The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 24. Robert Louis Stevenson
ruling and dreaded by the sound, was entirely taken from you.
Otto is, as you say, not a thing to extend my public on. It is queer and a little, little bit free; and some of the parties are immoral; and the whole thing is not a romance, nor yet a comedy; nor yet a romantic comedy; but a kind of preparation of some of the elements of all three in a glass jar. I think it is not without merit, but I am not always on the level of my argument, and some parts are false, and much of the rest is thin; it is more a triumph for myself than anything else; for I see, beyond it, better stuff. I have nine chapters ready, or almost ready, for press. My feeling would be to get it placed anywhere for as much as could be got for it, and rather in the shadow, till one saw the look of it in print. – Ever yours,
To W. E. Henley
MY DEAR LAD, – The books came some time since, but I have not had the pluck to answer: a shower of small troubles having fallen in, or troubles that may be very large.
I have had to incur a huge vague debt for cleaning sewers; our house was (of course) riddled with hidden cesspools, but that was infallible. I have the fever, and feel the duty to work very heavy on me at times; yet go it must. I have had to leave Fontainebleau, when three hours would finish it, and go full-tilt at tushery for a while. But it will come soon.
I think I can give you a good article on Hokusai; but that is for afterwards; Fontainebleau is first in hand.
By the way, my view is to give the Penny Whistles to Crane or Greenaway. But Crane, I think, is likeliest; he is a fellow who, at least, always does his best.
Shall I ever have money enough to write a play?
O dire necessity!
A word in your ear: I don’t like trying to support myself. I hate the strain and the anxiety; and when unexpected expenses are foisted on me, I feel the world is playing with false dice. – Now I must Tush, adieu.
The pleasant river gushes
Among the meadows green;
At home the author tushes;
For him it flows unseen.
The Birds among the Bŭshes
May wanton on the spray;
But vain for him who tushes
The brightness of the day!
The frog among the rushes
Sits singing in the blue.
By’r la’kin! but these tushes
Are wearisome to do!
The task entirely crushes
The spirit of the bard:
God pity him who tushes —
His task is very hard.
The filthy gutter slushes,
The clouds are full of rain,
But doomed is he who tushes
To tush and tush again.
At morn with his hair-brushes,
Still “tush” he says, and weeps;
At night again he tushes,
And tushes till he sleeps.
And when at length he pŭshes
Beyond the river dark —
’Las, to the man who tushes,
“Tush,” shall be God’s remark!
To Sidney Colvin
COLVIN, – The attempt to correspond with you is vain. Well, well, then so be it. I will from time to time write you an insulting letter, brief but monstrous harsh. I regard you in the light of a genteel impostor. Your name figures in the papers but never to a piece of letter-paper: well, well.
News. I am well: Fanny been ill but better: Otto about three-quarters done; Silverado proofs a terrible job – it is a most unequal work – new wine in old bottles – large rats, small bottles:5 as usual, penniless – O but penniless: still, with four articles in hand (say £35) and the £100 for Silverado imminent, not hopeless.
Why am I so penniless, ever, ever penniless, ever, ever penny-penny-penniless and dry?
The birds upon the thorn,
The poppies in the corn,
They surely are more fortunate or prudenter than I!
In Arabia, everybody is called the Father of something or other for convenience or insult’s sake. Thus you are “the Father of Prints,” or of “Bummkopferies,” or “Father of Unanswered Correspondence.” They would instantly dub Henley “the Father of Wooden Legs”; me they would denominate the “Father of Bones,” and Matthew Arnold “the Father of Eyeglasses.”
I have accepted most of the excisions. Proposed titles: —
The Innocent Muse.
A Child’s Garden of Rhymes.
Songs of the Playroom.
Nursery Songs.
I like the first?
To W. E. Henley
DEAR LAD, – Snatches in return for yours; for this little once, I’m well to windward of you.
Seventeen chapters of Otto are now drafted, and finding I was working through my voice and getting screechy, I have turned back again to rewrite the earlier part. It has, I do believe, some merit: of what order, of course, I am the last to know; and, triumph of triumphs, my wife – my wife who hates and loathes and slates my women – admits a great part of my Countess to be on the spot.
Yes, I could borrow, but it is the joy of being before the public, for once. Really, £100 is a sight more than Treasure Island is worth.
The reason of my dèche? Well, if you begin one house, have to desert it, begin another, and are eight months without doing any work, you will be in a dèche too. I am not in a dèche, however; distingue– I would fain distinguish; I am rather a swell, but not solvent. At a touch the edifice, ædificium, might collapse. If my creditors began to babble around me, I would sink with a slow strain of music into the crimson west. The difficulty in my elegant villa is to find oil, oleum, for the dam axles. But I’ve paid my rent until September; and beyond the chemist, the grocer, the baker, the doctor, the gardener, Lloyd’s teacher, and the great chief creditor Death, I can snap my fingers at all men. Why will people spring bills on you? I try to make ’em charge me at the moment; they won’t, the money goes, the debt remains. – The Required Play is in the Merry Men.
I thus render honour to your flair; it came on me of a clap; I do not see it yet beyond a kind of sunset glory. But it’s there: passion, romance, the picturesque, involved: startling, simple, horrid: a sea-pink in sea-froth! S’agit de la désenterrer. “Help!” cries a buried masterpiece.
Once I see my way to the year’s end, clear, I turn to plays; till then I grind at letters; finish Otto; write, say, a couple of my Traveller’s Tales; and then, if all my ships come home, I will attack the drama in earnest. I cannot mix the skeins. Thus, though I’m morally sure there is a play in Otto, I dare not look for it: I shoot straight at the story.
As a story, a comedy, I think Otto very well constructed;
The allusion is to a specimen I had been used to hear quoted of the Duke of Wellington’s table-talk in his latter years. He had said that musk-rats were sometimes kept alive in bottles in India. Curate, or other meek dependent: “I presume, your Grace, they are small rats and large bottles.” His Grace: “No, large rats, small bottles; large rats, small bottles; large rats, small bottles.”