The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 24. Robert Louis Stevenson
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W. E. Henley
DEAR BOY, —Old Mortality9 is out, and I am glad to say Coggie likes it. We like her immensely.
I keep better, but no great shakes yet; cannot work – cannot: that is flat, not even verses: as for prose, that more active place is shut on me long since.
My view of life is essentially the comic; and the romantically comic. As You Like It is to me the most bird-haunted spot in letters; Tempest and Twelfth Night follow. These are what I mean by poetry and nature. I make an effort of my mind to be quite one with Molière, except upon the stage, where his inimitable jeux de scène beggar belief; but you will observe they are stage-plays – things ad hoc; not great Olympian debauches of the heart and fancy; hence more perfect, and not so great. Then I come, after great wanderings, to Carmosine and to Fantasio; to one part of La Dernière Aldini (which, by the by, we might dramatise in a week), to the notes that Meredith has found, Evan and the postillion, Evan and Rose, Harry in Germany. And to me these things are the good; beauty, touched with sex and laughter; beauty with God’s earth for the background. Tragedy does not seem to me to come off; and when it does, it does so by the heroic illusion; the anti-masque has been omitted; laughter, which attends on all our steps in life, and sits by the deathbed, and certainly redacts the epitaph, laughter has been lost from these great-hearted lies. But the comedy which keeps the beauty and touches the terrors of our life (laughter and tragedy-in-a-good-humour having kissed), that is the last word of moved representation; embracing the greatest number of elements of fate and character; and telling its story, not with the one eye of pity, but with the two of pity and mirth.
To Edmund Gosse
Early in May Stevenson again fell very dangerously ill with hemorrhage of the lungs, and lay for several weeks between life and death, until towards the end of June he was brought sufficiently round to venture by slow stages on the journey to England, staying for two or three weeks at Royat on the way. His correspondent had lately been appointed Clark Reader in English Literature at Trinity College, Cambridge.
DEAR GOSSE, – The news of the Professorate found me in the article of – well, of heads or tails; I am still in bed, and a very poor person. You must thus excuse my damned delay; but, I assure you, I was delighted. You will believe me the more, if I confess to you that my first sentiment was envy; yes, sir, on my blood-boltered couch I envied the professor. However, it was not of long duration; the double thought that you deserved and that you would thoroughly enjoy your success fell like balsam on my wounds. How came it that you never communicated my rejection of Gilder’s offer for the Rhone? But it matters not. Such earthly vanities are over for the present. This has been a fine well-conducted illness. A month in bed; a month of silence; a fortnight of not stirring my right hand; a month of not moving without being lifted. Come! Ça y est: devilish like being dead. – Yours, dear Professor, academically,
I am soon to be moved to Royat; an invalid valet goes with me! I got him cheap – second-hand.
In turning over my late friend Ferrier’s commonplace book, I find three poems from Viol and Flute copied out in his hand: “When Flower-time,” “Love in Winter,” and “Mistrust.” They are capital too. But I thought the fact would interest you. He was no poetist either; so it means the more. “Love in W.!” I like the best.
To Sidney Colvin
Enclosing some supplementary verses for the Child’s Garden.
DEAR S. C., – Are these four in time? No odds about order. I am at Marseille and stood the journey wonderfully. Better address Hotel Chabassière, Royat, Puy de Dôme. You see how this d – d poeshie flows from me in sickness: Are they good or bad? Wha kens? But I like the Little Land, I think, as well as any. As time goes on I get more fancy in. We have no money, but a valet and a maid. The valet is no end; how long can you live on a valet? Vive le valet! I am tempted to call myself a valetudinarian. I love my love with a V because he is a Valetudinarian; I took him to Valetta or Valais, gave him his Vails and tenderly addressed him with one word,
P.S.– It does not matter of course about order. As soon as I have all the slips I shall organise the book for the publisher. A set of 8 will be put together under the title An Only Child; another cycle of 10 will be called In the Garden, and other six called Bedtime to end all up. It will now make quite a little volume of a good way upwards of 100 pp. Will you instruct Bain to send me a Bible; of a type that I can read without blindness; the better if with notes; there is a Clarendon Press Bible, pray see it yourself. I also want Ewald’s History in a translation.
To Sidney Colvin
The play of Deacon Brodie, the joint work of R. L. S. and W. E. H., was to be performed in London early in July.
DEAR S. C., – Books received with great thanks. Very nice books, though I see you underrate my cecity: I could no more read their beautiful Bible than I could sail in heaven. However I have sent for another and can read the rest for patience.
I quite understand your feelings about the Deacon, which is a far way behind; but I get miserable when I think of Henley cutting this splash and standing, I fear, to lose a great deal of money. It is about Henley, not Brodie, that I care. I fear my affections are not strong to my past works; they are blotted out by others; and anyhow the Deacon is damn bad.
I am half asleep and can no more discourse. Say to your friends, “Look here, some friends of mine are bringing out a play; it has some stuff; suppose you go and see it.” But I know I am a cold, unbelieving fellow, incapable of those hot claps that honour you and Henley and therefore – I am asleep. Child’s Garden (first instalment) come. Fanny ill; self asleep.
To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
MY DEAR PEOPLE, – The weather has been demoniac; I have had a skiff of cold, and was finally obliged to take to bed entirely; to-day, however, it has cleared, the sun shines, and I begin to
Several days after.– I have been out once, but now am back in bed. I am better, and keep better, but the weather is a mere injustice. The imitation of Edinburgh is, at times, deceptive; there is a note among the chimney pots that suggests Howe Street; though I think the shrillest spot in Christendom was not upon the Howe Street side, but in front, just under the Miss Graemes’ big chimney stack. It had a fine alto character – a sort of bleat that used to divide the marrow in my joints – say in the wee, slack hours. That music is now lost to us by rebuilding; another air that I remember, not regret, was the solo of the gas-burner in the little front room; a knickering, flighty, fleering, and yet spectral cackle. I mind it above all on winter afternoons, late, when the window was blue and spotted with rare rain-drops, and, looking out, the cold evening was seen blue all over, with the lamps of Queen’s and Frederick’s Street dotting it with yellow, and flaring eastward in the squalls. Heavens, how unhappy I have been in such circumstances – I, who have now positively forgotten the colour of unhappiness; who am full like a fed ox, and dull like a fresh turf, and have no more spiritual life, for good or evil, than a French bagman.
We are at Chabassière’s, for of course it was nonsense to go up the hill when we could not walk.
The child’s poems in a far extended form are likely soon to be heard of – which Cummy I dare say will be glad to know. They will make a book of about one hundred pages. – Ever your affectionate,
To Sidney Colvin
I
The essay so called, suggested by the death of J. W. Ferrier. See