Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson Volume 1 Part 19

His next appearance is at the restaurant of one Donadieu, in Bush Street, between Dupont and Kearney, where a copious meal, half a bottle of wine, coffee and brandy may be procured for the sum of four bits, ALIAS fifty cents., 0 pounds, 2s. 2d. sterling. The wine is put down in a whole bottleful, and it is strange and painful to observe the greed with which the gentleman in question seeks to secure the last drop of his allotted half, and the scrupulousness with which he seeks to avoid taking the first drop of the other. This is partly explained by the fact that if he were to go over the mark - bang would go a tenpence. He is again armed with a book, but his best friends will learn with pain that he seems at this hour to have deserted the more serious studies of the morning. When last observed, he was studying with apparent zest the exploits of one Rocambole by the late Viscomte Ponson du Terrail. This work, originally of prodigious dimensions, he had cut into liths or thicknesses apparently for convenience of carriage.

Then the being walks, where is not certain. But by about half-past four, a light beams from the windows of 608 Bush, and he may be observed sometimes engaged in correspondence, sometimes once again plunged in the mysterious rites of the forenoon. About six he returns to the Branch Original, where he once more imbrues himself to the worth of fivepence in coffee and roll. The evening is devoted to writing and reading, and by eleven or half-past darkness closes over this weird and truculent existence.

As for coin, you see I don't spend much, only you and Henley both seem to think my work rather bosh nowadays, and I do want to make as much as I was making, that is 200 pounds; if I can do that, I can swim: last year, with my ill health I touched only 109 pounds, that would not do, I could not fight it through on that; but on 200 pounds, as I say, I am good for the world, and can even in this quiet way save a little, and that I must do. The worst is my health; it is suspected I had an ague chill yesterday; I shall know by to-morrow, and you know if I am to be laid down with ague the game is pretty well lost. But I don't know; I managed to write a good deal down in Monterey, when I was pretty sickly most of the time, and, by G.o.d, I'll try, ague and all. I have to ask you frankly, when you write, to give me any good news you can, and chat a little, but JUST IN THE MEANTIME, give me no bad. If I could get Th.o.r.eAU, EMIGRANT and VENDETTA all finished and out of my hand, I should feel like a man who had made half a year's income in a half year; but until the two last are FINISHED, you see, they don't fairly count.

I am afraid I bore you sadly with this perpetual talk about my affairs; I will try and stow it; but you see, it touches me nearly.

I'm the miser in earnest now: last night, when I felt so ill, the supposed ague chill, it seemed strange not to be able to afford a drink. I would have walked half a mile, tired as I felt, for a brandy and soda. - Ever yours,

R. L. S.

Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER

608 BUSH STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, JAN. 26, '80

MY DEAR CHARLES, - I have to drop from a 50 cent. to a 25 cent.

dinner; to-day begins my fall. That brings down my outlay in food and drink to 45 cents., or 1s. 10 and a half d. per day. How are the mighty fallen! Luckily, this is such a cheap place for food; I used to pay as much as that for my first breakfast in the Savile in the grand old palmy days of yore. I regret nothing, and do not even dislike these straits, though the flesh will rebel on occasion. It is to-day bitter cold, after weeks of lovely warm weather, and I am all in a chitter. I am about to issue for my little s.h.i.+lling and halfpenny meal, taken in the middle of the day, the poor man's hour; and I shall eat and drink to your prosperity.

- Ever yours,

R. L. S.

Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN

608 BUSH STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA [JANUARY 1880].

MY DEAR COLVIN, - I received this morning your long letter from Paris. Well, G.o.d's will be done; if it's dull, it's dull; it was a fair fight, and it's lost, and there's an end. But, fortunately, dulness is not a fault the public hates; perhaps they may like this vein of dulness. If they don't, d.a.m.n them, we'll try them with another. I sat down on the back of your letter, and wrote twelve Cornhill pages this day as ever was of that same despised EMIGRANT; so you see my moral courage has not gone down with my intellect.

Only, frankly, Colvin, do you think it a good plan to be so eminently descriptive, and even eloquent in dispraise? You rolled such a lot of polysyllables over me that a better man than I might have been disheartened. - However, I was not, as you see, and am not. The EMIGRANT shall be finished and leave in the course of next week. And then, I'll stick to stories. I am not frightened.

I know my mind is changing; I have been telling you so for long; and I suppose I am fumbling for the new vein. Well, I'll find it.

The VENDETTA you will not much like, I dare say: and that must be finished next; but I'll knock you with THE FOREST STATE: A ROMANCE.

I'm vexed about my letters; I know it is painful to get these unsatisfactory things; but at least I have written often enough.

And not one soul ever gives me any NEWS, about people or things; everybody writes me sermons; it's good for me, but hardly the food necessary for a man who lives all alone on forty-five cents. a day, and sometimes less, with quant.i.ties of hard work and many heavy thoughts. If one of you could write me a letter with a jest in it, a letter like what is written to real people in this world - I am still flesh and blood - I should enjoy it. Simpson did, the other day, and it did me as much good as a bottle of wine. A lonely man gets to feel like a pariah after awhile - or no, not that, but like a saint and martyr, or a kind of macerated clergyman with pebbles in his boots, a pillared Simeon, I'm d.a.m.ned if I know what, but, man alive, I want gossip.

My health is better, my spirits steadier, I am not the least cast down. If THE EMIGRANT was a failure, the PAVILION, by your leave, was not: it was a story quite adequately and rightly done, I contend; and when I find Stephen, for whom certainly I did not mean it, taking it in, I am better pleased with it than before. I know I shall do better work than ever I have done before; but, mind you, it will not be like it. My sympathies and interests are changed.

There shall be no more books of travel for me. I care for nothing but the moral and the dramatic, not a jot for the picturesque or the beautiful other than about people. It bored me h.e.l.lishly to write the EMIGRANT; well, it's going to bore others to read it; that's only fair.

I should also write to others; but indeed I am jack-tired, and must go to bed to a French novel to compose myself for slumber. - Ever your affectionate friend,

R. L. S.

Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY

608 BUSH STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., FEBRUARY 1880.

MY DEAR HENLEY, - Before my work or anything I sit down to answer your long and kind letter.

I am well, cheerful, busy, hopeful; I cannot be knocked down; I do not mind about the EMIGRANT. I never thought it a masterpiece. It was written to sell, and I believe it will sell; and if it does not, the next will. You need not be uneasy about my work; I am only beginning to see my true method.

(1) As to STUDIES. There are two more already gone to Stephen.

YOs.h.i.+DA TORAJIRO, which I think temperate and adequate; and Th.o.r.eAU, which will want a really Balzacian effort over the proofs.

But I want BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND THE ART OF VIRTUE to follow; and perhaps also WILLIAM PENN, but this last may be perhaps delayed for another volume - I think not, though. The STUDIES will be an intelligent volume, and in their latter numbers more like what I mean to be my style, or I mean what my style means to be, for I am pa.s.sive. (2) The ESSAYS. Good news indeed. I think ORDERED SOUTH must be thrown in. It always swells the volume, and it will never find a more appropriate place. It was May 1874, Macmillan, I believe. (3) PLAYS. I did not understand you meant to try the draft. I shall make you a full scenario as soon as the EMIGRANT is done. (4) EMIGRANT. He shall be sent off next week. (5) Stories.

You need not be alarmed that I am going to imitate Meredith. You know I was a Story-teller ingrain; did not that rea.s.sure you? The VENDETTA, which falls next to be finished, is not entirely pleasant. But it has points. THE FOREST STATE or THE GREENWOOD STATE: A ROMANCE, is another pair of shoes. It is my old Semiramis, our half-seen Duke and d.u.c.h.ess, which suddenly sprang into suns.h.i.+ne clearness as a story the other day. The kind, happy DENOUEMENT is unfortunately absolutely undramatic, which will be our only trouble in quarrying out the play. I mean we shall quarry from it. CHARACTERS - Otto Frederick John, hereditary Prince of Grunwald; Amelia Seraphina, Princess; Conrad, Baron Gondremarck, Prime Minister; Cancellarius Greisengesang; Killian Gottesacker, Steward of the River Farm; Ottilie, his daughter; the Countess von Rosen. Seven in all. A brave story, I swear; and a brave play too, if we can find the trick to make the end. The play, I fear, will have to end darkly, and that spoils the quality as I now see it of a kind of crockery, eighteenth century, high-life-below- stairs life, breaking up like ice in spring before the nature and the certain modic.u.m of manhood of my poor, clever, feather-headed Prince, whom I love already. I see Seraphina too. Gondremarck is not quite so clear. The Countess von Rosen, I have; I'll never tell you who she is; it's a secret; but I have known the countess; well, I will tell you; it's my old Russian friend, Madame Z.

Certain scenes are, in conception, the best I have ever made, except for HESTER n.o.bLE. Those at the end, Von Rosen and the Princess, the Prince and Princess, and the Princess and Gondremarck, as I now see them from here, should be nuts, Henley, nuts. It irks me not to go to them straight. But the EMIGRANT stops the way; then a rea.s.sured scenario for HESTER; then the VENDETTA; then two (or three) Essays - Benjamin Franklin, Thoughts on Literature as an Art, Dialogue on Character and Destiny between two Puppets, The Human Compromise; and then, at length - come to me, my Prince. O Lord, it's going to be courtly! And there is not an ugly person nor an ugly scene in it. The SLATE both f.a.n.n.y and I have d.a.m.ned utterly; it is too morbid, ugly, and unkind; better starvation.

R. L. S.

Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN

608 BUSH STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, [MARCH 1880].

MY DEAR COLVIN, - My landlord and landlady's little four-year-old child is dying in the house; and O, what he has suffered. It has really affected my health. O never, never any family for me! I am cured of that.

I have taken a long holiday - have not worked for three days, and will not for a week; for I was really weary. Excuse this scratch; for the child weighs on me, dear Colvin. I did all I could to help; but all seems little, to the point of crime, when one of these poor innocents lies in such misery. - Ever yours,

R. L. S.

Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., APRIL 16 [1880].

MY DEAR GOSSE, - You have not answered my last; and I know you will repent when you hear how near I have been to another world. For about six weeks I have been in utter doubt; it was a toss-up for life or death all that time; but I won the toss, sir, and Hades went off once more discomfited. This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that I have a friendly game with that gentleman. I know he will end by cleaning me out; but the rogue is insidious, and the habit of that sort of gambling seems to be a part of my nature; it was, I suspect, too much indulged in youth; break your children of this tendency, my dear Gosse, from the first. It is, when once formed, a habit more fatal than opium - I speak, as St. Paul says, like a fool. I have been very very sick; on the verge of a galloping consumption, cold sweats, prostrating attacks of cough, sinking fits in which I lost the power of speech, fever, and all the ugliest circ.u.mstances of the disease; and I have cause to bless G.o.d, my wife that is to be, and one Dr. Bamford (a name the Muse repels), that I have come out of all this, and got my feet once more upon a little hilltop, with a fair prospect of life and some new desire of living. Yet I did not wish to die, neither; only I felt unable to go on farther with that rough horseplay of human life: a man must be pretty well to take the business in good part. Yet I felt all the time that I had done nothing to ent.i.tle me to an honourable discharge; that I had taken up many obligations and begun many friends.h.i.+ps which I had no right to put away from me; and that for me to die was to play the cur and slinking sybarite, and desert the colours on the eve of the decisive fight.

Of course I have done no work for I do not know how long; and here you can triumph. I have been reduced to writing verses for amus.e.m.e.nt. A fact. The whirligig of time brings in its revenges, after all. But I'll have them buried with me, I think, for I have not the heart to burn them while I live. Do write. I shall go to the mountains as soon as the weather clears; on the way thither, I marry myself; then I set up my family altar among the pinewoods, 3000 feet, sir, from the disputatious sea. - I am, dear Weg, most truly yours,

R. L. S.

Letter: TO DR. W. BAMFORD