The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 24. Robert Louis Stevenson
– A Good New Year to you. The year closes, leaving me with £50 in the bank, owing no man nothing, £100 more due to me in a week or so, and £150 more in the course of the month; and I can look back on a total receipt of £465, 0s. 6d. for the last twelve months!
And yet I am not happy!
Yet I beg! Here is my beggary: —
1. Sellar’s Trial.
2. George Borrow’s Book about Wales.
3. My Grandfather’s Trip to Holland.
4. And (but this is, I fear, impossible) the Bell Rock Book.
When I think of how last year began, after four months of sickness and idleness, all my plans gone to water, myself starting alone, a kind of spectre, for Nice – should I not be grateful? Come, let us sing unto the Lord!
Nor should I forget the expected visit, but I will not believe in that till it befall; I am no cultivator of disappointments, ’tis a herb that does not grow in my garden; but I get some good crops both of remorse and gratitude. The last I can recommend to all gardeners; it grows best in shiny weather, but once well grown, is very hardy; it does not require much labour; only that the husbandman should smoke his pipe about the flower-plots and admire God’s pleasant wonders. Winter green (otherwise known as Resignation, or the “false gratitude plant”) springs in much the same soil; is little hardier, if at all; and requires to be so dug about and dunged, that there is little margin left for profit. The variety known as the Black Winter green (H. V. Stevensoniana) is rather for ornament than profit.
“John, do you see that bed of resignation?” – “It’s doin’ bravely, sir.” – “John, I will not have it in my garden; it flatters not the eye and comforts not the stomach; root it out.” – “Sir, I ha’e seen o’ them that rase as high as nettles; gran’ plants!” – “What then? Were they as tall as alps, if still unsavoury and bleak, what matters it? Out with it, then; and in its place put Laughter and a Good Conceit (that capital home evergreen), and a bush of Flowering Piety – but see it be the flowering sort – the other species is no ornament to any gentleman’s Back Garden.”
To W. E. Henley
Early in January, Stevenson, after a week’s visit at Hyères from his friends Charles Baxter and W. E. Henley, accompanied them as far as Nice, and there suddenly went down with an attack of acute congestion, first of the lungs and then of the kidneys. At one moment there seemed no hope, but he recovered slowly and returned to Hyères. His friends had not written during his illness, fearing him to be too far gone to care for letters. As he got better he began to chafe at their silence.
I cannot read, work, sleep, lie still, walk, or even play patience. These plagues will overtake all damned silencists; among whom, from this day out, number
Eructavit cor Timonis.**
I counted miseries by the heap,
But now have had my fill,
I cannot see, I do not sleep,
But shortly I shall kill.
Of many letters, here is a
Full End.
The last will and testament of
a demitting correspondent.
My indefatigable pen
I here lay down forever. Men
Have used, and left me, and forgot;
Men are entirely off the spot;
Men are a blague and an abuse;
And I commit them to the deuce!
I had companions, I had friends,
I had of whisky various blends.
The whisky was all drunk; and lo!
The friends were gone for evermo!
And when I marked the ingratitude,
I to my maker turned, and spewed.
A pen broken, a subverted ink-pot.
All men are rot; but there are two —
Sidney, the oblivious Slade, and you —
Who from that rabble stand confest
Ten million times the rottenest.
When I was sick and safe in gaol
I thought my friends would never fail.
One wrote me nothing; t’other bard
Sent me an insolent post-card.
Terminus: Silentia.**
FINIS Finaliter finium.**
I now write no more.
The finger on the mouth.
To Sidney Colvin
The allusions in the second paragraph are to the commanders in the Nile campaigns of those years.
MY DEAR S. C., – You will already have received a not very sane note from me; so your patience was rewarded – may I say, your patient silence? However, now comes a letter, which on receipt, I thus acknowledge.
I have already expressed myself as to the political aspect. About Grahame, I feel happier; it does seem to have been really a good, neat, honest piece of work. We do not seem to be so badly off for commanders: Wolseley and Roberts, and this pile of Woods, Stewarts, Alisons, Grahames, and the like. Had we but ONE statesman on any side of the house!
Two chapters of Otto do remain: one to rewrite, one to create; and I am not yet able to tackle them. For me it is my chief o’ works; hence probably not so for others, since it only means that I have here attacked the greatest difficulties. But some chapters towards the end: three in particular – I do think come off. I find them stirring, dramatic, and not unpoetical. We shall see, however; as like as not, the effort will be more obvious than the success. For, of course, I strung myself hard to carry it out. The next will come easier, and possibly be more popular. I believe in the covering of much paper, each time with a definite and not too difficult artistic purpose; and then, from time to time, drawing oneself up and trying, in a superior effort, to combine the facilities thus acquired or improved. Thus one progresses. But, mind, it is very likely that the big effort, instead of being the masterpiece, may be the blotted copy, the gymnastic exercise. This no man can tell; only the brutal and licentious public, snouting in Mudie’s wash-trough, can return a dubious answer.
I am to-day, thanks to a pure heaven and a beneficent, loud-talking, antiseptic mistral, on the high places as to health and spirits. Money holds out wonderfully. Fanny has gone for a drive to certain meadows which are now one sheet of jonquils: sea-bound
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