Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (1037 page)

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.

 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.

XIV

LIFE IN SAMOA —
Concluded

FOURTH YEAR AT VAILIMA — THE END

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 374 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, p, 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. 375 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 —

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. .

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 377 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.” 378 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, 379 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 380 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!