Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson Volume 2 Part 45

TUSITALA.

AUGUST 12, 1894

And here, Mr. Barrie, is news with a vengeance. Mother Hubbard's dog is well again - what did I tell you? Pleurisy, pneumonia, and all that kind of truck is quite unavailing against a Scotchman who can write - and not only that, but it appears the perfidious dog is married. This incident, so far as I remember, is omitted from the original epic -

She went to the graveyard To see him get him buried, And when she came back The Deil had got merried.

It now remains to inform you that I have taken what we call here 'German offence' at not receiving cards, and that the only reparation I will accept is that Mrs. Barrie shall incontinently upon the receipt of this Take and Bring you to Vailima in order to apologise and be pardoned for this offence. The commentary of Tamaitai upon the event was brief but pregnant: 'Well, it's a comfort our guest-room is furnished for two.'

This letter, about nothing, has already endured too long. I shall just present the family to Mrs. Barrie - Tamaitai, Tamaitai Matua, Teuila, Palema, Loia, and with an extra low bow, Yours,

TUSITALA.

Letter: TO DR. BAKEWELL

VAILIMA, AUGUST 7, 1894.

DEAR DR. BAKEWELL, - I am not more than human. I am more human than is wholly convenient, and your anecdote was welcome. What you say about UNWILLING WORK, my dear sir, is a consideration always present with me, and yet not easy to give its due weight to. You grow gradually into a certain income; without spending a penny more, with the same sense of restriction as before when you painfully sc.r.a.ped two hundred a year together, you find you have spent, and you cannot well stop spending, a far larger sum; and this expense can only be supported by a certain production.

However, I am off work this month, and occupy myself instead in weeding my cacao, paper chases, and the like. I may tell you, my average of work in favourable circ.u.mstances is far greater than you suppose: from six o'clock till eleven at latest, and often till twelve, and again in the afternoon from two to four. My hand is quite destroyed, as you may perceive, to-day to a really unusual extent. I can sometimes write a decent fist still; but I have just returned with my arms all stung from three hours' work in the cacao. - Yours, etc.,

R. L. S.

Letter: TO JAMES PAYN

VAILIMA, UPOLU, SAMOA [AUGUST 11, 1894].

MY DEAR JAMES PAYN, - I hear from Lang that you are unwell, and it reminds me of two circ.u.mstances: First, that it is a very long time since you had the exquisite pleasure of hearing from me; and second, that I have been very often unwell myself, and sometimes had to thank you for a grateful anodyne.

They are not good, the circ.u.mstances, to write an anodyne letter.

The hills and my house at less than (boom) a minute's interval quake with thunder; and though I cannot hear that part of it, sh.e.l.ls are falling thick into the fort of Luatuanu'u (boom). It is my friends of the CURACOA, the FALKE, and the BUSSARD bombarding (after all these - boom - months) the rebels of Atua. (Boom-boom.) It is most distracting in itself; and the thought of the poor devils in their fort (boom) with their bits of rifles far from pleasant. (Boom-boom.) You can see how quick it goes, and I'll say no more about Mr. Bow-wow, only you must understand the perpetual accompaniment of this discomfortable sound, and make allowances for the value of my copy. It is odd, though, I can well remember, when the Franco-Prussian war began, and I was in Eilean Earraid, far enough from the sound of the loudest cannonade, I could HEAR the shots fired, and I felt the pang in my breast of a man struck. It was sometimes so distressing, so instant, that I lay in the heather on the top of the island, with my face hid, kicking my heels for agony. And now, when I can hear the actual concussion of the air and hills, when I KNOW personally the people who stand exposed to it, I am able to go on TANT BIEN QUE MAL with a letter to James Payn! The blessings of age, though mighty small, are tangible. I have heard a great deal of them since I came into the world, and now that I begin to taste of them - Well! But this is one, that people do get cured of the excess of sensibility; and I had as lief these people were shot at as myself - or almost, for then I should have some of the fun, such as it is.

You are to conceive me, then, sitting in my little gallery room, shaken by these continual spasms of cannon, and with my eye more or less singly fixed on the imaginary figure of my dear James Payn. I try to see him in bed; no go. I see him instead jumping up in his room in Waterloo Place (where EX HYPOTHESI he is not), sitting on the table, drawing out a very black briar-root pipe, and beginning to talk to a slim and ill-dressed visitor in a voice that is good to hear and with a smile that is pleasant to see. (After a little more than half an hour, the voice that was ill to hear has ceased, the cannonade is over.) And I am thinking how I can get an answering smile wafted over so many leagues of land and water, and can find no way.

I have always been a great visitor of the sick; and one of the sick I visited was W. E. Henley, which did not make very tedious visits, so I'll not get off much purgatory for them. That was in the Edinburgh Infirmary, the old one, the true one, with Georgius Secundus standing and pointing his toe in a niche of the facade; and a mighty fine building it was! And I remember one winter's afternoon, in that place of misery, that Henley and I chanced to fall in talk about James Payn himself. I am wis.h.i.+ng you could have heard that talk! I think that would make you smile. We had mixed you up with John Payne, for one thing, and stood amazed at your extraordinary, even painful, versatility; and for another, we found ourselves each students so well prepared for examinations on the novels of the real Mackay. Perhaps, after all, this is worth something in life - to have given so much pleasure to a pair so different in every way as were Henley and I, and to be talked of with so much interest by two such (beg pardon) clever lads!

The cheerful Lang has neglected to tell me what is the matter with you; so, I'm sorry to say, I am cut off from all the customary consolations. I can't say, 'Think how much worse it would be if you had a broken leg!' when you may have the crus.h.i.+ng repartee up your sleeve, 'But it is my leg that is broken.' This is a pity.

But there are consolations. You are an Englishman (I believe); you are a man of letters; you have never been made C.B.; your hair was not red; you have played cribbage and whist; you did not play either the fiddle or the banjo; you were never an aesthete; you never contributed to -'S JOURNAL; your name is not Jabez Balfour; you are totally unconnected with the Army and Navy departments; I understand you to have lived within your income - why, cheer up!

here are many legitimate causes of congratulation. I seem to be writing an obituary notice. ABSIT OMEN! But I feel very sure that these considerations will have done you more good than medicine.

By the by, did you ever play piquet? I have fallen a victim to this debilitating game. It is supposed to be scientific; G.o.d save the mark, what self-deceivers men are! It is distinctly less so than cribbage. But how fascinating! There is such material opulence about it, such vast ambitions may be realised - and are not; it may be called the Monte Cristo of games. And the thrill with which you take five cards partakes of the nature of l.u.s.t - and you draw four sevens and a nine, and the seven and nine of a suit that you discarded, and O! but the world is a desert! You may see traces of discouragement in my letter: all due to piquet! There has been a disastrous turn of the luck against me; a month or two ago I was two thousand ahead; now, and for a week back, I have been anything from four thousand eight hundred to five thousand two hundred astern. If I have a sixieme, my beast of a partner has a septieme; and if I have three aces, three kings, three queens, and three knaves (excuse the slight exaggeration), the devil holds quatorze of tens! - I remain, my dear James Payn, your sincere and obliged friend - old friend let me say,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Letter: TO MISS MIDDLETON

VAILIMA, SAMOA, SEPTEMBER 9, 1894.

DEAR MISS MIDDLETON, - Your letter has been like the drawing up of a curtain. Of course I remember you very well, and the Skye terrier to which you refer - a heavy, dull, fatted, graceless creature he grew up to be - was my own particular pet. It may amuse you, perhaps, as much as 'The Inn' amused me, if I tell you what made this dog particularly mine. My father was the natural G.o.d of all the dogs in our house, and poor Jura took to him of course. Jura was stolen, and kept in prison somewhere for more than a week, as I remember. When he came back Smeoroch had come and taken my father's heart from him. He took his stand like a man, and positively never spoke to my father again from that day until the day of his death. It was the only sign of character he ever showed. I took him up to my room and to be my dog in consequence, partly because I was sorry for him, and partly because I admired his dignity in misfortune.

With best regards and thanks for having reminded me of so many pleasant days, old acquaintances, dead friends, and - what is perhaps as pathetic as any of them - dead dogs, I remain, yours truly,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Letter: TO A. CONAN DOYLE

VAILIMA, SAMOA, SEPTEMBER 9, 1894.

MY DEAR CONAN DOYLE, - If you found anything to entertain you in my TREASURE ISLAND article, it may amuse you to know that you owe it entirely to yourself. YOUR 'First Book' was by some accident read aloud one night in my Baronial 'All. I was consumedly amused by it, so was the whole family, and we proceeded to hunt up back IDLERS and read the whole series. It is a rattling good series, even people whom you would not expect came in quite the proper tone - Miss Braddon, for instance, who was really one of the best where all are good - or all but one! ... In short, I fell in love with 'The First Book' series, and determined that it should be all our first books, and that I could not hold back where the white plume of Conan Doyle waved gallantly in the front. I hope they will republish them, though it's a grievous thought to me that that effigy in the German cap - likewise the other effigy of the noisome old man with the long hair, telling indelicate stories to a couple of deformed negresses in a rancid shanty full of wreckage - should be perpetuated. I may seem to speak in pleasantry - it is only a seeming - that German cap, sir, would be found, when I come to die, imprinted on my heart. Enough - my heart is too full. Adieu. - Yours very truly,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

(in a German cap, d.a.m.n 'em!)

Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER

[VAILIMA, SEPTEMBER 1894.]

MY DEAR CHARLES, - . . . Well, there is no more Edmund Baxter now; and I think I may say I know how you feel. He was one of the best, the kindest, and the most genial men I ever knew. I shall always remember his brisk, cordial ways and the essential goodness which he showed me whenever we met with grat.i.tude. And the always is such a little while now! He is another of the landmarks gone; when it comes to my own turn to lay my weapons down, I shall do so with thankfulness and fatigue; and whatever be my destiny afterward, I shall be glad to lie down with my fathers in honour. It is human at least, if not divine. And these deaths make me think of it with an ever greater readiness. Strange that you should be beginning a new life, when I, who am a little your junior, am thinking of the end of mine. But I have had hard lines; I have been so long waiting for death, I have unwrapped my thoughts from about life so long, that I have not a filament left to hold by; I have done my fiddling so long under Vesuvius, that I have almost forgotten to play, and can only wait for the eruption, and think it long of coming. Literally, no man has more wholly outlived life than I.

And still it's good fun.

R. L. S.

Letter: TO R. A. M. STEVENSON