894.]
MY DEAR BOB,—I must make out a letter this mail or
perish in the attempt. All the same, I am deeply stupid,
in bed with a cold, deprived of my amanuensis, and conscious
of the wish but not the furnished will. You may
be interested to hear how the family inquiries go. It is
now quite certain that we are a second-rate lot, and came
out of Cunningham or Clydesdale, therefore British folk;
so that you are Cymry on both sides, and I Cymry and
Pict. We may have fought with King Arthur and known
Merlin. The first of the family, Stevenson of Stevenson,
was quite a great party, and dates back to the wars of
Edward First. The last male heir of Stevenson of Stevenson
died 1670, £220, 10s. to the bad, from drink. About
the same time the Stevensons, who were mostly in Cunningham
before, crop up suddenly in the parish of Neilston,
over the border in Renfrewshire. Of course, they may
have been there before, but there is no word of them in
that parish till 1675 in any extracts I have. Our first
traceable ancestor was a tenant farmer of Mure of Cauldwell’s—James
in Nether Carsewell. Presently two families
of maltmen are found in Glasgow, both, by re-duplicated
proofs, related to James (the son of James) in Nether
Carsewell. We descend by his second marriage from
Robert; one of these died 1733. It is not very romantic
up to now, but has interested me surprisingly to fish out,
always hoping for more—and occasionally getting at least
a little clearness and confirmation. But the earliest date,
1655, apparently the marriage of James in Nether Carsewell,
cannot as yet be pushed back. From which of any
number of dozen little families in Cunningham we should
derive, God knows! Of course, it doesn’t matter a hundred
years hence, an argument fatal to all human enterprise,
industry, or pleasure. And to me it will be a deadly disappointment
if I cannot roll this stone away! One generation
further might be nothing, but it is my present
object of desire, and we are so near it! There is a man
in the same parish called Constantine; if I could only
trace to him, I could take you far afield by that one
talisman of the strange Christian name of Constantine.
But no such luck! And I kind of fear we shall stick
at James.
|
I. James, a tenant of the Mures, in Nether-Carsewell,
Neilston, married (1665?) Jean Keir. |
|
|
|
II. Robert (Maltman in Glasgow), died 1733,
married 1st; married second,
Elizabeth Cumming. |
|
|
|
William (Maltman in Glasgow).
Robert, Marion, Elizabeth.
Note.—Between 1730-1766
flourished in Glasgow Alan the
Coppersmith, who acts as a kind
of a pin to the whole Stevenson
system there. He was caution
to Robert the Second’s will,
and to William’s will, and to
the will of a John, another
maltman. |
III. Robert (Maltman in
Glasgow), married
Margaret Fulton (had
a large family).
||
IV. Alan, West India merchant,
married Jean Lillie.
||
V. Robert, married
Jean Smith.
VI. Alan.—Margaret Jones.
|
VII. R. A. M. S. |
So much, though all inchoate, I trouble you with,
knowing that you, at least, must take an interest in it.
So much is certain of that strange Celtic descent, that the
past has an interest for it apparently gratuitous, but
fiercely strong. I wish to trace my ancestors a thousand
years, if I trace them by gallowses. It is not love, not
pride, not admiration; it is an expansion of the identity,
intimately pleasing, and wholly uncritical; I can expend
myself in the person of an inglorious ancestor with perfect
comfort; or a disgraced, if I could find one. I suppose,
perhaps, it is more to me who am childless, and refrain
with a certain shock from looking forwards. But, I am
sure, in the solid grounds of race, that you have it also
in some degree.
Enough genealogy. I do not know if you will be able
to read my hand. Unhappily, Belle, who is my amanuensis,
is out of the way on other affairs, and I have to
make the unwelcome effort. (O this is beautiful, I am
quite pleased with myself.) Graham has just arrived last
night (my mother is coming by the other steamer in three
days), and has told me of your meeting, and he said you
looked a little older than I did; so that I suppose we keep
step fairly on the downward side of the hill. He thought
you looked harassed, and I could imagine that too. I
sometimes feel harassed. I have a great family here about
me, a great anxiety. The loss (to use my grandfather’s
expression), the “loss” of our family is that we are disbelievers
in the morrow—perhaps I should say, rather,
in next year. The future is always black to us; it was
to Robert Stevenson; to Thomas; I suspect to Alan;
to R. A. M. S. it was so almost to his ruin in youth; to
R. L. S., who had a hard hopeful strain in him from his
mother, it was not so much so once, but becomes daily
more so. Daily so much more so, that I have a painful
difficulty in believing I can ever finish another book, or
that the public will ever read it.
I have so huge a desire to know exactly what you are
doing, that I suppose I should tell you what I am doing
by way of an example. I have a room now, a part of the
twelve-foot verandah sparred in, at the most inaccessible
end of the house. Daily I see the sunrise out of my bed,
which I still value as a tonic, a perpetual tuning fork, a
look of God’s face once in the day. At six my breakfast
comes up to me here, and I work till eleven. If I am
quite well, I sometimes go out and bathe in the river
before lunch, twelve. In the afternoon I generally work
again, now alone drafting, now with Belle dictating. Dinner
is at six, and I am often in bed by eight. This is supposing
me to stay at home. But I must often be away,
sometimes all day long, sometimes till twelve, one, or two
at night, when you might see me coming home to the
sleeping house, sometimes in a trackless darkness, sometimes
with a glorious tropic moon, everything drenched
with dew—unsaddling and creeping to bed; and you
would no longer be surprised that I live out in this country,
and not in Bournemouth—in bed.
My great recent interruptions have (as you know)
come from politics; not much in my line, you will say.
But it is impossible to live here and not feel very sorely
the consequences of the horrid white mismanagement. I
tried standing by and looking on, and it became too much
for me. They are such illogical fools; a logical fool in
an office, with a lot of red tape, is conceivable. Furthermore,
he is as much as we have any reason to expect of
officials—a thoroughly common-place, unintellectual lot.
But these people are wholly on wires; laying their ears
down, skimming away, pausing as though shot, and presto!
full spread on the other tack. I observe in the official class
mostly an insane jealousy of the smallest kind, as compared
to which the artist’s is of a grave, modest character—the
actor’s, even; a desire to extend his little authority,
and to relish it like a glass of wine, that is impayable.
Sometimes, when I see one of these little kings strutting
over one of his victories—wholly illegal, perhaps, and
certain to be reversed to his shame if his superiors
ever heard of it—I could weep. The strange thing is that
they have nothing else. I auscultate them in vain; no real
sense of duty, no real comprehension, no real attempt to
comprehend, no wish for information—you cannot offend
one of them more bitterly than by offering information,
though it is certain that you have more, and obvious that
you have other, information than they have; and talking
of policy, they could not play a better stroke than by
listening to you, and it need by no means influence their
action. Tenez, you know what a French post office or
railway official is? That is the diplomatic card to the
life. Dickens is not in it; caricature fails.
All this keeps me from my work, and gives me the unpleasant
side of the world. When your letters are disbelieved
it makes you angry, and that is rot; and I wish
I could keep out of it with all my soul. But I have just
got into it again, and farewell peace!
My work goes along but slowly. I have got to a crossing
place, I suppose; the present book, St. Ives, is nothing;
it is in no style in particular, a tissue of adventures, the
central character not very well done, no philosophic pith
under the yarn; and, in short, if people will read it, that’s
all I ask; and if they won’t, damn them! I like doing
it though; and if you ask me why! After that I am on
Weir of Hermiston and Heathercat, two Scotch stories,
which will either be something different, or I shall have
failed. The first is generally designed, and is a private
story of two or three characters in a very grim vein. The
second—alas! the thought—is an attempt at a real historical
novel, to present a whole field of time; the race—our
own race—the west land and Clydesdale blue bonnets,
under the influence of their last trial, when they got to a
pitch of organisation in madness that no other peasantry
has ever made an offer at. I was going to call it The Killing
Time, but this man Crockett has forestalled me in that.
Well, it’ll be a big smash if I fail in it; but a gallant
attempt. All my weary reading as a boy, which you
remember well enough, will come to bear on it; and if
my mind will keep up to the point it was in a while back,
perhaps I can pull it through.
For two months past, Fanny, Belle, Austin (her child),
and I have been alone; but yesterday, as I mentioned,
Graham Balfour arrived, and on Wednesday my mother
and Lloyd will make up the party to its full strength. I
wish you could drop in for a month or a week, or two
hours. That is my chief want. On the whole, it is an
unexpectedly pleasant corner I have dropped into for an
end of it, which I could scarcely have foreseen from Wilson’s
shop, or the Princes Street Gardens, or the Portobello
Road. Still, I would like to hear what my alter ego
thought of it; and I would sometimes like to have my old
maître-ès-arts express an opinion on what I do. I put
this very tamely, being on the whole a quiet elderly man;
but it is a strong passion with me, though intermittent.
Now, try to follow my example and tell me something
about yourself, Louisa, the Bab, and your work; and
kindly send me some specimens of what you’re about. I
have only seen one thing by you, about Notre Dame in
the Westminster or St. James’s, since I left England, now
I suppose six years ago.
I have looked this trash over, and it is not at all the
letter I wanted to write—not truck about officials, ancestors,
and the like rancidness—but you have to let your
pen go in its own broken-down gait, like an old butcher’s
pony, stop when it pleases, and go on again as it will.—Ever,
my dear Bob, your affectionate cousin,
R. L. Stevenson.
To Sidney Colvin
Vailima, June 18th, ’94.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—You are to please understand that
my last letter is withdrawn unconditionally. You and
Baxter are having all the trouble of this Edition, and I
simply put myself in your hands for you to do what you
like with me, and I am sure that will be the best, at any
rate. Hence you are to conceive me withdrawing all
objections to your printing anything you please. After
all, it is a sort of family affair. About the Miscellany
Section, both plans seem to me quite good. Toss up. I
think the Old Gardener has to stay where I put him last.
It would not do to separate John and Robert.
In short, I am only sorry I ever uttered a word about
the edition, and leave you to be the judge. I have had
a vile cold which has prostrated me for more than a fortnight,
and even now tears me nightly with spasmodic
coughs; but it has been a great victory. I have never
borne a cold with so little hurt; wait till the clouds blow
by, before you begin to boast! I have had no fever; and
though I’ve been very unhappy, it is nigh over, I think.
Of course, St. Ives has paid the penalty. I must not let
you be disappointed in St. I. It is a mere tissue of adventures;
the central figure not very well or very sharply
drawn; no philosophy, no destiny, to it; some of the
happenings very good in themselves, I believe, but none
of them bildende, none of them constructive, except in so
far perhaps as they make up a kind of sham picture of the
time, all in italics and all out of drawing. Here and there,
I think, it is well written; and here and there it’s not.
Some of the episodic characters are amusing, I do believe;
others not, I suppose. However, they are the best of the
thing such as it is. If it has a merit to it, I should say it
was a sort of deliberation and swing to the style, which
seems to me to suit the mail-coaches and post-chaises
with which it sounds all through. ’Tis my most prosaic
book.
I called on the two German ships now in port, and we
are quite friendly with them, and intensely friendly of
course with our own Curaçoas. But it is other guess work
on the beach. Some one has employed, or subsidised,
one of the local editors to attack me once a week. He
is pretty scurrilous and pretty false. The first effect of
the perusal of the weekly Beast is to make me angry;
the second is a kind of deep, golden content and glory,
when I seem to say to people: “See! this is my position—I
am a plain man dwelling in the bush in a house, and
behold they have to get up this kind of truck against me—and
I have so much influence that they are obliged to
write a weekly article to say I have none.”
By this time you must have seen Lysaght and forgiven
me the letter that came not at all. He was really so nice
a fellow—he had so much to tell me of Meredith—and
the time was so short—that I gave up the intervening
days between mails entirely to entertain him.
We go on pretty nicely. Fanny, Belle, and I have had
two months alone, and it has been very pleasant. But
by to-morrow or next day noon, we shall see the whole
clan assembled again about Vailima table, which will be
pleasant too; seven persons in all, and the Babel of voices
will be heard again in the big hall so long empty and
silent. Good-bye. Love to all. Time to close.—Yours
ever,
R. L. S.
To Henry James
Vailima, July 7th, 1894.
DEAR HENRY JAMES,—I am going to try and dictate
to you a letter or a note, and begin the same without any
spark of hope, my mind being entirely in abeyance. This
malady is very bitter on the literary man. I have had it
now coming on for a month, and it seems to get worse
instead of better. If it should prove to be softening of
the brain, a melancholy interest will attach to the present
document. I heard a great deal about you from my mother
and Graham Balfour; the latter declares that you could
take a First in any Samoan subject. If that be so, I
should like to hear you on the theory of the constitution.
Also to consult you on the force of the particles o lo’o and
ua, which are the subject of a dispute among local pundits.
You might, if you ever answer this, give me your opinion
on the origin of the Samoan race, just to complete the
favour.
They both say that you are looking well, and I suppose
I may conclude from that that you are feeling passably.
I wish I was. Do not suppose from this that I am ill in
body; it is the numskull that I complain of. And when
that is wrong, as you must be very keenly aware, you
begin every day with a smarting disappointment, which is
not good for the temper. I am in one of the humours
when a man wonders how any one can be such an ass as
to embrace the profession of letters, and not get apprenticed
to a barber or keep a baked-potato stall. But I
have no doubt in the course of a week, or perhaps to-morrow,
things will look better.
We have at present in port the model warship of Great
Britain. She is called the Curaçoa, and has the nicest set
of officers and men conceivable. They, the officers, are
all very intimate with us, and the front verandah is known
as the Curaçoa Club, and the road up to Vailima is known
as the Curaçoa Track. It was rather a surprise to me;
many naval officers have I known, and somehow had not
learned to think entirely well of them, and perhaps sometimes
ask myself a little uneasily how that kind of men
could do great actions? and behold! the answer comes
to me, and I see a ship that I would guarantee to go anywhere
it was possible for men to go, and accomplish anything
it was permitted man to attempt. I had a cruise
on board of her not long ago to Manu’a, and was delighted.
The goodwill of all on board; the grim playfulness of77
quarters, with the wounded falling down at the
word; the ambulances hastening up and carrying them
away; the Captain suddenly crying, “Fire in the ward-room!”
and the squad hastening forward with the hose;
and, last and most curious spectacle of all, all the
men in their dust-coloured fatigue clothes, at a note of
the bugle, falling simultaneously flat on deck, and the
ship proceeding with its prostrate crew—quasi to ram an
enemy; our dinner at night in a wild open anchorage, the
ship rolling almost to her gunwales, and showing us
alternately her bulwarks up in the sky, and then the wild
broken cliffy palm-crested shores of the island with the
surf thundering and leaping close aboard. We had the
ward-room mess on deck, lit by pink wax tapers, everybody,
of course, in uniform but myself, and the first lieutenant
(who is a rheumaticky body) wrapped in a boat
cloak. Gradually the sunset faded out, the island disappeared
from the eye, though it remained menacingly
present to the ear with the voice of the surf; and then
the captain turned on the searchlight and gave us the
coast, the beach, the trees, the native houses, and the
cliffs by glimpses of daylight, a kind of deliberate lightning.
About which time, I suppose, we must have come
as far as the dessert, and were probably drinking our
first glass of port to Her Majesty. We stayed two days
at the island, and had, in addition, a very picturesque
snapshot at the native life. The three islands of Manu’a
are independent, and are ruled over by a little slip of a
half-caste girl about twenty, who sits all day in a pink
gown, in a little white European house with about a
quarter of an acre of roses in front of it, looking at the
palm-trees on the village street, and listening to the surf.
This, so far as I could discover, was all she had to do.
“This is a very dull place,” she said. It appears she
could go to no other village for fear of raising the jealousy
of her own people in the capital. And as for going
about “tafatafaoing,” as we say here, its cost was too
enormous. A strong able-bodied native must walk in front
of her and blow the conch shell continuously from the
moment she leaves one house until the moment she enters
another. Did you ever blow the conch shell? I presume
not; but the sweat literally hailed off that man, and I
expected every moment to see him burst a blood-vessel.
We were entertained to kava in the guest-house with
some very original features. The young men who run for
the kava have a right to misconduct themselves ad libitum
on the way back; and though they were told to restrain
themselves on the occasion of our visit, there was a strange
hurly-burly at their return, when they came beating the
trees and the posts of the houses, leaping, shouting, and
yelling like Bacchants.
I tasted on that occasion what it is to be great. My
name was called next after the captain’s, and several
chiefs (a thing quite new to me, and not at all Samoan
practice) drank to me by name.
And now, if you are not sick of the Curaçoa and Manu’a,
I am, at least on paper. And I decline any longer to give
you examples of how not to write.
By the by, you sent me long ago a work by Anatole
France, which I confess I did not taste. Since then I have
made the acquaintance of the Abbé Coignard, and have
become a faithful adorer. I don’t think a better book
was ever written.
And I have no idea what I have said, and I have no
idea what I ought to have said, and I am a total ass, but
my heart is in the right place, and I am, my dear Henry
James, yours,
R. L. S.
To Marcel Schwob
Vailima, Upolu, Samoa, July 7, 1894.
DEAR MR. MARCEL SCHWOB,—Thank you for having
remembered me in my exile. I have read Mimes twice
as a whole; and now, as I write, I am reading it again
as it were by accident, and a piece at a time, my eye catching
a word and travelling obediently on through the whole
number. It is a graceful book, essentially graceful, with
its haunting agreeable melancholy, its pleasing savoury of
antiquity. At the same time, by its merits, it shows
itself rather as the promise of something else to come than
a thing final in itself. You have yet to give us—and I am
expecting it with impatience—something of a larger gait;
something daylit, not twilit; something with the colours
of life, not the flat tints of a temple illumination; something
that shall be said with all the clearnesses and the
trivialities of speech, not sung like a semi-articulate lullaby.
It will not please yourself as well, when you come to give
it us, but it will please others better. It will be more of
a whole, more worldly, more nourished, more commonplace—and
not so pretty, perhaps not even so beautiful.
No man knows better than I that, as we go on in life, we
must part from prettiness and the graces. We but attain
qualities to lose them; life is a series of farewells, even in
art; even our proficiencies are deciduous and evanescent.
So here with these exquisite pieces the XVIIth, XVIIIth, and
IVth of the present collection. You will perhaps never
excel them; I should think the “Hermes,” never. Well,
you will do something else, and of that I am in expectation.—Yours
cordially,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To A. St. Gaudens
Vailima, Samoa, July 8, 1894.
MY DEAR ST. GAUDENS,—This is to tell you that the
medallion has been at last triumphantly transported up
the hill and placed over my smoking-room mantelpiece.
It is considered by everybody a first-rate but flattering
portrait. We have it in a very good light, which brings
out the artistic merits of the god-like sculptor to great
advantage. As for my own opinion, I believe it to be a
speaking likeness, and not flattered at all; possibly a
little the reverse. The verses (curse the rhyme) look
remarkably well.
Please do not longer delay, but send me an account
for the expense of the gilt letters. I was sorry indeed
that they proved beyond the means of a small farmer.—Yours
very sincerely,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Miss Adelaide Boodle
Vailima, July 14, 1894.
MY DEAR ADELAIDE,—... So, at last, you are going
into mission work? where I think your heart always was.
You will like it in a way, but remember it is dreary long.
Do you know the story of the American tramp who was
offered meals and a day’s wage to chop with the back of
an axe on a fallen trunk. “Damned if I can go on chopping
when I can’t see the chips fly!” You will never
see the chips fly in mission work, never; and be sure you
know it beforehand. The work is one long dull disappointment,
varied by acute revulsions; and those who
are by nature courageous and cheerful, and have grown
old in experience, learn to rub their hands over infinitesimal
successes. However, as I really believe there is some
good done in the long run—gutta cavat lapidem non
vi in this business—it is a useful and honourable career
in which no one should be ashamed to embark. Always
remember the fable of the sun, the storm, and the traveller’s
cloak. Forget wholly and for ever all small pruderies, and
remember that you cannot change ancestral feelings of right
and wrong without what is practically soul-murder. Barbarous
as the customs may seem, always hear them with
patience, always judge them with gentleness, always find
in them some seed of good; see that you always develop
them; remember that all you can do is to civilise the
man in the line of his own civilisation, such as it is. And
never expect, never believe in, thaumaturgic conversions.
They may do very well for St. Paul; in the case of an
Andaman islander they mean less than nothing. In fact,
what you have to do is to teach the parents in the interests
of their great-grandchildren.
Now, my dear Adelaide, dismiss from your mind the
least idea of fault upon your side; nothing is further
from the fact. I cannot forgive you, for I do not know
your fault. My own is plain enough, and the name of it
is cold-hearted neglect; and you may busy yourself more
usefully in trying to forgive me. But ugly as my fault is,
you must not suppose it to mean more than it does; it
does not mean that we have at all forgotten you, that we
have become at all indifferent to the thought of you.
See, in my life of Jenkin, a remark of his, very well expressed,
on the friendships of men who do not write to
each other. I can honestly say that I have not changed
to you in any way; though I have behaved thus ill, thus
cruelly. Evil is done by want of—well, principally by
want of industry. You can imagine what I would say (in
a novel) of any one who had behaved as I have done.
Deteriora sequor. And you must somehow manage to forgive
your old friend; and if you will be so very good,
continue to give us news of you, and let us share the knowledge
of your adventures, sure that it will be always followed
with interest—even if it is answered with the silence of
ingratitude. For I am not a fool; I know my faults, I
know they are ineluctable, I know they are growing on
me. I know I may offend again, and I warn you of it.
But the next time I offend, tell me so plainly and frankly
like a lady, and don’t lacerate my heart and bludgeon my
vanity with imaginary faults of your own and purely
gratuitous penance. I might suspect you of irony!
We are all fairly well, though I have been off work
and off—as you know very well—letter-writing. Yet I
have sometimes more than twenty letters, and sometimes
more than thirty, going out each mail. And Fanny has
had a most distressing bronchitis for some time, which
she is only now beginning to get over. I have just been
to see her; she is lying—though she had breakfast an
hour ago, about seven—in her big cool, mosquito-proof
room, ingloriously asleep. As for me, you see that a doom
has come upon me: I cannot make marks with a pen—witness
“ingloriously” above; and my amanuensis not
appearing so early in the day, for she is then immersed
in household affairs, and I can hear her “steering the
boys” up and down the verandahs—you must decipher
this unhappy letter for yourself and, I fully admit, with
everything against you. A letter should be always well
written; how much more a letter of apology! Legibility
is the politeness of men of letters, as punctuality of kings
and beggars. By the punctuality of my replies, and the
beauty of my hand-writing, judge what a fine conscience
I must have!
Now, my dear gamekeeper, I must really draw to a
close. For I have much else to write before the mail goes
out three days hence. Fanny being asleep, it would not
be conscientious to invent a message from her, so you
must just imagine her sentiments. I find I have not the
heart to speak of your recent loss. You remember perhaps,
when my father died, you told me those ugly images of
sickness, decline, and impaired reason, which then haunted
me day and night, would pass away and be succeeded by
things more happily characteristic. I have found it so.
He now haunts me, strangely enough, in two guises; as
a man of fifty, lying on a hillside and carving mottoes on
a stick, strong and well; and as a younger man, running
down the sands into the sea near North Berwick, myself—ætat.
11—somewhat horrified at finding him so beautiful
when stripped! I hand on your own advice to you in
case you have forgotten it, as I know one is apt to do in
seasons of bereavement.—Ever yours, with much love and
sympathy,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Mrs. A. Baker
This refers again to the printing of some of his books in Braille
type for the blind.
Vailima, Samoa, July 16, 1894.
DEAR MRS. BAKER,—I am very much obliged to you
for your letter and the enclosure from Mr. Skinner. Mr.
Skinner says he “thinks Mr. Stevenson must be a very
kind man”; he little knows me. But I am very sure of
one thing, that you are a very kind woman. I envy you—my
amanuensis being called away, I continue in my own
hand, or what is left of it—unusually legible, I am thankful
to see—I envy you your beautiful choice of an employment.
There must be no regrets at least for a day so
spent; and when the night falls you need ask no blessing
on your work. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one
of these.”—Yours truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Sidney Colvin
July, 1894.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—I have to thank you this time for
a very good letter, and will announce for the future, though
I cannot now begin to put in practice, good intentions for
our correspondence. I will try to return to the old system
and write from time to time during the month; but truly
you did not much encourage me to continue! However,
that is all by-past. I do not know that there is much in
your letter that calls for answer. Your questions about
St. Ives were practically answered in my last; so were your
wails about the edition, Amateur Emigrant, etc. By the end
of the year St. I. will be practically finished, whatever it be
worth, and that I know not. When shall I receive proofs
of the Magnum Opus? or shall I receive them at all?
The return of the Amanuensis feebly lightens my heart.
You can see the heavy weather I was making of it with
my unaided pen. The last month has been particularly
cheery largely owing to the presence of our good friends
the Curaçoas. She is really a model ship, charming officers
and charming seamen. They gave a ball last month, which
was very rackety and joyous and naval....
On the following day, about one o’clock, three horsemen
might have been observed approaching Vailima, who
gradually resolved themselves into two petty officers and
a native guide. Drawing himself up and saluting, the
spokesman (a corporal of Marines) addressed me thus.
“Me and my shipmates inwites Mr. and Mrs. Stevens,
Mrs. Strong, Mr. Austin, and Mr. Balfour to a ball to be
given to-night in the self-same ’all.” It was of course
impossible to refuse, though I contented myself with
putting in a very brief appearance. One glance was
sufficient; the ball went off like a rocket from the start.
I had only time to watch Belle careering around with a
gallant bluejacket of exactly her own height—the standard
of the British navy—an excellent dancer and conspicuously
full of small-talk—and to hear a remark from a beach-comber,
“It’s a nice sight this some way, to see the officers
dancing like this with the men, but I tell you, sir, these are
the men that’ll fight together!”
I tell you, Colvin, the acquaintance of the men—and
boys—makes me feel patriotic. Eeles in particular is a
man whom I respect. I am half in a mind to give him a
letter of introduction to you when he goes home. In case
you feel inclined to make a little of him, give him a dinner,
ask Henry James to come to meet him, etc.—you might let
me know. I don’t know that he would show his best, but he
is a remarkably fine fellow, in every department of life.
We have other visitors in port. A Count Festetics de
Tolna, an Austrian officer, a very pleasant, simple, boyish
creature, with his young wife, daughter of an American
millionaire; he is a friend of our own Captain Wurmbrand,
and it is a great pity Wurmbrand is away.
Glad you saw and liked Lysaght. He has left in our
house a most cheerful and pleasing memory, as a good,
pleasant, brisk fellow with good health and brains, and
who enjoys himself and makes other people happy. I am
glad he gave you a good report of our surroundings and
way of life; but I knew he would, for I believe he had a
glorious time—and gave one.78
I am on fair terms with the two Treaty officials, though
all such intimacies are precarious; with the consuls, I
need not say, my position is deplorable. The President
(Herr Emil Schmidt) is a rather dreamy man, whom I
like. Lloyd, Graham and I go to breakfast with him to-morrow;
the next day the whole party of us lunch on the
Curaçoa and go in the evening to a Bierabend at Dr. Funk’s.
We are getting up a paper-chase for the following week
with some of the young German clerks, and have in view
a sort of child’s party for grown-up persons with kissing
games, etc., here at Vailima. Such is the gay scene in
which we move. Now I have done something, though
not as much as I wanted, to give you an idea of how we
are getting on, and I am keenly conscious that there are
other letters to do before the mail goes.—Yours ever,
R. L. Stevenson.
To J. M. Barrie
Vailima, July 13, 1894.
MY DEAR BARRIE,—This is the last effort of an ulcerated
conscience. I have been so long owing you a letter,
I have heard so much of you, fresh from the press, from
my mother and Graham Balfour, that I have to write a
letter no later than to-day, or perish in my shame. But
the deuce of it is, my dear fellow, that you write such a
very good letter that I am ashamed to exhibit myself
before my junior (which you are, after all) in the light of
the dreary idiot I feel. Understand that there will be
nothing funny in the following pages. If I can manage
to be rationally coherent, I shall be more than satisfied.
In the first place, I have had the extreme satisfaction
to be shown that photograph of your mother. It bears
evident traces of the hand of an amateur. How is it that
amateurs invariably take better photographs than professionals?
I must qualify invariably. My own negatives
have always represented a province of chaos and
old night in which you might dimly perceive fleecy spots
of twilight, representing nothing; so that, if I am right
in supposing the portrait of your mother to be yours, I
must salute you as my superior. Is that your mother’s
breakfast? Or is it only afternoon tea? If the first, do
let me recommend to Mrs. Barrie to add an egg to her
ordinary. Which, if you please, I will ask her to eat to
the honour of her son, and I am sure she will live much
longer for it, to enjoy his fresh successes. I never in my
life saw anything more deliciously characteristic. I declare
I can hear her speak. I wonder my mother could resist
the temptation of your proposed visit to Kirriemuir, which
it was like your kindness to propose. By the way, I was
twice in Kirriemuir, I believe in the year ’71, when I was
going on a visit to Glenogil. It was Kirriemuir, was it
not? I have a distinct recollection of an inn at the end—I
think the upper end—of an irregular open place or
square, in which I always see your characters evolve.
But, indeed, I did not pay much attention; being all
bent upon my visit to a shooting-box, where I should fish
a real trout-stream, and I believe preserved. I did, too,
and it was a charming stream, clear as crystal, without a
trace of peat—a strange thing in Scotland—and alive
with trout; the name of it I cannot remember, it was
something like the Queen’s River, and in some hazy way
connected with memories of Mary Queen of Scots. It
formed an epoch in my life, being the end of all my trout-fishing.
I had always been accustomed to pause and very
laboriously to kill every fish as I took it. But in the
Queen’s River I took so good a basket that I forgot these
niceties; and when I sat down, in a hard rain shower,
under a bank, to take my sandwiches and sherry, lo! and
behold, there was the basketful of trouts still kicking in
their agony.
I had a very unpleasant conversation with my conscience.
All that afternoon I persevered in fishing, brought
home my basket in triumph, and sometime that night,
“in the wee sma’ hours ayont the twal,” I finally forswore
the gentle craft of fishing. I dare say your local knowledge
may identify this historic river; I wish it could go
farther and identify also that particular Free kirk in
which I sat and groaned on Sunday. While my hand is
in I must tell you a story. At that antique epoch you must
not fall into the vulgar error that I was myself ancient.
I was, on the contrary, very young, very green, and (what
you will appreciate, Mr. Barrie) very shy. There came
one day to lunch at the house two very formidable old
ladies—or one very formidable, and the other what you
please—answering to the honoured and historic name of
the Miss C—— A——’s of Balnamoon. At table I was
exceedingly funny, and entertained the company with tales
of geese and bubbly-jocks. I was great in the expression
of my terror for these bipeds, and suddenly this horrid,
severe, and eminently matronly old lady put up a pair
of gold eye-glasses, looked at me awhile in silence, and
pronounced in a clangorous voice her verdict. “You give
me very much the effect of a coward, Mr. Stevenson!”
I had very nearly left two vices behind me at Glenogil—fishing
and jesting at table. And of one thing you
may be very sure, my lips were no more opened at that
meal.
July 29th.—No, Barrie, ’tis in vain they try to alarm
me with their bulletins. No doubt, you’re ill, and unco
ill, I believe; but I have been so often in the same case
that I know pleurisy and pneumonia are in vain against
Scotsmen who can write. (I once could.) You cannot
imagine probably how near me this common calamity
brings you. Ce que j’ai toussé dans ma vie! How often
and how long have I been on the rack at night and learned
to appreciate that noble passage in the Psalms when
somebody or other is said to be more set on something
than they “who dig for hid treasures—yea, than those
who long for the morning”—for all the world, as you have
been racked and you have longed. Keep your heart up,
and you’ll do. Tell that to your mother, if you are still
in any danger or suffering. And by the way, if you are
at all like me—and I tell myself you are very like
me—be sure there is only one thing good for you, and
that is the sea in hot climates. Mount, sir, into “a little
frigot” of 5000 tons or so, and steer peremptorily for the
tropics; and what if the ancient mariner, who guides your
frigot, should startle the silence of the ocean with the
cry of land ho!—say, when the day is dawning—and you
should see the turquoise mountain tops of Upolu coming
hand over fist above the horizon? Mr. Barrie, sir, ’tis
then there would be larks! And though I cannot be certain
that our climate would suit you (for it does not suit
some), I am sure as death the voyage would do you good—would
do you Best—and if Samoa didn’t do, you needn’t
stay beyond the month, and I should have had another
pleasure in my life, which is a serious consideration for
me. I take this as the hand of the Lord preparing your
way to Vailima—in the desert, certainly—in the desert of
Cough and by the ghoul-haunted woodland of Fever—but
whither that way points there can be no question—and
there will be a meeting of the twa Hoasting Scots
Makers in spite of fate, fortune and the Devil. Absit
omen!
My dear Barrie, I am a little in the dark about this
new work of yours:79 what is to become of me afterwards?
You say carefully—methought anxiously—that I was no
longer me when I grew up? I cannot bear this suspense:
what is it? It’s no forgery? And AM I HANGIT? These
are the elements of a very pretty lawsuit which you had
better come to Samoa to compromise. I am enjoying a
great pleasure that I had long looked forward to, reading
Orme’s History of Indostan; I had been looking out for
it everywhere; but at last, in four volumes, large quarto,
beautiful type and page, and with a delectable set of maps
and plans, and all the names of the places wrongly spelled—it
came to Samoa, little Barrie. I tell you frankly, you
had better come soon. I am sair failed a’ready; and
what I may be if you continue to dally, I dread
to conceive. I may be speechless; already, or at
least for a month or so, I’m little better than a teetoller—I
beg pardon, a teetotaller. It is not exactly
physical, for I am in good health, working four or five
hours a day in my plantation, and intending to ride a
paper-chase next Sunday—ay, man, that’s a fact, and I
havena had the hert to breathe it to my mother yet—the
obligation’s poleetical, for I am trying every
means to live well with my German neighbours—and,
O Barrie, but it’s no easy!... To be sure, there
are many exceptions. And the whole of the above
must be regarded as private—strictly private. Breathe
it not in Kirriemuir: tell it not to the daughters of
Dundee! What a nice extract this would make for the
daily papers! and how it would facilitate my position
here!
August 5th.—This is Sunday, the Lord’s Day. “The
hour of attack approaches.” And it is a singular consideration
what I risk; I may yet be the subject of a tract,
and a good tract too—such as one which I remember
reading with recreant awe and rising hair in my youth, of
a boy who was a very good boy, and went to Sunday Schule,
and one day kipped from it, and went and actually bathed,
and was dashed over a waterfall, and he was the only son
of his mother, and she was a widow. A dangerous trade,
that, and one that I have to practise. I’ll put in a word
when I get home again, to tell you whether I’m killed or
not. “Accident in the (Paper) Hunting Field: death of
a notorious author. We deeply regret to announce the
death of the most unpopular man in Samoa, who broke his
neck, at the descent of Magiagi, from the misconduct of
his little raving lunatic of an old beast of a pony. It is
proposed to commemorate the incident by the erection
of a suitable pile. The design (by our local architect,
Mr. Walker) is highly artificial, with a rich and voluminous
Crockett at each corner, a small but impervious Barrièer
at the entrance, an arch at the top, an Archer of a pleasing
but solid character at the bottom; the colour will be
genuine William-Black; and Lang, lang may the ladies
sit wi’ their fans in their hands.” Well, well, they may
sit as they sat for me, and little they’ll reck, the ungrateful
jauds! Muckle they cared about Tusitala when they
had him! But now ye can see the difference; now
leddies, ye can repent, when ower late, o’ your former
cauldness and what ye’ll perhaps allow me to ca’ your
tepeedity! He was beautiful as the day, but his day is
done! And perhaps, as he was maybe gettin’ a wee thing
fly-blown, it’s nane too shüne.
Monday, August 6th.—Well, sir, I have escaped the
dangerous conjunction of the widow’s only son and the
Sabbath Day. We had a most enjoyable time, and Lloyd
and I were 3 and 4 to arrive; I will not tell here what
interval had elapsed between our arrival and the arrival
of 1 and 2; the question, sir, is otiose and malign; it
deserves, it shall have no answer. And now without
further delay to the main purpose of this hasty note. We
received and we have already in fact distributed the
gorgeous fahbrics of Kirriemuir. Whether from the splendour
of the robes themselves, or from the direct nature of
the compliments with which you had directed us to accompany
the presentations, one young lady blushed as she
received the proofs of your munificence.... Bad ink,
and the dregs of it at that, but the heart in the right place.
Still very cordially interested in my Barrie and wishing
him well through his sickness, which is of the body, and
long defended from mine, which is of the head, and by
the impolite might be described as idiocy. The whole
head is useless, and the whole sitting part painful: reason,
the recent Paper Chase.
There was racing and chasing in Vailele plantation,
And vastly we enjoyed it,
But, alas! for the state of my foundation,
For it wholly has destroyed it.
|
Come, my mind is looking up. The above is wholly
impromptu.—On oath,
Tusitala.
To Sidney Colvin
The missionary view of the Sunday paper-chase, with an account
of Stevenson’s apologies to the ladies and gentlemen of the mission,
have been printed by Mr. W. E. Clarke in the Chronicle of the London
Missionary Society for April and May 1908.
[Vailima] Aug. 7th, 1894.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—This is to inform you, sir, that on
Sunday last (and this is Tuesday) I attained my ideal here,
and we had a paper-chase in Vailele Plantation, about
15 miles, I take it, from us; and it was all that could be
wished. It is really better fun than following the hounds,
since you have to be your own hound, and a precious bad
hound I was, following every false scent on the whole
course to the bitter end; but I came in 3rd at the last
on my little Jack, who stuck to it gallantly, and awoke
the praises of some discriminating persons. (5 + 7 + 2½
= 14½ miles; yes, that is the count.) We had quite the
old sensations of exhilaration, discovery, an appeal to a
savage instinct; and I felt myself about 17 again, a
pleasant experience. However, it was on the Sabbath
Day, and I am now a pariah among the English, as if I
needed any increment of unpopularity. I must not go
again; it gives so much unnecessary tribulation to poor
people, and, sure, we don’t want to make tribulation. I
have been forbidden to work, and have been instead
doing my two or three hours in the plantation every morning.
I only wish somebody would pay me £10 a day for
taking care of cacao, and I could leave literature to others.
Certainly, if I have plenty of exercise, and no work, I feel
much better; but there is Biles the butcher! him we have
always with us.
I do not much like novels, I begin to think, but I am
enjoying exceedingly Orme’s History of Hindostan, a lovely
book in its way, in large quarto, with a quantity of maps,
and written in a very lively and solid eighteenth century
way, never picturesque except by accident and from a kind
of conviction, and a fine sense of order. No historian I
have ever read is so minute; yet he never gives you a
word about the people; his interest is entirely limited
in the concatenation of events, into which he goes with a
lucid, almost superhuman, and wholly ghostly gusto.
“By the ghost of a mathematician” the book might be
announced. A very brave, honest book.
Your letter to hand.
Fact is, I don’t like the picter.80 O, it’s a good picture,
but if you ask me, you know, I believe, stoutly believe,
that mankind, including you, are going mad. I am not
in the midst with the other frenzy dancers, so I don’t catch
it wholly; and when you show me a thing—and ask me,
don’t you know—Well, well! Glad to get so good an
account of the Amateur Emigrant. Talking of which, I am
strong for making a volume out of selections from the South
Sea letters; I read over again the King of Apemama, and
it is good in spite of your teeth, and a real curiosity, a
thing that can never be seen again, and the group is annexed
and Tembinoka dead. I wonder, couldn’t you send out
to me the first five Butaritari letters and the Low Archipelago
ones (both of which I have lost or mislaid) and I
can chop out a perfectly fair volume of what I wish to
be preserved. It can keep for the last of the series.
Travels and Excursions, vol. II. Should it not include
a paper on S. F. from the Mag. of Art? The A. E., the
New Pacific capital, the Old ditto. Silver. Squat. This
would give all my works on the States; and though it
ain’t very good, it’s not so very bad. Travels and Excursions,
vol. III., to be these resuscitated letters—Miscellanies,
vol. II.—comme vous voudrez, cher monsieur!
Monday, Aug. 13th.—I have a sudden call to go up
the coast and must hurry up with my information. There
has suddenly come to our naval commanders the need of
action, they’re away up the coast bombarding the Atua
rebels. All morning on Saturday the sound of the bombardment
of Luatuanu’u kept us uneasy. To-day again
the big guns have been sounding further along the coast.
One delicious circumstance must not be forgotten. Our
blessed President of the Council—a kind of hoary-headed
urchin, with the dim, timid eyes of extreme childhood and
a kind of beautiful simplicity that endears him to me
beyond words—has taken the head of the army—honour
to him for it, for his place is really there—and gone up the
coast in the congenial company of his housekeeper, a woman
coming on for sixty with whom he takes his walks abroad
in the morning in his shirt-sleeves, whom he reads to at
night (in a kind of Popular History of Germany) in the
silence of the Presidential mansion, and with whom (and
a couple of camp stools) he walked out last Sunday to
behold the paper-chase. I cannot tell you how taken I am
with this exploit of the President’s and the housekeeper’s.
It is like Don Quixote, but infinitely superior. If I could
only do it without offence, what a subject it would make!
To-morrow morning early I am off up the coast myself.
Therefore you must allow me to break off here
without further ceremony.—Yours ever,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Dr. Bakewell
The following is to a physician in Australia.
Vailima, August 7, 1894.
DEAR DR. BAKEWELL,—I am not more than human.
I am more human than is wholly convenient, and your
anecdote was welcome. What you say about unwilling
work, my dear sir, is a consideration always present with
me, and yet not easy to give its due weight to. You
grow gradually into a certain income; without spending
a penny more, with the same sense of restriction as before
when you painfully scraped two hundred a year together,
you find you have spent, and you cannot well stop spending,
a far larger sum; and this expense can only be supported
by a certain production. However, I am off work
this month, and occupy myself instead in weeding my
cacao, paper-chases, and the like. I may tell you, my
average of work in favourable circumstances is far greater
than you suppose: from six o’clock till eleven at latest,81
and often till twelve, and again in the afternoon from
two to four. My hand is quite destroyed, as you may
perceive, to-day to a really unusual extent. I can sometimes
write a decent fist still; but I have just returned
with my arms all stung from three hours’ work in the
cacao.—Yours, etc.,
R. L. S.
To James Payn
Vailima, Upolu, Samoa [August 11, 1894].
MY DEAR JAMES PAYN,—I hear from Lang that you
are unwell, and it reminds me of two circumstances:
First, that it is a very long time since you had the exquisite
pleasure of hearing from me; and second, that I have
been very often unwell myself and sometimes had to
thank you for a grateful anodyne.
They are not good, the circumstances, to write an
anodyne letter. The hills and my house at less than
(boom) a minute’s interval quake with thunder; and
though I cannot hear that part of it, shells are falling
thick into the fort of Luatuanu’u (boom). It is my friends
of the Curaçoa, the Falke, and the Bussard bombarding
(after all these—boom—months) the rebels of Atua.
(Boom-boom.) It is most distracting in itself; and the
thought of the poor devils in their fort (boom) with their
bits of rifles far from pleasant. (Boom-boom.) You can
see how quick it goes, and I’ll say no more about Mr.
Bow-wow, only you must understand the perpetual
accompaniment of this discomfortable sound, and make
allowances for the value of my copy. It is odd, though,
I can well remember, when the Franco-Prussian war
began, and I was in Eilean Earraid, far enough from the
sound of the loudest cannonade, I could hear the shots
fired, and I felt the pang in my breast of a man struck.
It was sometimes so distressing, so instant, that I lay in
the heather on the top of the island, with my face hid,
kicking my heels for agony. And now, when I can hear
the actual concussion of the air and hills, when I know
personally the people who stand exposed to it, I am able
to go on taut bien que mal with a letter to James Payn!
The blessings of age, though mighty small, are tangible.
I have heard a great deal of them since I came into the
world, and now that I begin to taste of them—Well!
But this is one, that people do get cured of the excess
of sensibility; and I had as lief these people were shot
at as myself—or almost, for then I should have some of
the fun, such as it is.
You are to conceive me, then, sitting in my little
gallery room, shaken by these continual spasms of cannon,
and with my eye more or less singly fixed on the imaginary
figure of my dear James Payn. I try to see him in bed;
no go. I see him instead jumping up in his room in Waterloo
Place (where ex hypothesi he is not), sitting on the
table, drawing out a very black briar-root pipe, and
beginning to talk to a slim and ill-dressed visitor in a
voice that is good to hear and with a smile that is pleasant
to see. (After a little more than half an hour, the voice
that was ill to hear has ceased, the cannonade is over.)
And I am thinking how I can get an answering smile
wafted over so many leagues of land and water, and can
find no way.
I have always been a great visitor of the sick; and
one of the sick I visited was W. E. Henley, which did
not make very tedious visits, so I’ll not get off much
purgatory for them. That was in the Edinburgh Infirmary,
the old one, the true one, with Georgius Secundus standing
and pointing his toe in a niche of the façade; and a
mighty fine building it was! And I remember one winter’s
afternoon, in that place of misery, that Henley and I
chanced to fall in talk about James Payn himself. I am
wishing you could have heard that talk! I think that
would make you smile. We had mixed you up with
John Payne, for one thing, and stood amazed at your
extraordinary, even painful, versatility; and for another,
we found ourselves each students so well prepared for
examinations on the novels of the real Mackay. Perhaps,
after all, this is worth something in life—to have given
so much pleasure to a pair so different in every way as
were Henley and I, and to be talked of with so much
interest by two such (beg pardon) clever lads!
The cheerful Lang has neglected to tell me what is
the matter with you; so, I’m sorry to say, I am cut off
from all the customary consolations. I can’t say, “Think
how much worse it would be if you had a broken leg!”
when you may have the crushing repartee up your sleeve,
“But it is my leg that is broken.” This is a pity. But
there are consolations. You are an Englishman (I believe);
you are a man of letters; you have never been made
C.B.; you hair was not red; you have played cribbage
and whist; you did not play either the fiddle or the
banjo; you were never an æsthete; you never contributed
to ——’s Journal; your name is not Jabez Balfour;
you are totally unconnected with the Army and Navy
departments; I understand you to have lived within
your income—why, cheer up! here are many legitimate
causes of congratulation. I seem to be writing an obituary
notice. Absit omen! But I feel very sure that
these considerations will have done you more good than
medicine.
By the by, did you ever play piquet? I have fallen
a victim to this debilitating game. It is supposed to be
scientific; God save the mark, what self-deceivers men
are! It is distinctly less so than cribbage. But how
fascinating! There is such material opulence about it,
such vast ambitions may be realised—and are not; it
may be called the Monte Cristo of games. And the thrill
with which you take five cards partakes of the nature of
lust—and you draw four sevens and a nine, and the seven
and nine of a suit that you discarded, and O! but the
world is a desert! You may see traces of discouragement
in my letter: all due to piquet! There has been
a disastrous turn of the luck against me; a month or
two ago I was two thousand ahead; now, and for a week
back, I have been anything from four thousand eight
hundred to five thousand two hundred astern. I have
a sixième, my beast of a partner has a septième; and
if I have three aces, three kings, three queens, and three
knaves (excuse the slight exaggeration), the devil holds
quatorze of tens!—I remain, my dear James Payn, your
sincere and obliged friend—old friend let me say,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Miss Middleton
A letter from the lady to whom this is addressed, and who had
been a friend of the Stevenson family in Edinburgh, had called up
some memories of a Skye terrier, Jura, of whom readers have heard
something already.
Vailima, Samoa, September 9, 1894.
DEAR MISS MIDDLETON,—Your letter has been like the
drawing up of a curtain. Of course I remember you
very well, and the Skye terrier to which you refer—a
heavy, dull, fatted, graceless creature he grew up to be—was
my own particular pet. It may amuse you, perhaps,
as much as “The Inn” amused me, if I tell you
what made this dog particularly mine. My father was
the natural god of all the dogs in our house, and poor
Jura took to him of course. Jura was stolen, and kept
in prison somewhere for more than a week, as I remember.
When he came back Smeoroch had come and taken my
father’s heart from him. He took his stand like a man,
and positively never spoke to my father again from that
day until the day of his death. It was the only sign of
character he ever showed. I took him up to my room
and to be my dog in consequence, partly because I was
sorry for him, and partly because I admired his dignity
in misfortune.
With best regards and thanks for having reminded
me of so many pleasant days, old acquaintances, dead
friends, and—what is perhaps as pathetic as any of them—dead
dogs, I remain, yours truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To A. Conan Doyle
The following refers to the papers originally contributed by
various writers to Mr. Jerome’s periodical The Idler, under the title
My First Book, and afterwards republished in a volume. The
references towards the end are to the illustrations in the pages of
The Idler.
Vailima, Samoa, September 9, 1894.
MY DEAR CONAN DOYLE,—If you found anything to
entertain you in my Treasure Island article, it may amuse
you to know that you owe it entirely to yourself. Your
“First Book” was by some accident read aloud one
night in my Baronial ’All. I was consumedly amused by
it, so was the whole family, and we proceeded to hunt
up back Idlers and read the whole series. It is a rattling
good series, even people whom you would not expect
came in quite the proper tone—Miss Braddon, for instance,
who was really one of the best where all are good—or
all but one!... In short, I fell in love with “The
First Book” series, and determined that it should be all
our first books, and that I could not hold back where
the white plume of Conan Doyle waved gallantly in the
front. I hope they will republish them, though it’s a
grievous thought to me that that effigy in the German
cap—likewise the other effigy of the noisome old man
with the long hair, telling indelicate stories to a couple
of deformed negresses in a rancid shanty full of wreckage—should
be perpetuated. I may seem to speak in pleasantry—it
is only a seeming—that German cap, sir, would
be found, when I come to die, imprinted on my heart.
Enough—my heart is too full. Adieu.—Yours very truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
(in a German cap, damn ’em!).
To Sidney Colvin
[Vailima, September 1894.]
MY DEAR COLVIN,—This must be a very measly letter.
I have been trying hard to get along with St. Ives. I should
now lay it aside for a year and I dare say I should make
something of it after all. Instead of that, I have to kick
against the pricks, and break myself, and spoil the book,
if there were anything to spoil, which I am far from saying.
I’m as sick of the thing as ever any one can be; it’s a
rudderless hulk; it’s a pagoda, and you can just feel—or
I can feel—that it might have been a pleasant story,
if it had been only blessed at baptism.
Our politics have gone on fairly well, but the result
is still doubtful.
Sept. 10th.—I know I have something else to say to
you, but unfortunately I awoke this morning with colly-wobbles,
and had to take a small dose of laudanum with
the usual consequences of dry throat, intoxicated legs,
partial madness and total imbecility; and for the life
of me I cannot remember what it is. I have likewise mislaid
your letter amongst the accumulations on my table,
not that there was anything in it. Altogether I am in a
poor state. I forgot to tell Baxter that the dummy had
turned up and is a fine, personable-looking volume and
very good reading. Please communicate this to him.
I have just remembered an incident that I really must
not let pass. You have heard a great deal more than
you wanted about our political prisoners. Well, one day,
about a fortnight ago, the last of them was set free—Old
Poè, whom I think I must have mentioned to you,
the father-in-law of my cook, was one that I had had a
great deal of trouble with. I had taken the doctor to see
him, got him out on sick leave, and when he was put
back again gave bail for him. I must not forget that
my wife ran away with him out of the prison on the doctor’s
orders and with the complicity of our friend the gaoler,
who really and truly got the sack for the exploit. As
soon as he was finally liberated, Poè called a meeting
of his fellow-prisoners. All Sunday they were debating
what they were to do, and on Monday morning I got
an obscure hint from Talolo that I must expect visitors
during the day who were coming to consult me. These
consultations I am now very well used to, and seeing
first, that I generally don’t know what to advise, and
second that they sometimes don’t take my advice—though
in some notable cases they have taken it, generally
to my own wonder with pretty good results—I am not
very fond of these calls. They minister to a sense of
dignity, but not peace of mind, and consume interminable
time, always in the morning too, when I can’t afford it.
However, this was to be a new sort of consultation. Up
came Poè and some eight other chiefs, squatted in a big
circle around the old dining-room floor, now the smoking-room.
And the family, being represented by Lloyd,
Graham, Belle, Austin and myself, proceeded to exchange
the necessary courtesies. Then their talking man began.
He said that they had been in prison, that I had always
taken an interest in them, that they had now been set
at liberty without condition, whereas some of the other
chiefs who had been liberated before them were still
under bond to work upon the roads, and that this had
set them considering what they might do to testify their
gratitude. They had therefore agreed to work upon my
road as a free gift. They went on to explain that it was
only to be on my road, on the branch that joins my house
with the public way.
Now I was very much gratified at this compliment,
although (to one used to natives) it seemed rather a
hollow one. It meant only that I should have to lay
out a good deal of money on tools and food and to give
wages under the guise of presents to some workmen who
were most of them old and in ill-health. Conceive how
much I was surprised and touched when I heard the
whole scheme explained to me. They were to return to
their provinces, and collect their families; some of the
young men were to live in Apia with a boat, and ply up
and down the coast to A’ana and Atua (our own Tuamasaga
being quite drained of resources) in order to supply
the working squad with food. Tools they did ask for,
but it was especially mentioned that I was to make no
presents. In short, the whole of this little “presentation”
to me had been planned with a good deal more consideration
than goes usually with a native campaign.
[I sat on the opposite side of the circle to the talking
man. His face was quite calm and high-bred as he went
through the usual Samoan expressions of politeness and
compliment, but when he came on to the object of their
visit, on their love and gratitude to Tusitala, how his
name was always in their prayers, and his goodness to
them when they had no other friend, was their most
cherished memory, he warmed up to real, burning, genuine
feeling. I had never seen the Samoan mask of reserve
laid aside before, and it touched me more than anything
else. A.M.]
This morning as ever was, bright and early up came
the whole gang of them, a lot of sturdy, common-looking
lads they seemed to be for the most part, and fell to on
my new road. Old Poè was in the highest of good spirits,
and looked better in health than he has done any time
in two years, being positively rejuvenated by the success
of his scheme. He jested as he served out the new tools,
and I am sorry to say damned the Government up hill
and down dale, probably with a view to show off his
position as a friend of the family before his workboys.
Now, whether or not their impulse will last them through
the road does not matter to me one hair. It is the fact
that they have attempted it, that they have volunteered
and are now really trying to execute a thing that was
never before heard of in Samoa. Think of it! It is
road-making—the most fruitful cause (after taxes) of all
rebellions in Samoa, a thing to which they could not
be wiled with money nor driven by punishment. It
does give me a sense of having done something in Samoa
after all.
Now there’s one long story for you about “my blacks.”—Yours
ever,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Charles Baxter
The following was written on hearing of the death of his friend’s
father.
[Vailima, September 1894.]
MY DEAR CHARLES,—... Well, there is no more
Edmund Baxter now; and I think I may say I know
how you feel. He was one of the best, the kindest, and
the most genial men I ever knew. I shall always remember
his brisk, cordial ways and the essential goodness which
he showed me whenever we met with gratitude. And
the always is such a little while now! He is another of
the landmarks gone; when it comes to my own turn to
lay my weapons down, I shall do so with thankfulness
and fatigue; and whatever be my destiny afterward, I
shall be glad to lie down with my fathers in honour. It
is human at least, if not divine. And these deaths make
me think of it with an ever greater readiness. Strange
that you should be beginning a new life, when I, who
am a little your junior, am thinking of the end of mine.
But I have had hard lines; I have been so long waiting
for death, I have unwrapped my thoughts from about
life so long, that I have not a filament left to hold by;
I have done my fiddling so long under Vesuvius, that I
have almost forgotten to play, and can only wait for
the eruption, and think it long of coming. Literally, no
man has more wholly outlived life than I. And still it’s
good fun.
R. L. S.
To R. A. M. Stevenson
Stevenson had received from his cousin a letter announcing,
among other things, the birth of a son to the writer, and rambling
suggestively, as may be guessed from the following reply, over many
disconnected themes: the ethnology of Scotland, paternity and
heredity, civilisation versus primitive customs and instincts, the
story of their own descent, the method of writing in collaboration,
education, Christianity and sex, the religion of conduct, anarchism,
etc.; all which matters are here discursively touched on. “Old
Skene” is, of course, the distinguished Scottish antiquarian and
historian, William Forbes Skene, in whose firm (Skene & Edwards,
W.S.) Stevenson had for a time served irregularly enough as an
unpaid clerk.
[Vailima, September 1894.]
DEAR BOB,—You are in error about the Picts. They
were a Gaelic race, spoke a Celtic tongue, and we have
no evidence that I know of that they were blacker than
other Celts. The Balfours, I take it, were plainly Celts;
their name shows it—the “cold croft,” it means; so
does their country. Where the black Scotch come from
nobody knows; but I recognise with you the fact that
the whole of Britain is rapidly and progressively becoming
more pigmented; already in one man’s life I can
decidedly trace a difference in the children about a school
door. But colour is not an essential part of a man or
a race. Take my Polynesians, an Asiatic people probably
from the neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf. They range
through any amount of shades, from the burnt hue of the
Low Archipelago islander, which seems half negro, to the
“bleached” pretty women of the Marquesas (close by on
the map), who come out for a festival no darker than an
Italian; their colour seems to vary directly with the
degree of exposure to the sun. And, as with negroes,
the babes are born white; only it should seem a little
sack of pigment at the lower part of the spine, which
presently spreads over the whole field. Very puzzling.
But to return. The Picts furnish to-day perhaps a third
of the population of Scotland, say another third for Scots
and Britons, and the third for Norse and Angles is a bad
third. Edinburgh was a Pictish place. But the fact is,
we don’t know their frontiers. Tell some of your journalist
friends with a good style to popularise old Skene;
or say your prayers, and read him for yourself; he was
a Great Historian, and I was his blessed clerk, and did
not know it; and you will not be in a state of grace
about the Picts till you have studied him. J. Horne
Stevenson (do you know him?) is working this up with
me, and the fact is—it’s not interesting to the public—but
it’s interesting, and very interesting, in itself, and
just now very embarrassing—this rural parish supplied
Glasgow with such a quantity of Stevensons in the beginning
of last century! There is just a link wanting; and
we might be able to go back to the eleventh century,
always undistinguished, but clearly traceable. When I
say just a link, I guess I may be taken to mean a dozen.
What a singular thing is this undistinguished perpetuation
of a family throughout the centuries, and the sudden
bursting forth of character and capacity that began with
our grandfather! But as I go on in life, day by day,
I become more of a bewildered child; I cannot get used
to this world, to procreation, to heredity, to sight, to
hearing; the commonest things are a burthen. The
prim obliterated polite face of life, and the broad, bawdy,
and orgiastic—or mænadic—foundations, form a spectacle
to which no habit reconciles me; and “I could
wish my days to be bound each to each” by the same
open-mouthed wonder. They are anyway, and whether
I wish it or not.
I remember very well your attitude to life, this conventional
surface of it. You had none of that curiosity
for the social stage directions, the trivial ficelles of the
business; it is simian, but that is how the wild youth
of man is captured; you wouldn’t imitate, hence you
kept free—a wild dog, outside the kennel—and came dam
near starving for your pains. The key to the business is
of course the belly; difficult as it is to keep that in view
in the zone of three miraculous meals a day in which we
were brought up. Civilisation has become reflex with us;
you might think that hunger was the name of the best
sauce; but hunger to the cold solitary under a bush of
a rainy night is the name of something quite different.
I defend civilisation for the thing it is, for the thing it
has come to be, the standpoint of a real old Tory. My
ideal would be the Female Clan. But how can you turn
these crowding dumb multitudes back? They don’t do
anything because; they do things, write able articles,
stitch shoes, dig, from the purely simian impulse. Go
and reason with monkeys!
No, I am right about Jean Lillie. Jean Lillie, our
double great-grandmother, the daughter of David Lillie,
sometime Deacon of the Wrights, married, first, Alan
Stevenson, who died May 26, 1774, “at Santt Kittes of
a fiver,” by whom she had Robert Stevenson, born 8th
June 1772; and, second, in May or June 1787, Thomas
Smith, a widower, and already the father of our grandmother.
This improbable double connection always tends
to confuse a student of the family, Thomas Smith being
doubly our great-grandfather.
I looked on the perpetuation of our honoured name
with veneration. My mother collared one of the photos,
of course; the other is stuck up on my wall as the chief
of our sept. Do you know any of the Gaelic-Celtic sharps?
you might ask what the name means. It puzzles me.
I find a M’Stein and a MacStephane; and our own great-grandfather
always called himself Steenson, though he
wrote it Stevenson. There are at least three places called
Stevenson—Stevenson in Cunningham, Stevenson in Peebles,
and Stevenson in Haddington. And it was not the Celtic
trick, I understand, to call places after people. I am
going to write to Sir Herbert Maxwell about the name,
but you might find some one.
Get the Anglo-Saxon heresy out of your head; they
superimposed their language, they scarce modified the
race; only in Berwickshire and Roxburgh have they
very largely affected the place names. The Scandinavians
did much more to Scotland than the Angles. The Saxons
didn’t come.
Enough of this sham antiquarianism. Yes, it is in the
matter of the book82 of course, that collaboration shows;
as for the manner, it is superficially all mine in the sense
that the last copy is all in my hand. Lloyd did not even
put pen to paper in the Paris scenes or the Barbizon
scene; it was no good; he wrote and often rewrote all
the rest; I had the best service from him on the character
of Nares. You see, we had been just meeting the man,
and his memory was full of the man’s words and ways.
And Lloyd is an impressionist, pure and simple. The
great difficulty of collaboration is that you can’t explain
what you mean. I know what kind of effect I mean a
character to give—what kind of tache he is to make;
but how am I to tell my collaborator in words? Hence
it was necessary to say, “Make him So-and-so”; and
this was all right for Nares and Pinkerton and Loudon
Dodd, whom we both knew, but for Bellairs, for instance—a
man with whom I passed ten minutes fifteen years
ago—what was I to say? and what could Lloyd do?
I, as a personal artist, can begin a character with only
a haze in my head, but how if I have to translate the
haze into words before I begin? In our manner of collaboration
(which I think the only possible—I mean that
of one person being responsible, and giving the coup de
pouce to every part of the work) I was spared the obviously
hopeless business of trying to explain to my collaborator
what style I wished a passage to be treated in. These
are the times that illustrate to a man the inadequacy of
spoken language. Now—to be just to written language—I
can (or could) find a language for my every mood,
but how could I tell any one beforehand what this effect
was to be, which it would take every art that I possessed,
and hours and hours of deliberate labour and selection
and rejection, to produce? These are the impossibilities
of collaboration. Its immediate advantage is to focus two
minds together on the stuff, and to produce in consequence
an extraordinarily greater richness of purview, consideration,
and invention. The hardest chapter of all was
“Cross Questions and Crooked Answers.” You would
not believe what that cost us before it assumed the least
unity and colour. Lloyd wrote it at least thrice, and I
at least five times—this is from memory. And was that
last chapter worth the trouble it cost? Alas, that I
should ask the question! Two classes of men—the artist
and the educationalist—are sworn, on soul and conscience,
not to ask it. You get an ordinary, grinning, red-headed
boy, and you have to educate him. Faith supports you;
you give your valuable hours, the boy does not seem to
profit, but that way your duty lies, for which you are
paid, and you must persevere. Education has always
seemed to me one of the few possible and dignified ways of
life. A sailor, a shepherd, a schoolmaster—to a less degree,
a soldier—and (I don’t know why, upon my soul, except
as a sort of schoolmaster’s unofficial assistant, and a kind
of acrobat in tights) an artist, almost exhaust the category.
If I had to begin again—I know not—si jeunesse
savait, si vieillesse pouvait ... I know not at all—I
believe I should try to honour Sex more religiously. The
worst of our education is that Christianity does not recognise
and hallow Sex. It looks askance at it, over its
shoulder, oppressed as it is by reminiscences of hermits
and Asiatic self-tortures. It is a terrible hiatus in our
modern religions that they cannot see and make venerable
that which they ought to see first and hallow most.
Well, it is so; I cannot be wiser than my generation.
But no doubt there is something great in the half-success
that has attended the effort of turning into an
emotional religion, Bald Conduct, without any appeal, or
almost none, to the figurative, mysterious, and constitutive
facts of life. Not that conduct is not constitutive,
but dear! it’s dreary! On the whole, conduct is better
dealt with on the cast-iron “gentleman” and duty
formula, with as little fervour and poetry as possible;
stoical and short.... There is a new something or
other in the wind, which exercises me hugely: anarchy,—I
mean, anarchism. People who (for pity’s sake) commit
dastardly murders very basely, die like saints, and leave
beautiful letters behind ’em (did you see Vaillant to his
daughter? it was the New Testament over again); people
whose conduct is inexplicable to me, and yet their spiritual
life higher than that of most. This is just what the early
Christians must have seemed to the Romans. Is this,
then, a new drive83 among the monkeys? Mind you, Bob,
if they go on being martyred a few years more, the gross,
dull, not unkindly bourgeois may get tired or ashamed
or afraid of going on martyring; and the anarchists
come out at the top just like the early Christians. That
is, of course, they will step into power as a personnel, but
God knows what they may believe when they come to
do so; it can’t be stranger or more improbable than
what Christianity had come to be by the same time.
Your letter was easily read, the pagination presented
no difficulty, and I read it with much edification and
gusto. To look back, and to stereotype one bygone
humour—what a hopeless thing! The mind runs ever in a
thousand eddies like a river between cliffs. You (the ego)
are always spinning round in it, east, west, north, and
south. You are twenty years old, and forty, and five,
and the next moment you are freezing at an imaginary
eighty; you are never the plain forty-four that you
should be by dates. (The most philosophical language
is the Gaelic, which has no present tense—and the most
useless.) How, then, to choose some former age, and
stick there?
R. L. S.
To Sir Herbert Maxwell
Vailima, Samoa, September 10, 1894.
DEAR SIR HERBERT MAXWELL,—I am emboldened by
reading your very interesting Rhind Lectures to put to
you a question: What is my name, Stevenson?
I find it in the forms Stevinetoun, Stevensoune, Stevensonne,
Stenesone, Stewinsoune, M’Stein, and MacStephane.
My family, and (as far as I can gather) the majority of the
inglorious clan, hailed from the borders of Cunningham
and Renfrew, and the upper waters of the Clyde. In the
Barony of Bothwell was the seat of the laird Stevenson
of Stevenson; but, as of course you know, there is a
parish in Cunningham and places in Peebles and Haddington
bearing the same name.
If you can at all help me, you will render me a real
service which I wish I could think of some manner to
repay.—Believe me, yours truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
P.S.—I should have added that I have perfect evidence
before me that (for some obscure reason) Stevenson was
a favourite alias with the M’Gregors.
To Sidney Colvin
Vailima, Samoa, October 6th, 1894.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—We have had quite an interesting
month and mostly in consideration of that road which I
think I told you was about to be made. It was made
without a hitch, though I confess I was considerably
surprised. When they got through, I wrote a speech to
them, sent it down to a Missionary to be translated, and
invited the lot to a feast. I thought a good deal of this
feast. The occasion was really interesting. I wanted to
pitch it in hot. And I wished to have as many influential
witnesses present as possible. Well, as it drew towards
the day I had nothing but refusals. Everybody supposed
it was to be a political occasion, that I had made a hive
of rebels up here, and was going to push for new hostilities.
The Amanuensis has been ill, and after the above
trial petered out. I must return to my own, lone Waverley.
The captain refused, telling me why; and at last I had
to beat up for people almost with prayers. However, I
got a good lot, as you will see by the accompanying newspaper
report. The road contained this inscription, drawn
up by the chiefs themselves:
“The Road of Gratitude
“Considering the great love of Tusitala in his loving
care of us in our distress in the prison, we have therefore
prepared a splendid gift. It shall never be muddy, it
shall endure for ever, this road that we have dug.”
This the newspaper reporter could not give, not knowing
any Samoan. The same reason explains his references
to Seumanutafa’s speech, which was not long and was
important, for it was a speech of courtesy and forgiveness
to his former enemies. It was very much applauded.
Secondly, it was not Poè, it was Mataafā (don’t confuse
with Mataafa) who spoke for the prisoners. Otherwise
it is extremely correct.
I beg your pardon for so much upon my aboriginals.
Even you must sympathise with me in this unheard-of
compliment, and my having been able to deliver so severe
a sermon with acceptance. It remains a nice point of
conscience what I should wish done in the matter. I
think this meeting, its immediate results, and the terms
of what I said to them, desirable to be known. It will
do a little justice to me, who have not had too much
justice done me. At the same time, to send this report
to the papers is truly an act of self-advertisement, and I
dislike the thought. Query, in a man who has been so
much calumniated, is that not justifiable? I do not
know; be my judge. Mankind is too complicated for
me; even myself. Do I wish to advertise? I think
I do, God help me! I have had hard times here, as every
man must have who mixes up with public business;
and I bemoan myself, knowing that all I have done has
been in the interest of peace and good government; and
having once delivered my mind, I would like it, I think,
to be made public. But the other part of me regimbs.84
I know I am at a climacteric for all men who live by
their wits, so I do not despair. But the truth is I am
pretty nearly useless at literature, and I will ask you to
spare St. Ives when it goes to you; it is a sort of Count
Robert of Paris. But I hope rather a Dombey and Son,
to be succeeded by Our Mutual Friend and Great Expectations
and A Tale of Two Cities. No toil has been spared
over the ungrateful canvas; and it will not come together,
and I must live, and my family. Were it not for my
health, which made it impossible, I could not find it in
my heart to forgive myself that I did not stick to an
honest, commonplace trade when I was young, which
might have now supported me during these ill years.
But do not suppose me to be down in anything else;
only, for the nonce, my skill deserts me, such as it is,
or was. It was a very little dose of inspiration, and a
pretty little trick of style, long lost, improved by the
most heroic industry. So far, I have managed to please
the journalists. But I am a fictitious article and have
long known it. I am read by journalists, by my fellow-novelists,
and by boys; with these, incipit et explicit
my vogue. Good thing anyway! for it seems to have
sold the Edition. And I look forward confidently to an
aftermath; I do not think my health can be so hugely
improved, without some subsequent improvement in my
brains. Though, of course, there is the possibility that
literature is a morbid secretion, and abhors health! I do
not think it is possible to have fewer illusions than I.
I sometimes wish I had more. They are amusing. But
I cannot take myself seriously as an artist; the limitations
are so obvious. I did take myself seriously as a
workman of old, but my practice has fallen off. I am
now an idler and cumberer of the ground; it may be
excused to me perhaps by twenty years of industry and
ill-health, which have taken the cream off the milk.
As I was writing this last sentence, I heard the strident
rain drawing near across the forest, and by the time I
was come to the word “cream” it burst upon my roof,
and has since redoubled, and roared upon it. A very
welcome change. All smells of the good wet earth,
sweetly, with a kind of Highland touch; the crystal rods
of the shower, as I look up, have drawn their criss-cross
over everything; and a gentle and very welcome coolness
comes up around me in little draughts, blessed
draughts, not chilling, only equalising the temperature.
Now the rain is off in this spot, but I hear it roaring still
in the nigh neighbourhood—and that moment, I was
driven from the verandah by random raindrops, spitting
at me through the Japanese blinds. These are not tears
with which the page is spotted! Now the windows stream,
the roof reverberates. It is good; it answers something
which is in my heart; I know not what; old memories
of the wet moorland belike.
Well, it has blown by again, and I am in my place
once more, with an accompaniment of perpetual dripping
on the verandah—and very much inclined for a chat.
The exact subject I do not know! It will be bitter at
least, and that is strange, for my attitude is essentially
not bitter, but I have come into these days when a man
sees above all the seamy side, and I have dwelt some
time in a small place where he has an opportunity of
reading little motives that he would miss in the great
world, and indeed, to-day, I am almost ready to call the
world an error. Because? Because I have not drugged
myself with successful work, and there are all kinds of
trifles buzzing in my ear, unfriendly trifles, from the
least to the—well, to the pretty big. All these that touch
me are Pretty Big; and yet none touch me in the least,
if rightly looked at, except the one eternal burthen to go
on making an income for my family. That is rightly the
root and ground of my ill. The jingling, tingling, damned
mint sauce is the trouble always; and if I could find a
place where I could lie down and give up for (say) two
years, and allow the sainted public to support me, if it
were a lunatic asylum, wouldn’t I go, just! But we can’t
have both extremes at once, worse luck! I should like
to put my savings into a proprietarian investment, and
retire in the meanwhile into a communistic retreat, which
is double-dealing. But you men with aries don’t know
how alas family weighs on a fellow’s mind.
I hear the article in next week’s Herald is to be a great
affair, and all the officials who came to me the other day
are to be attacked! This is the unpleasant side of being
(without a salary) in public life; I will leave any one to
judge if my speech was well intended, and calculated to
do good. It was even daring—I assure you one of the
chiefs looked like a fiend at my description of Samoan
warfare. Your warning was not needed; we are all
determined to keep the peace and to hold our peace. I
know, my dear fellow, how remote all this sounds! Kindly
pardon your friend. I have my life to live here; these
interests are for me immediate; and if I do not write of
them, I might as soon not write at all. There is the difficulty
in a distant correspondence. It is perhaps easy
for me to enter into and understand your interests; I
own it is difficult for you; but you must just wade through
them for friendship’s sake, and try to find tolerable what
is vital for your friend. I cannot forbear challenging you
to it, as to intellectual lists. It is the proof of intelligence,
the proof of not being a barbarian, to be able to enter
into something outside of oneself, something that does not
touch one’s next neighbour in the city omnibus.
Good-bye, my lord. May your race continue and you
flourish.—Yours ever,
Tusitala.
To Alison Cunningham
For a fuller account of the road-making affair here mentioned, see
pp. 431, 462.
[Vailima] October 8th, 1894.
MY DEAR CUMMY,—So I hear you are ailing? Think
shame to yoursell! So you think there is nothing better
to be done with time than that? and be sure we can all
do much ourselves to decide whether we are to be ill or
well! like a man on the gymnastic bars. We are all
pretty well. As for me, there is nothing the matter with
me in the world, beyond the disgusting circumstance that
I am not so young as once I was. Lloyd has a gymnastic
machine, and practises upon it every morning for an hour:
he is beginning to be a kind of young Samson. Austin
grows fat and brown, and gets on not so ill with his lessons,
and my mother is in great price. We are having knock-me-down
weather for heat; I never remember it so hot
before, and I fancy it means we are to have a hurricane
again this year, I think; since we came here, we have
not had a single gale of wind! The Pacific is but a child
to the North Sea; but when she does get excited, and
gets up and girds herself, she can do something good. We
have had a very interesting business here. I helped the
chiefs who were in prison; and when they were set free,
what should they do but offer to make a part of my road
for me out of gratitude? Well, I was ashamed to refuse,
and the trumps dug my road for me, and put up this
inscription on a board:—
“Considering the great love of His Excellency Tusitala
in his loving care for us in our tribulation in the prison
we have made this great gift; it shall never be muddy, it
shall go on for ever, this road that we have dug!” We had
a great feast when it was done, and I read them a kind
of lecture, which I dare say Auntie will have, and can
let you see. Weel, guid bye to ye, and joy be wi’ ye!
I hae nae time to say mair. They say I’m gettin’ fat—a
fact!—Your laddie, with all love,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To James Payn
Vailima, Samoa, Nov. 4, 1894.
MY DEAR JAMES PAYN,—I am asked to relate to you
a little incident of domestic life at Vailima. I had read
your Gleams of Memory, No. 1; it then went to my wife,
to Osbourne, to the cousin that is within my gates, and
to my respected amanuensis, Mrs. Strong. Sunday approached.
In the course of the afternoon I was attracted
to the great ’all—the winders is by Vanderputty, which
upon entering I beheld a memorable scene. The floor
was bestrewn with the forms of midshipmen from the
Curaçoa—“boldly say a wilderness of gunroom”—and in
the midst of this sat Mrs. Strong throned on the sofa
and reading aloud Gleams of Memory. They had just
come the length of your immortal definition of boyhood
in the concrete, and I had the pleasure to see the whole
party dissolve under its influence with inextinguishable
laughter. I thought this was not half bad for arthritic
gout! Depend upon it, sir, when I go into the arthritic
gout business, I shall be done with literature, or at least
with the funny business. It is quite true I have my battlefields
behind me. I have done perhaps as much work
as anybody else under the most deplorable conditions.
But two things fall to be noticed: In the first place, I
never was in actual pain; and in the second, I was never
funny. I’ll tell you the worst day that I remember. I
had a hemorrhage, and was not allowed to speak; then,
induced by the devil, or an errant doctor, I was led to
partake of that bowl which neither cheers nor inebriates—the
castor-oil bowl. Now, when castor-oil goes right,
it is one thing; but when it goes wrong, it is another.
And it went wrong with me that day. The waves of
faintness and nausea succeeded each other for twelve
hours, and I do feel a legitimate pride in thinking that
I stuck to my work all through and wrote a good deal
of Admiral Guinea (which I might just as well not have
written for all the reward it ever brought me) in spite
of the barbarous bad conditions. I think that is my great
boast; and it seems a little thing alongside of your Gleams
of Memory illustrated by spasms of arthritic gout. We
really should have an order of merit in the trade of letters.
For valour, Scott would have had it; Pope too; myself
on the strength of that castor-oil; and James Payn
would be a Knight Commander. The worst of it is,
though Lang tells me you exhibit the courage of Huish,
that not even an order can alleviate the wretched annoyance
of the business. I have always said that there is
nothing like pain; toothache, dumb-ague, arthritic gout,
it does not matter what you call it, if the screw is put
upon the nerves sufficiently strong, there is nothing left
in heaven or in earth that can interest the sufferer. Still,
even to this there is the consolation that it cannot last
for ever. Either you will be relieved and have a good
hour again before the sun goes down, or else you will
be liberated. It is something after all (although not
much) to think that you are leaving a brave example; that
other literary men love to remember, as I am sure they
will love to remember, everything about you—your sweetness,
your brightness, your helpfulness to all of us, and
in particular those one or two really adequate and noble
papers which you have been privileged to write during
these last years.—With the heartiest and kindest good-will,
I remain, yours ever,
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin
This was the last letter I received from my friend. On the
morning of his death the following month he spoke of being behindhand
with his December letter and of his intention to write it
next day.
[Vailima, November 1894.]
DEAR COLVIN,—Saturday there was a ball to the ship,
and on Sunday Gurr had a child to be baptized. Belle
was to be godmother and had to be got down; which
was impossible, as the jester Euclid says. However, we
had four men of very different heights take the poles of
a sort of bier and carry her shoulder high down the road,
till we met a trap. On the return journey on Sunday,
they were led by Austin playing (?) on a bugle, and you
have no idea how picturesque a business it was; the
four half-naked bearers, the cane lounge at that height
from the ground, and Belle in black and pretty pale reclining
very like a dead warrior of yore. However she
wasn’t dead yet. All the rest of the afternoon we hung
about and had consultations about the baptism. Just as
we went in to dinner, I saw the moon rise accurately full,
looking five times greater than nature, and the face that
we try to decipher in its silver disk wearing an obliterated
but benignant expression. The ball followed; bluejackets
and officers danced indiscriminately, after their pleasant
fashion; and Belle, who lay in the hotel verandah, and
held a sort of reception all night, had her longest visit
from one of the blue-jackets, her partner in the last ball.
About one on the Sunday morning all was over, and we
went to bed—I, alas! only to get up again, my room
being in the verandah, where a certain solemnly absurd
family conclave (all drunk) was being held until (I suppose)
three. By six, I was awake, and went out on the
verandah. On the east the dawn had broken, cold and
pink and rust colour, and the marshes were all smoking
whitely and blowing into the bay like smoke, but on the
west, all was golden. The street was empty, and right
over it hung the setting moon, accurately round, yellow
as an apricot, but slumberous, with an effect of afternoon
you would not believe if you had not seen it. Then
followed a couple of hours on the verandah I would be
glad to forget. By seven X. Y. had joined me, as drunk
as they make ’em. As he sat and talked to me, he smelt
of the charnel house, methought. He looked so old (he
is one month my senior); he spoke so silly; his poor
leg is again covered with boils, which will spell death to
him; and—enough. That interview has made me a
teetotaller. O, it is bad to grow old. For me, it is practically
hell. I do not like the consolations of age. I was
born a young man; I have continued so; and before I
end, a pantaloon, a driveller—enough again. But I don’t
enjoy getting elderly. Belle and I got home about three
in the afternoon, she having in the meantime renounced
all that makes life worth living in the name of little Miss
Gurr, and I seriously reflecting on renouncing the kindly
bowl in earnest! Presently after arrived the news of
Margery Ide (the C.J.’s daughter) being seriously ill,
alarmingly ill. Fanny wanted to go down; it was a
difficult choice; she was not fit for it; on the other
hand (and by all accounts) the patient would die if she
did not get better nursing. So we made up our own
minds, and F. and I set out about dusk, came to the
C.J.’s in the middle of dinner, and announced our errand.
I am glad to say the C.J. received her very willingly;
and I came home again, leaving her behind, where she
was certainly much wanted.
Nov. 4th.—You ask about St. Ives. No, there is no
Burford Bridge in it, and no Boney. He is a squire of
dames, and there are petticoats in the story, and damned
bad ones too, and it is of a tolerable length, a hundred
thousand, I believe, at least. Also, since you are curious
on the point, St. Ives learned his English from a Mr. Vicary,
an English lawyer, a prisoner in France. He must have
had a fine gift of languages!
Things are going on here in their usual gently disheartening
gait. The Treaty Officials are both good
fellows whom I can’t help liking, but who will never
make a hand of Samoa.—Yours ever,
R. L. Stevenson.
To Professor Meiklejohn
Congratulating an old friend of Savile Club days (see vol. xxiii.
p. 263) on his sailor son.
Vailima, Samoa, Nov. 6th, 1894.
MY DEAR MEIKLEJOHN,—Greeting! This is but a word
to say how much we felicitate ourselves on having made
the acquaintance of Hughie. He is having a famous
good chance on board the Curaçoa, which is the best ship
I have ever seen. And as for himself, he is a most engaging
boy, of whom you may very well be proud, and I
have no mortal manner of doubt but what you are. He
comes up here very often, where he is a great favourite
with my ladies, and sings me “the melancholy airs of
my native land” with much acceptancy. His name has
recently become changed in Vailima. Beginning with
the courteous “Mr. Meiklejohn,” it shaded off into the
familiar “Hughie,” and finally degenerated into “the Whitrett.”85
I hear good reports of him abroad and ashore,
and I scarce need to add my own testimony.
Hughie tells me you have gone into the publishing
business, whereat I was much shocked. My own affairs
with publishers are now in the most flourishing state,
owing to my ingenuity in leaving them to be dealt with
by a Scotch Writer to the Signet. It has produced revolutions
in the book trade and my banking account. I
tackled the Whitrett severely on a grammar you had
published, which I had not seen and condemned out of
hand and in the broadest Lallan. I even condescended
on the part of that grammar which I thought to be the
worst and condemned your presentation of the English
verb unmercifully. It occurs to me, since you are a publisher,
that the least thing you could do would be to send
me a copy of that grammar to correct my estimate. But
I fear I am talking too long to one of the enemy. I begin
to hear in fancy the voice of Meiklejohn upraised in
the Savile Club: “No quarter to publishers!” So I will
ask you to present my compliments to Mrs. Meiklejohn
upon her son, and to accept for yourself the warmest
reminiscences of auld lang syne.—Yours sincerely,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Lieutenant Eeles
Vailima, Samoa, November 24, 1894.
MY DEAR EELES,—The hand, as you will perceive (and
also the spelling!), is Teuila’s, but the scrannel voice is
what remains of Tusitala’s. First of all, for business.
When you go to London you are to charter a hansom
cab and proceed to the Museum. It is particular fun to
do this on Sundays when the Monument is shut up. Your
cabman expostulates with you, you persist. The cabman
drives up in front of the closed gates and says, “I told
you so, sir.” You breathe in the porter’s ears the mystic
name of Colvin, and he immediately unfolds the iron
barrier. You drive in, and doesn’t your cabman think
you’re a swell. A lord mayor is nothing to it. Colvin’s
door is the only one in the eastern gable of the
building. Send in your card to him with “From
R. L. S.” in the corner, and the machinery will do the
rest. Henry James’s address is 34 De Vere Mansions
West. I cannot remember where the place is; I cannot
even remember on which side of the park. But it’s
one of those big Cromwell Road-looking deserted
thoroughfares out west in Kensington or Bayswater, or
between the two; and anyway Colvin will be able to
put you on the direct track for Henry James. I
do not send formal introductions, as I have taken
the liberty to prepare both of them for seeing you
already.
Hoskyn is staying with us.
It is raining dismally. The Curaçoa track is hardly
passable, but it must be trod to-morrow by the degenerate
feet of their successor the Wallaroos. I think it a very
good account of these last that we don’t think them
either deformed or habitual criminals—they seem to be
a kindly lot.
The doctor will give you all the gossip. I have preferred
in this letter to stick to the strictly solid and necessary.
With kind messages from all in the house to all
in the wardroom, all in the gunroom, and (may we dare
to breathe it) to him who walks abaft, believe me, my
dear Eeles, yours ever,
R. L. Stevenson.
To Sir Herbert Maxwell
Vailima, Samoa, December 1, 1894.
DEAR SIR HERBERT,—Thank you very much for your
long and kind letter. I shall certainly take your advice
and call my cousin, the Lyon King, into council. It is
certainly a very interesting subject, though I don’t suppose
it can possibly lead to anything, this connection between
the Stevensons and M’Gregors. Alas! your invitation is
to me a mere derision. My chances of visiting Heaven
are about as valid as my chances of visiting Monreith.
Though I should like well to see you, shrunken into a
cottage, a literary Lord of Ravenscraig. I suppose it is
the inevitable doom of all those who dabble in Scotch
soil; but really your fate is the more blessed. I cannot
conceive anything more grateful to me, or more amusing
or more picturesque, than to live in a cottage outside
your own park-walls.—With renewed thanks, believe me,
dear Sir Herbert, yours very truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Andrew Lang
The following refers of course to Weir of Hermiston, the chief
character of which was studied from the traditions of Lord Braxfield,
and on which Stevenson was working at the full height of his powers
when death overtook him two days later.
Vailima, Samoa, December 1, 1894.
MY DEAR LANG,—For the portrait of Braxfield, much
thanks! It is engraved from the same Raeburn portrait
that I saw in ’76 or ’77 with so extreme a gusto that I
have ever since been Braxfield’s humble servant, and am
now trying, as you know, to stick him into a novel. Alas!
one might as well try to stick in Napoleon. The picture
shall be framed and hung up in my study. Not only as
a memento of you, but as a perpetual encouragement to
do better with his Lordship. I have not yet received the
transcripts. They must be very interesting. Do you
know I picked up the other day an old Longman’s where
I found an article of yours that I had missed, about
Christie’s? I read it with great delight. The year ends
with us pretty much as it began, among wars and rumours
of wars, and a vast and splendid exhibition of official
incompetence.—Yours ever,
R. L. Stevenson.
To Edmund Gosse
The next, and last, letter is to Mr. Gosse, dated also only two
days before the writer’s death. It acknowledges the dedication
“To Tusitala” of that gentleman’s volume of poems, In Russet and
Silver, just received.
Vailima, Samoa, December 1, 1894.
I am afraid, my dear Weg, that this must be the result
of bribery and corruption! The volume to which the
dedication stands as preface seems to me to stand alone
in your work; it is so natural, so personal, so sincere, so
articulate in substance, and what you always were sure of—so
rich in adornment.
Let me speak first of the dedication. I thank you for
it from the heart. It is beautifully said, beautifully and
kindly felt; and I should be a churl indeed if I were not
grateful, and an ass if I were not proud. I remember
when Symonds dedicated a book to me; I wrote and told
him of “the pang of gratified vanity” with which I had
read it. The pang was present again, but how much
more sober and autumnal—like your volume. Let me tell
you a story, or remind you of a story. In the year of
grace something or other, anything between ’76 and ’78,
I mentioned to you in my usual autobiographical and
inconsiderate manner that I was hard up. You said
promptly that you had a balance at your banker’s, and
could make it convenient to let me have a cheque, and I
accepted and got the money—how much was it?—twenty
or perhaps thirty pounds? I know not—but it was a
great convenience. The same evening, or the next day,
I fell in conversation (in my usual autobiographical and
... see above) with a denizen of the Savile Club, name
now gone from me, only his figure and a dim three-quarter
view of his face remaining. To him I mentioned that you
had given me a loan, remarking easily that of course it
didn’t matter to you. Whereupon he read me a lecture,
and told me how it really stood with you financially. He
was pretty serious; fearing, as I could not help perceiving,
that I should take too light a view of the responsibility
and the service (I was always thought too light—the
irresponsible jester—you remember. O, quantum mutatus
ab illo!) If I remember rightly, the money was repaid
before the end of the week—or, to be more exact and a
trifle pedantic, the se’nnight—but the service has never
been forgotten; and I send you back this piece of ancient
history, consule Planco, as a salute for your dedication,
and propose that we should drink the health of the nameless
one, who opened my eyes as to the true nature of
what you did for me on that occasion.
But here comes my Amanuensis, so we’ll get on more
swimmingly now. You will understand perhaps that
what so particularly pleased me in the new volume, what
seems to me to have so personal and original a note, are
the middle-aged pieces in the beginning. The whole of
them, I may say, though I must own an especial liking
to—
“I yearn not for the fighting fate,
That holds and hath achieved;
I live to watch and meditate
And dream—and be deceived.”
|
You take the change gallantly. Not I, I must confess.
It is all very well to talk of renunciation, and of course
it has to be done. But, for my part, give me a roaring
toothache! I do like to be deceived and to dream, but
I have very little use for either watching or meditation.
I was not born for age. And, curiously enough, I seem
to see a contrary drift in my work from that which is so
remarkable in yours. You are going on sedately travelling
through your ages, decently changing with the years to
the proper tune. And here am I, quite out of my true
course, and with nothing in my foolish elderly head but
love-stories. This must repose upon some curious distinction
of temperaments. I gather from a phrase, boldly
autobiographical, that you are—well, not precisely growing
thin. Can that be the difference?
It is rather funny that this matter should come up
just now, as I am at present engaged in treating a severe
case of middle age in one of my stories—“The Justice-Clerk.”
The case is that of a woman, and I think that I
am doing her justice. You will be interested, I believe,
to see the difference in our treatments. Secreta Vitæ comes
nearer to the case of my poor Kirstie. Come to think of
it, Gosse, I believe the main distinction is that you have
a family growing up around you, and I am a childless,
rather bitter, very clear-eyed, blighted youth. I have, in
fact, lost the path that makes it easy and natural for you
to descend the hill. I am going at it straight. And where
I have to go down it is a precipice.
I must not forget to give you a word of thanks for
An English Village. It reminds me strongly of Keats,
which is enough to say; and I was particularly pleased
with the petulant sincerity of the concluding sentiment.
Well, my dear Gosse, here’s wishing you all health
and prosperity, as well as to the mistress and the bairns.
May you live long, since it seems as if you would continue
to enjoy life. May you write many more books as
good as this one—only there’s one thing impossible, you
can never write another dedication that can give the
same pleasure to the vanished
Tusitala.
This question is with a view to the adventures of the hero in
St. Ives, who according to Stevenson’s original plan was to have
been picked up from his foundered balloon by an American privateer.
As to admire The Black Arrow.
The suppressed first part of the Amateur Emigrant, written in
San Francisco in 1879, which it was proposed now to condense and
to some extent recast for the Edinburgh Edition.
Word omitted in MS.
I may be allowed to quote the following sentence from a letter
of this gentleman written when the news of our friend’s death
reached England:—“So great was his power of winning love that
though I knew him for less than a week I could have borne the loss
of many a more intimate friend with less sorrow than Stevenson’s.
When I saw him, last Easter, there was no suggestion of failure of
strength. After all I had heard of his delicacy I was astonished at
his vigour. He was up at five, and at work soon after, and at
eleven o’clock at night he was dancing on the floor of the big room
while I played Scotch and Irish reels on the rickety piano. He
would talk to me for hours of home and old friends, but with a
wonderful cheerfulness, knowing himself banished from them for
life and yet brought close to them by love. I confidently counted
on his living; he took keen interest in my own poor work, and it
was one of my ambitions to send him a book some day which would
better deserve his attention.”
Sentimental Tommy: whose chief likeness to R. L. S. was meant
to be in the literary temperament and passion for the mot propre.
A proposed frontispiece for one of the volumes of the Edinburgh
Edition.
Sic: query “least”?
Of The Wrecker.
Trieb, impulse.
It seemed an obvious duty to publish the speech in question
through the English press, as the best proof both of Stevenson’s
wise and understanding methods of dealing with his native friends,
and of the affection and authority which he enjoyed among them.
I have reprinted it, as a necessary supplement to this letter, in
Appendix II. at end of the present volume.
Whitrett or Whitrack is Scots for a weasel: why applied to
Mr. Meiklejohn I know not.
He wrote hard all that morning of the last day; his half-finished
book, Hermiston, he judged the best he had ever
written, and the sense of successful effort made him buoyant
and happy as nothing else could. In the afternoon the
mail fell to be answered; not business correspondence—for
this was left till later—but replies to the long, kindly
letters of distant friends, received but two days since, and
still bright in memory.
At sunset he came downstairs; rallied his wife about
the forebodings she could not shake off; talked of a
lecturing tour to America that he was eager to make, “as
he was now so well,” and played a game at cards with
her to drive away her melancholy. He said he was hungry;
begged her assistance to help him make a salad for the
evening meal; and to enhance the little feast, he brought
up a bottle of old Burgundy from the cellar. He was
helping his wife on the verandah, and gaily talking, when
suddenly he put both hands to his head, and cried out,
“What’s that?” Then he asked quickly, “Do I look
strange?” Even as he did so he fell on his knees beside
her. He was helped into the great hall, between his wife
and his body-servant, Sosimo, losing consciousness instantly
as he lay back in the arm-chair that had once been
his grandfather’s. Little time was lost in bringing the
doctors—Anderson, of the man-of-war, and his friend
Dr. Funk. They looked at him and shook their heads;
they laboured strenuously, and left nothing undone; but
he had passed the bounds of human skill.
The dying man lay back in the chair, breathing heavily,
his family about him frenzied with grief, as they realised
all hope was past. The dozen and more Samoans that
formed part of the little clan of which he was chief sat
in a wide semicircle on the floor, their reverent, troubled,
sorrow-stricken faces all fixed upon their dying master.
Some knelt on one knee, to be instantly ready for any
command that might be laid upon them. A narrow bed
was brought into the centre of the room, the Master was
gently laid upon it, his head supported by a rest, the gift
of Shelley’s son. Slower and slower grew his respiration,
wider the interval between the long, deep breaths. The
Rev. Mr. Clarke was now come, an old and valued friend;
he knelt and prayed as the life ebbed away.
He died at ten minutes past eight on Monday evening
the 3rd of December, in the forty-fifth year of his age.
The great Union Jack that flew over the house was
hauled down, and laid over the body, fit shroud for a
loyal Scotsman. He lay in the hall which was ever his
pride, where he had passed the gayest and most delightful
hours of his life, a noble room with open stairway and
mullioned windows. In it were the treasures of his far-off
Scottish home: the old carved furniture, the paintings
and busts that had been in his father’s house before him.
The Samoans passed in procession beside his bed, kneeling
and kissing his hand, each in turn, before taking their
places for the long night watch beside him. No entreaty
could induce them to retire, to rest themselves for the
painful and arduous duties of the morrow. It would
show little love for Tusitala, they said, if they did not
spend their last night beside him. Mournful and silent,
they sat in deep dejection, poor, simple, loyal folk, fulfilling
the duty they owed their chief.
A messenger was despatched to the few chiefs connected
with the family, to announce the tidings and bid
them assemble their men on the morrow for the work
there was to do.
Sosimo asked on behalf of the Roman Catholics that
they might be allowed to recite the prayers for the dead.
Till midnight the solemn chants continued, the prolonged,
sonorous prayers of the Church of Rome, in commingled
Latin and Samoan. Later still, a chief arrived with his
retainers, bringing a precious mat to wrap about the dead.
He too knelt and kissed the hand of Tusitala, and
took his place amid the sleepless watchers. Another
arrived with a fine mat, a man of higher rank, whose
incipient consumption had often troubled the Master.
“Talofa Tusitala!” he said as he drew nigh, and took
a long, mournful look at the face he knew so well. When,
later on, he was momentarily required on some business of
the morrow, he bowed reverently before retiring. “Tofa
Tusitala!” he said, “Sleep, Tusitala!”
The morning of the 4th of December broke cool and
sunny, a beautiful day, rare at this season of the year.
More fine mats were brought, until the Union Jack lay
nigh concealed beneath them. Among the new-comers
was an old Mataafa chief, one of the builders of the “Road
of the Loving Hearts,” a man who had spent many days
in prison for participation in the rebellion. “I am only
a poor Samoan, and ignorant,” said he, as he crouched
beside the body; “others are rich, and can give Tusitala
the parting presents of rich fine mats; I am poor, and
can give nothing this last day he receives his friends. Yet
I am not afraid to come and look the last time in my
friend’s face, never to see him more till we meet with
God. Behold! Tusitala is dead; Mataafa is also dead
to us. These two great friends have been taken by God.
When Mataafa was taken, who was our support but Tusitala?
We were in prison, and he cared for us. We were
sick, and he made us well. We were hungry, and he fed
us. The day was no longer than his kindness. You are
great people and full of love. Yet who among you is so
great as Tusitala? What is your love to his love? Our
clan was Mataafa’s clan, for whom I speak this day;
therein was Tusitala also. We mourn them both.”
A meeting of chiefs was held to apportion the work and
divide the men into parties. Forty were sent with knives
and axes to cut a path up the steep face of the mountain,
and the writer himself led another party to the summit—men
chosen from the immediate family—to dig the
grave on a spot where it was Mr. Stevenson’s wish that he
should lie. Nothing more picturesque can be imagined
than the narrow ledge that forms the summit of Vaea, a
place no wider than a room, and flat as a table. On either
side the land descends precipitously; in front lies the
vast ocean and the surf-swept reefs; to the right and left
green mountains rise, densely covered with the primeval
forest. Two hundred years ago the eyes of another man
turned towards that same peak of Vaea as the spot that
should ultimately receive his war-worn body: Soalu, a
famous chief.
All the morning, Samoans were arriving with flowers;
few of these were white, for they have not learned our
foreign custom, and the room glowed with the many colours.
There were no strangers on that day, no acquaintances;
those only were called who would deeply feel the loss. At
one o’clock a body of powerful Samoans bore away the
coffin, hid beneath a tattered red ensign that had flown
above his vessel in many a corner of the South Seas. A
path so steep and rugged taxed their strength to the
utmost; for not only was the journey difficult in itself,
but extreme care was requisite to carry the coffin shoulder-high.
Half an hour later, the rest of his friends followed.
It was a formidable ascent, and tried them hard. Nineteen
Europeans, and some sixty Samoans, reached the
summit. After a short rest, the Rev. W. E. Clarke read
the burial service of the Church of England, interposing
a prayer that Mr. Stevenson had written and
had read aloud to his family only the evening before
his death:—
We beseech Thee, Lord, to behold us with favour, folk
of many families and nations, gathered together
in the peace of this roof; weak men and women,
subsisting under the covert of Thy patience.
Be patient still; suffer us yet a while longer—with
our broken purposes of good, and our idle endeavours
against evil—suffer us a while longer to
endure, and (if it may be) help us to do better.
Bless to us our extraordinary mercies; if the
day come when these must be taken, have us
play the man under affliction. Be with our
friends; be with ourselves. Go with each of us
to rest; if any awake, temper to them the dark
hours of watching; and when the day returns to
us, our sun and comforter, call us up with morning
faces and with morning hearts—eager to
labour—eager to be happy, if happiness shall
be our portion—and if the day be marked for
sorrow, strong to endure it.
We thank Thee and praise Thee; and in the words
of Him to whom this day is sacred, close our
oblation.
Mr. Stevenson said, “We are met together to-day to
celebrate an event and to do honour to certain chiefs,
my friends,—Lelei, Mataafa, Salevao, Poè, Teleso, Tupuola
Lotofaga, Tupuola Amaile, Muliaiga, Ifopo, and Fatialofa.
You are all aware in some degree of what has happened.
You know these chiefs to have been prisoners;
you perhaps know that during the term of their confinement
I had it in my power to do them certain favours.
One thing some of you cannot know, that they were immediately
repaid by answering attentions. They were liberated
by the new administration; by the King, and the
Chief Justice, and the Ta’its’ifono, who are here amongst
us to-day, and to whom we all desire to tender our renewed
and perpetual gratitude for that favour. As soon as
they were free men—owing no man anything—instead of
going home to their own places and families, they came to
me; they offered to do this work for me as a free gift,
without hire, without supplies, and I was tempted at
first to refuse their offer. I knew the country to be poor,
I knew famine threatening; I knew their families long
disorganised for want of supervision. Yet I accepted,
because I thought the lesson of that road might be more
useful to Samoa than a thousand breadfruit trees; and
because to myself it was an exquisite pleasure to receive
that which was so handsomely offered. It is now done;
you have trod it to-day in coming hither. It has been
made for me by chiefs; some of them old, some sick, all
newly delivered from a harassing confinement, and in spite
of weather unusually hot and insalubrious. I have seen
these chiefs labour valiantly with their own hands upon
the work, and I have set up over it, now that it is finished,
the name of ‘The Road of Gratitude’ (the road of loving
hearts) and the names of those that built it. ‘In perpetuam
memoriam,’ we say, and speak idly. At least so
long as my own life shall be spared, it shall be here
perpetuated; partly for my pleasure and in my gratitude;
partly for others; to continually publish the
lesson of this road.”
Addressing himself to the chiefs, Mr. Stevenson then
said:—
“I will tell you, Chiefs, that, when I saw you working
on that road, my heart grew warm; not with gratitude
only, but with hope. It seemed to me that I read the
promise of something good for Samoa: it seemed to me,
as I looked at you, that you were a company of warriors
in a battle, fighting for the defence of our common country
against all aggression. For there is a time to fight, and
a time to dig. You Samoans may fight, you may conquer
twenty times, and thirty times, and all will be in vain.
There is but one way to defend Samoa. Hear it before it
is too late. It is to make roads, and gardens, and care
for your trees, and sell their produce wisely, and, in one
word, to occupy and use your country. If you do not,
others will.”
The speaker then referred to the Parable of the Talents,
Matt. xxv. 14-30, and continuing, impressively asked:
“What are you doing with your talent, Samoa? Your
three talents, Savaii, Upolu, and Tutuila? Have you
buried it in a napkin? Not Upolu at least. You have
rather given it out to be trodden under feet of swine:
and the swine cut down food trees and burn houses, according
to the nature of swine, or of that much worse animal,
foolish man, acting according to his folly. ‘Thou knewest
that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I
have not strawed.’ But God has both sown and strawed
for you here in Samoa; He has given you a rich soil, a
splendid sun, copious rain; all is ready to your hand,
half done. And I repeat to you that thing which is sure:
if you do not occupy and use your country, others will.
It will not continue to be yours or your children’s, if you
occupy it for nothing. You and your children will in that
case be cast out into outer darkness, where shall be weeping
and gnashing of teeth; for that is the law of God which
passeth not away. I who speak to you have seen these
things. I have seen them with my eyes—these judgments
of God. I have seen them in Ireland, and I have seen
them in the mountains of my own country—Scotland—and
my heart was sad. These were a fine people in the
past—brave, gay, faithful, and very much like Samoans,
except in one particular, that they were much wiser and
better at that business of fighting of which you think so
much. But the time came to them as it now comes to
you, and it did not find them ready. The messenger came
into their villages, and they did not know him; they were
told, as you are told, to use and occupy their country,
and they would not hear. And now you may go through
great tracts of the land and scarce meet a man or a smoking
house, and see nothing but sheep feeding. The other
people that I tell you of have come upon them like a foe
in the night, and these are the other people’s sheep who
browse upon the foundation of their houses. To come
nearer; and I have seen this judgment in Oahu also. I
have ridden there the whole day along the coast of an
island. Hour after hour went by and I saw the face of
no living man except that of the guide who rode with me.
All along that desolate coast, in one bay after another, we
saw, still standing, the churches that have been built by
the Hawaiians of old. There must have been many
hundreds, many thousands, dwelling there in old times,
and worshipping God in these now empty churches. For
to-day they were empty; the doors were closed, the villages
had disappeared, the people were dead and gone;
only the church stood on like a tombstone over a grave,
in the midst of the white men’s sugar fields. The other
people had come and used that country, and the Hawaiians
who occupied it for nothing had been swept away, ‘where
is weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
“I do not speak of this lightly, because I love Samoa
and her people. I love the land, I have chosen it to be
my home while I live, and my grave after I am dead;
and I love the people, and have chosen them to be my
people to live and die with. And I see that the day is
come now of the great battle; of the great and the last
opportunity by which it shall be decided whether you
are to pass away like these other races of which I have
been speaking, or to stand fast and have your children
living on and honouring your memory in the land you
received of your fathers.
“The Land Commission and the Chief Justice will
soon have ended their labours. Much of your land will
be restored to you, to do what you can with. Now is
the time the messenger is come into your villages to summon
you; the man is come with the measuring rod; the fire
is lighted in which you shall be tried, whether you are gold
or dross. Now is the time for the true champions of Samoa
to stand forth. And who is the true champion of Samoa?
It is not the man who blackens his face, and cuts down
trees, and kills pigs and wounded men. It is the man who
makes roads, who plants food trees, who gathers harvests,
and is a profitable servant before the Lord, using and
improving that great talent that has been given him in
trust. That is the brave soldier; that is the true champion;
because all things in a country hang together like
the links of the anchor cable, one by another: but the
anchor itself is industry.
“There is a friend of most of us, who is far away; not
to be forgotten where I am, where Tupuola is, where Poè
Lelei, Mataafa, Solevao, Poè Teleso, Tupuola Lotofaga,
Tupuolo Amaile, Muliaiga, Ifopo, Fatialofa, Lemusu are.
He knew what I am telling you; no man better. He
saw the day was come when Samoa had to walk in a new
path, and to be defended not only with guns and blackened
faces, and the noise of men shouting, but by digging
and planting, reaping and sowing. When he was still
here amongst us, he busied himself planting cacao; he
was anxious and eager about agriculture and commerce,
and spoke and wrote continually; so that when we turn
our minds to the same matters, we may tell ourselves that
we are still obeying Mataafa. Ua tautala mai pea o ia
ua mamao.
“I know that I do not speak to idle or foolish hearers.
I speak to those who are not too proud to work for gratitude.
Chiefs! You have worked for Tusitala, and he
thanks you from his heart. In this, I could wish you
could be an example to all Samoa—I wish every chief in
these islands would turn to, and work, and build roads,
and sow fields, and plant food trees, and educate his
children and improve his talents—not for love of Tusitala,
but for the love of his brothers, and his children, and the
whole body of generations yet unborn.
“Chiefs! On this road that you have made many feet
shall follow. The Romans were the bravest and greatest
of people! mighty men of their hands, glorious fighters
and conquerors. To this day in Europe you may go
through parts of the country where all is marsh and bush,
and perhaps after struggling through a thicket, you shall
come forth upon an ancient road, solid and useful as the
day it was made. You shall see men and women bearing
their burdens along that even way, and you may tell
yourself that it was built for them perhaps fifteen hundred
years before,—perhaps before the coming of Christ,—by
the Romans. And the people still remember and bless
them for that convenience, and say to one another, that
as the Romans were the bravest men to fight, so they
were the best at building roads.
“Chiefs! Our road is not built to last a thousand
years, yet in a sense it is. When a road is once built, it
is a strange thing how it collects traffic, how every year,
as it goes on, more and more people are found to walk
thereon and others are raised up to repair and perpetuate
it and keep it alive; so that perhaps even this road of ours
may, from reparation to reparation, continue to exist and
be useful hundreds and hundreds of years after we are
mingled in the dust. And it is my hope that our far-away
descendants may remember and bless those who
laboured for them to-day.”
[For short Index to Vols. I.-XXII., see pp. 509-519.]
“Abbé Coignard” (France), xxv. 409, 410
Academy, The, xxiii. intro. xvii., 166;
contributions to, xxiii. 184, xxv. 364
“Across the Plains,” xxv. 123 & n. 1, xxv. 207, 224, 301 n. 1;
dedication, xxv. 127 & n. 1, xxv. 323 & n. 1;
inception, xxv. 97 & n. 1
“Actor’s Wife,” projected, xxiii. 308
Adams, Henry, historian, xxv. 4, 29, 41, 43, 45
“Address to the Unco Guid” (Burns), xxiii. 225
“Adela Chart” (“The Marriages,” H. James), xxv. 108-9, 110
“Adelaïde,” song (Beethoven), xxiii. 64
Adirondack Mountains, stay in, xxiv. 234, 306 et seq.
Admiral Benbow inn (Treasure Island), xxiii. 327
“Admiral Guinea,” play (with Henley), xxiii. 327; xxiv. 106, 119, 120, 146, 147; xxv. 447
“Admiral,” the (Story of a Lie), xxiii. 248, 249; xxiv. 90
“Adventures of David Balfour,” proposed double volume of, xxv. 283, 357, 366
“Æneid,” reading of, xxiv. 186, 265, 306
“Æsthetic Letters” (Schiller), xxiv. 71
Ahab, King, xxv. 304
“Ah perfido spergiuro,” song, xxiii. 166
Aitu fafine, an, xxv. 41, 135
Alabama case, xxiii. 110
“Aladdin” (Pyle), xxv. 164
Alais, visit to, xxiii. 216
“Alan Breck Stewart,” (“Catriona” and “Kidnapped”), xxiv. 201, 203, xxv. 46, 142;
letter as from, xxv. 46-8
Alexander, J. W., xxiv. 249, 250;
drawing by, of R. L. S., xxiv. 199
Allan Ramsay, Fergusson and Burns, essay on, projected, xxiii. 191, 192, 193
Allen, Grant, ballade by, xxiv. 248
“Amateur Emigrant,” xxiii. 235, 237, 239, 240, 244, 252, 254, 255, 259, 260, 265, 266, 267, 277, 352; xxv. 396-7 & n. 1, 398, 414, 423
“Amazing Marriage” (Meredith), R. L. S. drawn in, xxv. 344, 390-1
“Amelia Balfour,” see Jersey, Countess of
American politics, xxiii. 112
Anderson, Dr., xxv. 457-8
Andrews, Mrs., xxiii. 113
Angelo, Michael, xxiii. 32
Angus, W. Craibe, letters to, xxv. 69, 87, 118
“Annals of the Persecutions in Scotland” (Aikman), xxiii. 18
Anser, xxiii. 22
Anstey, F., xxv. 275
Anstruther, at, xxiii. 12
“Antichrist, L’” (Renan), xxv. 304
“Antiquary, The” (Scott), xxiv. 91
Antwerp, xxiii. 185
Apemama, Gilbert Islands, xxiv. 358
Apia, at, xxiv. 293, 370, 375; xxv. 226;
famous hurricane at, xxiv. 345, 346, 369, 371; xxv. 147, 172-3, 174;
prisoners at, gratitude shown by, to R. L. S., xxv. 367 et seq.
Apiang, Island, xxiv. 358
Apology, difficulty of, xxiii. 133, 134
“Apology for Idlers,” xxiii. 203, 204, 205, 207, 210
“Appeal to the Clergy of the Church of Scotland,” xxiii. 141, 142
Appin case (Catriona), xxv. 161, 351
Appin country, in, xxiii. 284
Appin Murder, xxiii. 284, 331, 332; xxv. 161, 351
Appleton, Dr., xxiii. intro. xvii. 143, 144, 168, 178
“Arblaster” (Black Arrow), xxiii. intro. xx.
Arbroath, Abbot of, xxiii. 29
Archer, Thomas, letter to, xxiv. 305
Archer, William, xxiv. 105, 161, 214;
letters to, xxiv. 147, 156, 161, 163, 247, 270, 272, 273, xxv. 384
Archer, William and Thomas, letter to, xxiv. 300
Areia, chief, xxiv. 315
Arnold, Matthew, xxiii. 15
Arthur’s Seat, xxiii. 71
Artist, the, problem of, xxv. 378-9
“Art of Literature,” projected, xxiii. 342
“Art of Virtue,” xxiii. 265
Asceticism and Christianity, xxiii. 213
Assurance of Faith, xxiii. 299, 300
“As You Like It” (Shakespeare), xxiv. 96
Atalanta, magazine, contributions to, xxv. 279 & n. 1, 283
Athenæum, xxiii. 239
“At Last” (Kingsley), xxiv. 101
“Attwater” (Ebb Tide), xxv. 301, 307, 350, 382
Atua, bombardment of, xxv. 424, 426
Auckland, visits to, xxv. 30, 34; xxv. 290, 291, 292
“Auld Licht Idylls” (Barrie), xxv. 264
“Auntie’s Skirts” (Child’s Garden of Verse), xxiii. 223
Aurévilly, Barbey d’, works of, xxiv. 83; xxv. 174, 314, 379
“Ausfürliche Erklarung der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche” (Lichtenberg), xxiii. 178
“Autolycus at Court,” xxiii. 170
“Autumn Effect, An,” xxiii. 155, 166; xxv. 397-8
Autun, xxiii. 216, 219
Avignon, at, xxiii. 77
Ayrshire and Galloway, walking tour in, xxiii. 182, 202
Babington, Mrs. Churchill, xxiii. 54;
letter to, xxiii. 30
Babington, Professor Churchill, xxiii. 30, 54; xxiv. 130
Bacon, Sir F., on Time, xxiii. 81
Baildon, H. B., xxv. 56;
letters to, xxv. 56, 377, 381
Baker, Mrs. A., letters to, xxv. 366, 413
Baker, Shirley, of Tonga, xxv. 40, 44
Baker, Sir Samuel, xxv. 175
Bakewell, Dr., letter to, xxv. 424
Balfour, Dr. George, xxiii. 330
Balfour, Graham, xxv. 221, 251 & n. 1, 292, 339, 348, 351, 355, 363, 406, 416;
“Life” of R. L. S., by, xxiii. intro. xix.;
at Vailima, xxv. 144, 374, 401, 403
Balfour, James, xxiii. 4
Balfour, Miss Jane, letter to, xxiii. 223
Balfour, Mr., of the Shaws, xxv. 47
Balfour, Mrs. Lewis, xxiii. 4, 5
Balfour of Burley (Old Mortality), xxiii. 130
Balfour, Rev. Lewis, xxiii. 4
“Balfour’s Letters,” xxv. 293
“Ballade in Hot Weather” (Henley), xxiv. 248
“Ballades, Rondeaus, etc.” (collected by Gleeson White), xxiv. 248
“Ballads,” xxiv. 380; xxv. 34, 53, 57, 73
Ballantyne, R., xxiii. intro. xxiii.
Balzac, xxv. 154;
on literary frenzy, xxiii. 173;
style of, xxiv. 60
Bamford, Dr. W., xxiii. 271;
letter to, xxiii. 272
“Barbara” (Catriona), xxv. 294-5
Barbizon, visits to, xxiii. 174 et seq., 183
Barmouth, visits to, xxiii. 124, 146
“Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities” (Billing), xxiv. 270
“Barrack Room Ballads” (Kipling), xxv. 48
“Barrel Organ,” xxiii. 171
Barrie, J. M., appreciation, xxv. 276-7:
letters to, xxv. 154, 264, 276, 362, 416
Barrie, Mrs. (Margaret Ogilvie), xxv. 417
Bartholomew, Messrs., xxv. 177
Basin, Thomas, xxiii. 203 & n. 1
Basselin, Olivier, poems by, xxiii. 193
Bass Rock, xxiii. 207
Bates, —, xxiii. 89
Bates, Edward Hugh Higlee, xxv. 384
Bates, E. M. G., xxv. 384
Bates, J. H., letter to, xxv. 384
Bathgate, the inn maid at, xxiii. 226, 227
“Bauble Shop,” play (H. A. Jones), xxv. 385
Baudelaire, —, xxiii. 160, 195
Baxter, Charles, xxiii. 3, 159, 174, 285, 336, 341, 353, 356; xxiv. 14, 47, 79; xxv. 174, 240, 266, 273, 306, 357;
letters to, xxiii. 33, 34, 46, 49, 52, 92, 193, 217, 262, 285, 336, 341; xxiv. 14, 121, 122, 200, 251, 260, 268, 286, 294, 296, 301, 303, 322, 327, 343, 344, 369, 375, 384, 392; xxv. 53, 82, 120, 177, 213, 270, 278, 288, 292, 337, 345, 360, 376, 392, 394, 433;
literary agency of, xxiv. 252;
scheme of, for “Edinburgh Edition,” xxv. 372 & n. 1, 373
Baxter, Edmund, xxiv. 394; xxv. 54;
death of, xxv. 433
Baynes, Professor Spencer, editor “Encyclopædia Britannica,” xxiii, 202
“Beachcombers” (with Lloyd Osbourne), xxiv. 361
“Beach de Mar,” projected xxv. 187
“Beach of Falesá,” xxv. 5, 20, 25, 76, 97, 102, 103 & n. 1, 120, 122, 131, 138, 147, 152, 221, 224, 235-6, & n. 1, 239, 240, 250, 266, 272, 274, 284;
illustrations to, xxv. 253-4, 288;
marriage contract in, xxv. 187 & n. 1;
publication, xxv. 1.
“Beau Austin,” play (with Henley), xxiv. 106
Becker, Consul, xxv. 139, 141, 268
“Becket” (Tennyson), xxv. 385
“Bedtime” projected, xxiv. 99
“Beggars” (Scribner’s), xxiv. 235, 253; xxv. 97, 209, 301
Bell Rock, book on, xxiv. 78; xxv. 322;
controversy on, xxiv. 121
Bell, the, in the Vailima woods, xxv. 277
Ben More, xxiii. 318
Bennet, Dr., xxiii. 84, 101
Bentley, publisher, xxiii. 336, 339, 346
Béranger, article on, xxiii. 186, 191, 193
Bereavement, xxiv. 52
Berlin Convention, xxv. 6
Berlioz, paper on (Henley), xxiii. 318
“Bête Humaine” (Zola), xxiv. 396; xxv. 319
“Betteredge” (Moonstone), xxiii. 18
Bickford, Captain, R.N., C.M.G., xxv. 334, 351
Bitter Creek, xxiii. 234
Black and White, contributions to, xxiii. 286, 337, 341
“Black Arrow,” xxiv. 5, 31, 56, 247, 376, 385 & n. 1;
serial issue, xxiv. 55;
success, xxiv. 68;
suggested French version, xxiv. 398
“Black Canyon” (L. Osbourne), xxiii. 347, 348, 349
Blackie, Professor, xxiii. 28, 30, 306
Blacklock, Consul, xxv. 142
“Black Man,” xxiii. 308
Blackwood’s Magazine, xxiv. 370
Blair of Blairmyle (see “Young Chevalier”), xxv. 216
“Blanche Amory” (Thackeray), xxiv. 212
“Bloody Wedding,” projected, xxv. 66, 97
Board of Trade Offices, xxiv. 87
Boccaccio, xxv. 301
“Body Snatchers,” xxiii. 308, 316, 321; xxiv. 125, 130; xxv. 397
“Bondage of Brandon” (Hemming), xxiii. 333
“Bondman, The” (Hall Caine), xxiv. 396-7
Boodle, Miss Adelaide, xxiv. 375;
letters to, xxiv. 231, 259, 267, 284, 297, 339, 401; xxv. 80, 147, 217, 243, 248, 410
“Book, A, of Stories,” projected contents, xxiii. 171
“Book of Verses” (Henley), xxv. 121
Book Reader, notice of “Prince Otto,” xxiv. 195
Books wanted, xxiii. 36, 332; xxiv. 78, 101, 130, 134, 270, 274, 338; xxv. 111, 112, 174, 215, 271, 287, 293, 346, 361, 392
Boswell, James, xxiii. 193, 203, 295
“Bottle Imp,” xxiv. 292; xxv. 272, 284, 340;
Samoan translation, xxv. 64 & n. 1
Bough, Sam, painter, xxiii. 24, 26-30; xxiv. 60
Bourget, Paul, xxv. 130-2, 315, 323
Bourke, Captain, R.N., xxv. 263
Bournemouth, at, xxiv. 104 et seq.; xxv. 111
“Bouroche, Major” (Débâcle), xxv. 250
Braemar, at, xxiii. 282, 313, 320
Braille, books by R. L. S., to be issued in, xxv. 366, 413
Brandeis, xxv. 141
“Brashiana,” burlesque sonnets, xxiii. 283; xxiv. 14, 38, 39
Brash, the publican, xxiii. 336; xxiv. 14
Braxfield (Weir of Hermiston), xxv. 260 & n. 1, 264-5;
portrait of, xxv. 453
Bridge of Allan, at, xxiii. 33, 174
British Museum, visits to, xxiv. 105, 107, 186-7, 202, 229, 365
Bronson, —, editor, xxiii. 240
Brooke, Rajah, xxv. 129
Brown, —, xxiv. 230
Brown, Dr. John, verses to, xxiii. 296, 297
Brown, Horatio F., xxiii. 303, 304;
letters to, xxiii. 303, 304
Brown, Mrs., xxiii. 13
Brown, Rev. Dr., xxv. 312
Brown R. Glasgow (editor of London), xxiii. 184, 251;
illness, xxiii. 214 & n. 1
Browne, Gordon, xxv. 301, 305;
letter to, xxv. 252
Browning, Robert, xxiv. 107, 202;
book on, by Gosse, xxv. 74
Bruce, Michael, xxiii. 71
Bruno, Father, xxiv. 312, 334
Brussels, at, xxiii. 36
Buckinghamshire, walking tour in, xxiii. 124, 155
Buckle, Mrs., xxiv. 176
“Bucolics” (Virgil), xxiii. 18
“Bummkopf” (typical pedant), xxiii. 225
Bunner, —, xxiv. 64, 154
Bunting, —, xxiv. 227
Bunyan, John, xxiv. 29;
essay on, xxiii. 334; xxv. 398
Burford Bridge, visit to, xxiii. 183
Burial customs, Gilbert Islanders’, xxiv. 400-1
Burke, Edmund, xxiii. 71
Burlingame, E. L., editor of Scribner’s Magazine, xxiv. 233; xxv. 6, 138;
letters to, xxiv. 253-4, 269, 273-4, 319, 338, 367, 376, 387, 394, xxv. 24, 32, 86, 110, 128, 145, 174, 210, 215, 257, 266
Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, xxiii. 224; xxiv. 101, 107, 202; xxv. 394
Burney, “Admiral,” R.N., xxv. 394
Burn, Miss, xxiv. 89
Burns Exhibition, Glasgow, xxv. 69, 87 et seq.
Burns, Robert, xxiii. intro. xxiii.; xxv. 69, 70, 88, 395-6;
articles and writings on, xxiii. 111, 151, 179, 191, 192, 193, 202, 203, 224, 226, 237, 241, 245, 250, 263, 273, 358, xxiv. 63;
house of, Dumfries, xxiii. 66;
judgment on, xxiii. 224;
poems of, xxiii. 4, xxiv. 256
Burt, xxiii. 298
Bussard, the ship, xxv. 425
Butaritari, Gilbert Islands, xxiv. 358
“But still our hearts are true” (Eglinton), xxv. 69, 70
“But yet the Lord that is on high” (Scotch Psalter), xxiii. 23
“By Proxy” (Payn), xxiv. 7
Byron, Lord, xxiii. 132;
essay on (Henley), xxiii. 318; xxiv. 7
Caldecott, Randolph, xxiii. 248, 267
California, visit to, xxiii. 228
Calistoga, at, xxiii. 277
Calton Hill (Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh), xxiii. 216
Calvin, John, studies in, xxiii. 126
Cambridge, visits to, xxiii. 219; xxiv. 105
Cameron, Captain, xxiv. 349, 350
Campagne Defli, at, xxiv. 4, 8 et seq.
Campbell of Glenure, murder of, xxiii. 284, 331, 332
Campbell, Rev. Professor Lewis, xxiii. 278, 316;
letter to, xxiv. 113
“Canadian Boat Song” (Earl of Eglinton), xxv. 69, 70
Candlish, Dr., xxiv. 63
“Cannon Mills,” projected, xxiv. 403
Canoe Journey in France (see Inland Voyage), xxiii. 204
“Canoe, The, Speaks” (Underwoods), xxiv. 89, 231
“Canterbury Pilgrimage” (Chaucer), illustrated, gift of, xxiv. 149
“Capitaine Fracasse, Le” (Théophile Gautier), xxiii. 75
Cap Martin, xxiii. intro. xxxiv., 93, 114
“Captain Singleton” (Defoe), xxiv. 101, 102
Carlyle, Thomas, xxiii. 302;
xxiv. 135;
appreciation of, xxiii. 301, 302;
on Coleridge, xxiii. 220
“Carmosine” (Musset), xxiv. 97
Carrington, C. Howard, letter to, xxiv. 152
Carr, T. Comyns, xxiv. 68
Carruthers, —, xxv. 40
Carson, Mrs., xxiii. 252
“Carthew” (Wrecker), xxv. 112 & n. 1
“Casamassima” (H. James), xxiv. 263
Casco, schooner, cruise in, xxiv. 234, 287 et seq., 290-1, 300, 305, 310, 312-3, 316 et seq., 325 et seq.
“Case Bottle,” xxiii. 281
“Cashel Byron’s Profession” (Shaw), xxiv. 270-1
“Casparidea,” unpublished, xxiii. 283
“Cassandra” (Mrs. R. L. Stevenson), xxiv. 22
Cassell and Co., xxiv. 110, 127; xxv. 57, 110, 124, 272, 283
“Catriona” (at first called “David Balfour,” q.v.), xxiii. intro. xxiii., 331; xxiv. 190, 402; xxv. 108, 144, 155, 158 & n. 1, 160-1, 163, 166-7, 172, 187, 192, 201-2, 211, 215, 240, 250, 264, 274, 283, 290, 298, 301, 305, 310, 316, 344, 351 & n. 1, 352, 378;
in Braille, xxv. 366;
characters in, xxv. 216;
draft of, xxv. 162;
maps for, xxv. 177-8;
“my high-water mark,” xxv. 393 (but see 379);
projected illustrations, xxv. 349 n. 1;
replies to remarks on, xxv. 294 et seq.;
restraint of description in, xxv. 367
Cavalier (de Sonne), xxiii. 307
Cavalier, Jean, xxiii. 306, 307
“Cavalier,” The (G. P. R. James), xxiv. 274
Cedercrantz, Conrad, Chief Justice of Samoa, xxv. 7, 13, 48-9, 67, 95-6, 98-100, 102, 124-5, 175, 188, 239, 256, 275, 278, 281, 286, 305, 364, 376, 380-1
Celtic blood in Britain, xxv. 379
Century Magazine, xxiv. 26, 30, 55, 90, 171;
article in, by H. James, on R. L. S., xxiv. 250-1;
contributions to, xxiii. 338, xxiv. 55, 170, 171, 185;
critical notice in, of R. L. S., xxiv. 63, 64
Cévennes, the tramp in (see “Travels with a Donkey”), xxiii. 183
Ceylon, projected visit, xxv. 98
Chair of History and Constitutional Law, Edinburgh University, candidature for, xxiii. 282, 309 et seq., 331, 335, 336
Chalmers, Rev. J., xxv. 30, 33, 39, 56-7
“Chapter of Artistic History,” suggested title for proposed book by Henley, xxiii. 318
“Chapter on Dreams” (Scribner’s), xxiv. 235; xxv. 97
“Character of Dogs” (English Illustrated), xxiv. 67; xxv. 41 n. 2
“Charity Bazaar,” xxv. 398
Charles of Orleans, paper on, xxiii. 182, 191, 192, 202, 203, 204
“Charlotte” (Sorrows of Werther), xxiii. 60, 61
Charteris, Rev. Dr., xxiv. 276;
letters to, xxiv. 276, 279
Chastity, xxiii. 338, 360
Chateaubriand (Sainte-Beuve), xxiii. 78
Chatto, Andrew, letter to, xxiv. 110
Chatto and Windus, publishers, xxiii. 335; xxiv. 110; xxv. 395;
letter to, xxiv. 231
Chepmell, Dr., xxiv. 242
Chester visited, xxiii. 145, 146
“Chevalier Des Touches”
(d’Aurévilly), xxv. 174, 314, 380
Chicago Exhibition, xxv. 379
Children, feelings towards, xxiii. 99, 101, 147, 171
Children in the [Kilburn] Cellar (see also Boodle), letter to, xxv. 243
“Child’s Garden of Verse,” xxiii. 282; xxiv. 5, 17 et seq., 24, 54, 55, 70, 99 et seq., 106, 116, 154; xxv. 385;
dedication, xxiv. 16, 19, 27, 92;
illustrations, xxiv. 18 et seq., 32, 115;
publication, xxiv. 138, 140;
reviews, xxiv. 147
“Child’s Play,” xxiv. 70; xxv. 301
Chiltern Hills, visited, xxiii. 155
“Choice of Books” (F. Harrison), xxv. 113
Christianity and Asceticism, xxiii. 213
Christmas Books (Dickens), xxiii. 148
Christmas Day at Vailima, xxv. 40-1
“Christmas Sermon,” xxv. 123 n. 1
Christ’s Hospital, xxiv. 206, 207
Chrystal, Professor, xxiv. 118
“Cimourdain” (Quatre-vingt Treize, by Hugo), xxiii. 130 n. 1
“Clarissa Harlowe” (Richardson), xxiii. 210
Clarke, Mrs. W. E., xxv. 26
Clark, R. & R., printers, xxv. 124
Clark, Rev. W. E., missionary, xxiv. 371; xxv. 10, 11 & n. 1, 26, 30, 64 n. 1, 101; xxv. 203, 236, 329, 330, 422, 458, 460
Clark, Sir Andrew, xxiii. 55, 77, 84
Claxton, missionary, xxv. 64
Clinton, —, xxiii. 332, 333
Clouds, descriptions of, xxv. 178-9
Club, at Vailima, xxv. 168, 170, 176
Clytie, bust of, xxiii. 170
Cockfield Rectory, xxiii. 276;
at, xxiii. 54, 56
“Coggie,” see Ferrier, Miss
Coleridge, S. T., xxiii. 220
Colinton, manse of, xxiii. 5
“Collected Essays” (Huxley), xxiv. 219
Collins, Wilkie, xxiii. 238
“Colonel Jack” (Defoe), xxiv. 101, 103
Colorado, xxiv. 110 et seq., 229 et seq., 234
Colvin, Lady (see also Sitwell, Mrs.), xxiii. 54
Colvin, Sir Sidney, xxiii. 88, 91, 93, 94 et seq., 116, 117, 152; xxiv. 13, 47, 133, 191, 210, 216, 278, 323, 343, 396;
choice of, for literary executor, xxiii. intro. xviii.;
introduction of Eeles to, xxv. 452;
letters to (see especially xxv. 5), xxiii. 75, 76, 105, 106, 108, 124, 127, 129, 140, 141, 143, 157, 167, 169, 173, 178, 186, 191, 195, 196, 201, 202, 206, 211, 212, 225, 230, 232, 234, 235, 241, 244, 247, 251, 253, 258, 267, 269, 272, 273, 274, 276, 284, 291, 297, 300, 308, 310, 316, 320, 339, 349; xxiv. 15, 33, 55, 69, 81, 98, 99, 101, 134, 136, 137, 186, 189, 192, 210, 219, 227, 235-6, 238, 264, 265, 275, 283, 285, 293, 295, 298, 316, 329, 336, 353, 357, 362, 385; xxv. 9, 25, 34, 48, 54, 58, 66, 76, 83, 90, 94, 102, 112, 121, 132, 152, 156, 166, 178, 193, 211, 221, 230, 249, 258, 271, 282, 289, 291, 294, 299, 310, 324, 338, 347, 352, 367, 380, 382, 387, 396, 404, 414, 422, 430, 441 (the last), 448;
letters to, from Mrs. R. L. Stevenson, xxiv. 308, 347;
portraits of, xxv. 78-9, 80 & n. 1, 83-5, 94, 100;
testimonial from, xxiii. 316
“Come back” (Clough), xxiii. 294
Comines, Philippe de, xxiii. 193
Commissioners of Northern Lights, yacht of, xxv. 98 & n. 1
“Comtesse d’Escarbaguas” (Molière), xxiv. 123
“Comtesse de Rudolstadt” (Sand), xxiii. 135
“Confessions” (St. Augustine), xxiv. 82-3
Congdon, L. C., xxv. 384
Conrad, Joseph, xxv. 76
“Consuelo” (Sand), xxiii. 87, 135
Consulship, xxv. 208 & n. 1
Contemporary Review, contributions to, xxiv. 143, 181, 227; xxv. 398
Cook’s “Voyages,” xxv. 346
“Coolin,” Skye terrier, xxiv. 201
Coquelin, xxiii. 276
Cornhill Magazine, xxiii. intro. xvii.; xxiv. 355;
contributions to, xxiii. 56, 104, 125, 129, 180, 184, 191, 201, 203, 204, 205, 206, 208, 210, 211, 224, 237, 238, 256, 258, 264, 281, 341, 352, 355; xxiv. 90; xxv. 397;
Henley’s “Hospital” poems in, xxiii. 174 n. 1, 176
Cornwall, Barry, xxv. 29 n. 2
Cornwall, impressions of, xxiii. 207
“Correspondence” (Wodrow’s), xxiii. 291
Corsica, glimpse of, xxiii. 108
“Country Dance,” xxiii. 171, 172
“Country Wife” (Wycherley), Lamb’s essay on, xxiv. 87
Covenanters, xxiii. 65, 67;
rhyming by, xxv. 363
Craig, —, xxiii. 25
Cramond, xxiii. 61
“Cramond” and other cousins, xxiv. 44
Crane, Walter, xxiii. 212; xxiv. 32
“Crashaw,” essay (Gosse), xxiii. 291
“Crime inconnu” (Méry), xxiii. 258
“Crime, Le, et le Châtiment” (Dostoieffsky), xxiv. 182 n. 1, 183
“Criminal Trials” (Arnott), xxiii. 332
“Critical Kitcats” (Gosse), xxiv. 235
Critic, The, notice in, xxiv. 64
Crockett, S. R., xxv. 349 & n. 2, 403;
letters to, xxiv. 280; xxv. 305
Crosse, Henry, sculptor, xxv. 383
Cumming, Miss Gordon, xxiv. 308
Cummy (see Cunningham)
Cunningham, Alison, xxiii. 5, 69, xxiv. 100;
letters to, xxiii. 32, 340; xxiv. 16, 17, 44, 167, 196, 200, 202, 204, 220; xxv. 359, 445
Curaçoa, H.M.S., xxv. 189, 202, 234, 267 et seq., 416, 425;
officers of, xxv. 374, 389, 405-9, 414, 447, 450;
petty officers’ ball, xxv. 414-5
“Curate of Anstruther’s Bottle,” xxiii. 108, 109, 170
Curtin, Jeremiah, widow and daughters of, xxiv. 108, 222
Cusack-Smith, Sir Berry, xxv. 334
Dalgleish, Dr. Scott, and the Ballantyne Memorial, xxv. 393
Damien, Father, xxiv. 291-2, 349, 354, 356;
letter on, xxiv. 383-4, 391 n. 1, 404; xxv. 124
“Damned Ones of the Indies” (Joseph Méry), xxiii. 258
Damon, Rev. F., xxiv. 383
“Dance of Death” (Rowlandson’s), xxv. 292-3
Dancing Children (Notes on the Movements of Young Children), xxv. 397-8
“Daniel Deronda” (George Eliot), xxiii. 210
Darien affair, books on, wanted, xxv. 361
Darwin, Charles, xxiii. 57, 122
David Balfour, character, xxv. 155, 189-90
“David Balfour” (title first given both to “Kidnapped” and “Catriona,” q.v.), xxiv. 179, 190-1, 196, 201, 204; xxv. 108, 144, 158 & n. 1, 160, 161-2, 163, 167, 172, 177, 279, 283, 313, 316, 351, 366, 379;
“Catriona” issued as, in serial form, xxv. 294;
historical introduction planned, xxv. 376;
unfinished, xxiv. 402
Davis, Dr., of Savaii, xxv. 32
Davos, visits to, xxiii. intro. xxxiv., 280 et seq., 331 et seq.;
papers on (Pall Mall Gazette), xxiii. 281, 347
“Dawn of the Century” (Ashton), xxv. 392
“Day after To-morrow” (Contemporary), xxv. 398
“Deacon Brodie,” play (with Henley), xxiii. 185, 257; xxiv. 119, 230, 248;
production, xxiv. 99, 102, 261
“Dead Man’s Letter,” projected, xxiii. 249, 308
Deans, Jeanie, xxiii. 65
“Death in the Pot,” projected, xxv. 314 & n. 1
Death, thoughts on, xxiii. 136, 275, 276; xxiv. 58, 162, 183, 227
“Débâcle” (Zola), xxv. 250 & n. 1, 318, 319, 379
Deborah and Barak, fancies on, xxiii. 154, 155
“Decisions of the Lords of Council” (Fountainhall), xxv. 293, 336, 360
“Defence of Idlers” (see “Apology for Idlers”)
Defoe, Daniel, works of, xxiv. 101, 103
“Delafield,” xxiii. 350; xxv.55-6 n. 1
“Delhi,” and other cousins, xxiv. 44
de Mattos, Mrs., letters to, xxiii. 199; xxiv. 152, 167
“Demi-Monde” (Dumas fils), scene in, xxiv. 273
Depression, xxiii. 199, 200
De Quincey, Thomas, biography of (Japp), xxiii. 321
“Dernière Aldini, La,” xxiv. 97
Desborough, Mrs., xxiv. 177
Descamps, Maxime, xxiv. 405
“Descent of Man” (Darwin), xxiii. 57
des Ursins, Juvénal, xxiii. 192
“Devil on Cramond Sands,” xxiii. 170, 249, 308
Dew-Smith, A. G., xxiv. 151;
letter to, xxiii. 287
Dhu Heartach lighthouse, xxiii. 10
“Diaboliques, Les” (d’Aurévilly), xxv. 174
“Dialogue of Character and Destiny,” unfinished, xxiii. 257, 267
“Dialogue on Man, Woman, and ‘Clarissa Harlowe,’” projected, xxiii. 211
Diana of the Ephesians, play on, planned, xxiii. 124, 125
“Diary,” suggested publication of, xxv. 208
Dick, Mr., xxiv. 135; letter to, xxiv. 83
“Dickon Crookback” (Black Arrow), xxiii. intro. xx.
“Dictionary of Music” (Grove), xxiii. 151
Didier, Father, xxv. 67
“Die Judin” at Frankfurt, xxiii. 44
Disappointment, xxiii. 295
Dobell, Dr., xxiv. 201, 230
Dobson, Austin, xxiii. 307; xxiv. 205;
letter to, xxiv. 126
“Dr. Syntax’s Tour,” xxv. 292-3
“Dodd” (Wrecker), xxv. 378
“Dogs” (Mayhew), xxiii. 341
“Dolly” (Way of the World), xxiii. 215
Donadieu’s restaurant, xxiii. 254
Donat, —, xxiv. 312
“Don Juan” (Byron), xxiii. 354
“Don Juan,” unfinished play (with Henley), xxiii. 256, 257, 258
Dorchester, visited, xxiv. 153
Dostoieffsky’s works, xxiv. 182-3
Dover, T. W., letter to, xxv. 209
Dowden, Professor, xxiv, 211-12
Dowdney, —, xxv. 138
Dowson, Mr., xxiii. 86, 88
Doyle, Sir A. Conan, letters to, xxv. 298, 336, 429
“Dreams,” xxv. 97
Duddingston Loch, xxiii. 75, 164
“Du hast Diamanten und Perlen,” song, xxiii. 58
Dumas, Alexandre (pêre), xxiii. 347;
Henley’s book on, xxiv. 54, 257
Dumas, novels of, xxiv. 398
Dumfries, at, xxiii. 64
Dunblane, at, xxiii. 33
Dunnet, —, xxv. 106
Dunoyer, Olympe, xxiii. 307
“Du schönes Fischermädchen,” song (Schubert), xxiii. 139
Dutra, Augustin, xxiii. 240
Dutton, Mr., xxiv. 356
“Dyce of Ythan,” projected (see also “The Young Chevalier”), xxv. 172
“Dynamiter, The,” xxiv. 114, 176
Dynamite, views on, xxiv. 108
Earraid, Isle of, xxiii. 10, 24, 318
“Earthly Paradise” (Morris), xxiii. 36
Easter Island, images from, xxiv. 362, 367
“Ebb Tide” (with Lloyd Osbourne), xxiv. 361, 399 & n. 1, 402; xxv. 120, 172 & n. 1, 281, 288 et seq., 290 & n. 1, 301 et seq., 307, 310, 314 et seq., 318, 321, 325, 350, 353, 372;
criticism, xxv. 347 et seq.;
illustrations for, notes on, xxv. 301
“Echoes” (Henley), xxv. 215
Eckenhelm, xxiii. 39
“Eclogues” (Virgil), xxiii. 34
Edinburgh Academy (school), old boys’ dinner, xxiii. 168, 169
Edinburgh, at, xxiii. passim;
homes in, xxiii. 5;
life at, 1874-5, xxiii. 123 et seq.
Edinburgh Castle, xxiii. 69, 71
Edinburgh Courant, wanted, xxv. 392
Edinburgh Edition of works, xxv. 372-3, 394, 396, 404, 414;
illustrations in, xxv. 423 & n. 1;
suggested prefaces, xxv. 376
“Edinburgh Eleven” (Barrie), xxv. 276
Edinburgh, influence of, xxv. 155
Edinburgh, “Picturesque Notes on,” xxiii. 185, 211, 216, 218
Edinburgh Review, article in, on Rembrandt, by Colvin, xxiii. 225
Edinburgh Society of Arts, medal awarded to R. L. S., xxiii. 10
Edinburgh streets, xxiv. 100
Edinburgh University, Speculative Society at, xxiii. 35, 64, 184; xxiii. 312; xxiv. 178
studies at, xxiii. 8 et seq.
Eeles, Lieutenant, R.N., xxv. 415;
letters to, xxv. 267, 451
Effort, uses of, xxiv. 88
Eglinton, Hugh, 12th Earl of, xxv. 69
“Egoist, The” (Meredith), xxiii. 353
Eimeo, storm near, xxiv. 324
“Einst, O Wunder, einst,” song, xxiii. 65
“Elements of Style” (Contemporary Review), xxiv. 181
Elgin marbles, the, xxiii. 158-60, 163-4
Eliot, George, works of, xxiii. 210
Elstree murder, xxiii. 338
“Emerson” (H. James), xxiv. 278
“Emigrant Train, The,” xxv. 97
“Encyclopædia Britannica,” contributions to, xxiii. 179, 186, 191, 202-3
“Endymion” (Keats), xxiv. 170
“Engineer’s Thumb” (Doyle), xxv. 340
England and Samoa, xxv. 6 et seq.
England and Scotland, contrasts between, xxiii. 56 et seq.
English Illustrated Magazine, contributions to, xxiv. 68 & n. 1
“English Odes,” edited by Gosse, xxiii. 292;
suggestions concerning, xxiii. 293-4
English, the, mock definition of, xxiii. 225
“English Village, An” (Gosse), xxv. 457
“English Worthies” Series, book for, xxiv. 134
“Ensorcelée, L’” (d’Aurévilly), xxv. 314, 380
“Epilogue to an Inland Voyage,” xxiv. 68
Epitaph for himself, by R. L. S., xxiii. 269; xxv. 375
Epitaph (mock) on himself, xxiv. 69
Equator, schooner, cruise in, xxiv. 291-2, 340, 343, 347, 357-8, 369, 390; xxv. 3
“Eroica” Symphony (Beethoven), xxiii. 166
“Escape at Bedtime” (“Child’s Garden”), xxiv. 55
Essays, xxiii. 143;
selected, projected volume and suggested contents, xxv. 301 & n. 1
“Essays in Art” (Hamerton), xxiii. 242
“Essays in London” (H. James), xxv. 367
“Essays on the Art of Writing,” xxiv. 265
“Essays on Travel,” xxiii. 201, 281
“Etherege,” essay (Gosse), xxiv. 45
“Evan Harrington” (Meredith), characters in, xxiv. 97
Evictions, Highland, xxiii. 298
“Evictions” (Miller), xxiii. 297
Ewing, Professor, xxiv. 226
Exeter, visited, xxiv. 105, 153
“Expansion of England” (Seeley), xxiv. 55, 56
“Fables in Song,” xxiii. 127-8, 132, 141, 142
“Fables” (Lord Lytton), xxiii. 129
Fage, xxiii. 307
Fairchild, Blair, xxiv. 239, 405
Fairchild, Charles, xxiv. 233, 237, 239, 250;
letter to, xxiv. 246
Fairchild, Mrs. Charles, xxiv. 233, 237, 239, 250; xxv. 379;
letters to, xxiv. 403; xxv. 163, 240
Fair Isle, visit to, xxiii. 24
Fakarava, at, xxiv. 295, 312
“Falconers, The Two, of Cairnstane,” xxiii. 170
Falke, the, xxv. 425
Fall of Man, the, xxiii. 212
“Familiar Essays,” xxiv. 230
“Familiar Studies of Men and Books,” xxiii. 149, 224, 229, 351, 355;
publication, xxiii. 335.
“Family of Engineers” (“History of the Stevensons” or the “Northern Lights”), unfinished; xxv. 120, 310, 315-6, 319-20, 322, 334, 339, 348, 357;
germ of, xxiv. 279; xxv. 95
“Family of Love,” xxiii. 170
“Fantasio” (de Musset), xxiv. 97
Farehau, xxiv. 310, 315
“F.A.S., In Memoriam” (Underwoods), xxiii. 300
Fast-day, xxiii. 153
“Fastidious Brisk,” sobriquet, xxiv. 72
“Faust” (Goethe), xxiv. 71
Faxon, —, xxiv. 390
“Femmes Savantes” (Molière), xxiv. 123
Fenian dynamite outrages, xxiii. 320
Fergusson, Robert, poet, xxiv. 214, 215; xxv. 57, 70-1, 88;
monument, xxv. 395-6
Ferrier, James Walter, xxiii. 48, 223; xxiv. 46, 47, 63, 98;
appreciation of, xxiv. 46 et seq.;
collaboration with, xxv. 398;
death, xxiv. 6, 46 et seq., 59, 69, 71-2, 96 n. 1;
letter to, xxiii. 269
Ferrier, Miss, xxiv. 90;
letters to, xxiv. 46, 52, 71, 88, 121, 132, 282
Festetics de Solna, Count, at Apia, xxv. 415
Fielding, Henry, xxiii. 129
Fiji, xxv. 50, 96, 102
Fiji, High Commissioner of, proclamation by, xxv. 280
“Finsbury Tontine, The” (see “Wrong Box”)
Flaubert, Gustave, on prose, xxv. 71-2
Fleming, Marjorie, xxiv. 245 n. 1;
verses of, xxv. 385
“Flint, Captain” (“Treasure Island”), xxiii. 326
“Flowers of the Forest,” air, xxiii. 113
Folau, —, Chief Judge, xxv. 30
“Folk Lore” (Lang), xxiv. 130
Folleté, M., xxiii. 100
“Fons Bandusiæ” (Macdonald), xxiv. 249
Fontainebleau (see also Barbizon, and “Forest Notes”), visits to, xxiii. 124, 182, 183, 184, 189, 282, 305
“Footnote to History,” xxiv. 362 et seq., 369 et seq., 386; xxv. 5, 41 n. 1, 117, 120, 122, 124, 126, 129-30, 138, 140-4, 146, 163, 172, 188, 192, 211, 250, 257, 267, 274;
publication of, xxv. 146;
German reception of, xxv. 346
“Foreigner, The, at Home,” essay, xxiii. 56
“Forester,” unfinished paper (J. W. Ferrier), xxiii. 269
“Forest Notes,” essay on Fontainebleau (Magazine of Art), xxiii. 180, 181, 186, 198, 201, 202; xxiv. 32, 57, 58, 67, 68 n. 1; xxv. 397-8
“Forest State, The: A Romance” (see also “Prince Otto”), xxiii. 259, 265, 266
Forfeited Estates, tenants of, xxiii. 298
Forster, —, xxiii. 321
Forth, Firth of, xxiii. 61, 68, 69
Fortnightly Review, contributions to, xxiii. 127, 132, 281
“Fortune by Sea and Land” (Heywood), xxiii. 354
Fortune, Mr. and Mrs., xxiii. 15
“Fortunes of Nigel” (Scott), xxiv. 91
Foss, Captain, xxv. 106
“Four Great Scotsmen,” project for, xxiii. 111
“Fra Diavolo,” at Frankfurt, xxiii. 42
France, Anatole, xxv. 321, 409
Franchise for working men, xxiii. 97
François, a baker, xxiii. 240; xxiv. 42
François Villon, xxiii. 182, 191, 192, 207; xxiv. 397;
Schwob’s writings on, xxv. 52
Frank, —, xxv. 330
Frankfurt, at, xxiii. 38
Franklin, Benjamin, article on, projected, xxiii. 253, 265, 266, 333
Fraser’s Magazine, contribution to, xxv. 97, 123
French possessions in the Pacific, xxiv. 293
French translations, see letters to Schwob
“Friend,” the (S. T. Coleridge), xxiii. 221
Friends, the six, xxiv. 47
“Fruits of Solitude” (Penn), xxiii. 303
Funk, Dr., xxv. 416, 458
Galitzin, Prince Leon, xxiii. 119, 120, 121, 125, 155
Galpin, —, xxiv. 202
“Gamekeeper,” sobriquet for Miss Boodle, xxiv. 259, 284
“Game of Bluff,” see “Wrong Box”
Garschine, Madame, xxiii. 98, 99, 102, 108, 115, 147;
letter from, xxiii. 128
“Gauvain” (Quatre-vingt Treize, by Hugo), xxiii. 130 n. 1
“Gavin Ogilvy,” character (Barrie), xxv. 277
“Gavottes Célèbres” (Litolf’s edition), xxiv. 188
“Gebir,” line from, quoted (Landor), xxiii. 329
“Genesis of the Master of Ballantrae,” xxv. 33
“Gentleman of France” (Weyman), xxv. 312
“George the Pieman” (Deacon Brodie), xxiii. 257
German policy in Samoa, xxiv. 370; xxv. 6 et seq., 176 et passim
Gévaudan, xxiii. 218
“Giant Bunker,” xxiv. 70
Gibson, Captain, xxv. 203
Gilbert Islands, burial customs in, xxiv. 399, 400;
papers on, xxv. 84;
suggested plan and title, 84;
visited, xxiv. 291-2, 356-7 et seq., 368
Gilder, R. W., editor Century Magazine, xxiii. 338; xxiv. 26, 29, 30, 64, 98, 149, 185, 250
Gilfillan, —, xxiv. 349, 352
Gladstone, Rt. Hon. W. E., xxiii. 113; xxiv. 136-7, 139, 192
Glasgow, Knox memorial at, xxv. 88
“Gleams of Memory” (Payn), xxv. 447
Glencorse Church, xxiii. 180; xxv. 305, 307
“Go Between,” xxv. 314-5 & n. 1
“Goguclat” (St. Ives), xxiii. intro. xx.
“Good Boy, A” (“Child’s Garden”), xxiv. 55, 170
“Gordon Darnaway” (“Merry Men”), xxiii. intro. xx.
Gordon, General C. G., xxiv. 107, 137, 139-40, 183; xxv. 57
Gosse, Edmund, xxiii. 311, 316, 328, 329, 341; xxiv. 36, 120, 244;
appointment to Clark Readership, xxiv. 99;
letters to, xxiii. 219, 224, 226, 236, 243, 245, 260, 271, 292, 293, 306, 311, 313, 324, 325, 332, 338, 350, 359, 360; xxiv. 26, 29, 30, 45, 50, 87, 97, 125, 139, 173, 181, 244, 277; xxv. 71, 317, 454;
“Life” by, of his father, xxv. 71, 130, 317
Gosse, Mrs. Edmund, xxiii. 225, 227;
letter to, xxiii. 347
Gosse, P. H., “Life” of, by E. Gosse, xxv. 71, 130, 317
“Gossip, A, on Romance,” xxiii. 283, 342, 349
Göttingen, xxiii. 118, 122, 125
“Gower Woodseer” (“Amazing Marriage,” by Meredith), prototype of, xxv. 344, 390-1
Grange, Lady, xxiii. 298
Grant, —, xxiii. 316
Grant, Geordie, xxiii. 19
Grant, Lady, xxiv. 53, 72
Grant, Mrs., of Laggan, xxiii. 298
Granton, xxiii. 8
Grant, Sir Alexander, xxiv. 53, 72, 132
“Grape from a Thorn” (Payn), xxiv. 7
Graves, home and foreign, xxv. 349 & n. 1
“Gray, Thomas” (“English Men of Letters”), by Gosse, xxiii. 350, 351, 360;
works of, edited by Gosse, xxiv. 140
“Great Expectations” (Dickens), xxiv. 22-3
“Great North Road,” unfinished, xxiii. 328; xxiv. 106, 127, 139, 152, 402
Greenaway, Kate, xxiv. 32
Green, Madame, singer, xxv. 249
Grey, Sir George, xxv. 290, 298-9;
visit to, xxv. 292
Grez, at, xxiii. 183, 185, 187;
meeting with Mrs. Osbourne at, xxii. 183, 228
Grove, Sir George, xxiii. intro. xviii. 151, 178, 204
Guérin, Maurice de, xxiii. 165
Gurr, —, xxv. 48, 105, 116, 448
Gurr, Mrs., xxv. 107
Guthrie, Charles J., letters to, xxiii. 312; xxiv. 178
“Guy Mannering” (Scott), xxiv. 91; xxv. 167
Habakkuk, prophet, xxiii. 211
Haddon, Trevor, letters to, xxiii. 357, 360; xxiv. 10, 39, 93
Haggard, Bazett, xxv. 138, 161, 170-1, 193 et passim
Haggard, Rider, xxiv. 257; xxv. 86, 226-7
“Haggis, The” (Burns), xxiv. 256
“Hair Trunk,” xxiii. 205-6
Hake, Dr. Gordon, xxiv. 239
Hall, Basil, xxv. 111
Hallé, Sir Charles, xxiii. 169, 198
“Hall, Mr.” (Clarissa Harlowe), xxiii. 211
Hamerton, P. G., xxiii. intro. xvii., 58, 216, 218, 315 n. 1, 316, 336;
letters to, xxiii. 242, 314, 335; xxiv. 143
“Hamerton, P. G., An Autobiography,” xxiii. 216
Hamilton, Captain, death of, xxv. 65
“Hamlet” (Shakespeare), xxv. 51
Hammond, Basil, xxiv. 13 & n. 1
Hampstead, at, xxiii. 124, 133
Hand, Captain, R.N., xxv. 139
Handwriting, tests of, xxv. 254-5
Hansome, Rufe, xxiii. 278
Happiness, xxiv. 183-4
Hardy, Thomas, xxiv. 153; xxv. 266
Hargrove, Mr., xxiii. 25, 26
“Harry Richmond” (Meredith), characters in, xxiv. 97
Harte, Bret, xxiii. 210
“Hastie” (Kidnapped), xxiv. 196
Hawaiian Islands, stay in, xxiv. 291
“Hawthorne” (H. James), xxiii. 273, 277
Hayley, —, xxiii. 252
Hazlitt, William, xxv. 385
“Heart of Midlothian” (Scott), xxiii. 65; xxv. 154
“Heathercat,” unfinished, xxv. 281, 360-1, 403
Hebrides, yachting trip in, xxiii. 124, 139, 140
Hecky, a dog, xxiv. 202
Hegel, —, xxiv. 75
Heintz, Dr., xxiii. 244
Henderson, Mr., xxiii. 6, 328; xxiv. 31
Henley, Anthony, xxiii. 238, 240
Henley, E. J., xxiv. 261
Henley, W. E., xxiii. 124, 171, 172, 177, 284, 285, 334, 352; xxiv. 29, 47, 52, 59, 67, 79, 99, 151, 155, 191, 202, 302, 377; xxv. 97, 121, 123, 174;
appreciation of, xxv. 213;
dramatic collaboration with, xxiii.
185, 256, 257; xxiv. 99, 106, 119, 146;
editor of London, xxiii. 184;
in hospital, xxv. 427;
letters to, xxiii. 204, 217, 219, 221, 233, 238, 249, 255, 256, 265, 317, 319, 326, 328, 330, 334, 341, 342, 352, 362; xxiv. 17, 23, 31, 32, 34, 36, 37, 47, 54, 57, 65, 72, 79, 91, 96, 102, 111, 114, 120, 123, 127, 131, 133, 146, 147, 155, 229, 239, 248, 257; xxv. 214;
poems by, xxv. 122, 214
“Henry Shovel,” see “Shovels of Newton French”
Herald, ship, xxv. 444
Herbert, George, poetry of, xxiii. 18
Herrick, Robert, xxiii. intro. xx.; xxiv. 36, 82
“Herrick, Robert,” essay (Gosse), xxiv. 45
Hester Noble, unfinished play (with Henley), xxiii. 256, 257
“Hey, Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin’ yet?” air, xxiii. 113
Highland History, projected, xxiii. 280, 290-1, 297; xxv. 117
“Highland Widow” (Scott), xxv. 24
“High Woods of Umfanua,” see “Beach of Falesá”
Hiroshigé, prints by, xxiii. 157
“Histoire d’Israël” (Renan), xxv. 304
“Histoire des Origines de Christianisme” (Renan), xxv. 304
“History of America” (Adams), xxv. 215, 266
“History of England” (Macaulay), xxiii. 70
“History of France” (Martin), xxiii. 193
“History of Indostani” (Orme), xxv. 419, 423
“History of Notorious Pirates” (Johnson), xxiv. 101
“History of the Great Storm” (Defoe), xxiv. 101
“History of the Rebellion” (Clarendon), xxiii. 31
“History of the Stevensons,” see “Family of Engineers”
“History of the United States” (Bancroft), xxiii. 246
Hogarth, William, xxiii. 69;
Cambridge lectures on, by Colvin, xxiii. 178
Hokusai (Magazine of Art), xxiv. 32
Hole, W., illustrator, xxiv. 270, 319, 321-2, 346; xxv. 349 & n. 1, 362 n. 1
“Holy Fair” (Burns), xxiii. 4; xxiv. 265 n. 1
Homburg, visit to, xxiii. 182
“Home is the Sailor,” lines chosen for epitaph, xxiii. 269; xxv. 375
Home Rule Bill of 1885, xxiv. 192
“Homme, L’, qui rit” (Hugo), xxiii. 125 & n. 1
Honolulu, visits to, xxiv. 291, 319 et seq., 329, 353; xxv. 281, 345, 349, 362
“Horatian Ode” (Marvell), xxiii. 293
Hoskin, Dr., xxv. 268, 270, 452
“House of Eld” Fables, xxiii. 12, 141
Houses, characteristics of, xxiii. 145, 146
Howard Place, 8,
Edinburgh, birthplace, xxiii. 5
“Howe, Miss” (Clarissa Harlowe), xxiii. 210
“Huckleberry Finn” (Twain), xxiv. 139
“Huguenots, Les,” opera, xxiii. 200
“Huish” (Ebb Tide), xxv. 313
“Human Compromise,” xxiii. 267
Humble Apology (Longman’s), xxiv. 181
Humble Remonstrance (Longman’s), xxiv. 127
Hume, David, xxiii. 4, 72, 111, 145
“Humilies et offensés” (Dostoieffsky), xxiv. 183
Hunter, Robert, “portrait” of, xxv. 301
Hurricane at Apia, the great, xxiv. 345, 346, 369; xxv. 141, 172-4;
chapter on, in “Footnote,” issued in Scots Observer, xxv. 174
Hutchinson, —, bust by, of R. L. S., xxv. 353 & n. 1
Hyde, Rev. Dr., and Father Damien, xxiv. 292;
controversy with, xxiv. 383-4, 391 & n. 1, 402, 404
Hyéres, at, xxiv. 5, 21 et seq.; xxv. 60
Hyndman, —, xxiv. 141
“Hyperion” (Keats), xxiv. 170
Iceland, book on, by Gosse suggested, xxiii. 333
“Ich unglückselige Atlas,” song (Schubert), xxiii. 139
Ide, Annie H., and R. L. S.’s birthday, xxv. 89-90, 118-9;
letter to, xxv. 118
Ide, C. J., Land Commissioner and afterwards Chief Justice in Samoa, xxv. 281, 298, 380-1, 450;
letter to, xxv. 88
Ide, Margery, xxv. 450
Idler, The, xxv. 372, 429;
contributions to, xxv. 376
Illustrated London News, xxv. 301
Inchcape bell, xxiii. 29
Income-tax, xxiii. 113, 114
Inglis, John, Justice-General, xxiii. 181
Ingram, John H., xxiii. 166
“Inland Voyage,” xxiii. 183, 185, 204, 211, 212, 218, 229, 247; xxiv. 103;
criticisms on, xxiii. 215-6
“Inn Album” (Robert Browning), review of, xxiii, 198, 199
“Inn, The,” xxv. 429
“In Russet and Silver” (Gosse), dedication of, xxv. 454
“In the Garden,” projected, xxiv. 99
“In the South Seas,” first published as “The South Seas,” xxiv. 290, 292, 297, 320-1, 358, 362, 399, 403; xxv. 5, 12, 16, 22, 26, 34, 45, 54, 61 & nn. 1 & 2, 68, 69, 77, 78, 80, 97, 100;
criticisms, xxiv. 293, 348-9; xxv. 76;
dedication proposed, xxiv. 304
Intimate Poems, suggested edition, xxv. 377
Iona, vessel, xxiii. 24
Ireland, Alexander, letter to, xxiii. 342
Ireland, plan for life in, xxiv. 108, 222
Irongray, tombs at, xxiii. 65
“Isabella and the Pot of Basil” (Keats), xxiv. 170
Isaiah, prophet, xxiii. 211
“Is it not verse except enchanted groves” (Herbert), xxiii. 18
“Island Nights’ Entertainments,” xxv. 64, 272, 284, 290;
illustrations, xxv. 312;
length, xxv. 353 & n. 1;
reviews xxv. 315 & n. 1
“Isle of Voices,” xxv. 272
“Islet, The,” xxv. 301
“Ivanhoe” (Scott), xxiv. 31
Jack, the island horse, xxv. 35-6, 41, 136, 142
James, G. P. R., novels by, ordered by R. L. S., xxiv. 273
James, Henry, xxiv. 105, 127, 130, 133, 143, 154, 182, 235, 250, 359; xxv. 29, 317, 415, 452;
letters to, xxiv. 127, 160, 214, 215, 237, 249, 262, 278, 288, 334, 382, 396;
xxv. 43, 108, 130, 274, 320, 335, 367, 406
“James More,” xxv. 161, 216, 295
Janet Nicoll, ss., cruise in, xxiv. 292-3, 385 et seq., 392, 403; xxv. 11, 54, 304
Japan and Japanese art, interest in, xxiii. 157, 158, 159; xxiv. 32, 57
Japp, Dr. Alexander, xxiii. 329;
letters to, xxiii. 321, 327, 351
Jeafferson, —, xxiv. 178
“Jedidiah Cleishbotham” (Scott), xxiii. 65
Jenkin family, xxiii. 25, 100
Jenkin, Mrs. Fleeming, xxiii. 10, 25; xxiv. 300;
letters to, xxiv. 150, 151, 187, 221, 225, 258; xxv. 273
Jenkin, Professor Fleeming, xxiii. 10, 25, 118, 122, 175, 176, 183, 247, 311, 341, 353; xxiv. 48, 258, 272;
death, xxiv. 106, 150, 151;
memoir of, by R. L. S. (see “Memoir”);
debt to, xxiv. 331
Jerome, Jerome K., xxv. 372, 429
“Jerry Abershaw,” projected, xxiii. 328, 329; xxiv. 152
Jersey, Countess of, in Samoa, xxv. 145, 227, 228, 325;
letters to, xxv. 228-9;
on her visit to R. L. S., xxv. 228
Jersey, Earl of, xxv. 288
“Jess” (Window in Thrums), xxv. 277
Jhering, Professor, xxiii. 118, 122
J. L. Tiernan, schooner, xxiv. 359
Joan of Arc, Byron’s epithet for, xxiii. 354
“Jock o’ Hazeldean,” air, xxiii. 113
“John Peel” of the song, xxiii. 28
“John Silver” (Treasure Island), xxiv. 112, 123;
genesis of, xxiv. 31
Johnson, —, an American, xxiii. 108, 110, 111, 112
“Johnson,” or “Johnstone,” pseudonym, xxiv. 14, 121
Johnson, Samuel, xxiii. 298;
“Life” of, xxiii. 193, 203
Johnstone, Marie, Mary, or May, xxiii. 94, 95, 98, 99, 101
Johnstone, Mr. and Mrs., xxiii. 96, 99
John Williams, missionary barque, xxiv. 387
“Jolly Beggars” (Burns), sent for autograph, xxv. 69, 87, 118
Jones, Henry Arthur (see also “Bauble Shop”), letter to, xxiv. 133
Jonson, Ben, xxiii. 294
Journalistic work, xxiii. 184
“Joy of Earth” (Meredith), xxv. 214
Jura, Skye terrier, xxv. 428-9
“Justice Clerk,” see Weir of Hermiston
“Juvenilia,” xxv. 397-8
Kaiulani, Hawaiian Princess, xxiv. 345, 346
Kalakaua, King, xxiv. 320
Kalaupapa, Molokai, xxiv. 351 et seq.
Kalawao, Molokai, xxiv. 353-4
Katoomba, H.M.S., xxv. 334;
band of, xxv. 351
Kava, native beverage, xxv. 183 & n. 1
“Keats” (“English Men of Letters,” by Colvin), xxiii. 349, 350-1; xxiv. 210, 211
Keir, Jean, xxv. 335
Kelso, xxiii. 156
“Kenilworth” (Scott), xxiv. 91
“Kidnapped,” xxiii. 24, 331; xxiv. 106, 146, 147, 179, 190, 195-6, 203, 233, 265, 317, 370, 377; xxv. 108, 160, 215, 250, 283, 301, 351;
in Braille, xxv. 366;
projected
illustrations, xxv. 349 n. 1;
reception, xxiv. 198;
reviews, xxiv. 203;
sequel (see “Catriona”), xxv. 144;
suggested French translation, xxv. 52
Killigrew, Anne, xxiii. 293 n. 1
“King Lear” (Shakespeare), xxv. 51
“King Matthias’s Hunting Horn” lost, xxiii. 158, 160, 170
Kinglake, W., xxiii. 70
“King’s Horn, The,” xxiii. 308
Kingston, W.G., xxiii. intro. xxiii.
Kingussie, at, xxiii. 284, 357
Kipling, Rudyard, anticipated visit from, xxv. 105 & n. 1; xxv. 163, 165;
appreciations of, xxiv. 396; xxv. 46, 213, 275;
letter to, xxv. 46;
writings of, xxv. 379
Kirriemuir, xxv. 417
“Kirstie Elliot” (Weir of Hermiston), xxiii. intro. xx.; xxv. 457
Kitchener, Colonel, ib.
Kitchener, Viscount, xxv. 236-7
Knappe, Consul, xxiv. 370; xxv. 139, 141
“Knox, John, and his Relations with Women,” xxiii. 141, 149, 150, 153, 155
Knox, John, “Works” of, xxiii. 117
Knox, John, writings on, xxiii. 55, 61, 111, 141, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 153, 155, 158, 159, 167, 170, 171, 173
Ko-o-amua, ex-cannibal chief, xxiv. 293
“Kubla Khan” (Coleridge), xxiii. 92, 220
Kuniyoshi, prints by, xxiii. 157
Labiche, —, xxiii. 239
Labour, imported, in Samoa, xxv. 159 & n. 1
Lacy, Mr., xxiii. 307
“Lady Barberina” (H. James), xxiv. 128
“Lady Carbury” (“Way of the World”), xxiii. 215
Lafarge, John, painter, xxv. 4, 29 & n. 1, 41, 43, 45
La Fontaine, “Fables” of, xxv. 49
“Lake Isle of Innisfree” (Yeats), xxv. 390
Lamb, Charles, xxiii. 209
“Lamia” (Keats), illustrated by Low, xxiv. 142, 166; dedication of, xxiv. 169-71
Lampman, Archibald, sonnet by, xxiv. 321 & n. 1
Landor, W. S., xxiii. 302, 317, 320-1
“Landscape” (Hamerton), xxiv. 143-4
Land’s End, visited, xxiii. 183, 209
Lang, Andrew, xxiii. 115, 117, 222, 311, 316; xxiv. 106, 134, 206, 257, 278, 381, 388; xxv. 357, 427;
letters to, xxiv. 399; xxv. 216, 453;
story suggested by, xxv. 141 & n. 1;
on “Treasure Island,” xxiv. 67
Lantenac, M. (Victor Hugo), xxiii. 130 n. 1
“Lantern Bearers, The” (Scribner’s), xxiv. 235, 254; xxv. 97, 301
Large, Miss, xxv. 329-31
La Sale, Antoine, projected essay on, xxiii. 207
“Last Sinner, The,” xxiii. 171
Laupepa, see Malietoa
Lautreppe, Albert de, xxv. 383
Lavenham, xxiii. 56
Law examination passed, xxiii. 182
“Lay Morals,” 86, 185; xxiv. 62 et seq.
“Leading Light, The,” projected, xxiii. 329
“Leaves of Grass” (Whitman), xxiii. 70
Le Gallienne, Richard, letter to, xxv. 364
Legal work, xxiii. 182, 184
Leigh, Hon. Capt., xxv. 227-8, 231, 233, 234, 235
Leith, xxiii. 159, 202
Lemon, —, picture by, xxiv. 167
Lenz, —, xxiv. 198
Le Puy, xxiii. 217
“Lesson, The, of the Master” (H. James), xxiv. 382; xxv. 108, 274
“Letter to the Church of Scotland,” xxv. 398
“Letter to a Young Gentleman,” xxv. 123 n. 1
“Letters and Memories of Jane Welsh Carlyle” (Froude), xxiii, 301, 302
Letters, desiderata in, xxiii. 259
“Letters” (Flaubert), xxiv. 405; xxv. 59
“Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland to his Friend in London” (Burt), xxiii. 291
“Letters to his Family and Friends,” xxiii. intro. xix.
Leven, xxiii. 61
“Library, The” (Lang), xxiii. 307
“Lieder und Balladen” (Burns), Silbergleit’s translation, xxiii. 39
Life, two views on, xxiv. 158, 164, 165
“Life and Death,” xxiii. 171
“Life of General Hutchinson” (Mrs. Hutchinson), xxiii. 30, 31, 32
“Life of Hazlitt,” projected, xxiii. 283, 336, 339, 345
“Life of P. H. Gosse” (Edmund Gosse), xxv. 71, 130, 317
“Life of R. L. S.” (Balfour), xxiii. intro. xix.; xxv. 4, 59
“Life of Robertson” (Dugald Stewart), xxiii. 119
“Life of Samuel Johnson” (Boswell), xxiii. 193, 203
“Life of Sir Walter Scott” (Lockhart), xxiv. 75, 84, 170, 171
“Life of Wellington” (“English Worthies”), unfinished, xxiv. 106, 134, 139
“Life on the Lagoons” (H. F. Brown), xxiii. 303
Lillie, Jean and David, connection of, with the Stevensons, xxv. 436
“Lion of the Nile,” xxiv. 321
Lions, xxiii. 307
Lippincott, xxiv. 54-5, 90
“Literary Recollections” (Payn), xxiv. 381
“Little Minister” (Barrie), xxv. 265, 276
“Lives of the Admirals” (Southey), xxiii. 70
“Lives of the Stevensons,” see “Family of Engineers”
“L. J. R.,” Essay Club, xxiii. 46, 48; xxv. 121
Llandudno, visited, xxiii. 124, 148
Locker-Lampson, Frederick, letters to, xxiv. 205, 206, 207, 208, 215
“Lodging for the Night,” xxiii. 184, 191, 248
Logan, John, xxiii. 71, 72
London, contributions to, xxiii. 184
“London Life” (H. James), xxiv. 289
London, visits to (see also British Museum), xxiii. 77, 155, 330; xxiv. 105, 107, 186-7, 189, 202, 209, 229
“London Voluntaries” (Henley), xxv. 214
Longman, —, publisher, xxiv. 30, 66, 111, 134; xxv. 123, 125
Longman’s Magazine, contributions to, xxiv. 127, 130, 134, 143, 181; xxv. 454
“Lord Nidderdale” (Way of the World), xxiii. 215
“Lord Rintoul” (Little Minister), xxv. 265
“Lost Sir Massingberd” (Payn), xxiv. 7, 177
Loti, Pierre (M. Viaud), xxiv. 308
“Loudon Dodd” (Wrecker), xxv. 24, 172 & n.1
“Louis XIV. et la Révocation de l’Édit de Nantes” (Michelet), xxiii. 69
“Louse, The” (Burns), xxiv. 256
“Love in the Valley” (Meredith), xxiv. 54; xxv. 214, 390
“Lovelace” (Clarissa Harlowe), xxiii. 210
Love, young, advice on, xxiii. 358
Lowell, John Russell, xxiv. 107
Low, Mrs. W. H., xxiv. 107, 202, 217
Low, W. H., xxiv. 107, 202, 217, 234, 250, 251, 255, 288, 369, 390; xxv. 25, 111;
illustrated edition by, of “Lamia,” xxiv. 142, 166;
dedication of, xxiv. 169-71;
letters to, xxiv. 57, 63, 72, 89, 115, 142, 153, 166, 169, 172, 177, 185, 217, 230, 245, 346; xxv. 378
Lübeck, s.s., passage on, xxiv. 375 et seq.; xxv. 48, 50, 53, 81
Ludgate Hill, s.s., passage in, xxiv. 110, 230, 232; xxiv. 235 et seq.
Lully, J.B., gavotte by, xxiv. 188-9
Lysaght, Sidney, xxv. 385-6, 388, 405, 415 & n. 1;
books by, xxv. 390;
visit from, xxv. 374
Macaire, play (with Henley), xxiv. 146, 147
Macbeth (Shakespeare), xxiv. 57
M’Carthy, Justin, xxiv. 173
McClure, S. S., publisher, relations with, xxiv. 234, 252, 321, 379; xxv. 120
McCrie, —, xxiii. 117
Macdonald, David, xxiii. 20
Macdonald, Flora, xxiii. 298
Macdonald, George, xxiv. 248
Macdonald, J. H. A., xxiii. 114
Macgregor, clan, xxv. 293, 346
M’Gregor-Stevenson connection, question of, xxv. 440
Mackay, Professor Æneas, xxiii. 282;
letters to, xxiii. 309
Mackintosh family, xxiii. 169
M’Laren, Duncan, xxiii. 96, 97, 114
MacMahon, President, xxiii. 116
Macmillan, Alexander, xxiii. 151
Macmillan’s Magazine, xxiii. intro. xvii. 204;
contributions to, xxiii. 125, 149, 151
Macpherson, Miss Fanny (Lady Holroyd), xxv. 83 & n. 1
Madeira, plan to visit, xxiv. 328
“Mademoiselle Merquem” (Sand), xxiii. 87
Magazine of Art, contributions to, xxiii. 333-4; xxiv. 54, 57, 115, 181; xxv. 97, 123, 398, 423
Majendie, Colonel, xxiv. 283
“Malade Imaginaire” (Molière), xxiv. 123
“Malbrook s’en va-t-en guerre,” xxiii. 102
Malie, abode and following of Malietoa, xxv. 6, 9 et seq.
Malietoa Laupepa, xxv. 9, 176, 234, 466;
friendliness with, xxv. 10;
and Mataafa, troubles concerning, xxv. 6-9 et seq.
Manasquan, at, xxiv. 234, 286-8
Manchester Ship Canal, xxiv. 135
Manhattan, magazine, xxiv. 57, 90
“Manse, The,” xxiii. 4; xxv. 301
Manu’a, islands of, “queen” of, xxv. 407-8
Marat, xxiv. 183
Marbot, “Memoires” of, xxv. 274, 321
“Marche funèbre” (Chopin), xxiii. 139
Marcus Aurelius, xxiv. 183
“Marden, Colonel” (Clarissa Harlowe), xxiii. 210
“Margery Bonthron,” xxiii. 171
“Marion,” xxiii. 307
Mariposa, s.s., xxv. 346
“Markheim,” xxiii. intro. xx., xxiii.; xxiv. 125, 213
“Marmont’s Memoirs,” xxiv. 134
Marot, Clement, poems by, xxiii. 108
“Marplot, The” (Lysaght), xxv. 390
Marquesas Islands, visited, xxiv. 290, 293, 371
Marryat, Captain, works by, ordered by R. L. S., xxiv. 338
Marseilles, at, xxiv. 5, 12-14, 98
Marshall Islands, visited, xxiv. 292
Martial, xxiv. 82
Martin, A. Patchett, letters to, xxiii. 208, 209
“Martin’s Madonna,” xxiii. 171
Marvell, Andrew, xxv. 46
Mary, Queen of Scots, xxiii. 62
“Mary Wollstonecraft” (Mrs. Pennell), xxiv. 149
“Master of Ballantrae,” xxiii. intro. xxiii.; xxiv. 235, 265, 268-70, 274, 276, 278, 279, 291, 314, 317, 328, 338, 339, 346, 349, 360, 369, 370, 377, 398; xxv. 43, 171 & n. 2, 250, 357;
illustrations, xxiv. 319, 320;
original plan of, xxv. 396;
paper on, xxv. 376;
suggested French translation, xxv. 52
Mataafa, xxiv. 370; xxv. 176, 256;
troubles concerning, xxv. 6-9 et seq., 93 et seq., 280, 332-3, 350;
visits to, xxv. 193 et seq., 242;
with Lady Jersey, xxv. 228 et seq.
Matlock, visited, xxiv. 105, 189
Maupassant, Guy de, xxiv. 383
Maxwell, Sir Herbert, xxv. 437;
letters to, xxv. 440, 453
“Mazeppa” (Byron), xxiii. 132
Medallion portrait by St. Gaudens, xxv. 410
Medea (Ordered South), xxiii. 86 & n. 1
Mediterranean, impression of, xxiii. 104, 105
Meiklejohn, Hugh, xxv. 269, 450, 451
Meiklejohn, Professor John, xxiii. 263, 316;
compliments on “Burns” article, xxiii. 241;
letters to, xxiii. 263; xxv. 450
“Mein Herz ist im Hochland,” xxiii. 41
Melford, xxiii. 56
Melville, Herman, xxiv. 295, 348, 381
“Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,” xxiv. 106-7, 150, 169, 174, 187, 225
“Memoirs of a Cavalier” (Defoe), xxiv. 101
“Memoirs of an Islet,” essay, xxiii. 23
“Memoirs of Henry Shovel,” unfinished, xxiv. 402
“Memorials” (Laing), xxv. 293
“Memorials of a Scottish Family,” projected (see also “Family of Engineers”), xxiv. 279
“Memories and Portraits,” xxiii. 56, 318 n. 1; xxiv. 96 n. 1, 214, 215, 230, 231, 257; xxv. 51, 53, 301 & n. 1
“Men and Books,” xxiii. 86
Menken, Adah, xxiii. 275
Mentone, at, xxiii. 55, 77, 81 et seq., 143-4
Meredith, George, xxiii. 183, 311; xxiv. 97, 278 & n. 1; xxv. 351-2;
letters to, xxv. 343, 390
“Merry Men, The,” xxiii. 282, 316, 317, 321; xxiv. 35, 90, 125, 213, 215; xxv. 353;
criticisms on, xxiii. 319;
dedication, xxiv. 211;
germ of, xxiii. 308;
places described in, xxiii. 317
Michaels, barber, xxiii. 244
Michelet, —, xxv. 304
Middleton, Miss, letter to, xxv. 428
Millais, Sir John E., xxiv. 139;
on R. L. S., as artist, xxiii. intro. xxx.
Milne, Mrs., letter to, xxiv. 70
Milson, John, xxiv. 130
“Mimes” (Schwob), xxv. 409
“Misadventure in France, A,” essay, xxiv. 67-8
“Misadventures of John Nicholson” (Yule-Tide), xxiii. 12; xxiv. 211, 214; xxv. 57 & n. 1
“Miscellanies” (Edinburgh edition), xxv. 33, 376, 397 & n. 1, 424
“Misérables, Les” (V. Hugo), xxiii. 129 n. 1
Missions and missionary work, xxv. 10, n. 1, 33, 56, 57, 203, 410-11, 422
Möe, Princess, xxiv. 308, 309, 313
“Mobray” (Clarissa Harlowe), xxiii. 210
Mödestine, the donkey of the Cévennes journey, xxiii. 218
Molière, xxiii. 69;
plays, xxiv. 96, 123
“Moll Flanders” (Defoe), xxiv. 101
Molokai, visited, xxiv. 291, 345, 349 et seq., 356
Monaco, at, xxiii. 93
Monastier, visit to, xxiii. 217
Monkhouse, Cosmo, letters to, xxiv. 85, 95
Monroe, Miss, letters to, xxiv. 191, 193, 261
“Monsieur Auguste” (Méry), xxiii. 257, 258
Montagu, Basil, xxv. 29 n. 2
Montaigne, xxiv. 130, 144
Monterey, xxiv. 36;
ranche life at, xxiii. 229, 234, 235, 236
“Monterey, California,” xxiii. 241, 242
Montpellier, at, xxiv. 4
“Moonstone, The” (Wilkie Collins), xxiii. 18
Moors, H. J., xxiv. 292, 370, 371; xxv. 10, 28, 29, 30, 31, 40, 96, 107
“Morality, the, of the Profession of Letters” (Fortnightly), xxiii. 281
“More New Arabian Nights,” xxiv. 106, 108, 114, 127, 139, 140, 142
Morley, Charles, of the Pall Mall Gazette, xxiv. 125
“Morley Ernstein” (G. P. R. James), xxiv. 75
Morley, John (Viscount Morley), xxiii. 127, 132, 226, 268
Morning Star, missionary ship, cruise in, projected, xxiv. 337, 338-9, 340, 343, 384
Morris, William, letter to, xxv. 162
Morse, Captain, xxv. 222
Morse, Miss, letter to, xxv. 253
Mount Chessie, xxiv. 44
Mount Saint Helena, xxiii. 277
Mount Vaea, burial-place of R. L. S., xxv. 9, 10, n. 1, 458 et seq.
Mulinuu, abode and party of Malietoa, xxv. 9 et seq., 107, 330, 332, 333, 370
“Mulvaney” (Soldiers Three), letter as from, xxv. 46
“Murder of Red Colin,” projected, xxiii. 331
Murders, famous, volume on, projected by Gosse and R. L. S., xxiii. 338, 350
“Murders in the Rue Morgue” (Poe), xxiii. intro. xxiii
Mures, the, of Caldwell, xxv. 358
Murphy, Tommy, a lost child, story of, xxiii. 161, 162
Murrayfield, xxv. 57
Murray, Grahame, xxiii. 90
Murray, W. C., xxv. 69
Musset, Alfred de, comedies of, xxiii. 212
Mutiny, Indian, novel on, projected, xxiv. 283-4
“My Boy Tammie,” air, xxiii. 113
“My First Book,” series in Idler, xxv. 33, 376, 429
Myers, F. W. H., letter to, xxiv. 184
Napoleon III., xxv. 250, 319
Nares, Captain (The Wrecker), xxv.269
Navigator Islands, xxiii. 180, 205; xxiv, 405
Navy, British, men of, xxv. 351-2
Nebraska, aspect of, xxiii. 233-4
Nerli, Count, xxv. 228
Neruda, Mme. Norman, xxiii. 169, 198
Nether Carsewell, xxv. 342, 346
“New Arabian Nights,” xxiii. 185, 218; xxiv. 7, 256
New Caledonia, visited, xxiv. 293, 385, 392
“New Poems” (Edmund Gosse), xxiii. 245-6
Newport, U.S.A., at, xxiv. 233, 237-8, 255
New Quarterly, contributions to, xxiii. 237
New Review, contribution to, xxv. 18 n. 1
New Year’s wish, a, xxiii. 212
New York, at, xxiv. 233-4, 238
New York Ledger, contribution to, xxiv. 361
New York Tribune, editor of, letter to, xxiv. 7
New Zealand, xxiv. 405
Nice, visits to, xxiii. 84; xxiv. 4, 6, 79, 92
Nile Campaigns, xxiv. 81
Noël-Pardon, M., xxiv. 394
“Noll and Nell,” poem (Martin), xxiii. 210
“Norma,” opera, xxiii. 252
“Northern Lights” (see also “Family of Engineers”), xxiii. 4, 10; xxv. 322
Norwood, at, xxiii. 57
“Note on Realism” (Magazine of Art), xxiv. 59, 62, 181
“Notes on the Movements of Young Children,” xxiii. 133, 143 & n. 2
“Notre Dame” (Hugo), xxiii. 129 n. 1
Noumea, visited, xxiv. 293, 392, 396
Nukahiva Island, at, xxiv. 290, 293
Nulivae Bridge, at, xxv. 223
“Ode to Duty” (Wordsworth), xxv. 173 & n. 1
“Ode to the Cuckoo,” authorship of, xxiii. 71, 72
O’Donovan Rossa, xxiii. 321
“Œdipus King” (Sophocles), xxiv. 114
“Olalla,” xxiv. 106
Old English History (Freeman’s), xxv. 117
“Old Gardener,” xxv. 404
“Old Mortality” (Scott), xxiii. 129 n. 1;
essay on, xxiv. 6, 68, 96
“Old Pacific Capital” (Fraser’s Magazine), xxv. 97
Oliphant, Mrs., xxiv. 370, 382
Omission, art of, xxiv. 60
Omond, —, xxiv. 178
“Omoo” (Melville), xxiv. 348
“One of the Grenvilles” (Lysaght), xxv. 390
“Only Child,” projected, xxiv. 99
“On the Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places,” xxiii. 15, 151-3
“On the Principal Causes of Silting in Estuaries” (T. Stevenson), xxiv. 135
“On some Aspects of Burns” (Cornhill), xxiii. 224, 227
“On some Ghostly Companions at a Spa,” xxiii. 285
“Operations of War” (Hamley), xxiii. intro. xxxiv.
Orange, at, xxiii. 80
“Ordered South,” xxiii. intro. xxvii., 56, 77, 83, 86, 87 &
n. 1, 116, 122, 126, 267;
published, xxiii. 125
Organ-grinder episode, xxiii. 155-6
Ori a Ori, chief, xxiv. 291, 302, 304, 306-7, 309-10 et seq., 317, 334;
letter from, xxiv. 332-3, 337
“Origines de la France Contemporaine” (Taine), xxiv. 258; xxv. 111-2, 319
“Origines” (Renan), xxv. 304
Orkneys and Shetlands, tour of, xxiii. 10, 24
Orlando, H.M.S., xxv. 329
Orr, Fred, letter to, xxv. 127
“Orsino” (Twelfth Night), R. L. S. as, xxiii. 175, 176
Osbourne, Lloyd, xxiii. intro. xvii., 300, 348 et seq.; xxiv. 28, 139, 178, 198, 199, 201, 290, 309, 323, 330, 341, 366, 392, 396, 399, 402; xxv. 3, 21 & n. 2, 50, 52, 67, 78, 96, 98, 99, 390, 445;
account by, of death of R. L. S., xxv. 457 et seq.;
collaboration with (see also “Wrecker”), xxiv. 235, 249, 250, 256, 283-4, 328, 361, 367, 379, 380, 389, 399, 402; xxv. 347-9, 437-8;
illness, xxv. 152
Osbourne, Mrs., see Stevenson, Mrs. R. L.
Ossianic controversy, xxiii. 298
Othello (Shakespeare), xxv. 51
Otis, Captain, xxiv. 234, 290
Otway, essay on (Gosse), xxiv. 45
Our Lady of the Snows, monastery, poem on (Underwoods), xxiii. 221-2
“Owl, The,” projected, xxv. 315 & n. 1
“Oxford Dictionary of the English Language” (Murray), xxiv. 37
P—N, John, letter to, xxv. 358
P—n, Russell, letter to, xxv. 359
Pacific Ocean, xxiii. 240
Pacific voyages, see “In the South Seas”
Page, H. A., pseudonym for Dr. Japp, q.v.
Pago-pago harbour, xxv. 8, 65
Painters and their art, xxiv. 60-1
“Painters’ Camp, in the Highlands” (Hamerton), xxiii. 216
Pall Mall Gazette, contributions to, xxiii. 281, 346; xxiv. 120, 125, 130, 131, 227; xxv. 397;
Henley’s articles in, xxiii. 238
“Pan’s Pipes,” xxiii. 212; xxv. 301
Papeete (Tahitian Islands), xxiv. 291, 296, 308, 314
Paperchase, Sunday, xxv. 422
Paris Exhibition of 1878, xxiii. 183
Paris, visits to, xxiii. 183, 305; xxiv. 105, 107
Parker, Lieutenant and Mrs., xxv. 29
“Parliament Close” (Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh), xxiii. 216
Parliament House, Edinburgh, verses on, xxiii. 193-4
Parnessiens, proposed paper on, xxiii. 168
“Paston Letters,” xxiii. 203
“Pastoral” (Longman’s), xxiv. 221; xxv. 301
Paton, John, and Co., xxiv. 252
Paul, C. Kegan, xxiii. 212
Paumotus atolls, visited, xxiv. 290, 293-4
“Pavilion, The, on the Links,” xxiii. 229, 238, 249, 256, 259, 262, 267
Payne, John, xxv. 427
Payn, James, xxiv. 355;
handwriting of, xxv. 365;
letters to, xxiv. 176, 355, 381; xxv. 425, 446;
novel by, xxv. 171;
works of, xxiv. 7-9
“Pearl Fisher” (with Lloyd Osbourne, see “Ebb Tide”),
changes of name for story, xxv. 288 et seq.
“Pegfurth Bannatyne,” xxiii. 361, 362
Pella, letter from, xxiii. 115, 128
Pembroke, Earl of, xxv. 290
“Penn” (H. Dixon), xxiii. 277
Pennell, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph, xxiv. 149;
letter to, xxiv. 149
Penn, William, article on, projected, xxiii. 265
“Penny plain and Twopence coloured,” essay, xxiv. 93
“Penny Whistles,” see “Child’s Garden of Verse”
“Pentland Hills” (Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh), xxiii. 216
“Pentland Rising,” xxv. 397
Penzance, visit to, xxiii. 206
Pepys, Samuel, xxiv. 29, 183;
essay on, xxiii. 281
“Petit Jehan de Saintre” (La Sale), essay on projected, xxiii. 267
“Petits Poèmes en Prose,” xxiii. 195, 196, 197
“Petronius Arbiter,” xxiv. 83
“Pew” (Admiral Guinea), xxiv. 119, 120
Peyrat, Napoleon, xxiii. 307
Pharos, s.y., xxv. 98 & n. 1
“Phasellulus loquitur,” xxiv. 116
Pheidias, xxiii. 159
“Philosophy of Umbrellas” (with Ferrier), xxv. 398
Picts, the, xxv. 434-6
“Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh,” xxiii. 185, 211, 216, 218
“Pilgrim’s Progress” (Bunyan), xxiii. 203;
Bagster’s edition, essay on cuts in, xxiii. 334
Pilsach, Baron Senfft von, President of the Council, Samoa, xxv. 7, 95 et seq., 100-1, 275, 281, 286, 305, 364, 376
“Pinkerton” (Wrecker), xxiv. 368; xxv. 141 & n. 1, 146, 378
“Pioneering in New Guinea” (Chalmers), xxv. 39
Piquet, xxv. 428
“Pirate, The” (Marryat), xxiii. 329
“Pirate, The” (Scott), xxiii. 318
“Pirbright Smith,” xxiii. 361
“Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials of Scotland,” xxv. 271, 293
Pitlochry, at, xxiii. 282, 306
“Plain Speaker” (Hazlitt), xxiv. 130
Platz, Herr, xxiv. 194
Poe, Edgar, xxiii. intro. xxiii., 166; xxiv. 83
Poems by Baildon, technique discussed, xxv. 377
Poepoe, Joseph, xxiv. 330
Poland, projected visit to, xxiii. 151, 152, 155
Pollington, Lord, xxiv. 260
Pollock, ——, xxiv. 36
Pomaré V., King, xxiv. 309
Poor folk, charity of, xxv. 209-10
“Poor Thing, The,” xxiii. 141
Poquelin, ——, xxiv. 123
Portfolio, The, xxiii. intro. xvii.;
contributions to, xxiii. 58, 77, 141, 146, 151, 152, 153, 164, 166, 168, 185, 216; xxv. 397-8;
Colvin’s work for, xxiii. 178
Portobello, beach incident, xxiii. 73;
train incident, xxiii. 63
“Portrait of a Lady” (H. James), xxiv. 263
Positivism, studies in, xxiii. 159
Pratt, ——, fables by, xxv. 49
“Prince de Galles,” xxiii., 356
“Prince of Grünewald,” see “Prince Otto”
“Prince Otto” (Forest State q.v.), xxiii. 229, 265, 266, 267, 278, 353; xxiv. 5, 23, 24, 34, 35, 36, 54, 66, 68, 73, 81, 106, 110, 142, 154, 173, 181; xxv. 53, 376;
criticisms, xxiv. 191;
publication, xxiv. 138;
reviews, xxiv. 155-6
“Princess Casamassima” (H. James), xxiv. 160 n. 1
Princes Street, Edinburgh, xxiii. 72, 74
Pringle, Janet, xxv. 361
“Printemps, Le,” group (Rodin), xxiv. 202, 209
Prisoners, Samoan, gratitude of, see “Road of Loving Hearts”
Privateers, enquiry on, xxv. 380 & n. 1
Proctor, Mr. B. W., xxv. 29 & n. 2
“Professor Rensselaer,” xxiii. 249
Pronouns, “direct and indirect,” quip on, xxv. 174
“Providence and the Guitar,” xxiii. intro. xx., 185, 219, 248, 268
Publishers, xxv. 123-5
“Pulvis et Umbra” (Scribner’s), xxiv. 235, 253, 264, 274,284, 384; xxv. 123 & n. 1
“Pupil, The” (H. James), xxv. 132
Purcell, Rev. ——, xxiii. 332-3; xxiv. 159
Purple passages in literature, xxv. 72-3
“Pye,” ——, xxv. 30
Pyle, Howard, xxv. 164 n. 1
Queen, ship, xxv. 353
Queensferry, xxiii. 68, 69
Queen’s River, xxv. 417
“Quentin Durward” (Scott), xxiii. 129 n. 1; xxiv. 91
“Rab and his Friends” (Brown) xxiii. 296
Raiatea, xxiv. 308 et seq.
Raleigh, Walter, on restrained egoism in literature, xxiii. intro. xxvi., xxvii.
“Randal” (The Ebb Tide), xxv. 187
“Random Memories: the Coast of Fife” (Scribner’s), xxiii. 12, 15; xxiv. 235, 387; xxv. 97, 301
Rarotonga, xxv. 269
“Raskolnikoff” (Le Crime et le Châtiment), xxiv. 182
Rawlinson, Miss,
letters to, xxiv. 227; xxv. 274;
verses to, xxiv. 227
Rawlinson, Mrs., xxiv. 227
Reade, Charles, xxiii. 129 n. 1
“Real Thing” (H. James), xxv. 322
“Redgauntlet” (Scott), xxiii. intro. xxiii., 287 n. 1
Reformation, studies in, xxiii. 159
“Refugees” (Doyle), xxv. 340
Reid, Captain Mayne, works of, xxv. 13
“Reign of Law” (Duke of Argyll), xxiii. 67 & n. 1
“Rembrandt,” article on, by Colvin (Edinburgh Review), xxiii. 225
“Reminiscences” (Carlyle), xxiii. 301
Rémy, Père, xxv. 327
Renaissance story, projected, xxiii. 167, 168
Renan, Ernest, works, xxv. 304
Rennie, John, xxiv. 121
Resignation, xxiv. 62, 76 et seq.
“Restoration Dramatists,” essay on (Lamb), xxiv. 85
Retrospective musings, xxv. 437-8
Revenge, Christian doctrine of, xxiii. 214
Rhone, the, xxiii. 79
“Richard Feverel” (Meredith), xxv. 265
Richard III. (Shakespeare), xxiv. 398; xxv. 51
Richardson, Samuel, novelist, xxiii. 129 n. 1
Richmond, Sir W. B., xxiv. 107;
portrait by, xxiv. 202
Richmond, s.s., xxiv. 337, 343
Richmond, stay at, xxiv. 104
“Rideau Cramoisi, Le” (d’Aurévilly), xxv. 314, 380
Ringarooma, ship, xxv. 268-9
“Rising Sun,” projected, xxiv. 403
“Ritter von dem heiligen Geist” (Heine), xxiii. 88 & n. 1
R. L. S. Society, Cincinnati, xxv. 384
“R. L. Stevenson in Wick” (Margaret H. Roberton), xxiii. 15 n. 1
“Roads,” paper on, xxiii. 55, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 67, 76, 77, 117, 119, 121, 141, 143, 201; xxv. 397-8
“Road, the, of Loving Hearts,” xxv. 374, 431 et seq., 441, 442, 446, 459 et seq.;
inscription on, xxv. 441, 446;
speech by R. L. S. at opening of, xxv. 441, 446, 462 et seq.
Robert, Louis, xxiv. 28
Roberts, Earl, xxiv. 81
Robertson, —, xxiii. 117
Robertson’s Sermons, xxiv, 268
Robinet, —, painter, xxiii. 98, 99
“Robin Run-the-Hedge,” unfinished, xxiv. 402
“Robinson Crusoe” (Defoe), xxiv. 101, 103
Rob Roy, xxv. 293
“Rob Roy” (Scott), xxiv. 91
“Rocambole” (Ponson du Terrail), xxiii. 254
Roch, Valentine, xxiv. 110, 238 et passim
“Roderick Hudson” (H. James), xxiv. 262-3, 265
Rodin, Auguste, sculptor, xxiv. 107, 202;
letters to, xxiv. 209, 216
Rodriguez Albano, xxiii. 244
“Rois en Exil” (Daudet), xxiii. 346
“Romance” (Longman’s), xxiv. 181
Roman Law, studies in, xxiii. 126
Rondeaux, xxiii. 188-9
“Rosa Quo Locorum,” xxv. 33
“Rose,” character of (Meredith), xxiv. 97
“Rosen, Countess von” (Forest State), xxiii. 266
Ross, Dr. Fairfax, xxv. 348 & n. 1, 350
Ross family, xxiii. 28
Ross of Mull, used in “The Merry Men,” xxiii. 41
Rossetti, D. G., xxiv. 239
Ross, Rev. Alexander and Mrs., xxiii. 27
Rothschild, Baron, xxiii. 195
“Rover,” verses (Gosse), xxiv. 27
Rowfant, xxiv. 215
“Rowfant Rhymes” (Locker-Lampson), xxiv. 205
Royal Society of Edinburgh, xxiv. 118, 135
Royat, visits to, actual and projected, xxiv. 39, 98, 99 et seq.; xxv. 105, 131
Ruedi, Dr., xxiii. 297
Rui = Louis, in Samoan pronunciation, xxiv. 307, 310 et alibi
Ruskin, John, xxiii. 117; xxv. 397
Russel family, xxiii. 21, 22
Russel, Miss Sara, xxiii. 21, 22
Russel, Mrs., xxiii. 22
Russel, Sheriff, xxiii. 21, 22
Ruysdael, —, painting by, xxiii. 178
Sachsenhausen, xxiii. 43
Sagas, love of, xxiii. 332; xxiv. 207; xxv. 162, 211
“St. Agnes’ Eve” (Keats), xxiv. 170
St. Augustine, xxiii. intro. xxiv.
St. Gaudens, Augustus, sculptor, xxiv. 170, 234, 238, 390; xxv. 25;
letters to, xxv. 308, 341, 410;
medallion portrait by, xxiv. 238-9, 250, 255
St. Gaudens, Homer, letters to, xxiv. 287
St. Germain, at, xxiii. 305
“St. Ives,” xxv. 281, 347-8, 371, 375, 380 & n. 1, 387, 392, 403, 405, 414, 430, 450;
inception of, xxv. 285-6;
parallel to, xxv. 442;
scheme for, xxv. 287
St. John, apostle, and the Revelation (in Renan’s book), xxv. 304
St. Paul, xxv. 304;
teaching of, xxiii. 214
Saintsbury, Professor G., xxiii. 307
Salvini, T., article on, xxiv. 72
Samoa and the Samoans for children (letters to Miss Boodle on), xxv. 147, 217, 243
Samoa, climate of, xxv. 250, 278, 333, 348 n. 1, 350, 419
contrasted with Europe, xxv. 355
exile in, xxv. 349
letters from, xxv. 9 et seq.
missionary work, in, interest in, xxv. 10 & n. 1; xxv. 33, 56, 57
rain in, xxv. 443-4
rivers of, xxv. 132-3 et seq.
visit to, and settlement in, xxiv. 290 et seq.
war trouble in, projected work on, xxiv. 370, 379, 380
Samoan character, xxv. 381, 432
chiefs, road made by, see “Road of Loving Hearts”
history, see “Footnote to History”
language, xxv. 49;
study of, xxv. 181, 203
politics, apologies for dwelling on, xxv. 388, 445;
interest in. xxv. 4 et passim
prisoners (chiefs), see “Road of Loving Hearts”
Samoa Times, xxiv. 392
“Samuel Pepys,” essay (Cornhill), xxiii. 281
Sanchez, Adolpho, xxiii. 240
Sanchez, Mrs., xxv. 257
Sand, George, writings of, xxiii. 87
Sandwich Islands, xxiv. 292, 340
“San Francisco,” xxiii. 342
San Francisco, stay at, and visits to, xxiii. 229, 230; xxiv. 234, 283, 286, 289, 290
“Sannazzaro,” xxiii. 167
Saône and Rhone, projected journey down and book on, xxiv. 98, 99
Saranac Lake, at, xxiv. 233-4, 240 et seq.; xxv. 123 n. 1
Sargent, John S., artist, xxiv. 105, 167;
portrait by, xxiv. 117, 155
Saturday Review, xxiii. 58, 69, 77
Savage Island, at, xxiv. 387
Savile Club, the, xxiii. 124, 127, 133, 186, 263; xxiv. 187
Schmidt, Emil, President of Council, Samoa, xxv. 416, 424
“Schooner Farallone,” see “Ebb Tide”
Schopenhauer, studies in, xxiii. 159
Schwob, Marcel, letters to, xxiv. 327, 397; xxv. 51, 409
Sciatica, xxiv. 92
“Scotch Church and Union” (Defoe), xxiv. 101
Scotch labourer and politics, xxiii. 61
Scotch murder trials, books on, asked for, xxv. 271
Scotch songs, Russian pleasure in, xxiii. 113
“Scotland and the Union,” projected, xxiii. 297
Scotland, last visit, xxiv. 227
Scotland, whisky, etc., of, xxiii. 41
Scotsman, xxv. 398
Scots Observer, contribution to, xxv. 174
“Scots wha hae,” air, xxiii. 113
Scott, Dr., letter to, xxiv. 374
Scott, Sir Walter (see also Waverley Novels), xxiii. 65 & n. 1,
111, 130 n. 1, 264, 333; xxiv. 75, 76, 84, 91, 382; xxv. 86, 110, 154, 164, 167, 371;
love of action, xxiii. intro. xxxiv.;
nobility of character, xxiii. intro. xxxv.;
novels, xxv. 24;
novels contrasted with R. L. S.’s, xxiii. intro. xxiii.
Scribner, C., xxiv. 233, 253-4, 390; xxv. 25, 380, 392;
letters to, xxiv. 252
Scribner, Messrs., verse published by, xxiv. 395
Scribner’s Magazine, xxiv. 110, 142, 253, 258;
contributions, actual and suggested, xxiv. 233, 235, 239, 240, 247, 252, 268, 277, 287, 367, 377 et seq., 387, 393; xxv. 86, 97, 110, 115, 171 n. 1
“Sea-Cook, The” (see also “Treasure Island”), xxiii. 326-7
Sedan, xxv. 250, 318
Seed, Hon. J., xxiii. 179; xxiv. 405
Seeley, Professor, style of, xxiv. 55-6
Seeley, Richmond, publisher and editor (see also “Portfolio”), xxiii. intro. xvii., 141, 142, 143, 148, 398
Sellar, Mrs., xxiii. 115
“Sensations d’Italie” (Bourget), xxv. 127, 130-1
“Sentimental Journey” (Sterne), xxiii. intro. xxiii.
“Sentimental Tommy” (Barrie), xxv. 419 & n. 1
Seraphina (see also “Prince Otto”), xxiii. intro. xx.
“Service of Man” (Cotter Morison), xxiv. 219-20
Seumanutafa, Chief, of Apia, xxv. 26, 48-9, 105
“Seventeenth Century Studies” (Gosse), xxiv. 45
Sewall, Mr., American Consul at Samoa, xxv. 4, 29, 58, 65-6
“Shadow, The, on the Bed” (Mrs. R. L. S.), xxiii. 308, 316, 321
Shairp, Professor, xxiii. 191, 263
Shaltigoe, wreck at, xxiii. 22
Shannon, W. J., xxiii. 332-3
Shaw, Bernard, appreciation of, xxiv. 270-1
Shelley, Lady, xxiv. 105, 149, 177, 179, 211; xxv. 131
“Shelley Papers” (Dowden), xxiv. 211, 212
Shelley, P. B., xxiv. 177-8, 212; 372, 373-4;
and Keats, xxiv. 211
Shelley, Sir P. B., xxiv. 177-8, 211, 373; xxv. 458
“Sherlock Holmes” (Doyle), xxv. 299
Shetland, visited, xxiii. 10, 24
“Shovels of Newton French,” projected, xxv. 5, 55-6, 82-3, 172
Sick child, episode of, xxiii. 230, 269
“Sign of the ship” causerie (Lang), xxiv. 278, 388
“Sigurd” (W. Morris), xxiii. 334; xxv. 162
Silverado, life at, xxiii. 278
“Silverado Squatters,” xxiii. 230, 279, 283, 352, 355; xxiv. 5, 26, 27, 30 & n. 1, 34, 56, 66, 67, 73, 92; xxv. 423;
serial issue of, xxiv. 55
“Silver Ship,” see “Casco”
Simoneau, Jules, xxiii. 239, 240, 244; xxiv. 423;
letters to, xxiv. 36, 41
Simoneau, Mrs., xxiv. 42
“Simon Fraser” (Catriona), xxv. 351 & n. 1
Simpson, Sir Walter, xxiii. 36,43, 46, 49, 69, 89, 124, 159, 174, 182, 187, 259, 341, 353; xxiv. 47;
letter to, xxiv. 117, 229, 242;
yachting trip with, xxiii. 124, 139, 140
Simson, Dr., xxiv. 91
Sinclair, Miss Amy, xxiii. 24, 27-8
Sinclair, Sir Tollemache, xxiii. 27
Sinico, —, singer, xxiii. 166
“Sire de Malétroit’s Door,” xiii. 184, 206, 207, 211, 248
Siron, aubergiste, Barbizon, xxiii. 187
Sitwell, Mrs. (see also Colvin, Lady), xxiii. 54, 300; xxiv. 335; xxv. 85;
letter to, from Mrs. R. L. Stevenson, xxiv. 331;
letters to, from R. L. S., xxiii. 57, 58, 61, 63, 66, 68, 71, 74, 77, 83, 86, 91, 93, 101, 103, 104, 110, 115, 121, 125, 127, 131, 133, 137, 139, 140, 144, 148, 149, 151, 153, 155, 156, 158, 161, 164, 166, 168, 171, 174, 175, 177, 180 bis, 181, 187, 189, 197, 198, 200, 203, 205, 207, 323; xxiv. 24; xxv. 393
Skelt, xxiv. 57, 93
Skene, William Forbes, xxv. 434-5
Skerryvore, article on (Archer), xxiv. 305
“Skerryvore” (house), xxiv. 105, 109, 141, 196, 252; xxv. 31 n. 2, 75
Skinner, Mr., xxv. 413
Slade School, xxiv. 39
“Sleeper Awakened,” xxv. 314 & n. 1
Smeoroch, Skye terrier, xxiv. 77 & n. 1; xxv. 429
Smiles, Samuel, xxiv. 121
Smith, Adam, xxiii. 72
Smith, Captain, xxiii. 235
Smith, Rev. George, xxiii. 4; xxiv. 265 n. 1
Soalu, Chief, xxv. 460
Society for Psychical Research, Journals of, xxv. 299
“Soldiers Three” (Kipling), xxv. 46
“Solemn Music” (Milton), xxiii. 294
“Solomon Crabb,” xxiii. 343-4
“Solution, The” (Lesson of the Master, H. James), xxiv. 382
“Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle” (Wordsworth), xxiii. 315 & n. 1
“Song of To-morrow,” xxiii. 141
“Songs of Scotland without words, for the Pianoforte” (Surrenne), xxiii. 113
“Songs of Travel,” xxiv. 190, 239, 337, 362, 375, 378, 395; xxv. 349 & n. 1
“Sonnet to England” (Martin), xxiii. 210
“Sophia Scarlett,” proposed, xxv. 144, 152-3, 172, 187, 281
Sophocles, translation (Campbell), xxiv. 113
Sorrow, discipline of, xxiv. 163
Soudan affairs, xxiv. 107
Southey, R., xxiii. 302
“South Sea Ballads,” xxiv. 298-9, 317, 321, 380, 395, 399
“South Sea Bubble” (Earl of Pembroke), xxv. 153 n. 1;
on Kava, xxv. 183 n. 1;
on Samoan streams, xxiv. 133 n. 1
“South Sea Idylls” (Stoddard), xxiv. 180
South Sea Islands, call of, xxiii. 180, 205
“South Sea Letters,” published first as “The South Seas,” later as “In the South Seas,” q.v.;
selection from, projected, xxv. 423
South Seas, cruises in, xxiv. 233 et seq., 286 et seq.
“South Sea Yarns” (with Lloyd Osbourne), projected, xxiv. 361, 367, 379; xxv. 397
Spain, xxiii. 119
Spectator, xxiii. 239, 264; xxv. 58
“Spectator” (Addison’s), style of, xxiii. 252
Speculative Society, Edinburgh University, xxiii. 35, 64, 184, 312; xxiv. 178
Speed, —, xxv. 210
Spencer, —, xxv. 74-5
Spencer, Herbert, xxiii. 169
Sperber, German warship, xxv. 29
Speyside, in, xxiii. 284
“Spring Sorrow” (Henley), xxiii. 186
“Spring time,” xxiii. 191, 193, 196, 197, 202
“Squaw Men,” projected, xxiii. 329
“Squire” (Story of a Lie), xxiii. 249
“Squire Trelawney” (Treasure Island), xxiii. 326-7
Stansfield, —, xxv. 269
“Stepfather’s Story,” projected, xxiii. 207
Stephen, Leslie, xxiii. intro. xvii., 174, 184, 205, 206, 207, 241, 256, 257, 264, 267, 302, 311; xxiv. 47;
letter from with appreciation of “Victor Hugo,” xxiii. 129 et seq. & n. 1;
introduction by, of R. L. S. and Henley, xxiii. 172;
on “Forest Notes,” xxiii. 201, 202;
testimonial from, xxiii. 316
Stephenson, —, xxiii. 25
Sterne, Laurence, xxiii. intro. xxiii.
Stevenson, Alan, xxv. 335, 401, 436
Stevenson family, inquiries concerning, xxv. 293, 335, 342, 357, 399, 435-7
Stevenson, Hugh, xxv. 335
Stevenson, James, xxv. 334
Stevenson, James S., letter to, xxv. 334, 342
Stevenson, J. Horne, xxv. 293, 345, 435;
letter to, xxv. 357
Stevenson, John, xxv. 358
Stevenson, Katharine (see also de Mattos), xxiii. 138
Stevenson, Macgregor, xxv. 293
Stevenson, Mrs. Alan, xxv. 110, 436
Stevenson, Mrs. R. L., xxiv. 234, 247-8, 251, 256, 258-9, 275, 282, 291-2, 323, 330-1, 341-2, 390; xxv. 29, 30, 31, 38, 249-50, 371, 377;
character, xxiii. 279-80;
first meeting, xxiii. 183, 228;
marriage, xxiii. 228 et seq., 260, 262, 268, 270, 272, 274; xxiv. 105;
collaboration with R. L. S., xxiii. 282;
letter to, on avoiding the infliction of pain in literary work, xxiii. intro. xxvi.;
story by (see “Shadow on the Bed“);
ill health and illness of, xxiii. 280, 283-4, 320-1,355; xxv. 146, 280, 297 et seq., 320-1 et alibi;
letter to, xxiv. 349;
letters from, to S. Colvin, xxiv. 309, 347, to Mrs. Sitwell, xxiv. 331,
to J. A. Symonds, xxiv. 11
Stevenson, Mrs. Thomas (née Balfour), xxiii. 4, 6, 148; xxiv. 39, 147, 199, 216, 220, 234, 248, 251, 258, 276, 280, 290, 291, 309, 310, 314, 323, 331, 336, 341, 343, 366, 375, 405; xxv. 3, 31, 50, 53, 193 et seq., 259, 282, 403, 406, 416;
letters to, xxiii. 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 24, 36, 38, 39, 44, 56, 81, 94, 96, 97, 99, 107, 112, 116, 117, 118, 120, 187, 215, 216, 218, 298, 337, 354; xxiv. 9, 21, 66, 76, 202, 383;
settled in Samoa, xxv. 76, 78
Stevenson, Mrs. Thomas, and Thomas Stevenson, letters to (jointly), see Stevenson, Thomas, infra
Stevenson, name, query on to Sir H. Maxwell, xxv. 440
Stevenson, Robert, xxiii. 4, 13, 160, 200; xxiv. 359; xxv. 87, 95, 98, 120, 310, 315, 401, and see “Family of Engineers”
Stevenson, Robert (the first), xxv. 335
Stevenson, Robert Alan Mowbray
(Bob), xxiii. 49, 57, 58, 83, 103, 105, 109, 110, 124, 133, 135, 137, 138, 140, 149, 174, 183, 187, 239, 308, 341; xxiv. 3, 69, 89, 124, 167, 196, 328 & n. 1;
letters to, xxiii. 356; xxiv. 8, 59, 196, 198, 240, 323; xxv. 398, 401, 434
Stevenson, Robert Louis Balfour (“R. L. S.”), ancestry, xxiii. 4, 5;
appearance, xxiii. intro. xxxviii.;
appreciation of, by Lysaght, xxv. 415 n. 1;
appreciation of his own literary skill, xxv. 443;
characteristics and habitudes, xxiii. intro. xxii., xxvi. et seq., 8-12, 186; xxiv. 296; xxv. 33, 415, n. 1;
charm, xxiii. intro. xxiii., xxvi., xxvii.-ix., xxxi., 55; xxv. 415;
conversation, xxiii. intro. xxxi., 9. 123;
help derived from writings of, xxii., intro. xxix., 253-4;
interest in missionary work, xxv. 10 & n. 1, 33, 56, 57;
interest in music, xxiv. 188-9, 196 et seq., 285, 302; xxv. 85, 92, 125, 185;
literary style and methods, xxiii. intro. xix. et seq.; xxv. 173;
political views, xxiv. 107-8;
portraits, busts, photographs of, xxiv. 117, 154, 170, 177, 199, 202, 238-9, 250, 255; xxv. 309, 310, 341, 353 & n. 1;
relations with his father, xxiv. 5, 6 et alibi;
religious views, xxiii. intro. xxxii., 11, 12, 53-4, 67
Life, 1850-57, Birth and Early delicacy, xxiii. 5
1858-67, Education and home life and early travels, xxiii. 6-8
1868-70, Engineering studies, xxiii. 10
1871-4, Law studies, religious differences with parents, xxiii. 10-12
1874-5 (May to June), Law studies, home life, experimental literature, travels, home and foreign, and friendships, xxiii. 123-4
1875-79 (July to July), Bar studies concluded, travels in France and Germany, life at the bar abandoned for literature; Fontainebleau again, xxiii. 182-3;
early journalistic and other writing, xxiii. 184-5
1879-1880 (July to July), Californian visit, hardships, illness, marriage, xxiii. 228-30
1880, Aug.-1882, Oct., Home from California, xxiii. 279;
summers in Scotland, xxiii. 279-80;
winters at Davos, and literary work, xxiii. 280, 283
1882, Oct.-1884, Aug., The Riviera again, Montpellier and Marseilles, Nice, xxiv. 5;
Hyères home life, happier relations with parents, illness and literary work, letters, xxiv. 3-5
1874, Sept.-1887, Aug., Bournemouth homes—“Skerryvore,” invalid life, friendships, and literary work, xxiv. 104-9;
visit to Paris, schemes for life in Ireland, xxiv. 108;
death of his father, and departure for Colorado, xxiv. 110
1887, Aug.-1888, June, Voyage to New York and reception there, friends new and old, stay in the Adirondacks, journey to San Francisco, xxiv. 233-4
1888, June-1890, Oct., Voyages in the Pacific, xxiv. 290-3;
settlement at Vailima, xxiv. 291-2;
controversy about Father Damien, xxiv. 292
1890, Nov.-1891, Dec., First year at Vailima, Samoan politics, letters on, to The Times—building of the first Vailima house, xxv. 3-8
1892, Jan. to Dec., Life at Vailima, second year, visitors, enlargement of the house, Samoan politics, threatened deportation, xxv. 144-6
1893, Jan. to Dec., Life at Vailima, third year, the addition to the house completed, Samoan politics, proclamation aimed at him, illness of Mrs. R. L. Stevenson, trips to Sydney, to Honolulu, to New Zealand, outbreak of war, financial anxieties, signs of life-weariness, xxv. 280-2
1894, Jan. to Dec., fourth year at Vailima, illness and recovery, loss of literary facility, financial position, visitors, xxv. 373-5;
the making of the Road of Gratitude, xxv. 374, 432 et seq., 441, 446;
speech and feast to the chiefs, xxv. 441, 446, 462 et seq.;
sudden death and burial, xxv. 8, 10 n. 1, 375;
account of, by Lloyd Osbourne, xxv. 457 et seq.;
epitaph, xxiii. 268; xxv. 375
Stevenson, Thomas, xxii. 4, 5, 11, 12, 20, 24, 146, 148, 180, 260, 261 & n. 1, 279, 285, 298, 328, 347, 353; xxiv. 5, 6, 39, 58, 105, 107, 108, 118, 119, 135, 138, 147, 161, 187, 188, 189, 196, 199, 210, 216, 220, 234, 276, 280, 365, 405; xxv. 335, 382, 401;
affection for Mrs. R. L. S., xxiii. 279;
gift to her of a Bournemouth house, xxiv. 105;
biographical essay on, xxiii. 21;
letters to, xxiii. 13, 42, 111, 113, 213, 290, 330; xxiv. 9, 22, 62, 74, 90, 118, 119, 137, 159, 179, 190, 201;
Memories of, xxv. 413;
misunderstandings with, xxiii. intro. xvii., 11, 12, 55, 67;
religious views, xxiii. 11, 12, 52, 67; death, xxiii. 5; xxiv. 109, 227
and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson, joint letters to, xxiii. 215, 296, 305; xxiv. 27, 75, 76, 78, 100, 110, 130, 168, 199
“Stewart, Alan Breck,” xxv. 46-8
Stewart, James (see Appin murder)
Stewart, Miss (Bathgate), xxiii. 227
Stewart, Sir Herbert, xxiv. 81
Stewart’s plantation, Tahiti, xxv. 153 & n. 1
“Stickit Minister” (Crockett), dedication of, xxv. 349 & n. 1
Stobo Manse, at, xxiii. 284, 357
Stockton, F. R., verse to, xxiv. 125
Stoddard, Charles Warren, xxv. 267;
letters to, xxiii. 275, 294; xxiv, 180
“Stories and Interludes” (Barry Pain), xxv. 215
“Stories,” or “A Story Book,” projected, xxiii. 249
Storm, ideas on, xxiii. 150
“Story of a Lie,” xxiii. 12, 229, 230, 235, 237, 247, 249; xxiv. 90
“Strange Adventures of Mr. Nehemiah Solny,” projected, xxiii. 170
“Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” xxiii. intro. xxiii.; xxiv. 106, 169, 171, 182, 233, 253, 398; xxv. 289;
publication, xxiv. 166;
dedication, xxiv. 167;
criticisms, xxiv. 184
Strathpeffer, at, xxiii. 280, 284, 285
Streams, Samoan, peculiarities of, xxv. 36
Strong, Austin, xxiv. 151, 341; xxv. 92, 117, 249 & n. 1, 269 & n. 1, 389, 403, 446
Strong, Mrs., xxiv. 325 & n. 1, 341; xxv. passim;
letter to, xxiii. 286
Stuebel, Dr., German Consul, xxv. 35, 41 & n. 1, 141
Sturgis, Mrs., xxv. 391
“Subpriorsford,” nickname for Vailima, xxv. 165, 170
“Such is Life,” poem (Martin), xxiii. 209
Sudbury, Suffolk, at, xxiii. 56
Suffering, value of, xxiii. 251
Suffolk, peasantry, xxiii. 61
“Suicide Club,” xxiii. intro. xx., 356
Sullivan, Russell, xxv. 25
Sunrise, tonic of, xxv. 401
Sutherland, Mr., xxiii. 15
Sutherland, Mrs., xxiii. 22
Swan, Professor, xxiii. 193; xxiv. 143; xxv. 315
Swanston Cottage, Lothianburn, xxiii. 8, 123, 126 et seq., 312
“Sweet Girl Graduate, A,” and other poems (Martin), xxiii. 208-9
Swift, Dr. and Mrs., of Molokai, xxiv. 351-2
Swinburne, A. C., poems, xxv. 390
Sydney, N.S.W., visits to, and illnesses at, xxiv. 292-3, 325, 375, 382 et seq., 394; xxv. 4, 38, n. 1, 53 et seq., 61, 77, 81, 208, 288-9, 296
Symonds, J. A., xxiii. 281, 304, 311, 317, 334, 341, 351, 361; xxiv. 142;
dedication of book by, xxv. 454;
epithet of, for R. L. S., xxiii. intro. xxvi.;
letter to, from Mrs. R. L. Stevenson, xxiv. 11;
letters to, xxiv. 182, 254, 304;
on Southey, xxiii. 302;
death of, xxv. 317 & n. 1
“Table Talk” (Hazlitt), xxiv. 130
Tacitus, xxiv. 83
Tahiti, xxiv. 291, 371
Tahitian Islands, xxiv. 293;
stay in, xxiv. 291, 296 et seq.
Tait, Professor, xxiv. 118
“Tales and Fantasies,” xxv. 397.
“Tales for Winter Nights,” projected title, xxiii. 316, 318
“Tales of a Grandfather” (Scott), xxv. 117
“Tales of my Grandfather” (see also “Family of Engineers”), xxv. 110
“Talk and Talkers” (Cornhill), xxiii. 283, 341, 349; xxiv. 138
Tamasese, xxiv. 371; xxv. 67, 351
Tamate, see Chalmers
Tati, high chief of the Tevas, xxiv. 317
Tauchnitz, Baron, and “Footnote,” xxv. 346
Tautira, at, xxiv. 291, 302 et seq., 317
Taylor, Ida and Una, xxiv. 105, 372, 374
Taylor, Lady, xxiv. 105, 180; xxv. 203;
death of, xxv. 254;
letters to, xxiv. 211, 212, 286, 357, 372
Taylor, Miss, xxv. 364;
letter to, xxv. 254
Taylor, Sir Henry, xxiv. 145, 180
Tembinoka, King of Apemama, xxiv. 358-9, 368, 400;
verses to, xxiv. 378, 380
Temple Bar, contributions to, xxiii. 184, 206, 207, 211
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord (see also “Becket”), xxiv. 205
“Tentation de St. Antoine” (Flaubert), xxiii. 150
Teriitera, Samoan name of R. L. S., xxiv. 308, 310, 317, 321
“Tess of the D’Urbervilles” (Hardy), xxv. 266 n. 1, 296
Thackeray, W. M., xxv. 154
“Theatrical World” (Archer), xxv. 384
“Thérèse Raquin” (Zola), xxiv. 57
“The Tempest” (Shakespeare), xxiv. 96
“Thomas Haggard” (Window in Thrums), xxv. 276
Thomson, Maggie, xxiii. 25
Thomson, Mr., xxiii. 8
“Thomson,” pseudonym, letters in character of and as to, xxiv. 14, 121, 122
Thoreau, Henry David, essay on (Familiar Studies), xxiii. 226, 229, 252, 255, 262, 263, 265, 273; xxiv. 149, 158;
criticisms on, xxiii. 322
“Thoughts on Literature as an Art,” xxiii. 266
“Thrawn Janet” (Cornhill), xxiii. 282, 308, 316, 321; xxiv. 90; xxv. 295
“Tibby Birse” (Window in Thrums), xxv. 276, 362 n. 1
Time, Archer’s criticisms in, xxiv. 156, 159, 160, 161
“Time” (Milton), xxiii. 294
Times, The, letters to, on Samoan affairs, xxv. 7, 94, 98, 119, 137, 145, 212, 376, 386, 387
Todd, John, xxiv. 221
Todd, Mrs., xxiv. 221
“Tod Lapraik” (Catriona), xxv. 294-5
“Tommy Haddon” (Wrecker), xxv. 268 & n. 1
“Toothache, The” (Burns), xxiv. 256
“Torn Surplice, The,” suggested title, xxiii. 321
Torquay, at, xxiv. 109
Torrence, Rev. ——, xxiii. 181
“Touchstone, The,” xxiii. 141
Tourgenieff, ——, xxiii. 222
“Tourgue, la” (“Quatre-vingt Treize,” Hugo), xxiii. 130
Trades Unions, xxiii. 97
“Tragedies of the Wilderness” (Drake), xxiv. 270
“Tragic Comedians” (Meredith), xxiii. 224
“Tragic Muse, The” (H. James), xxiv. 397; xxv. 44, 130-1
“Transformation of the Scottish Highlands,” projected, xxiii. 297
Traquair, Willie, xxiii. 20, xxiv. 70
“Travailleurs de la Mer” (Hugo), xxiii. 129 n. 1
Travel-books, cheap edition projected, xxiii. 294
“Travelling Companion, The,” projected, xxiii. 321; xxiv. 68, 149
“Travels and Excursions,” Vols. II. and III. discussed, xxv. 423
“Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes,” xxiii. 183, 184, 185, 216, 217, 219, 225, 229, 248, 250, 257
“Treasure Island,” xxiii. intro. xxxv., 282, 283, 326, 334, 352, 355; xxiv. 31, 93, 101, 112, 179, 233; xxv. 76, 124, 289, 429;
publication as serial, xxiii. 328;
in book form, xxiv. 6, 27, 35, 67;
criticisms, xxiv. 66;
genesis of, xxiv. 101;
illustrated edition, xxiv. 159;
paper on, xxv. 376
“Treasure of Franchard,” xxiv. 4, 398; xxv. 153
“Trial of Joan of Arc,” xxiii. 203
“Trials of the Sons of Rob Roy, with Anecdotes,” xxiii. 332
“Tricoche et Cacolet,” xxiii. 219
“Tristram Shandy” (Sterne), xxiii. 118
Trollope, Anthony, novels of, xxiii. 215
“Trophées, Les” (Hérédia), xxv. 331 & n. 1
Trudeau, Dr., xxiv. 234
Tulloch, Principal, xxiii. 280, 290, 297, 316; xxv. 97, 123
Tupper, Martin, xxiii. 348
“Tushery,” xxiv. 6, 31, 32
Tusitala, xxv. 196 et aliter
Tutuila, visited, xxv. 4, 8, 58, 65
“Twa Dogs” (Burns), xxiii. 225
Twain, Mark (Samuel Clemens), xxiii. 276
Twelfth Night (Shakespeare) at the Jenkins’, xxiii. 175, 176, 178
“Two Falconers, The, of Cairnstane,” xxiii. 170
“Two St. Michael’s Mounts,” essay, projected, xxiii. 207
“Two Years before the Mast” (Dana), xxiv. 297
“Typee” (Melville), xxiv. 348
Ulufanua, island, xxv. 97
“Underwoods,” collected verses, xxiii. 222, 271, 281, 296, 300; xxiv. 36, 89, 107, 170, 173 n. 1, 189-90, 214, 215, 229-30, 231, 395; xxv. 376, 398;
dedication of, xxiv. 374;
review by Gosse, xxiv. 244;
success of, xxiv. 239, 255-6
United States, the, and Samoa, xxv. 6 et seq.
Upolu and Savaii, xxv. 8
Vacquerie, ——, xxiii. 307
Vaea, Mount, xxv. 9, 135, 388;
burial-place, xxv. 10 n. 1, 460
Vaea river, xxv. 132 et seq.
Vailima, home at, xxiv. 291;
purchase of, xxiv. 292, 372-3, 374, 377, 390;
life at, xxv. 3 et seq., 148-51, 156 et seq., 280 et seq.;
visitors to, xxv. 228;
expenses, xxv. 282;
household staff, xxv. 356-7;
joy of colour at, xxv. 378;
new house, xxv. 145-6, 251, 269, 271, 278-9, 284, 287;
decorations for, xxv. 308-9;
feeling about, xxv. 349
“Vailima Letters,” xxiii. intro. xviii., xxix.; xxv. 5
Vanity Fair, magazine, contributions to, xxiii. 184, 198, 199
“Vanity Fair” (Thackeray), xxv. 154
Vedder, Elihu, illustrator of “Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám,” xxiv. 116
“Velasquez” (R. A. M. Stevenson), xxiii. 57
“Vendetta, in the West,” unfinished, xxiii. 229, 238-9, 241, 244, 255, 256, 259, 266
Verses, Miscellaneous and Impromptu—
“Adela, Adela, Adela Chart,” xxv. 109
“Bells upon the City are ringing in the night,” xxiv. 167
“Blame me not that this Epistle,” letter in verse to Baxter, xxiii. 46
“Brave lads in olden musical centuries,” xxiii. 304
“Dear Henley, with a pig’s snout on,” xxiii. 330
“Do you remember—can we e’er forget?—,” xxiv. 376
“Far have you come, my lady, from the town,” rondel, xxiii. 188
“Feast of Famine” (Ballads, 1890), xxiv. 298-9, 321, 330, 395
“Figure me to yourself, I pray,” xxiii. 287
“He may have been this and that,” xxiv. 190
“Here’s breid an’ wine an’ kebbuck,” xxiii. 257
“Home no more home to me, where must I wander?” (Songs of Travel), xxiv. 303
“I heard the pulse of the besieging sea” (to Colvin), xxiv. 366; xxv. 23 & n. 1
“In the beloved hour that ushers day” (Songs of Travel), xxiv. 240
“I was a barren tree before,” xxv. 366
“I would shoot you, but I have no bow,” xxiii. 360
“Let us who part like brothers part like bards” (Songs of Travel), xxiv. 378, 380
“My Stockton if I failed to like,” xxiv. 125
“Noo lyart leaves blaw ower the green,” xxiii. 193
“Nor you, O Penny Whistler, grudge,” xxiv. 20
“Not roses to the rose, I trow,” xxiv. 205
“Not yet, my soul, these friendly fields desert,” xxiii. 271
“Nous n’irons plus au bois,” rondel, xxiii. 188-9
“Of the many flowers you brought me” (to Miss Rawlinson), xxiv. 227
“Of where or how, I nothing know,” xxiii. 232
“O Henley, in my hours of ease,” xxiii. 222
“O, how my spirit languishes,” xxiv. 299
“O Sovereign of my Cedercrantz,” xxv. 278
“Priests’ Drought, The,” ballad, xxiv. 321
“Song of Rahero,” ballad, xxiv. 317, 321, 330, 395; xxv. 58
“Tandem Desino,” xxiv. 79 et seq.
“The pleasant river gushes,” xxiv. 32
“There was racing and chasing in Vailima plantation, xxv. 422
“Though I’ve often been touched with the volatile dart,” xxv. 109
“Ticonderoga,” ballad, xxiv. 321, 395
“To Felix,” xxiv. 189, 190
“We’re quarrelling, the villages,” xxv. 50
“When from her land to mine she goes” (Songs of Travel), xxiv. 345
“Woodman, The” (New Review), xxv. 18 & n. 1, 20
“Youth now flees on feathered foot,” xxiv. 172, 181
“Vicar of Wakefield,” xxv. 14 n. 1
“Vicomte de Bragelonne” (Dumas), xxiv. 398; xxv. 51
Victor Hugo’s romances, essay on, xxiii. 56, 124-5, 126, 127, 135
Victoria, Queen, xxiii. 323
Villiers, Lady Margaret, xxv. 228, 236
“Viol and Flute” (Gosse), xxiv. 98
“Virginibus Puerisque,” xxiii. 184, 185, 203, 204, 208, 212, 284, 294; xxv. 301 n. 1;
publication, xxiii. 281;
new edition, xxiv. 195, 216;
reprint, xxiv. 230
Vitrolles, Baron de, xxv. 288 n. 1, 321
Viviani, Emillia, xxiv. 212
Vogelweide, Walther von der (Studies in the Literature of Modern Europe), Gosse’s introduction to, xxiii. 221
“Volsungs” (Morris), xxiii. 334
Voltaire, xxiii. 297; on Œdipus, xxiv. 114
Vossische Zeitung, xxv. 263
Wachtmeister, Count, xxv. 96
“Waif Woman, The,” xxv. 272 & n. 1
Walker, Patrick, xxiv. 91
“Walking Tours,” xxiii. 202
Wallaroo, H.M.S., officers, xxv. 452
Walter, the Skye terrier, and his sobriquets, xxiii. 280, 281, 318; xxv. 41 & n. 2, et alibi
“Wandering Willie,” air, xxiii. 113
“Wandering Willie’s Tale” (Redgauntlet), xxiii. 287
“Washington” (Irving), xxv. 30
Watts-Dunton, T., letter to, xxiv. 203
Waverley Novels (Scott), xxiv. 75, 76, 84, 91; xxv. 228
“Waverley” (Scott), xxiii. intro. xxiii.; xxiv. 91
“Way of the World” (Trollope), xxiii. 215
Weather and the old woman, xxiii. 175
Webster, essay on (Gosse), xxiv. 45
Week, The, xxiv. 45
“Wegg, Silas,” (Our Mutual Friend), xxiii. 226
“Weg,” nickname for Gosse, xxiii. 224, 226, 227
“Weir of Hermiston,” unfinished, xxiii. intro. xx., 12; xxv. 144, 170, 264-5, 274, 281, 284, 287, 293, 306-7, 338, 350, 375, 383, 392, 403, 453, 456-7;
scheme for, xxv. 258, 260-1, 270-1
Wellington, Duke of (see also “Life” of), xxiv. 34 n. 1;
Tennyson’s “Ode” on, xxiii. 293
Went, George, xxv. 23 & n. 1, 100
“Werther” (Goethe’s “Sorrows of Werther”), xxiii. 60
Western Islands, trip among, xxiii. 124
West Highlands, visit to, xxiii. 183
“What was on the Slate,” xxiii. 222, 267
“When the Devil was well,” xxiii. 167, 168, 186
“Where” and “Whereas,” use discussed, xxv. 163
“White Company” (Doyle), xxv. 336
Whitman, Walt, essays on, xxiii. 55, 70, 72, 86, 89, 103, 104, 139, 140;
works of, xxiii. 70, 72, 357-8; xxiv. 183
Whitmee, Rev. S. J., missionary xxv. 174, 180, 202, 203;
letter to, xxv. 174
Wick, at, xxiii. 12, 15
“Widdicombe Fair,” song, xxv. 391
Wiesbaden, visit to, xxiii. 182
“Wild Man of the Woods,” xxiii. 249
“Will o’ the Mill,” xxiii. 184, 207, 248, 268
Williams, Dr., of Nice, xxiv. 59
Williams, Mr. and Mrs., xxiii. 353
“William Wilson” (Poe), xxiii. intro. xxiii.
“Wiltshire” (Beach of Falesá), xxv. 187
“Window in Thrums” (Barrie), xxv. 276, 362 & n. 1
Winslow Reef, xxiv. 362
“Winter and New Year” (Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh), xxiii. 216
“Winter’s Walk, The,” unfinished, xxiii. 201, 202
Wise, ——, xxv. 55
“Witch of Prague” (Crawford), xxv. 275
“Wogg” (see Walter), other names for, xxiii. 280-1, 318
Wolseley, Viscount, xxiv. 81
“Woman killed with Kindness” (Heywood), xxiii. 354
Women characters, dissatisfaction with, xxiv. 398
Women, thoughts on (see also Elgin marbles), xxiii. 162-4, 358
Wood, Sir Evelyn, xxiv. 81
“Wrecker” (with Lloyd Osbourne), xxiii. 12, 275; xxiv. 362, 367-8, 379, 380, 389, 396, 399, 402; xxv. 5, 11, 24, 33, 84, 87, 108, 110, 115, 128, 138, 141, 152, 171, 210, 215, 221, 224, 274, 376, 378;
finished, xxv. 111-2 & n. 1, 113, 115, 120, 122;
comments, xxv. 146;
discussed, xxv. 437 & n. 1;
publication of, xxv. 87, 144;
success of, xxv. 238, 258, 357
Wreck of the Susannah, xxiii. 308
“Wrong Box, The,” or “The Finsbury Tontine,” or “The Game of Bluff” (with Lloyd Osbourne), xxiv. 235, 249-50, 256, 258, 282, 291, 320, 322, 328, 360, 370
Wurmbrand, Captain Count, xxv. 354, 369, 370, 383, 415
Wyatt, Mr., xxiii. 6
Yeats, W. B., letter to, xxv. 390
“Yellow Paint,” xxiii. 141
Yelverton, ——, xxiii. 275
“Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum” (Treasure Island), xxiii. 326
Yoshida Torajiro, essay on (Familiar Studies), xxiii. 229, 262, 264, 265
“Young Chevalier,” unfinished, xxv. 144, 171 n. 1, 187-8, 189, 192, 216-7, 264, 281, 305;
characters in, xxv. 190-1
Young Folks, contributions to, xxiii. 328, 329, 332, 339; xxiv. 31, 55, 148
Yule-Tide, contribution to, xxv. 57
Zassetsky, Madame, xxiii. 97, 99, 102, 105, 108, 110, 113, 114, 115, 118, 122
Zassetsky, Nelitchka, xxiii. 98, 102, 104, 107, 108, 112, 114, 115, 116
Zola, Emile, xxiii. 346-7; xxiv. 396; xxv. 250 n. 1, 318, 319, 379
[For Index to the Letters, see pp. 469-507 of this Volume.]
“A birdie with a yellow bill,” xiv. 23
“A child should always say what’s true,” xiv. 5
Additional Memories and Portraits, xvi. 155
Additional Poems, xiv. 259
“Adela, Adela, Adela Chart,” xiv. 276
Admiral Guinea, xv. 145
Advertisement of “Moral Emblems,” Edition de Luxe, xxii. (end)
Advertisement of “Moral Emblems,” Second Collection, xxii. (end)
Advertisement of “The Graver and the Pen,” xxii. (end)
Æs Triplex, ii. 358
“All night long, and every night,” xiv. 4
“All round the house is the jet-black night,” xiv. 28
“All the names I know from nurse,” xiv. 46
“A lover of the moorland bare,” xiv. 74
Alpine Diversions, xxii. 248
Alps, The Stimulation of the, xxii., 252
Amateur Emigrant, The: Part I., From the Clyde to Sandy Hook: The Second Cabin, ii. 7;
Early Impressions, ii. 15;
Steerage Scenes, ii. 24;
Steerage Types, ii. 32;
The Sick Man, ii. 43;
The Stowaways, ii. 53;
Personal Experiences and Review, ii. 66;
New York, ii. 77. Part II., Across the Plains: Notes by the Way to Council Bluffs, ii. 93;
The Emigrant Train, ii. 107;
The Plain of Nebraska, ii. 115;
The Desert of Wyoming, ii. 119;
Fellow Passengers, ii. 124;
Despised Races, ii. 129;
To the Golden Gates, ii. 133
“A mile an’ a bittock, a mile or twa,” xiv. 110
“A naked house, a naked moor,” xiv. 71
Antwerp to Boom, i. 7
“A picture-frame for you to fill,” xiv. 74
Apology, An, for Idlers, ii. 334
Appeal, An, to the Clergy of the Church of Scotland, xxii. 199
“As from the house your mother sees,” xiv. 59
“As the single pang of the blow, when the metal is mingled well,” xiv. 254
“At evening when the lamp is lit,” xiv. 36
Autumn Effect, An, xxii. 112
Back to the World, i. 120
Bagster’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” xxii. 186
Balfour, David, xi. 1
Ballads, xiv. 139
Ballantrae, The Master of, xii. 5;
its genesis, xvi. 341
Beach, The, of Falesá: A South Sea Bridal, xvii. 193;
The Ban, xvii. 206;
The Missionary, xvii. 228;
Devil-work, xvii. 240;
Night in the Bush, xvii. 258;
The Bottle Imp, xvii. 277;
The Isle of Voices, xvii. 311
Beau Austin, xv. 91
Beggars, xvi. 190
“Berried brake and reedy island,” xiv. 226
“Birds all the sunny day,” xiv. 44
Black Arrow, The: Prologue, viii. 7;
Book I. The Two Lads, viii. 25;
Book II. The Moat House, viii. 83;
Book III. My Lord Foxham, viii. 123;
Book IV. The Disguise, viii. 165;
Book V. Crookback, viii. 217
Black Canyon, Advertisement of, xxii. (end)
Black Canyon or Wild Adventures in the Far West, xxii. (end)
“Blame me not that this epistle,” xiv. 261
“Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,” xiv. 257
Boarders, The, i. 195
Body-snatcher, The, iii. 277
Books which have Influenced Me, xvi. 272
Bottle Imp, The, xvii. 275
“Brave lads in olden musical centuries,” xiv. 270
“Bright is the ring of words,” xiv. 227
“Bring the comb and play upon it,” xiv. 15
Builder’s Doom, The, xxii. (end)
Burns, Robert, Some Aspects of, iii. 43
“By Lyne and Tyne, by Thames and Tees,” xiv. 133
Calton Hill, Edinburgh, i. 314
Camisards, The Country of the, i. 211
Camp, A, in the Dark, i. 167
Catriona: Part I. The Lord Advocate, xi. 7;
Part II. Father and Daughter, xi. 203
Changed Times, i. 99
Character, A, xxii. 37
Character, The, of Dogs, ix. 105
Charity Bazaar, The, xxii. 213
Charles of Orleans, iii. 171
Cheylard and Luc, i. 177
“Chief of our aunts, not only I,” xiv. 56
“Children, you are very little,” xiv. 18
Child’s Garden, A, of Verses, xiv. 1
Child’s Play, ii. 394
Christmas at Sea, xiv. 207
Christmas Sermon, A, xvi. 306
Cockermouth and Keswick, xxii. 80
College Magazine, A, ix. 36
College Memories, Some, ix. 19
College Papers: Edinburgh Students in 1824, xxii. 41;
The Modern Student considered generally, xxii. 45;
Debating Societies, xxii. 53;
The Philosophy of Umbrellas, xxii. 58;
The Philosophy of Nomenclature, xxii. 63
“Come up here, O dusty feet,” xiv. 24
Compiègne, At, i. 94
Crabbed Age and Youth, ii. 321
Criticisms: Lord Lytton’s “Fables in Song,” xxii. 171;
Salvini’s “Macbeth,” xxii. 180;
Bagster’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” xxii. 186
“Dark brown is the river,” xiv. 10
Davos in Winter, xxii. 241
Davos Press, The, xxii. (end)
Day, The, after To-morrow, xvi. 279
Deacon Brodie, or the Double Life, xv. 1
“Dear Andrew, with the brindled hair,” xiv. 79
“Dear Thamson class, whaure’er I gang,” xiv. 121
“Dear Uncle Jim, this garden ground,” xiv. 50
Debating Societies, xxii. 53
“Do you remember—can we e’er forget?” xiv. 242
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Strange Case of, v. 227
Donkey, the Pack, and the Pack Saddle, i. 143
“Down by a shining water well,” xiv. 32
Dreams, A Chapter on, xvi. 177
Dynamiter, The:
Prologue of the Cigar Divan, v. 7;
Challoner’s Adventure, v. 15;
Somerset’s Adventure, v. 73;
Desborough’s Adventure, v. 149;
Epilogue of the Cigar Divan, v. 212
Ebb-Tide, The:
Note by Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, xix. 3;
Part I. The Trio, xix. 7;
Part II. The Quartette, xix. 81
Edinburgh:
Picturesque Notes, i. 269;
Introductory, i. 271
Edinburgh Students in 1824, xxii. 41
Education, The, of an Engineer, xvi. 167
El Dorado, ii. 368
Engineers, Records of a Family of, xvi. 3
English Admirals, The, ii. 372
Enjoyment, The, of Unpleasant Places, xxii. 103
Epilogue to An Inland Voyage, i. 122
Episodes in the Story of a Mine, ii. 254
Essays of Travel:
Davos in Winter, xxii. 241;
Health and Mountains, xxii. 244;
Alpine Diversions, xxii. 248;
The Stimulation of the Alps, xxii. 252
“Even in the bluest noonday of July,” xiv. 77
“Every night my prayers I say,” xiv. 13
Fables:
The Persons of the Tale, xxi. 269;
The Sinking Ship, xxi. 272;
The Two Matches, xxi. 274;
The Sick Man and the Fireman, xxi. 275;
The Devil and the Inn-keeper, xxi. 276;
The Penitent, xxi. 277;
The Yellow Paint, xxi. 277;
The House of Eld, xxi. 280;
The Four Reformers, xxi. 286;
The Man and His Friend, xxi. 287;
The Reader, xxi. 287;
The Citizen and the Traveller, xxi. 288;
The Distinguished Stranger, xxi. 289;
The Cart-horses and the Saddle-horse, xxi. 290;
The Tadpole and the Frog, xxi. 291;
Something in it, xxi. 291;
Faith, Half-faith, and No Faith at all, xxi. 295;
The Touchstone, xxi. 297;
The Poor Thing, xxi. 304;
The Song of the Morrow, xxi. 310
Falling in Love, On, ii. 302
Familiar Studies of Men and Books:
Preface by Way of Criticism, iii. 5;
Victor Hugo’s Romances, iii. 19;
Some Aspects of Robert Burns, iii. 43;
Walt Whitman, iii. 77;
Henry David Thoreau: His Character and Opinions, iii. 101;
Yoshida-Torajiro, iii. 129;
François Villon, Student, Poet, and Housebreaker, iii. 142;
Charles of Orleans, iii. 171;
Samuel Pepys, iii. 206;
John Knox and his Relations to Women, iii. 230
“Far from the loud sea beaches,” xiv. 72
“Far have you come, my lady, from the town,” xiv. 263
“Farewell, fair day and fading light,” xiv. 233
Farewell, Modestine! i. 253
“Far ’yont amang the years to be,” xiv. 105
“Faster than fairies, faster than witches,” xiv. 24
Father Apollinaris, i. 183
Father Damien: An Open Letter to the Rev. Dr. Hyde of Honolulu, xvi. 315
Feast, The, of Famine;
Marquesan Manners, xiv. 167;
The Priest’s Vigil, xiv. 169;
The Lovers, xiv. 172;
The Feast, xiv. 176;
The Raid, xiv. 182;
Notes, xiv. 213
Fife, The Coast of, xvi. 155
“Figure me to yourself, I pray,” xiv. 268
Fleeming Jenkin, Memoir of, ix. 165
Florac, i. 234
Fontainebleau: Village Communities of Painters, xvi. 215
Footnote, A, to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa:
The Elements of Discord, I. Native, xvii. 5;
II. Foreign, xvii. 15;
The Sorrows of Laupepa, xvii. 27;
Brandeis, xvii. 53;
The Battle of Matautu, xvii. 70;
Last Exploits of Becker, xvii. 83;
The Samoan Camps, xvii. 103;
Affairs of Laulii and Fangalii, xvii. 112;
“Furor Consularis,” xvii. 128;
The Hurricane, xvii. 142;
Laupepa and Mataafa, xvii. 156
Foreigner, The, at Home, ix. 7
Forest Notes, xxii. 142
“For love of lovely words, and for the sake,” xiv. 97
“Forth from her land to mine she goes,” xiv. 239
“Frae nirly, nippin’, Eas’lan’ breeze,” xiv. 106
“Friend, in my mountain-side demesne,” xiv. 73
“From breakfast on all through the day,” xiv. 12
Genesis, The, of “The Master of Ballantrae,” xvi. 341
“Give to me the life I love,” xiv. 219
“God, if this were enough,” xiv. 234
“Go, little book, and wish to all,” xiv. 67
Gossip, A, on a Novel of Dumas’s, ix. 124
Gossip, A, on Romance, ix. 134
Goulet, Across the, i. 203
Graver, The, and the Pen, xxii. (end)
“Great is the sun, and wide he goes,” xiv. 46
Great North Road, The, xxi. 203
Green Donkey Driver, The, i. 149
Greyfriars, Edinburgh, i. 298
Health and Mountains, xxii. 244
Heart of the Country, The, i. 7
Heather Ale:
A Galloway Legend, xiv. 201;
Notes, xiv. 215
Heathercat, xxi. 177
“He hears with gladdened heart the thunder,” xiv. 233
“Here all is sunny, and when the truant gull,” xiv. 97
“Here, from the forelands of the tideless sea,” xiv. 273
“Home no more home to me, whither must I wander?” xiv. 229
“How do you like to go up in a swing?” xiv. 22
Hugo’s, Victor, Romances, iii. 19
Human Life, Reflections and Remarks on, xvi. 354
Humble Remonstrance, A, ix. 148
Hunter’s Family, The, ii. 230
“I am a kind of farthing dip,” xiv. 95
Ideal House, The, xvi. 370
“If I have faltered more or less,” xiv. 86
“If two may read aright,” xiv. 55
“I have a goad,” i. 158
“I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,” xiv. 12
“I have trod the upward and the downward slope,” xiv. 233
“I heard the pulse of the besieging sea,” xiv. 244
“I knew a silver head was bright beyond compare,” xiv. 240
“I knew thee strong and quiet like the hills,” xiv. 232
“I know not how it is with you,” xiv. 225
“In all the grove, nor stream nor bird,” xiv. 249
“In ancient tales, O friend, thy spirit dwelt,” xiv. 80
“In dreams unhappy I behold you stand,” xiv. 221
Inland Voyage, An, i. 7;
Epilogue to, i. 122
“In mony a foreign pairt I’ve been,” xiv. 125
“In rigorous hours, when down the iron lane,” xiv. 230
“In the belovèd hour that ushers day,” xiv. 231
“In the highlands, in the country places,” xiv. 228
“In the other gardens,” xiv. 49
Introduction, by Andrew Lang, to the Swanston Edition, i. ix.
“In winter I get up at night,” xiv. 3
“I read, dear friend, in your dear face,” xiv. 85
“I saw you toss the kites on high,” xiv. 16
“I should like to rise and go,” xiv. 7
“I sit and wait a pair of oars,” xiv. 78
Island Nights’ Entertainments, xvii. 193
Isle, The, of Voices, xvii. 311
“It is not yours, O mother, to complain,” xiv. 90
“It is the season now to go,” xiv. 70
“It is very nice to think,” xiv. 4
“It’s an owercome sooth for age an’ youth,” xiv. 135
“It’s rainin’. Weet’s the gairden sod,” xiv. 116
“It’s strange that God should fash to frame,” xiv. 120
“I was a barren tree before,” xiv. 276
“I will make you brooches and toys for your delight,” xiv. 225
“I woke before the morning, I was happy all the day,” xiv. 14
Juvenilia, and other Papers, xxii. 3
Kidnapped, x. 77
Knox, John, and his Relations to Women, iii. 230
La Fère, of Cursed Memory, i. 79
Landrecies, At, i. 46
Lantern-Bearers, The, xvi. 200
Last Day, The, i. 248
“Last, to the chamber where I lie,” xiv. 28
“Late in the nicht in bed I lay,” xiv. 129
“Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,” xiv. 25
Later Essays, xvi. 215
Lay Morals, xvi. 379
Legends, Edinburgh, i. 291
“Let Beauty awake in the morn from beautiful dreams,” xiv. 224
“Let now your soul in this substantial world,” xiv. 255
Letter to a Young Gentleman who proposes to embrace the Career of Art, xvi. 290
Letters from Samoa, xviii. 351
“Let us, who part like brothers part like bards,” xvi. 245
“Light foot and tight foot,” xiv. 277
Light-keeper, The, xxii. 217
“Little Indian, Sioux or Crow,” xiv. 19
Lodging, A, for the Night, iv. 227
“Long must elapse ere you behold again,” xiv. 241
Lord Lytton’s “Fables in Song,” xxii. 171
Lozère, Across the, i. 213
Macaire, xv. 205
Manse, The, ix. 61
Markheim, viii. 273
Martial Elegy, A, for some Lead Soldiers, xxii. (end)
Master, The, of Ballantrae, xii. 5;
its genesis, xvi. 341
Maubeuge, At, i. 21
Memoirs of an Islet, ix. 68
Memories and Portraits, ix. 7;
Additional Memories and Portraits, xvi. 155
Merry Men, The, xxi. 69
Mimente, In the Valley of the, i. 237
Monks, The, i. 188
Montvert, Pont de, i. 218
Moral Emblems, xxii. (end)
Moral Emblems: Second Collection, xxii. (end)
Morality, The, of the Profession of Letters, xvi. 260
More New Arabian Nights, v. 7
Mountain Town, A, in France, i. 257
Movements of Young Children, Notes on the, xxii. 97
Moy, Down the Oise to, i. 74
“My bed is like a little boat,” xiv. 21
“My body which my dungeon is,” xiv. 98
“My bonny man, the warld, it’s true,” xiv. 118
My First Book, “Treasure Island,” xvi. 331
“‘My house,’ I say. But hark to the sunny doves,” xiv. 98
“My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky,” xiv. 2
New Arabian Nights, iv. 3;
More New Arabian Nights, v. 7
New Form of Intermittent Light for Lighthouses, xxii. 220
New Town, Edinburgh: Town and Country, i. 305
Nicholson, John, The Misadventures of, x. 3
Nomenclature, The Philosophy of, xxii. 63
“Noo lyart leaves blaw ower the green,” xiv. 265
Note, A, on Realism, xvi. 234
Notes and Essays, chiefly of the Road:
A Retrospect, xxii. 71;
Cockermouth and Keswick, xxii. 80;
Roads, xxii. 90;
Notes on the Movements of Young Children, xxii. 97;
On the Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places, xxii. 103;
An Autumn Effect, xxii. 112;
A Winter’s Walk in Carrick and Galloway, xxii. 132;
Forest Notes, xxii. 142
Not I, and other Poems, xxii. (end)
“Not yet, my soul, these friendly fields desert,” xiv. 89
“Nous n’irons plus au bois,” xiv. 263
Noyon Cathedral, i. 86
Nuits Blanches, xxii. 27
Nurses, xxii. 34
“Of a’ the ills that flesh can fear,” xiv. 131
“Of his pitiable transformation,” xiv. 263
“Of speckled eggs, the birdie sings,” xiv. 9
“Of where or how, I nothing know,” xiv. 267
Oise, The, in Flood, i. 55;
Down the Oise to Moy, i. 74;
Through the Golden Valley, i. 84;
To Compiègne, i. 91
Church Interiors, i. 105
“O it’s I that am the captain of a tidy little ship,” xiv. 32
“O, I wad like to ken—to the beggar-wife says I,” xiv. 116
“O mother, lay your hand on my brow,” xiv. 92
Olalla, xxi. 127
Old Mortality, ix. 26
Old Scots Gardener, An, ix. 46
Old Town, Edinburgh: The Lands, i. 278
“Once only by the garden gate,” xiv. 220
“On the great streams the ships may go,” xiv. 68
Ordered South, ii. 345
Origny Sainte-Benoîte: A By-Day, i. 62;
The Company at Table, i. 68
Our Lady of the Snows, i. 181
“Out of the sun, out of the blast,” xiv. 87
“Over the borders, a sin without pardon,” xiv. 17
Pacific Capitals, The Old and New:
Monterey, ii. 141;
San Francisco, ii. 159
Pan’s Pipes, ii. 415
Parliament Close, Edinburgh, i. 285
Pastoral, ix. 53
Pavilion on the Links, The:
Tells how I camped in Graden Sea-wood, and beheld a Light in the Pavilion, iv. 167;
Tells of the Nocturnal Landing from the Yacht, iv. 174;
Tells how I became Acquainted with my Wife, iv. 180;
Tells in what a Startling Manner I learned that I was not alone in Graden Sea-wood, iv. 189;
Tells of an Interview between Northmour, Clara, and myself, iv. 197;
Tells of my Introduction to the Tall Man, iv. 202;
Tells how a Word was cried through the Pavilion Window, iv. 208;
Tells the last of the Tall Man, iv. 214;
Tells how Northmour carried out his Threat, iv. 221
“Peace and her huge invasion to these shores,” xiv. 93
Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured, xi. 116
Pentland Hills, To the, Edinburgh, i. 327
Pentland Rising, The:
The Causes of the Revolt, xxii. 3;
The Beginning, xxii. 6;
The March of the Rebels, xxii. 8;
Rullion Green, xxii. 13;
A Record of Blood, xxii. 17
Pepys, Samuel, iii. 206
Pines, A Night among the, i. 206
“Plain as the glistering planets shine,” xiv. 223
Plea, A, for Gas Lamps, ii. 420
Pont-sur-Sambre: We are Pedlars, i. 31;
The Travelling Merchant, i. 36
Portraits, Some, by Raeburn, ii. 385
Prayers written for Family Use at Vailima, xvi. 431
Précy and the Marionnettes, i. 111
Prince Otto:
Book I. Prince Errant, vii. 7;
Book II. Of Love and Politics, vii. 49;
Book III. Fortunate Misfortune, vii. 171
Providence and the Guitar, iv. 273
Pulvis et Umbra, xvi. 299
Raeburn, Some Portraits, by, ii. 385
Rajah’s Diamond, The:
Story of the Bandbox, iv. 86;
Story of the Young Man in Holy Orders, iv. 111;
The Story of the House with the Green Blinds, iv. 127;
The Adventure of Prince Florizel and a Detective, iv. 159
Random Memories:
I. The Coast of Fife, xvi. 155; II.
The Education of an Engineer, xvi. 167;
Rosa quo Locorum, xvi. 345
Realism, A Note on, xvi. 234
Records of a Family of Engineers, xvi. 3
Reflections and Remarks on Human Life, xvi. 354
“Resign the rhapsody, the dream,” xiv. 236
Retrospect, A, xxii. 71
Roads, xxii. 90
Robin and Ben, or the Pirate and the Apothecary, xxii. (end)
Rosa quo Locorum, xvi. 345
Royal Sport Nautique, The, i. 16
St. Ives, xx. 3
Salvini’s “Macbeth,” xxii. 180
Sambre and Oise Canal: Canal Boats, i. 50
Sambre Canalised, On the:
To Quartes, i. 26;
To Landrecies, i. 41
Satirist, The, xxii. 25
“Say not of me that weakly I declined,” xiv. 99
Scots Gardener, An old, ix. 46
Sea-Fogs, The, ii. 239
“She rested by the Broken Brook,” xiv. 222
Silverado Squatters, The, ii. 173;
In the Valley:
1, Calistoga, ii. 179;
2, The Petrified Forest, ii. 184;
3, Napa Wine, ii. 188;
4, The Scot Abroad, ii. 194.
—With the Children of Israel:
1, To Introduce Mr. Kelmar, ii. 201;
2, First Impressions of Silverado, ii. 205;
3, The Return, ii. 215
“Since I am sworn to live my life,” xiv. 263
“Since long ago, a child at home,” xiv. 237
“Sing clearlier, Muse, or evermore be still,” xiv. 96
“Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,” xiv. 256
Sire de Malétroit’s Door, The, iv. 250
Sketches:
The Satirist, xxii. 25;
Nuits Blanches, xxii. 27;
The Wreath of Immortelles, xxii. 30;
Nurses, xxii. 34;
A Character, xxii. 37
“Smooth it slides upon its travel,” xiv. 23
“Some day soon this rhyming volume, if you learn with proper speed,” xiv. 58
Songs of Travel, xiv. 217
Song, The, of Rahéro:
A Legend of Tahiti, xiv. 139;
The Slaying of Támatéa, xiv. 139;
The Venging of Támatéa, xiv. 148;
Rahéro, xiv. 159;
Notes, xiv. 211
“Son of my woman’s body, you go, to the drum and fife,” xiv. 227
South Seas, In the:
Part I. The Marquesas.—An Island Landfall, xviii. 5;
Making Friends, xviii. 12;
The Maroon, xviii. 21;
Death, xviii. 28;
Depopulation, xviii. 36;
Chiefs and Tapus, xviii. 44;
Hatiheu, xviii. 53;
The Port of Entry, xviii. 61;
The House of Temoana, xviii. 69;
A Portrait and a Story, xviii. 77;
Long Pig—A Cannibal High Place, xviii. 85;
The Story of a Plantation, xviii. 95;
Characters, xviii. 105;
In a Cannibal Valley, xviii. 112;
The Two Chiefs of Atuona, xviii, 119.
Part II. The Paumotus.—The Dangerous Archipelago—Atolls at a Distance, xviii. 129;
Fakarava: An Atoll at Hand, xviii. 137;
A House to Let in a Low Island, xviii. 146;
Traits and Sects in the Paumotus, xviii. 155;
A Paumotuan Funeral, xviii. 165;
Graveyard Stories, xviii. 170.
Part III. The
Eight Islands.—The Kona Coast, xviii. 187;
A Ride in the Forest, xviii. 197;
The City of Refuge, xviii. 203;
Koahumanu, xviii. 209;
The Lepers of Kona, xviii. 215.
Part IV. The Gilberts.—Butaritari, xviii. 223;
The Four Brothers, xviii. 229;
Around Our House, xviii. 237;
A Tale of a Tapu, xviii. 247, 255;
The Five Days’ Festival, xviii. 265;
Husband and Wife, xviii. 278.
Part V. The Gilberts—Apemama.—The King of Apemama:
The Royal Trader, xviii. 289;
Foundation of Equator Town, xviii. 298;
The Palace of Many Women, xviii. 306;
Equator Town and the Palace, xviii. 313;
King and Commons, xviii. 321;
Devil-work, xviii. 320;
The King of Apemama, xviii. 342
Squatting, The Act of, ii. 221
Starry Drive, A, ii. 250
Stevenson at Play:
Introduction by Lloyd Osbourne, xxii. 259;
War Correspondence from Stevenson’s Note-book, xxii. 263
Stevenson, Thomas, ix. 75
Story, The, of a Lie, xxi. 3
Student, The Modern, considered generally, xxii. 45
Suicide Club, The, iv. 3;
Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts, iv. 5;
The Story of the Physician and the Saratoga Trunk, iv. 37;
The Adventure of the Hansom Cabs, iv. 65
“Summer fading, winter comes,” xiv. 33
Talk and Talkers: I., ix. 81; II., ix. 94
Tarn, In the Valley of the, i. 224
Technical Elements, Some, of Style in Literature, xvi. 241
“The bed was made, the room was fit,” xiv. 96
“The clinkum-clank o’ Sabbath bells,” xiv. 111
“The coach is at the door at last,” xiv. 26
“Thee, Mackintosh, artificer of light,” xiv. 273
“The embers of the day are red,” xiv. 257
“The friendly cow, all red and white,” xiv. 16
“The ganger walked with willing foot,” xiv. 67
“The gardener does not love to talk,” xiv. 49
“The infinite shining heavens,” xiv. 222
“The jolly English Yellowboy,” xiv. 274
“The lamps now glitter down the street,” xiv. 37
“The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out,” xiv. 14
“The Lord Himsel’ in former days,” xiv. 123
“The moon has a face like the clock in the hall,” xiv. 22
“The morning drum-call on my eager ear,” xiv. 233
“The pleasant river gushes,” xiv. 272
“The rain is raining all around,” xiv. 5
“The red room with the giant bed,” xiv. 56
Thermal Influence of Forests, xxii. 225
“The Silver Ship, my King—that was her name,” xiv. 238
“The stormy evening closes now in vain,” xiv. 230
“The sun is not a-bed when I,” xiv. 20
“The tropics vanish, and meseems that I,” xiv. 243
“The unfathomable sea, and time, and tears,” xiv. 75
“These nuts, that I keep in the back of the nest,” xiv. 34
“The world is so full of a number of things,” xiv. 16
“The year runs through her phases; rain and sun,” xiv. 82
Thoreau, Henry David: His Character and Opinions, iii. 101
Thrawn Janet, v. 305
“Three of us afloat in the meadow by the swing,” xiv. 6
“Through all the pleasant meadow side,” xiv. 26
Ticonderoga:
A Legend of the West Islands, xiv. 187;
The Saying of the Name, xiv. 189;
The Seeking of the Name, xiv. 194;
The Place of the Name, xiv. 196;
Notes, xiv. 214
Toils and Pleasures, ii. 264
Toll House, The, ii. 245
“To see the infinite pity of this place,” xiv. 240
“To the heart of youth the world is a highway side,” xiv. 221
“To you, let snow and roses,” xiv. 224
Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, i. 141
Treasure Island—
Part I. The Old Buccaneer, vi. 9;
Part II. The Sea-Cook, vi. 49;
Part III. My Shore Adventure, vi. 87;
Part IV. The Stockade, vi. 109;
Part V. My Sea Adventure, vi. 145;
Part VI. Captain Silver, vi. 185;
My First Book, xvi. 331
Treasure, The, of Franchard, vi. 267
“Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,” xiv. 235
Truth of Intercourse, ii. 311
Umbrellas, The Philosophy of, xxii. 58
“Under the wide and starry sky,” xiv. 86
Underwoods:
I. In English, xiv. 67;
II. In Scots, xiv. 105
“Up into the cherry-tree,” xiv. 6
Upper Gévaudan, i. 165, 201
Velay, i. 141
Villa Quarters, Edinburgh, i. 311
Villon, François: Student, Poet, and Housebreaker, iii. 142
Virginibus Puerisque, I., ii. 281; II., ii. 292;
On Falling in Love, ii. 302;
Truth of Intercourse, ii. 311;
Crabbed Age and Youth, ii. 321;
An Apology for Idlers, ii. 334;
Ordered South, ii. 345;
Æs Triplex, ii. 358;
El Dorado, ii. 368;
The English Admirals, ii. 372;
Some Portraits by Raeburn, ii. 385;
Child’s Play, ii. 394;
Walking Tours, ii. 406;
Pan’s Pipes, ii. 415;
A Plea for Gas Lamps, ii. 420
Walking Tours, ii. 406
Walt Whitman, iii. 77
War Correspondence from Stevenson’s Note-book, xxii. 263
“We built a ship upon the stairs,” xiv. 9
Weir of Hermiston, xix. 159;
Sir Sidney Colvin’s Note, xix. 284;
Glossary of Scots Words, xix. 297
“We see you as we see a face,” xiv. 85
“We travelled in the print of olden wars,” xiv. 96
“We uncommiserate pass into the night,” xiv. 255
“What are you able to build with your blocks?” xiv. 35
“When aince Aprile has fairly come,” xiv. 109
“When at home alone I sit,” xiv. 38
“When children are playing alone on the green,” xiv. 31
“When chitterin’ cauld the day sail daw,” xiv. 275
“Whenever Auntie moves around,” xiv. 11
“Whenever the moon and stars are set,” xiv. 7
“When I am grown to man’s estate,” xiv. 9
“When I was sick and lay a-bed,” xiv. 11
“When the bright lamp is carried in,” xiv. 27
“When the golden day is done,” xiv. 43
“When the grass was closely mown,” xiv. 47
“Where the bells peal far at sea,” xiv. 84
“Who comes to-night? We ope the doors in vain,” xiv. 83
Willebrock Canal, On the, i. 11
Will o’ the Mill, vi. 235
Winter and New Year, Edinburgh, i. 320
Winter’s Walk, A, in Carrick and Galloway, xxii. 132
“With half a heart I wander here,” xiv. 94
Wreath, The, of Immortelles, xxii. 30
Wrecker, The:
Prologue, xiii. 5;
The Yarn, xiii. 19;
Epilogue, xiii. 427
Wrong Box, The, vii. 219
“Yet, O stricken heart, remember, O remember,” xiv. 93
Yoshida-Torajiro, iii. 129
Young Chevalier, The, xxi. 253
“Youth now flees on feathered foot,” xiv. 76
“You, too, my mother, read my rhymes,” xiv. 55
THE END.
PRINTED BY CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C.
