And not by eastern windows only,When daylight comes, comes in the light;In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,But westward, look, the land is bright.
And not by eastern windows only,When daylight comes, comes in the light;In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,But westward, look, the land is bright.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.
"I see," Taffy nodded. "And—I say, that's jolly. Who wrote it?"
"A man I used to see in the streets of Oxford, and always turned to stare after:a man with big oddly shaped feet and the face of a god—a young tormented god. Those were days when young men's thoughts tormented them. Taffy," he asked, abruptly, "should you like to go to Oxford?"
"Don't, father!" The boy bit his lip to keep back the tears. "Talk of something else—something cheerful. It has been a splendid fight, just splendid! And now it's over I'm almost sorry."
"What is over?"
"Well, I suppose—now that Honoria wants to help—we can hire workmen and have the whole job finished in a month or two at farthest: and you——"
Mr. Raymond stood up, and leaning against a bench-end examined the thread of the screw between his fingers.
"That is one way of looking at it, no doubt," he said, slowly; "and I hope God will forgive me if I have put my own pride before His service. But a man desires to leave some completed work behind him: something to which people may point and say, 'hedid it.' There was my book, now: for years I thought that was to be my work. But God thought otherwise and—to correct my pride, perhaps—set me to this task instead. To set a small forsaken country church in order and make it worthy of His presence—that is not the mission I should have chosen. But so be it: I have accepted it. Only, to let others step in at the last and finish even this—I say He must forgive me, but I cannot."
"Your book ... you can go back to it and finish it."
"I have burnt it."
"Dad!"
"I burned it. I had to. It was a temptation to me, and until I lifted it from the grate and the flakes crumbled in my hands, the surrender was not complete."
Taffy felt a sudden gush of pity. And as he pitied, suddenly he understood his father.
"It had to be complete?"
"Either the book or the surrender. My boy"—and in his voice there echoed the aspiration and the despair of the true scholar who abhors imperfection and incompleteness in a world where nothing is either perfect or complete, "it is different with you. I borrowed you, so to say, for the time. Without you I must have failed; but this was never your work. For myself, I have been humble and learnt my lesson; but, please God, you shall be my Solomon and be granted a temple to build."
Taffy had lost his shyness now. He laid a hand on his father's sleeve.
"We will go on, then."
"Yes, we will go on."
"And Jacky? Where has he been? I haven't seen him since the Squire died."
Mr. Raymond searched in his coat-pocket and handed over a crumpled letter. It ran:—
"Dear friend.—This is to say that you will not see me no more. The dear Lord tells me I have made a cauch of it. He don't say how, all He says is go and do better somewheres else.
"Seems to me a terrable thing to thinkReligioncan be bad for anny man. It have done me such powars of good. The late Moyle esq he was like a dirty pan all the milk turned sour no mattar what. Drfriend I pored Praise into him and it come out Prayer and all for him self. But the dear Lord says I was to blame as much as Moyle esq so must do bettar next time but feel terrable timid.
"My respects to MasrTaffy. Drfriend I done my best I come likeNicodemusby night. Seeming to me when Christians fall out tis over what they pray for. When theypraise Godforget diffnsesand I cant think where the quaraling comes in and so no more at present from
"Yours respflly"J. Pascoe."
"Yours respflly
"J. Pascoe."
After supper that night, in the Parsonage kitchen, Humility kept rising from her chair, and laying her needlework aside to re-arrange the pans and kettles on the hearth. This restlessness was so unusual that Taffy, seated in the ingle with a book on his knee, had half raised his head to twit her when he felt a hand laid softly on his hair, and looked up into his mother's eyes.
"Taffy, should you like to go to Oxford?"
"Don't, mother!"
"But you can." The tears in her eyes answered his at once. She turned to his father. "Tell him——"
"Yes, my boy, you can go," said Mr.Raymond; "that is, if you can win a scholarship. Your mother and I have been talking it over."
"But—" Taffy began and could get no farther. He knew nothing of his parents' affairs except that they were poor: he had always supposed, almost desperately poor.
"We have money enough, with care," said Mr. Raymond.
But the boy's eyes were on his mother. Her cheeks, usually so pale, were flushed; but she turned her face away and walked slowly back to her chair. "The lace-work," he heard her say: "I have been saving ... from the beginning——"
"For this?" He followed and took her hand. With the other she covered her eyes; but nodded.
"O mother—mother!" He knelt and let his brow drop on her lap. She ceased to weep; her palms rested on his bowed head, but now and then her body shook with a sob that would not be restrained. And but for the ticking of the tall clock there was silence in the room.
It was wonderful; and the wonder of it grew when they recovered themselves and fell to discussing their actual plans. In spite of his idolatry, Mr. Raymond could not help remembering certain slights which he, a poor miller's son, had undergone at Christ Church. He had chosen Magdalen, which Taffy knew to be the most beautiful of all the colleges; and the news that his name had been entered on the college books for years past gave him a delicious shock. It was now July. He would matriculate in the October term, and in January enter for a demyship. But (the marvels followed so fast on each other's heels) there would be an examination held in ten days' time—actually in ten days' time—a "Certificate" examination, Mr. Raymond called it—which would excuse the boy not only the ordinary Matriculation test, but Responsions too. And, in short, Taffy was to pack his box and go.
"But the subjects?"
"You have been reading them and the prescribed books for four months past. And I have had sets of the old papers by me for a guide. Your mathematics are shaky—but I think you should do well enough."
It was now Humility's turn, and the discussion plunged among shirts and collars. Never had evening been so happy; and whether they talked of mathematics or of collars, Taffy could not help observing how from time to time his father's and mother's eyes would meet and say, as plainly as words, "We have done rightly," "Yes, we have done rightly."
And the wonder of it remained next morning, when he awoke to a changed world and took down his books with a new purpose. Already his box had been carried into old Mrs. Venning's room, and his mother and grandmother were busy, the one packing and repacking, the other making a new and important suggestion every minute.
He was to go up alone, and to lodge in Trinity College, where an old friend of Mr. Raymond's, a resident fellow just then abroad and spending his Long Vacation in the Tyrol, had placed his own room at the boy's service.
To see Oxford—to be lodging in college! He had to hug his mother in the midst of her packing.
"You will be going by the Great Western," she said. "You won't be seeing Honiton on your way."
When the great morning came, Mr. Raymond travelled with him in the van to Truro, to see him off. Humility went upstairs to her mother's room, and the two women prayed together.
They also serve who only stand and wait.
E
"Eight o'clock, sir!"
Taffy heard the voice speaking above a noise which his dreams confused with the rattle of yesterday's journey. He was still in the train, rushing through the rich levels of Somersetshire. He saw the broad horizon, the cattle at pasture, the bridges and flagged pools flying past the window—and sat up, rubbing his eyes. Blenkiron, the scout, stood between him and the morning sunshine, emptying a can of water into the tub beside his bed.
Blenkiron wore a white waistcoat, and a tie of orange scarlet and blue, the colors of the College Servants Cricket Club. These were signs of the Long Vacation. For the rest his presence would have become an archdeacon; and he guided Taffy's choice of a breakfast with an air which suggested the hand of iron beneath the glove of velvet.
"And begging your pardon, sir, but will you be lunching in?"
Taffy would consult Mr. Blenkiron's convenience.
"The fact is, sir, we've arranged to play Teddy 'All this afternoon at Cowley, and the drag starts at one-thirty sharp."
"Then I'll get my lunch out of college," said Taffy, wondering who Teddy Hall might be.
"I thank you, sir. I had, indeed, took the liberty of telling the manciple that you was not a gentleman to give more trouble than you could 'elp. Fried sole, pot of tea, toast, pot of blackberry jam, commons of bread—" Mr. Blenkiron disappeared.
Taffy sprang out of bed and ran to the open window in the next room. The gardens lay below him—smooth turf flanked with a border of gay flowers, flanked on the other side with yews; and beyond the yews, with an avenue of limes; and beyond these, with tall elms. A straight gravelled walk divided the turf. At the end of it two yews of magnificent spread guarded a great iron gate. Beyond these the chimneys and battlements of Wadham College stood gray against the pale eastern sky, and over them the larks were singing.
So this was Oxford; more beautiful than all his dreams. And since his examination would not begin until to-morrow, he had a whole long day to make acquaintance with her. Half a dozen times he had to interrupt his dressing to run and gaze out of the window, skipping back when he heard Blenkiron's tread on the staircase. And at breakfast again he must jump up and examine the door. Yes, there was a second door outside—a heavyoak—just as his father had described. What stories had he not heard about these oaks! He was handling this one almost idolatrously when Blenkiron appeared suddenly at the head of the stairs. Blenkiron was good enough to explain at some length how the door worked; while Taffy, who did not need his instruction in the least, blushed to the roots of his hair.
For, indeed, it was like first love, this adoration of Oxford; shamefast, shy of its own raptures; so shy, indeed, that when he put on his hat and walked out into the streets he could not pluck up courage to ask his way. Some of the colleges he recognized from his father's description: of one or two he discovered the names by peeping through their gateways and reading the notices pinned up by the porters' lodges: for it never occurred to him that he was free to step inside and ramble through the quadrangles. He wondered where the river lay, and where Magdalen, and where Christ Church. He passed along the Turl, and down Brasenose Lane; and at the foot of it, beyond the great chestnut-tree leaning over Exeter wall, the vision of noble square, the dome of the Radcliffe, and St. Mary's spire caught his breath and held him gasping.
His feet took him by the gate of Brasenose and across the High. On the farther pavement he halted, round-eyed, held at gaze by the beauty of the Virgin's Porch with the creeper drooping like a veil over its twisted pillars. High up, white pigeons wheeled round the spire, or fluttered from niche to niche, and a queer fancy took him that they were the souls of the carved saints, up there, talking to one another above the city's traffic. At length he withdrew his eyes, and reading the name "Oriel Street" on an angle of the wall above him, passed down a narrow by-lane in search of further wonders.
The clocks were striking three when, after regaining the High and lunching at a pastry-cook's, Taffy turned down into St. Aldates and recognized Tom Tower ahead of him. The great gates were closed. Through the open wicket he had a glimpse of green turf and an idle fountain; and while he peered in a jolly-looking porter stepped out of the lodge for a breath of air and nodded in the friendliest manner.
"You can walk through, if you want to. Were you looking for anyone?"
"No," said Taffy; and explained, proudly, "My father used to be at Christ Church."
The porter seemed interested. "What name?" he asked.
"Raymond."
"That must have been before my time. I suppose you'll be wanting to see the Cathedral. That's the door—right opposite."
Taffy thanked him, and walked across the great empty quadrangle. Within the Cathedral the organ was sounding and pausing; and from time to time a boy's voice broke in upon the music like a flute, the pure treble rising to the roof as though it were the very voice of the building and every pillar sustained its petition, "Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law!" Neither organist nor chorister was visible, and Taffy tiptoed along the aisles in dread of disturbing them. For the moment this voice adoring in the noble building expressed to him the completest, the most perfect thing in life. All his own boyish handiwork, remember, had been guided under his father's eye toward the worship of God.
"... and incline our hearts to keep this law." The music ceased. He heard the organist speaking, up in the loft; criticising, no doubt: and it reminded him somehow of the small sounds of home and his mother moving about her house-work in the hush between breakfast and noon.
He stepped out into the sunlight again, and wandering through archway and cloister found himself at length beyond the college walls and at the junction of two avenues of elms, between the trunks of which shone the acres of a noble meadow, level and green. The avenues ran at a right angle, east and south; the one old, with trees of magnificent girth, the other new and interset with poplars.
Taffy stood irresolute. One of these avenues, he felt sure, must lead to the river; but which?
Two old gentlemen stepped out from the wicket of the Meadow Buildings, and passed him, talking together. The taller—a lean man, with a stoop—was clearly a clergyman. The other wore cap and gown, and Taffy remarked, as he went by, that his cap was of velvet; and also that he walked with his arms crossed just above the wrists, his right hand clutching his left cuff, and his left hand his right cuff, his elbows hugged close to his sides.
After a few paces the clergyman paused, said something to his companion, and the two turned back toward the boy.
"Were you wanting to know your way?"
"I was looking for the river," Taffy answered. He was thinking that he had never in his life seen a face so full of goodness.
"Then this is your first visit to Oxford? Suppose, now, you come with us? and we will take you by the river and tell you the names of the barges. There is not much else to see, I'm afraid, in Vacation time."
He glanced at his companion in the velvet cap, who drew down an extraordinarily bushy pair of eyebrows (yet he, too, had a beautiful face) and seemed to come out of a dream.
"So much the better, boy, if you come up to Oxford to worship false gods."
Taffy was taken aback.
"Eight false gods in little blue caps, seated in a trough and tugging at eight poles: and all to discover if they can get from Putney to Mortlake sooner than eight other false gods in little blue caps of a lighter shade! What do they do at Mortlake when they get there in such a hurry? Eh, boy?"
"I—I'm sure I don't know," stammered Taffy.
The clergyman broke out laughing, and turned to him. "Are you going to tell us your name?"
"Raymond, sir. My father used to be at Christ Church."
"What? Are you Sam Raymond's son?"
"You knew my father?"
"A very little. I was his senior by a year or two. But I know something about him." He turned to the other. "Let me introduce the son of a man after your own heart—of a man fighting for God in the wilds, and building an altar there with his own hands and by the lamp of sacrifice."
"But how do you know all this?" cried Taffy.
"Oh," the old clergyman smiled, "we are not so ignorant up here as you suppose."
They walked by the river-bank, and there Taffy saw the college barges and was told the name of each. Also he saw a racing eight go by: it belonged to the Vacation Rowing Club. From the barges they turned aside and followed the windingsof the Cherwell. The clergyman did most of the talking; but now and then the old gentleman in the velvet cap interposed a question about the church at home, its architecture, the materials it was built of, and so forth; or about Taffy's own work, his carpentry, his apprenticeship with Mendarva the smith. And to all these questions the boy found himself replying with an ease which astonished him.
Suddenly the old clergyman said, "There is your College!"
And unperceived by Taffy a pair of kindly eyes watched his own as they met the first vision of that lovely tower rising above the trees and (so like a thing of life it seemed) lifting its pinnacles exultantly into the blue heaven.
"Well?"
All three had come to a halt. The boy turned, blushing furiously.
"This is the best of all, sir."
"Boy," said old Velvet-cap, "do you know the meaning of 'edification'? There stands your lesson for four years to come, if you can learn it in that time. Do you think it easy? Come and see how it has been learnt by men who have spent their lives face to face with it."
They crossed the street by Magdalen bridge, and passed under Pugin's gateway, by the Chapel door and into the famous cloisters. All was quiet here; so quiet that even the voices of the sparrows chattering in the ivy seemed but a part of the silence. The shadow of the great tower fell across the grass, on which (so a notice-board announced) nobody was allowed to walk.
"This is how one generation read the lesson. Come and see how another, and a later, read it."
A narrow passage led them out of gloom into sudden sunlight; and the sunlight spread itself on fair grass-plots and gravelled walks, flower-beds and the pale yellow façade of a block of buildings in the classical style, stately and elegant, with a colonnade which only needed a few promenading figures in laced coats and tie-wigs to complete the agreeable picture.
"What do you make of that?"
As a matter of fact, Taffy's thoughts had run back to the theatre at Plymouth with its sudden changes of scenery. And he stood for a moment while he collected them.
"It's different—that is," he added, feeling that this was lame, "it means something different; I cannot tell what."
"It means the difference between godly fear and civil ease, between a house of prayer and one of no-prayer. It spells the moral change which came over this University when religion, the spring and source of collegiate life, was discarded. The cloisters behind you were built for men who walked with God."
"But why," objected Taffy, plucking up courage, "couldn't they do that in the sunlight?"
Velvet-cap opened his mouth. The boy felt he was going to be denounced; when a merry laugh from the old clergyman averted the storm.
"Be content," he said to his companion; "we are Gothic enough in Oxford nowadays. And the lad is right too. There was hope even for eighteenth-century Magdalen while its buildings looked on sunlight and on that tower. We lay too much stress on prayer. The lesson of that tower (with all deference to your amazing discernment and equally amazing whims) is not prayer, but praise. And between ourselves, when all men unite to worship God, it'll be praise, not prayer, that brings them together.
Praise is devotion fit for noble minds,The differing world's agreeing sacrifice...."
Praise is devotion fit for noble minds,The differing world's agreeing sacrifice...."
Praise is devotion fit for noble minds,
The differing world's agreeing sacrifice...."
"Oh, if you're going to fling quotations from a tapster's son at my head.... Let me see ... how does it go on?... Where—something or other—different faiths—
Where Heaven divided faiths united finds...."
Where Heaven divided faiths united finds...."
Where Heaven divided faiths united finds...."
And in a moment the pair were in hot pursuit after the quotation, tripping each other up, like two schoolboys at a game. Taffy never forgot the last stanza, the last line of which they recovered exactly in the middle of the street, Velvet-cap standing between two tram-lines, right in the path of an advancing car, while he declaimed—
"By penitence when we ourselves forsake,'Tis but in wise design on piteous Heaven;In praise—
"By penitence when we ourselves forsake,'Tis but in wise design on piteous Heaven;In praise—
"By penitence when we ourselves forsake,
'Tis but in wise design on piteous Heaven;
In praise—
(The gesture was magnificent)
In praise we nobly give what God may take,And are without a beggar's blush forgiven.
In praise we nobly give what God may take,And are without a beggar's blush forgiven.
In praise we nobly give what God may take,
And are without a beggar's blush forgiven.
—Damn these trams!"
The old clergyman shook hands with Taffy in some haste. "And when you reach home give my respects to your father. Stay, you don't know my name. Here is my card, or you'll forget it."
"Mine too," said Velvet-cap.
Taffy stood staring after them as they walked off down the lane which skirts the Botanical Gardens. The names on the two cards were famous ones, as even he knew. He walked back toward Trinity a proud and happy boy. Half-way up Queen's Lane, finding himself between blank walls, with nobody in sight, he even skipped.
T
The postman halted by the foot-bridge and blew his horn. The sound sent the rabbits scampering into their burrows; and just as they began to pop out again, Taffy came charging across the slope; whereupon they drew back their noses in disgust, and to avoid the sand scattered by his heels.
The postman held up a blue envelope and waved it. "Here, 'tis come, at last!"
"It may not be good news," said Taffy, clutching it, and then turning it over in his hand.
"Well, that's true. And till you open it, it won't be any news at all."
"I wanted mother to be the first to know."
"Oh, very well—only as you say, it mightn't be good news."
"If it's bad news, I want to be alone. But why should they trouble to write?"
"True again. I s'pose now you're sure itisfrom them?"
"I can tell by the seal."
"Take it home, then," said the postman. "Only if you think 'tis for the sake of a twiddling sixteen shilling a week that I traipse all these miles every day——"
Taffy fingered the seal. "If you would really like to know——"
"Don't 'ee mention it. Not on any account." He waved his hand magnanimously and trudged off toward Tredinnis.
Taffy waited until he disappeared behind the first sand-hill, and broke the seal. A slip of parchment lay inside the envelope.
"This is to certify——"
He had paused! He pulled off his cap and waved it round his head. And once more the rabbits popped back into their burrows.
Toot—toot—toot!—It was that diabolical postman. He had fetched a circuit round the sand-hill, and was peeping round the north side of it and grinning as he blew.
Taffy set off running, and never stopped until he reached the Parsonage and burst into the kitchen.
"Mother—it's all right! I've passed!"
Somebody was knocking at the door. Taffy jumped up from his knees and Humility made the lap of her apron smooth.
"May I come in?" asked Honoria, and pushed the door open. She stepped into the middle of the kitchen and dropped Taffy an elaborate courtesy. "A thousand congratulations, sir!"
"Why, how did you know?"
"Well, I met the postman: and I looked in through the window before knocking."
Taffy bit his lip. "People seem to be taking a deal of interest in us, all of a sudden," he said to his mother. Humility looked distressed, uncomfortable. Honoria ignored the snub. "I am starting for Carwithiel to-day," she said, "for a week's visit; and thought I would look in—after hearing what the postman told me—and pay my compliments."
She talked for a minute or two on matters of no importance; asked after old Mrs. Venning's health; and left, turning at the door to give Humility a cheerful little nod.
"Taffy, you ought not to have spoken so." Humility's eyes were tearful.
Taffy's conscience was already accusing him. He snatched up his cap and ran out.
"Miss Honoria!"
She did not turn.
"Miss Honoria—I am sorry." Heovertook her, but she turned her face away. "Forgive me——"
She halted, and after a moment looked him in the eyes. He saw then that she had been crying.
"The first time I came to see you,hewhipped me," she said slowly.
"I am sorry; please——"
"Taffy——"
"Miss Honoria."
"I said—Taffy."
"Honoria, then."
"Do you know what it is to feel lonely, here?"
Taffy remembered the afternoons when he had roamed the sand-hills longing for George's company. "Why, yes," said he; "it used to be always lonely."
"I think we have been the loneliest children in the whole world—you and I and George; only George didn't feel it in the same way. And now it's coming to an end with you. You are going up to Oxford, and soon you will have heaps of friends. Can you not understand? Suppose there were two prisoners, alone in the same prison, but shut in different cells; and one heard that the other's release had come. He would feel—would he not?—that now he was going to be lonelier than ever. And yet he might be glad of the other's liberty, and if the chance were given, might be the happier for shaking hands with the other and wishing him joy."
Taffy had never heard her speak at all like this.
"But you are going over to Carwithiel, and George is famous company."
"I am going over to Carwithiel because I hate Tredinnis. I hate every stone of it, and will sell the place as soon as ever I come of age. And George is the best fellow in the world. Some day I shall marry him (Oh, it's all arranged!) and we shall live at Carwithiel and be quite happy; for I like him, and he likes people to be happy. And we shall talk of you. Being out of the world ourselves, we shall talk of you, and the great things you are going to do, and the great things you are doing. We shall say to each other, 'It's all very well for the world to be proud of him, but we have the best right; for we grew up with him and know the stories he used to tell us, and when the time came for his going, it was we who waved from the door'——"
"Honoria——"
"But there is one thing you haven't told; and you shall now, if you care to—about your examination and what you did at Oxford."
So he sat down beside her on a sand-hill and told her; about the long low-ceiled room in the quadrangle of the Bodleian, the old marbles which lined the walls, the examiner at the blue-baize table, and the little deal tables (all scribbled over with names and dates and verses and ribald remarks) at which the candidates wrote; also of theviva voceexamination in the ante-chamber of the Convocation House. He told it all as if it were the great event which he honestly felt it to be.
"And the others," said she: "those who were writing around you, and the examiner—how did you feel toward them?"
Taffy stared at her. "I don't know that I thought much about them?"
"Didn't you feel as if it was a battle, and you wanted to beat them all?"
He broke out laughing. "Why the examiner was an old man, as dry as a stick! And the others—I hardly remember what they were like—except one, a white-headed boy with a pimply face. I couldn't help noticing him, because, whenever I looked up, there he was at the next table, staring at me and chewing a quill."
"I can't understand," she confessed. "Often and often I have tried to think myself a man—a man with ambition. And to me that has always meant fighting. I see myself a man, and the people between me and the prize have all to be knocked down or pushed out of the way. But you don't even see them—all you see is a pimply-faced boy sucking a quill. Taffy——"
"What is it, Honoria?"
"I wish you would write to me, when you get to Oxford. Write regularly. Tell me all you do."
"You will like to hear?"
"Of course I shall; so will George. But it's not only that. You have such an easy way of going forward; you take it for granted you're going to be a great man——"
"I don't."
"Yes, you do. You think it just lieswith yourself, and it is nobody's business to interfere with you. You don't even notice those who are on the same path. Now a woman would notice every one, and find out all about them."
"Who said I wanted to be a great man?"
"Don't be silly, that's a good boy. There's your father coming out of the church-porch, and you haven't told him yet. Run to him, but promise first."
"What?"
"That you will write."
"I promise."
(To be continued.)
[The following correspondence with Mr. William Archer I insert continuously, though it belongs to two different periods of the year 1885. An anonymous review of theChild's Garden, appearing in March, gave R. L. S. so much pleasure that he wrote to inquire the name of his critic, and learned that it was Mr. Archer, with whom he had hitherto had no acquaintance, but with whom he thereupon entered into friendly correspondence. The "paper" referred to in the later letters of October 25 to November 1, is one on R. L. S. in general, which Mr. Archer wrote over his own signature inTime, a monthly magazine now extinct.]
Bournemouth, March 29th, 1885.
Dear Mr. Archer,—Yes, I have heard of you and read some of your work; but I am bound in particular to thank you for the notice of my verses. "There," I said, throwing it over to the friend who was staying with me, "it's worth writing a book to draw an article like that." Had you been as hard upon me as you were amiable, I try to tell myself I should have been no blinder to the merits of your notice. For I saw there, to admire and to be very grateful for, a most sober, agile pen; an enviable touch; the marks of a reader, such as one imagines for one's self in dreams, thoughtful, critical, and kind; and to put the top on this memorial column, a greater readiness to describe the author criticised than to display the talents of his censor.
I am a manblaséto injudicious praise (though I hope some of it may be judicious, too), but I have to thank you forthe best Criticism I ever had; and am therefore, dear Mr. Archer, the most grateful critickee now extant.
Robert Louis Stevenson.
P.S.—I congratulate you on living in the corner of all London that I like best [Queen's Square, Bloomsbury].Apropos, you are very right about my voluntary aversion from the painful sides of life. My childhood was in reality a very mixed experience, full of fever, nightmare, insomnia, painful days and interminable nights; and I can speak with less authority of gardens than of that other 'land of counterpane.' But to what end should we renew these sorrows. The sufferings of life may be handled by the very greatest in their hours of insight; it is of its pleasures that our common poems should be formed; these are the experiences that we should seek to recall or to provoke; and I say with Thoreau, "What right have I to complain, who have not ceased to wonder?" and, to add a rider of my own, who have no remedy to offer?
R. L. S.
Skerryvore, Bournemouth,October 28th, 1885.
Dear Mr. Archer,—I have read your paper with my customary admiration; it is very witty, very adroit, it contains a great deal that is excellently true (particularly the parts about my stories and the description of me as an artist in life): but you will not be surprised if I do not think it altogether just. It seems to me, in particular, that you have wilfully read all my works in terms of my earliest; my aim, even in style, has quite changed in the last six or seven years; and this I should have thought you would have noticed. Again, you first remark upon the affectation of the italic names: a practice only followed in my two affected little books of travel, where a typographicalminauderieof the sort appeared to me in character; and what you say of it, then, is quite just. But why should you forget yourself and use these same italics as an index to my theology some pages further on? This is lightness of touch indeed; may I say, it is almost sharpness of practice?
Excuse these remarks. I have been on the whole much interested, and sometimes amused. Are you aware that the praiser of this "brave gymnasium" has not seen a canoe nor taken a long walk since '79? that he is rarely out of the house nowadays, and carries his arm in a sling? Can you imagine that he is a back-slidden communist, and is sure he will go to Hell (if there be such an excellent institution) for the luxury in which he lives? And can you believe that, though it is gaily expressed, the thought is hag and skeleton in every moment of vacuity or depression? Can you conceive how profoundly I am irritated by the opposite affectation to my own, when I see strong men and rich men bleating about their sorrows and the burthen of life, in a world full of "cancerous paupers," and poor sick children, and the fatally bereaved, ay, and down even to such happy creatures as myself, who has yet been obliged to strip himself, one after another, of all the pleasures that he had chosen except smoking (and the days of that I know in my heart ought to be over), I forgot eating, which I still enjoy, and who sees the circle of impotence closing very slowly but quite steadily around him? In my view, one dank, dispirited word is harmful, a crime oflèse-humanité, a piece of acquired evil; every gay, every bright word or picture, like every pleasant air of music, is a piece of pleasure set afloat; the reader catches it and, if he be healthy, goes on his way rejoicing; and it is the business of art so to send him, as often as possible.
For what you say, so kindly, so prettily, so precisely, of my style, I must in particular thank you: though even here, I am vexed you should not have remarked on my attempted change of manner: seemingly this attempt is still quite unsuccessful! Well, we shall fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.
And now for my last word: Mrs. Stevenson is very anxious that you should see me, and that she should see you, in the flesh. If you at all share in these views, I am a fixture. Write or telegraph (giving us time, however, to telegraph in reply, lest the day be impossible), and come down here to a bed and a dinner. What do you say, my dear critic? I shall be truly pleased to see you; and to explain at greater length what I meant by saying narrative was the most characteristic mood of literature, on which point I have great hopes I shall persuade you.—Yours truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
P.S.—My opinion about Thoreau, and the passage inThe Week, is perhaps a fad, but it is sincere and stable. I am still of the same mind, five years later; did you observe that I had said "modern" authors? and will you observe again that this passage touches the very joint of our division? It is one that appeals to me, deals with that part of life that I think the most important, and you, if I gather rightly, so much less so? You believe in the extreme moment of the facts that humanity has acquired and is acquiring; I think them of moment, but still of much less than those inherent or inherited brute principles and laws that sit upon us (in the character of conscience) as heavy as a shirt of mail, and that (in the character of the affections and the airy spirit of pleasure) make all the light of our lives. The house is, indeed, a great thing, and should be rearranged on sanitaryprinciples; but my heart and all my interest are with the dweller, that ancient of days and day-old infant, man.
R. L. S.
An excellent touch is p. 584. "By instinct or design he eschews what demands constructive patience." I believe it is both; my theory is that literature must always be most at home in treating movement and change; hence I look for them.
Bournemouth, October 30th, 1885.
Dear Mr. Archer,—It is possible my father may be soon down with me; he is an old man and in bad health and spirits; and I could neither leave him alone, nor could we talk freely before him. If he should be here when you offer your visit, you will understand if I have to say no, and put you off.
I quite understand your not caring to refer to things of private knowledge. What still puzzles me is how you ('in the witness box'—ha! I like the phrase) should have made your argument actually hinge on a contention which the facts answered.
I am pleased to hear of the correctness of my guess. It is then as I supposed; you are of the school of the generous and not the sullen pessimists; and I can feel with you. I used myself to rage when I saw sick-folk going by in their Bath-chairs; since I have been sick myself (and always when I was sick myself), I found life, even in its rough places, to have a property of easiness. That which we suffer ourselves has no longer the same air of monstrous injustice and wanton cruelty that suffering wears when we see it in the case of others. So we begin gradually to see that things are not black, but have their strange compensations; and when they draw towards their worst, the idea of death is like a bed to lie on. I should bear false witness if I did not declare life happy. And your wonderful statement that happiness tends to die out and misery to continue, which was what put me on the track of your frame of mind, is diagnostic of the happy man raging over the misery of others; it could never be written by the man who had tried what unhappiness was like. And at any rate, it was a slip of the pen: the ugliest word that silence has to declare is a reserved indifference to happiness and misery in the individual; it declares no leaning toward the black, no iniquity on the large scale in fate's doings, rather a marble equality, dread not cruel, giving and taking away and reconciling.
Why have I not written myTimon? Well, here is my worst quarrel with you. You take my young books as my last word. The tendency to try to say more has passed unperceived (my fault, that). And you make no allowance for the slowness with which a man finds and tries to learn his tools. I began with a neat brisk little style, and a sharp little knack of partial observation; I have tried to expand my means, but still I can only utter a part of what I wish to say, and am bound to feel; and much of it will die unspoken. But if I had the pen of Shakespeare, I have noTimonto give forth. I feel kindly to the powers that be; I marvel they should use me so well; and when I think of the case of others I wonder too, but in another vein, whether they may not, whether they must not, be like me, still with some compensation, some delight. To have suffered, nay, to suffer, sets a keen edge on what remains of the agreeable. This is a great truth, and has to be learned in the fire.—Yours very truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
We expect you, remember that.
Skerryvore, Bournemouth, November 1st, 1885.
Dear Mr. Archer,—You will see that I had already had a sight of your article and what were my thoughts.
One thing in your letter puzzles me. Are you, too, not in the witness box? And if you are, why take a wilfully false hypothesis? If you knew I was a chronic invalid, why say that my philosophy was unsuitable to such a case? My call for facts is not so general as yours, but an essential fact should not be put the other way about.
The fact is, consciously or not, you doubt my honesty; you think I am making faces, and at heart disbelieve my utterances. And this I am disposed to think must spring from your not having had enough of pain, sorrow, and trouble in your existence. It is easy to have too much; easy also or possible to have too little; enough is required that a man may appreciate what elements of consolationand joy there are in everything but absolutely overpowering physical pain or disgrace, and how in almost all circumstances the human soul can play a fair part. But perhaps my hypothesis is as unlike the truth as the one you chose. Well, if it be so, if you have had trials, sickness, the approach of death, the alienation of friends, poverty at the heels, and have not felt your soul turn round upon these things and spur them under—you must be very differently made from me, and I earnestly believe from the majority of men. But at least you are in the right to wonder and complain.
To 'say all'? Stay here. All at once? That would require a word from the pen of Gargantua. We say each particular thing as it comes up, and 'with that sort of emphasis that for the time there seems to be no other.' Words will not otherwise serve us; no, nor even Shakespeare, who could not have putAs You Like ItandTimoninto one without ruinous loss both of emphasis and substance. Is it quite fair then to keep your face so steadily on my most light-hearted works, and then say I recognise no evil? Yet in the paper on Burns, for instance, I show myself alive to some sorts of evil. But then, perhaps, they are not your sorts.
And again: 'to say all'? All: yes. Everything: no. The task were endless, the effect nil. But my all, in such a vast field as this of life, is what interests me, what stands out, what takes on itself a presence for my imagination or makes a figure in that little tricky abbreviation which is the best that my reason can conceive. That I must treat, or I shall be fooling with my readers. That, and not the all of some one else.
And here we come to the division: not only do I believe that literature should give joy, but I see a universe, I suppose, eternally different from yours: a solemn, a terrible, but a very joyous and noble universe; where suffering is not at least wantonly inflicted, though it falls with dispassionate partiality, but where it may be and generally is nobly borne; where above all (this I believe: probably you don't: I think he may, with cancer)any brave man may makeout a life which shall be happy for himself, and, by so being, beneficent to those about him. And if he fails, why should I hear him weeping? I mean if I fail, why should I weep? why shouldyouhearme? Then to me morals, the conscience, the affections, and the passions are, I will own frankly and sweepingly, so infinitely more important than the other parts of life, that I conceive men rather triflers who become immersed in the latter; and I will always think the man who keeps his lip stiff, and makes 'a happy fireside clime,' and carries a pleasant face about to friends and neighbours, infinitely greater in the abstract than an atrabilious Shakespeare or a backbiting Kant or Darwin. No offence to any of these gentlemen: two of whom probably (one for certain) came up to my standard.
And now enough said: it were hard if a poor man could not criticise another without having so much ink shed against him. But I shall still regret you should have written on an hypothesis you knew to be untenable, and that you should thus have made your paper, for those who do not know me, essentially unfair. The rich, foxhunting squire speaks with one voice; the sick man of letters with another.—Yours very truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.(Prometheus-Heine in minimis.)
P.S.—Here I go again. To me, the medicine bottles on my chimney and the blood on my handkerchief are accidents; they do not colour my view of life, as you would know, I think, if you had experience of sickness; they do not exist in my prospect; I would as soon drag them under the eyes of my readers as I would mention a pimple I might chance to have (saving your presence) on my ——. What does it prove? what does it change? it has not hurt, it has not changed me in any essential part; and I should think myself a trifler and in bad taste if I introduced the world to these unimportant privacies.
But again there is this mountain-range between us:that you do not believe me. It is not flattering, but the fault is probably in my literary art.
Skerryvore, Bournemouth, October 28, 1885.
My dear Henry James,—At last, my wife being at a concert, and a story beingdone, I am at some liberty to write and give you of my views. And first, many thanks for the works that came to my sickbed. And second, and more important, as to thePrincess[Cazamassima]. Well, I think you are going to do it this time; I cannot, of course, foresee, but these two first numbers seem to me picturesque and sound and full of lineament, and very much a new departure. As for your young lady, she is all there; yes, sir, you can do low life, I believe. The prison was excellent; it was of that nature of touch that I sometimes achingly miss from your former work; with some of the grime, that is, and some of the emphasis of skeleton there is in nature. I pray you to take grime in a good sense; it need not be ignoble: dirt may have dignity; in nature it usually has; and your prison was imposing.
And now to the main point, why do we not see you? Do not fail us. Make an alarming sacrifice, and let us see "Henry James's chair" properly occupied. I never sit in it myself (though it was my grandfather's); it has been consecrated to guests by your approval, and now stands at my elbow gaping. We have a new room, too, to introduce to you: our last baby, the drawing-room: it never cries, and has cut its teeth. Likewise, there is a cat now. It promises to be a monster of laziness and self-sufficiency.
Pray see, in the NovemberTime(a dread name for a magazine of light reading), a very clever fellow, W. Archer, stating his views of me: the rosy-gilled "athletico-æsthete": and warning me in a fatherly manner that a rheumatic fever would try my philosophy (as indeed it would), and that my gospel would not do for "those who are shut out from the exercise of any manly virtue save renunciation." To those who know that rickety and cloistered spectre, the real R. L. S., the paper, besides being clever in itself, presents rare elements of sport. The critical parts are in particular very bright and neat and often excellently true. Get it by all manner of means.
I hear on all sides I am to be attacked as an immoral writer; this is painful. Have I at last got, like you, to the pitch of being attacked? 'Tis the consecration I lack—and could do without. Not that Archer's paper is an attack, or what either he or I, I believe, would call one; 'tis the attacks on my morality (which I had thought a gem of the first water) I referred to.—Yours affectionately,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Oct. 28th, 1885.
My dearest Father,—Get the November number ofTime, and you will see a review of me by a very clever fellow, who is quite furious at bottom because I am too orthodox, just as Purcell was savage because I am not orthodox enough. I fall between two stools. It is odd, too, to see how this man thinks me a full-blooded foxhunter, and tells me my philosophy would fail if I lost my health or had to give up exercise!
An illustratedTreasure Islandwill be out next month. I have had an early copy, and the French pictures are admirable. The artist has got his types up in Hogarth; he is full of fire and spirit, can draw and can compose, and has understood the book as I meant it, all but one or two little accidents, such as making theHispaniolaa brig. I would send you my copy,but I cannot: it is my new toy, and I cannot divorce myself from this enjoyment.
I am keeping really better, and have been out about every second day, though the weather is cold and very wild.
I was delighted to hear you were keeping better; you and Archer would agree, more shame to you! (Archer is my pessimist critic.) Good-bye to all of you, with my best love. We had a dreadful overhauling of my conduct as a son the other night; and my wife stripped me of my illusions and made me admit I had been a detestable bad one. Of one thing in particular she convicted me in my own eyes: I mean, a most unkind reticence, which hung on me then, and I confess still hangs on me now, when I try to assure you that I do love you.—Ever your bad son,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
["Prince Otto" had been published in the October of this year; and the following refers to two reviews of it—one of them by Mr. Henley, which to the writer'sdispleasure had been pruned by the editor before it was printed—the other by a critic in theSaturday Review, who had declared Otto to be "a fool and a wittol," and seen nothing but false style in the flight of Seraphina through the forest.]
October 1885.
Dear Lad,—If there was any more praise in what you wrote, I think [the editor] has done us both a service; some of it stops my throat. What, it would not have been the same if Dumas or Musset had done it, would it not? Well, no, I do not think it would, do you know, now; I am really of opinion it would not; and a dam good job too. Why, think what Musset would have made of Otto! Think how gallantly Dumas would have carried his crowd through! And whatever you do, don't quarrel with ——. It gives me much pleasure to see your work there; I think you do yourself great justice in that field; and I would let no annoyance, petty or justifiable, debar me from such a market. I think you do good there. Whether (considering our intimate relations) you would not do better to refrain from reviewing me, I will leave to yourself: were it all on my side, you could foresee my answer; but there is your side also, where you must be the judge.
As for theSaturday. Otto is no 'fool,' the reader is left in no doubt as to whether or not Seraphina was a Messalina (though much it would matter, if you come to that); and therefore on both these points the reviewer has been unjust. Secondly, the romance lies precisely in the freeing of two spirits from these court intrigues; and here I think the reviewer showed himself dull. Lastly, if Otto's speech is offensive to him, he is one of the large class of unmanly and ungenerous dogs who arrogate and defile the name of manly. As for the passages quoted, I do confess that some of them reek Gorgonically; they are excessive, but they are not inelegant after all. However, had he attacked me only there, he would have scored.
Your criticism onGondremarkis, I fancy, right. I thought all your criticisms were indeed; only your praise—chokes me.—Yours ever,
R. L. S.
Skerryvore, Bournemouth,December 26th, 1885.
My dear Low,—Lamiahas not yet turned up, but your letter came to me this evening with a scent of the Boulevard Montparnasse that was irresistible. The sand of Lavenue's crumbled under my heel; and the bouquet of the old Fleury came back to me; and I remembered the day when I found a twenty franc piece under my fetish. Have you that fetish still? and has it brought you luck? I remembered, too, my first sight of you in a frock coat and a smoking-cap, when we passed the evening at the Café de Medicis; and my last when we sat and talked in the Parc Monceau; and all these things made me feel a little young again, which, to one who has been mostly in bed for a month, was a vivifying change.
Yes, you are lucky to have a bag that holds you comfortably. Mine is a strange contrivance; I don't die, damme, and I can't get along on both feet to save my soul; I am a chronic sickist; and my work cripples along between bed and the parlour, between the medicine bottle and the cupping glass. Well, I like my life all the same; and should like it none the worse if I could have another talk with you: though even my talks now are measured out to me by the minute hand like poisons in a minim glass.
A photograph will be taken of my ugly mug and sent to you for ulterior purposes: I have another thing coming out, which I did not put in the way of the Scribners, I can scarce tell how, but I was sick and penniless and rather back on the world, and mismanaged it. I trust they will forgive me.
I am sorry to hear of Mrs. Low's illness, and glad to hear of her recovery. I will announce the comingLamiato Bob; he steams away at literature like smoke. I have a beautiful Bob on my walls, and a good Sargent, and a delightful Lemon; and your etching now hangs framed in the dining-room. So the arts surround me,—Yours,
R. L. S.
['Kinnicum' is an affectionate variation upon 'Cummy', which was Stevenson's name for Mrs. Alison Cunningham, the nurse who had been so devoted in hertendance on his childhood, and to whom his affection and gratitude knew no change.]
Jan. 1st, 1886.
My dear Kinnicum,—I am a very bad dog, but not for the first time. Your book, which is very interesting, came duly; and I immediately got a very bad cold indeed, and have been fit for nothing whatever. I am a bit better now, and aye on the mend: so I write to tell you, I thought of you on New Year's Day; though, I own, it would have been more decent if I had thought in time for you to get my letter then. Well, what can't be cured must be endured, Mr. Lawrie; and you must be content with what I give. If I wrote all the letters I ought to write, and at the proper time, I should be very good and very happy; but I doubt if I should do anything else.
I suppose you will be in town for the New Year; and I hope your health is pretty good. What you want is diet; but it is as much use to tell you that as it is to tell my father. And I quite admit a diet is a beastly thing. I doubt, however, if it be as bad as not being allowed to speak, which I have tried fully, and do not like. When, at the same time, I was not allowed to read, it passed a joke. But these are troubles of the past, and on this day, at least, it is proper to suppose they won't return. But we are not put here to enjoy ourselves; it was not God's purpose; and I am prepared to argue, it is not our sincere wish. As for our deserts, the less said of them the better, for some body might hear, and nobody cares to be laughed at. A good man is a very noble thing to see, but not to himself; what he seems to God is, fortunately, not our business; that is the domain of faith; and whether on the first of January or the thirty-first of December, faith is a good word to end on.
My dear Cummy, many happy returns to you and my best love.—The worst correspondent in the world,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Skerryvore, Bournemouth, Jan. 2nd, 1886.
My dear Gosse,—Thank you for your letter, so interesting to my vanity. There is a review in theSt. James's, which, as it seems to hold somewhat of your opinions, and is besides written with a pen and not a poker, we think may possibly be yours. The Prince has done fairly well in spite of the reviews, which have been bad; he was, as you doubtless saw, well slated in theSaturday; one paper received it as a child's story; another (picture my agony) described it as a 'Gilbert comedy.' It was amusing to see the race between me and Justin M'Carthy; the Milesian has won by a length.
That is the hard part of literature. You aim high, and you take longer over your work, and it will not be so successful as if you had aimed low and rushed it. What the public likes is work (of any kind) a little loosely executed; so long as it is a little wordy, a little slack, a little dim and knotless, the dear public likes it; it should (if possible) be a little dull into the bargain. I know that good work sometimes hits; but, with my hand on my heart, I think it is by an accident. And I know also that good work must succeed at last; but that is not the doing of the public; they are only shamed into silence or affectation. I do not write for the public; I do write for money, a nobler deity; and most of all for myself, not perhaps any more noble, but both more intelligent and nearer home.
Let us tell each other sad stories of the bestiality of the beast whom we feed. What he likes is the newspaper; and to me the press is the mouth of a sewer, where lying is professed as from an university chair, and everything prurient, and ignoble, and essentially dull, finds its abode and pulpit. I do not like mankind; but men, and not all of these—and fewer women. As for respecting the race, and, above all, that fatuous rabble of burgesses called 'the public,' God save me from such irreligion,—that way lies disgrace and dishonour. There must be something wrong in me, or I would not be popular.
This is perhaps a trifle stronger than my sedate and permanent opinion. Not much, I think. As for the art that we practice, I have never been able to see why its professors should be respected. They chose the primrose path; when they found it was not all primroses, but some of it brambly, and much of it uphill, they began to think and to speak of themselves as holy martyrs. But a man is never martyred inany honest sense in the pursuit of his pleasure; anddelirium tremenshas more of the honour of the cross. We were full of the pride of life, and chose, like prostitutes, to live by a pleasure. We should be paid if we give the pleasure we pretend to give; but why should we be honoured?
I hope some day you and Mrs. Gosse will come for a Sunday; but we must wait till I am able to see people. I am very full of Jenkin's life; it is painful, yet very pleasant, to dig into the past of a dead friend, and find him, at every spadeful, shine brighter. I own, as I read, I wonder more and more why he should have taken me to be a friend. He had many and obvious faults upon the face of him; the heart was pure gold. I feel it little pain to have lost him, for it is a loss in which I cannot believe; I take it, against reason, for an absence; if not to-day, then to-morrow, I still fancy I shall see him in the door; and then, now when I know him better, how glad a meeting! Yes, if I could believe in the immortality business, the world would indeed be too good to be true; but we were put here to do what service we can, for honour and not for hire; the sods cover us, and the worm that never dies, the conscience, sleeps well at last; these are the wages, besides what we receive so lavishly day by day; and they are enough for a man who knows his own frailty and sees all things in the proportion of reality. The soul of piety was killed long ago by that idea of reward. Nor is happiness, whether eternal or temporal, the reward that mankind seeks. Happinesses are but his wayside campings; his soul is in the journey; he was born for the struggle, and only tastes his life in effort and on the condition that he is opposed. How, then, is such a creature, so fiery, so pugnacious, so made up of discontent and aspiration, and such noble and uneasy passions, how can he be rewarded but by rest? I would not say it aloud; for man's cherished belief is that he loves that happiness which he continually spurns and passes by; and this belief in some ulterior happiness exactly fits him. He does not require to stop and taste it; he can be about the rugged and bitter business where his heart lies; and yet he can tell himself this fairy-tale of an eternal tea-party, and enjoy the notion that he is both himself and something else; and that his friends will yet meet him, all ironed out and emasculate, and still be lovable; as if love did not live in the faults of the beloved only, and draw its breath in an unbroken round of forgiveness? But the truth is, we must fight until we die; and when we die there can be no quiet for mankind but complete resumption into—what?—God, let us say—when all these desperate tricks will lie spellbound at last.
Here came my dinner and cut this sermon short—excusez.
R. L. S.
[The next letter was written on receiving from the United States a copy of Messrs. Lippincotts's fine edition of Keats'sLamia, illustrated by Mr. W. H. Low, and bearing on the frontispiece the dedication: "In testimony of loyal friendship and of a common faith in doubtful tales from faery land, I dedicate to Robert Louis Stevenson my work in this book"; together with the Latin legend "neque est ullum certius amicitiæ vinculum quam consensus et societas consiliorum et voluntatum".]
Jan. 2nd, 1886.
My dear Low,—Lamiahas come, and I do not know how to thank you, not only for the beautiful art of the designs, but for the handsome and apt words of the dedication. My favourite is "Bathes unseen," which is a masterpiece; and the next, "Into the green recessed woods," is perhaps more remarkable, though it does not take my fancy so imperiously. The night scene at Corinth pleases me also. The second part offers fewer opportunities. I own I should like to see bothIsabellaand theEvethus illustrated; and then there'sHyperion—O, yes, andEndymion! I should like to see the lot: beautiful pictures dance before me by hundreds: I believeEndymionwould suit you best. It, also, is in faery land; and I see a hundred opportunities, cloudy and flowery glories, things as delicate as the cobweb in the bush; actions, not in themselves of any mighty purport, but made for the pencil: the feast of Pan, Peona's isle, the "slabbèd margin of a well," the chase of the butterfly, the nymph, Glaucus, Cybele, Sleep on his couch, a farrago of unconnected beauties.But I divagate; and all this sits in the bosom of the publisher.
What is more important, I accept the terms of the dedication with a frank heart, and the terms of your Latin legend fairly. The sight of your pictures has once more awakened me to my right mind; something may come of it; yet one more bold push to get free of this prison-yard of the abominably ugly, where I take my daily exercise with my contemporaries. I do not know, I have a feeling in my bones, a sentiment which may take on the forms of imagination, or may not. If it does, I shall owe it to you; and the thing will thus descend from Keats even if on the wrong side of the blanket. If it can be done in prose—that is the puzzle—I divagate again. Thank you again; you can draw and yet you do not love the ugly: what are you doing in this age? Flee, while it is yet time; they will have your four limbs pinned upon a stable door to scare witches. The ugly, my unhappy friend, isde rigueur: it is the only wear! What a chance you threw away with the serpent! Why had Apollonius no pimples? Heavens, my dear Low, you do not know your business....
I send you herewith a Gothic gnome for your Greek nymph; but the gnome is interesting, I think, and he came out of a deep mine, where he guards the fountain of tears. It is not always the time to rejoice.—Yours ever,
R. L. S.
The gnome's name is "Jekyll & Hyde"; I believe you will find he is likewise quite willing to answer to the name of Low or Stevenson.
Jan. 2nd, '86.
P.S. I have copied out on the other sheet some bad verses, which somehow your picture suggested; as a kind of image of things that I pursue and cannot reach, and that you seem—no, not to have reached—but to have come a thought nearer to than I. This is the life we have chosen; well, the choice was mad, but I should make it again.
What occurs to me is this: perhaps they might be printed in (say) theCenturyfor the sake of my name; and if that were possible, they might advertise your book. It might be headed as sent in acknowledgment of yourLamia. Or perhaps it might be introduced by the phrases I have marked above. I daresay they would stick it in: I want no payment, being well paid byLamia. If they are not, keep them to yourself.
R. L. S.
[The verses referred to in the above were those beginning "Youth now flees on feathered foot." They were printed in theCentury Magazineas here suggested, and afterward in the volume ofUnderwoods.]
Skerryvore, Bournemouth[1886].
My dear Symonds,—If we have lost touch, it is (I think) only in a material sense; a question of letters, not hearts. You will find a warm welcome at Skerryvore from both the lightkeepers; and indeed we never tell ourselves one of our financial fairy tales, but a run to Davos is a prime feature. I am not changeable in friendship; and I think I can promise you you have a pair of trusty well-wishers and friends in Bournemouth, whether they write or not is but a small thing; the flag may not be waved, but it is there.