Роберт Льюис Стивенсон
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 23

III
STUDENT DAYS — Concluded

HOME AGAIN – LITERATURE AND LAW

May 1874 – June 1875

Returning to Edinburgh by way of Paris in May 1874, Stevenson went to live with his parents at Swanston and Edinburgh and resumed his reading for the Bar. Illness and absence had done their work, and the old harmony of the home was henceforth quite re-established. In his spare time during the next year he worked hard at his chosen art, trying his hand at essays, short stories, criticisms, and prose poems. In all this experimental writing he had neither the aims nor the facility of the journalist, but strove always after the higher qualities of literature, and was never satisfied with what he had done. To find for all he had to say words of vital aptness and animation – to communicate as much as possible of what he has somewhere called “the incommunicable thrill of things“ – was from the first his endeavour in literature, nay more, it was the main passion of his life: and the instrument that should serve his purpose could not be forged in haste. Neither was it easy for this past master of the random, the unexpected, the brilliantly back-foremost and topsy-turvy in talk, to learn in writing the habit of orderly arrangement and organic sequence which even the lightest forms of literature cannot lack.

In the course of this summer Stevenson’s excursions included a week or two spent with me at Hampstead, during which he joined the Savile Club and made some acquaintance with London literary society; a yachting trip with his friend Sir Walter Simpson in the western islands of Scotland; a journey to Barmouth and Llandudno with his parents; and in the late autumn a walking tour in Buckinghamshire. The Scottish winter (1874-75) tried him severely, as Scottish winters always did, but was enlivened by a new and what was destined to be a very fruitful and intimate friendship, the origin of which was described in the following letters, namely that of Mr. W. E. Henley. In April 1875 he made his first visit, in the company of his cousin R. A. M. Stevenson to the artist haunts of the forest of Fontainebleau, whence he returned to finish his reading for the Scottish Bar and face the examination which was before him in July. During all this year, as will be seen, his chief, almost his exclusive, correspondents and confidants continued to be the same as in the preceding winter.

To Sidney Colvin

Written in Paris on his way home to Edinburgh. Some of our talk at Mentone had run on the scheme of a spectacle play on the story of the burning of the temple of Diana at Ephesus by Herostratus, the type of insane vanity in excelsis.

[Hôtel St. Romain, Paris, end of April 1874.]

MY DEAR COLVIN, – I am a great deal better, but still have to take care. I have got quite a lot of Victor Hugo done; and not I think so badly: pitching into this work has straightened me up a good deal. It is the devil’s own weather but that is a trifle. I must know when Cornhill must see it. I can send some of it in a week easily, but I still have to read The Laughing Man,¹³ and I mean to wait until I get to London and have the loan of that from you. If I buy anything more this production will not pay itself. The first part is not too well written, though it has good stuff in it.

My people have made no objection to my going to Göttingen; but my body has made I think very strong objections. And you know if it is cold here, it must be colder there. It is a sore pity; that was a great chance for me and it is gone. I know very well that between Galitzin and this swell professor I should have become a good specialist in law and how that would have changed and bettered all my work it is easy to see; however I must just be content to live as I have begun, an ignorant, chic-y penny-a-liner. May the Lord have mercy on my soul!

Going home not very well is an astonishing good hold for me. I shall simply be a prince.

Have you had any thought about Diana of the Ephesians? I will straighten up a play for you, but it may take years. A play is a thing just like a story, it begins to disengage itself and then unrolls gradually in block. It will disengage itself some day for me and then I will send you the nugget and you will see if you can make anything out of it. – Ever yours,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Sitwell

This and the following letters were written after Stevenson’s return to Scotland. The essay Ordered South appeared in Macmillan’s Magazine at this date; that on Victor Hugo’s romances in the Cornhill a little later.

[Swanston], May 1874, Monday.

We are now at Swanston Cottage, Lothianburn, Edinburgh. The garden is but little clothed yet, for, you know, here we are six hundred feet above the sea. It is very cold, and has sleeted this morning. Everything wintry. I am very jolly, however, having finished Victor Hugo, and just looking round to see what I should next take up. I have been reading Roman Law and Calvin this morning.

Evening.– I went up the hill a little this afternoon. The air was invigorating, but it was so cold that my scalp was sore. With this high wintry wind, and the grey sky, and faint northern daylight, it was quite wonderful to hear such a clamour of blackbirds coming up to me out of the woods, and the bleating of sheep being shorn in a field near the garden, and to see golden patches of blossom already on the furze, and delicate green shoots upright and beginning to frond out, among last year’s russet bracken. Flights of crows were passing continually between the wintry leaden sky and the wintry cold-looking hills. It was the oddest conflict of seasons. A wee rabbit – this year’s making, beyond question – ran out from under my feet, and was in a pretty perturbation, until he hit upon a lucky juniper and blotted himself there promptly. Evidently this gentleman had not had much experience of life.

I have made an arrangement with my people: I am to have £84 a year – I only asked for £80 on mature reflection – and as I should soon make a good bit by my pen, I shall be very comfortable. We are all as jolly as can be together, so that is a great thing gained.

Wednesday.– Yesterday I received a letter that gave me much pleasure from a poor fellow-student of mine, who has been all winter very ill, and seems to be but little better even now. He seems very much pleased with Ordered South. “A month ago,” he says, “I could scarcely have ventured to read it; to-day I felt on reading it as I did on the first day that I was able to sun myself a little in the open air.” And much more to the like effect. It is very gratifying. – Ever your faithful friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

Mr. John Morley had asked for a notice by R. L. S. for the Fortnightly Review, which he was then editing, of Lord Lytton’s newly published volume, Fables in Song.

Swanston, Lothianburn, Edinburgh [May 1874].

All right. I’ll see what I can do. Before I could answer I had to see the book; and my good father, after trying at all our libraries, bought it for me. I like the book; that is some of it and I’ll try to lick up four or five pages for the Fortnightly.

It is still as cold as cold, hereaway. And the Spring hammering away at the New Year in despite. Poor Spring, scattering flowers with red hands and preparing for Summer’s triumphs all in a shudder herself. Health still good, and the humour for work enduring.

Jenkin wrote to say he would second me in such a kind little notelet. I shall go in for it (the Savile I mean) whether Victor Hugo is accepted or not, being now a man of means. Have I told you by the way that I have now an income of £84, or as I prefer to put it for dignity’s sake, two thousand one hundred francs, a year.

In lively hope of better weather and your arrival hereafter. – I remain, yours ever,

R. L. S.

To Mrs. Sitwell

Swanston, Wednesday, May 1874.

Struggling away at Fables in Song. I am much afraid I am going to make a real failure; the time is so short, and I am so out of the humour. Otherwise very calm and jolly: cold still impossible.

Thursday.– I feel happier about the Fables, and it is warmer a bit; but my body is most decrepit, and I can just manage to be cheery and tread down hypochondria under foot by work. I lead such a funny life, utterly without interest or pleasure outside of my work: nothing, indeed, but work all day long, except a short walk alone on the cold hills, and meals, and a couple of pipes with my father in the evening. It is surprising how it suits me, and how happy I keep.

Friday.– “My dear Stevenson how do you do? do you annoying yourself or no? when we go to the Olivses it allways rememberse us you. Nelly and my aunt went away. And when the organ come and play the Soldaten it mak us think of Nelly. It is so sad I allmoste went away. I make my baths; and then we go to Franzensbad; will you come to see us?”

There is Pella’s letter facsimile, punctuation, spelling and all. Mme. Garschine’s was rather sad and gave me the blues a bit; I think it very likely I may run over to Franzensbad for a week or so this autumn, if I am wanted that is to say: I shall be able to afford it easily.

I have got on rather better with the Fables; perhaps it won’t be a failure, though I fear. To-day the sun shone brightly although the wind was cold: I was up the hill a good time. It is very solemn to see the top of one hill steadfastly regarding you over the shoulder of another: I never before to-day fully realised the haunting of such a gigantic face, as it peers over into a valley and seems to command all corners. I had a long talk with the shepherd about foreign lands, and sheep. A Russian had once been on the farm as a pupil; he told me that he had the utmost pity for the Russian’s capacities, since (dictionary and all) he had never managed to understand him; it must be remembered that my friend the shepherd spoke Scotch of the broadest and often enough employs words which I do not understand myself.

Saturday.– I have received such a nice long letter (four sides) from Leslie Stephen to-day about my Victor Hugo. It is accepted. This ought to have made me gay, but it hasn’t. I am not likely to be much of a tonic to-night. I have been very cynical over myself to-day, partly, perhaps, because I have just finished some of the deedest rubbish about Lord Lytton’s Fables that an intelligent editor ever shot into his wastepaper basket. If Morley prints it I shall be glad, but my respect for him will be shaken.

R. L. S.

To Sidney Colvin

Enclosing Mr. Leslie Stephen’s letter accepting the article on Victor Hugo: the first of Stevenson’s many contributions to the Cornhill Magazine.

[Edinburgh, May 1874.]

MY DEAR COLVIN, – I send you L. Stephen’s letter which is certainly very kind and jolly to get¹⁴. I wrote some stuff about Lord Lytton, but I had not the heart to submit it to you. I sent it direct to Morley, with a Spartan billet. God knows it is bad enough; but it cost me labour incredible. I was so out of the vein, it would have made you weep to see me digging the rubbish out of my seven wits with groanings unutterable. I certainly mean to come to London, and likely before long if all goes well; so on that ground, I cannot force you to come to Scotland. Still, the weather is now warm and jolly, and of course it would not be expensive to live here so long as that did not bore you. If you could see the hills out of my window to-night, you would start incontinent. However do as you will, and if the mountain will not come to Mahomet Mahomet will come to the mountain in due time, Mahomet being me and the mountain you, Q.E.D., F.R.S. – Ever yours,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Sitwell

[Swanston, May 1874], Tuesday.

Another cold day; yet I have been along the hillside, wondering much at idiotic sheep, and raising partridges at every second step. One little plover is the object of my firm adherence. I pass his nest every day, and if you saw how he flies by me, and almost into my face, crying and flapping his wings, to direct my attention from his little treasure, you would have as kind a heart to him as I. To-day I saw him not, although I took my usual way; and I am afraid that some person has abused his simple wiliness and harried (as we say in Scotland) the nest. I feel much righteous indignation against such imaginary aggressor. However, one must not be too chary of the lower forms. To-day I sat down on a tree-stump at the skirt of a little strip of planting, and thoughtlessly began to dig out the touchwood with an end of twig. I found I had carried ruin, death, and universal consternation into a little community of ants; and this set me a-thinking of how close we are environed with frail lives, so that we can do nothing without spreading havoc over all manner of perishable homes and interests and affections; and so on to my favourite mood of an holy terror for all action and all inaction equally – a sort of shuddering revulsion from the necessary responsibilities of life. We must not be too scrupulous of others, or we shall die. Conscientiousness is a sort of moral opium; an excitant in small doses, perhaps, but at bottom a strong narcotic.

Saturday.– I have been two days in Edinburgh, and so had not the occasion to write to you. Morley has accepted the Fables, and I have seen it in proof, and think less of it than ever. However, of course, I shall send you a copy of the magazine without fail, and you can be as disappointed as you like, or the reverse if you can. I would willingly recall it if I could.

Try, by way of change, Byron’s Mazeppa; you will be astonished. It is grand and no mistake, and one sees through it a fire, and a passion, and a rapid intuition of genius, that makes one rather sorry for one’s own generation of better writers, and – I don’t know what to say; I was going to say “smaller men“; but that’s not right; read it, and you will feel what I cannot express. Don’t be put out by the beginning; persevere, and you will find yourself thrilled before you are at an end with it.

Sunday.– The white mist has obliterated the hills and lies heavily round the cottage, as though it were laying siege to it; the trees wave their branches in the wind, with a solemn melancholy manner, like people swaying themselves to and fro in pain. I am alone in the house, all the world being gone to church; and even in here at the side of the fire, the air clings about one like a wet blanket. Yet this morning, when I was just awake, I had thought it was going to be a fine day. First, a cock crew, loudly and beautifully and often; then followed a long interval of silence and darkness, the grey morning began to get into my room; and then from the other side of the garden, a blackbird executed one long flourish, and in a moment as if a spring had been touched or a sluice-gate opened, the whole garden just brimmed and ran over with bird-songs. – Ever your faithful friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Sitwell

For a part of June Stevenson had come south, spending most of his time in lodgings with me at Hampstead (where he got the idea for part of his essay Notes on the Movements of Young Children) and making his first appearance at the Savile Club. Trouble awaited him after his return.

[Swanston, June 1874], Wednesday.

News reaches me that Bob is laid down with diphtheria; and you know what that means.

Night.– I am glad to say that I have on the whole a good account of Bob and I do hope he may pull through in spite of all. I went down and saw the doctor; but it is not thought right that I should go in to see him in case of contagion: you know it is a very contagious malady.

Thursday.– It is curious how calm I am in such a case. I wait with perfect composure for farther news; I can do nothing; why should I disturb myself? And yet if things go wrong I shall be in a fine way I can tell you.

How curiously we are built up into our false positions. The other day, having toothache and the black dog on my back generally, I was rude to one of the servants at the dinner-table. And nothing of course can be more disgusting than for a man to speak harshly to a young woman who will lose her place if she speak back to him; and of course I determined to apologise. Well, do you know, it was perhaps four days before I found courage enough, and I felt as red and ashamed as could be. Why? because I had been rude? not a bit of it; because I was doing a thing that would be called ridiculous in thus apologising. I did not know I had so much respect of middle-class notions before; this is my right hand which I must cut off. Hold the arm please: once – twice – thrice: the offensive member is amputated: let us hope I shall never be such a cad any more as to be ashamed of being a gentleman.

Night.– I suppose I must have been more affected than I thought; at least I found I could not work this morning and had to go out. The whole garden was filled with a high westerly wind, coming straight out of the hills and richly scented with furze – or whins, as we would say. The trees were all in a tempest and roared like a heavy surf; the paths all strewn with fallen apple-blossom and leaves. I got a quiet seat behind a yew and went away into a meditation. I was very happy after my own fashion, and whenever there came a blink of sunshine or a bird whistled higher than usual, or a little powder of white apple-blossom came over the hedge and settled about me in the grass, I had the gladdest little flutter at my heart and stretched myself for very voluptuousness. I wasn’t altogether taken up with my private pleasures, however, and had many a look down ugly vistas in the future, for Bob and others. But we must all be content and brave, and look eagerly for these little passages of happiness by the wayside, and go on afterwards, savouring them under the tongue.

Friday.– Our garden has grown beautiful at last, beautiful with fresh foliage and daisied grass. The sky is still cloudy and the day perhaps even a little gloomy; but under this grey roof, in this shaded temperate light, how delightful the new summer is.

When I shall come to London must always be problematical like all my movements, and of course this sickness of Bob’s makes it still more uncertain. If all goes well I may have to go to the country and take care of him in his convalescence. But I shall come shortly. Do not hurry to write to me; I had rather you had ten minutes more of good, friendly sleep, than I a longer letter; and you know I am rather partial to your letters. Yesterday, by the bye, I received the proof of Victor Hugo; it is not nicely written, but the stuff is capital, I think. Modesty is my most remarkable quality, I may remark in passing.

1.30. – I was out, behind the yew hedge, reading the Comtesse de Rudolstadt when I found my eyes grow weary, and looked up from the book. O the rest of the quiet greens and whites, of the daisied surface! I was very peaceful, but it began to sprinkle rain and so I fain to come in for a moment and chat with you. By the way, I must send you Consuelo; you said you had quite forgotten it if I remember aright; and surely a book that could divert me, when I thought myself on the very edge of the grave, from the work that I so much desired and was yet unable to do, and from many painful thoughts, should somewhat support and amuse you under all the hard things that may be coming upon you. If you should wonder why I am writing to you so voluminously, know that it is because I am not suffering myself to work, and in idleness, as in death, etc.

Saturday.– I have had a very cruel day. I heard this morning that yesterday Bob had been very much worse and I went down to Portobello with all sorts of horrible presentiments. I was glad when I turned the corner and saw the blinds still up. He was definitely better, if the word definitely can be used about such a detestably insidious complaint. I have ordered Consuelo for you, and you should have it soon this week; I mean next week of course; I am thinking when you will receive this letter, not of now when I am writing it.

I am so tired; but I am very hopeful. All will be well some time, if it be only when we are dead. One thing I see so clearly. Death is the end neither of joy nor sorrow. Let us pass into the clods and come up again as grass and flowers; we shall still be this wonderful, shrinking, sentient matter – we shall still thrill to the sun and grow relaxed and quiet after rain, and have all manner of pains and pleasures that we know not of now. Consciousness, and ganglia, and suchlike, are after all but theories. And who knows? This God may not be cruel when all is done; he may relent and be good to us à la fin des fins. Think of how he tempers our afflictions to us, of how tenderly he mixes in bright joys with the grey web of trouble and care that we call our life. Think of how he gives, who takes away. Out of the bottom of the miry clay I write this; and I look forward confidently; I have faith after all; I believe, I hope, I will not have it reft from me; there is something good behind it all, bitter and terrible as it seems. The infinite majesty (as it will be always in regard to us the bubbles of an hour) the infinite majesty must have moments, if it were no more, of greatness; must sometimes be touched with a feeling for our infirmities, must sometimes relent and be clement to those frail playthings that he has made, and made so bitterly alive. Must it not be so, my dear friend, out of the depths I cry? I feel it, now when I am most painfully conscious of his cruelty. He must relent. He must reward. He must give some indemnity, if it were but in the quiet of a daisy, tasting of the sun and the soft rain and the sweet shadow of trees, for all the dire fever that he makes us bear in this poor existence. We make too much of this human life of ours. It may be that two clods together, two flowers together, two grown trees together touching each other deliciously with their spread leaves, it may be that these dumb things have their own priceless sympathies, surer and more untroubled than ours.

I don’t know quite whether I have wandered. Forgive me, I feel as if I had relieved myself; so perhaps it may not be unpleasant for you either. – Believe me, ever your faithful friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.