Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson Volume 1 Part 29

Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER

[CHALET AM STEIN], DAVOS, DECEMBER 5, 1881.

MY DEAR CHARLES, - We have been in miserable case here; my wife worse and worse; and now sent away with Lloyd for sick nurse, I not being allowed to go down. I do not know what is to become of us; and you may imagine how rotten I have been feeling, and feel now, alone with my weasel-dog and my German maid, on the top of a hill here, heavy mist and thin snow all about me, and the devil to pay in general. I don't care so much for solitude as I used to; results, I suppose, of marriage.

Pray write me something cheery. A little Edinburgh gossip, in Heaven's name. Ah! what would I not give to steal this evening with you through the big, echoing, college archway, and away south under the street lamps, and away to dear Brash's, now defunct! But the old time is dead also, never, never to revive. It was a sad time too, but so gay and so hopeful, and we had such sport with all our low spirits and all our distresses, that it looks like a kind of lamplit fairyland behind me. O for ten Edinburgh minutes - sixpence between us, and the ever-glorious Lothian Road, or dear mysterious Leith Walk! But here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling; here in this strange place, whose very strangeness would have been heaven to him then; and aspires, yes, C. B., with tears, after the past. See what comes of being left alone. Do you remember Brash? the sheet of gla.s.s that we followed along George Street? Granton? the blight at Bonny mainhead? the compa.s.s near the sign of the TWINKLING EYE? the night I lay on the pavement in misery?

I swear it by the eternal sky Johnson - nor Thomson - ne'er shall die!

Yet I fancy they are dead too; dead like Brash.

R. L. S.

Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON

CHALET BUOL, DAVOS-PLATZ, DECEMBER 26, 1881.

MY DEAR MOTHER, - Yesterday, Sunday and Christmas, we finished this eventful journey by a drive in an OPEN sleigh - none others were to be had - seven hours on end through whole forests of Christmas trees. The cold was beyond belief. I have often suffered less at a dentist's. It was a clear, sunny day, but the sun even at noon falls, at this season, only here and there into the Prattigau. I kept up as long as I could in an imitation of a street singer:-

Away, ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses, etc.

At last Lloyd remarked, a blue mouth speaking from a corpse- coloured face, 'You seem to be the only one with any courage left?'

And, do you know, with that word my courage disappeared, and I made the rest of the stage in the same dumb wretchedness as the others.

My only terror was lest f.a.n.n.y should ask for brandy, or laudanum, or something. So awful was the idea of putting my hands out, that I half thought I would refuse.

Well, none of us are a penny the worse, Lloyd's cold better; I, with a twinge of the rheumatic; and f.a.n.n.y better than her ordinary.

General conclusion between Lloyd and me as to the journey: A prolonged visit to the dentist's, complicated with the fear of death.

Never, O never, do you get me there again. - Ever affectionate son,

R. L. S.

Letter: TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM

[CHALET AM STEIN, DAVOS-PLATZ, FEBRUARY 1882.]

MY DEAR c.u.mMY, - My wife and I are very much vexed to hear you are still unwell. We are both keeping far better; she especially seems quite to have taken a turn - THE turn, we shall hope. Please let us know how you get on, and what has been the matter with you; Braemar I believe - the vile hole. You know what a lazy rascal I am, so you won't be surprised at a short letter, I know; indeed, you will be much more surprised at my having had the decency to write at all. We have got rid of our young, pretty, and incompetent maid; and now we have a fine, canny, twinkling, shrewd, auld-farrant peasant body, who gives us good food and keeps us in good spirits. If we could only understand what she says! But she speaks Davos language, which is to German what Aberdeen-awa' is to English, so it comes heavy. G.o.d bless you, my dear c.u.mmy; and so says f.a.n.n.y forbye. - Ever your affectionate,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER

[CHALET AM STEIN, DAVOS], 22ND FEBRUARY '82.

MY DEAR CHARLES, - Your most welcome letter has raised clouds of sulphur from my horizon. . . .

I am glad you have gone back to your music. Life is a poor thing, I am more and more convinced, without an art, that always waits for us and is always new. Art and marriage are two very good stand- by's.

In an article which will appear sometime in the CORNHILL, 'Talk and Talkers,' and where I have full-lengthened the conversation of Bob, Henley, Jenkin, Simpson, Symonds, and Gosse, I have at the end one single word about yourself. It may amuse you to see it.

We are coming to Scotland after all, so we shall meet, which pleases me, and I do believe I am strong enough to stand it this time. My knee is still quite lame.

My wife is better again. . . . But we take it by turns; it is the dog that is ill now. - Ever yours,

R. L. S.

Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY

[CHALET AM STEIN, DAVOS-PLATZ, FEBRUARY 1882.]

MY DEAR HENLEY, - Here comes the letter as promised last night.

And first two requests: Pray send the enclosed to c/o Blackmore's publisher, 'tis from f.a.n.n.y; second, pray send us Routledge's s.h.i.+lling book, Edward Mayhew's DOGS, by return if it can be managed.

Our dog is very ill again, poor fellow, looks very ill too, only sleeps at night because of morphine; and we do not know what ails him, only fear it to be canker of the ear. He makes a bad, black spot in our life, poor, selfish, silly, little tangle; and my wife is wretched. Otherwise she is better, steadily and slowly moving up through all her relapses. My knee never gets the least better; it hurts to-night, which it has not done for long. I do not suppose my doctor knows any least thing about it. He says it is a nerve that I struck, but I a.s.sure you he does not know.

I have just finished a paper, 'A Gossip on Romance,' in which I have tried to do, very popularly, about one-half of the matter you wanted me to try. In a way, I have found an answer to the question. But the subject was hardly fit for so chatty a paper, and it is all loose ends. If ever I do my book on the Art of Literature, I shall gather them together and be clear.

To-morrow, having once finished off the touches still due on this, I shall tackle SAN FRANCISCO for you. Then the tide of work will fairly bury me, lost to view and hope. You have no idea what it costs me to wring out my work now. I have certainly been a fortnight over this Romance, sometimes five hours a day; and yet it is about my usual length - eight pages or so, and would be a d-d sight the better for another curry. But I do not think I can honestly re-write it all; so I call it done, and shall only straighten words in a revision currently.

I had meant to go on for a great while, and say all manner of entertaining things. But all's gone. I am now an idiot. - Yours ever,

R. L. S.

Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY

[CHALET AM STEIN, DAVOS, MARCH 1882.]