Robert Louis Stevenson

“ As a place of residence, beyond a splendid climate, it has to my eyes but one advantage - the neighbourhood of J. A. Symonds - I dare say you know his work, but the man is far more interesting. It has done me, in my two winters' Alpine exile, much good; so much, that I hope to leave it now for ever, but would not be understood to boast. In my present unpardonably crazy state, any cold might send me skipping, either back to Davos, or further off. Let us hope not. ”

“ How we would tear at Solomon Crabb! O what a bully, bully, bully business. Which would you read first - Shakespeare's autobiography, or his journals? What sport the monody on Napoleon would be - what wooden verse, what stucco ornament! I should read both the autobiography and the journals before I looked at one of the plays, beyond the names of them, which shows that Saintsbury was right, and I do care more for life than for poetry. No - I take it back. Do you know one of the tragedies - a Bible tragedy too - DAVID - was written in his third period - much about the same time as Lear? ”

“ In neither mood can a man judge at all. I know the thing to be terribly perilous, I fear it to be now altogether hopeless. Luck has failed; the weather has not been favourable; and in her true heart, the mother hopes no more. But - well, I feel a great deal, that I either cannot or will not say, as you well know. It has helped to make me more conscious of the wolverine on my own shoulders, and that also makes me a poor judge and poor adviser. ”

“ In August and a good part of September we shall be in Braemar, in a house with some accommodation. Now Braemar is a place patronised by the royalty of the Sister Kingdoms - Victoria and the Cairngorms, sir, honouring that countryside by their conjunct presence. This seems to me the spot for A Bard. Now can you come to see us for a little while? I can promise you, you must like my father, because you are a human being; you ought to like Braemar, because of your avocation; and you ought to like me, because I like you; and again, you must like my wife, because she likes cats ”

“ Two hours of hysterics can be no good matter for a sick nurse, and the strange, hard, old being in so lamentable and yet human a desolation - crying out like a burnt child, and yet always wisely and beautifully - how can that end, as a piece of reading, even to the strong - but on the brink of the most cruel kind of weeping? ”

“ In addition to many other things, and a volume of travel, I find I have written, since December, 90 CORNHILL pages of magazine work - essays and stories: 40,000 words, and I am none the worse - I am the better. I begin to hope I may, if not outlive this wolverine upon my shoulders, at least carry him bravely like Symonds and Alexander Pope. I begin to take a pride in that hope.
I shall be much interested to see your criticisms; you might perhaps send them to me. I believe you know that is not dangerous; one folly I have not - I am not touchy under criticism. ”

“ TO EDMUND GOSSE
THE COTTAGE (LATE THE LATE MISS M'GREGOR'S) , CASTLETON OF BRAEMAR, AUGUST 10, 1881.
MY DEAR GOSSE, - Come on the 24th, there is a dear fellow. Everybody else wants to come later, and it will be a godsend for, sir - Yours sincerely.
You can stay as long as you behave decently, and are not sick of, sir - Your obedient, humble servant.
We have family worship in the home of, sir - Yours respectfully.
Braemar is a fine country, but nothing to (what you will also see) the maps of, sir - Yours in the Lord. ”

“ Lord Conybeare is surely a little overdone; but I don't know either; he's such damned fine sport. Do you like Sally Barnes? I'm in love with her. Constable Muddon is as good as Dogberry and Verges put together; when he takes Solomon to the cage, and the highwayman gives him Solomon's own guinea for his pains, and kisses Mrs. Muddon, and just then up drives Lord Conybeare, and instead of helping Solomon, calls him all the rascals in Christendom - O Henry Fielding, Henry Fielding! ”

“ There are seven or eight people it is no part of my scheme in life to survive - yet if I could but heal me of my bellowses, I could have a jolly life - have it, even now, when I can work and stroll a little, as I have been doing till this cold. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now these, the songs, remain to eternity, Those, only those, the bountiful choristers Gone - those are gone, those unremembered Sleep and are silent in earth for ever.
So man himself appears and evanishes, So smiles and goes; as wanderers halting at Some green-embowered house, play their music, Play and are gone on the windy highway ”

“ This is the new work on which I am engaged with Fanny; they are all supernatural. 'Thrawn Janet' is off to Stephen, but as it is all in Scotch he cannot take it, I know. It was SO GOOD, I could not help sending it. My health improves. We have a lovely spot here: a little green glen with a burn, a wonderful burn, gold and green and snow-white, singing loud and low in different steps of its career, now pouring over miniature crags, now fretting itself to death in a maze of rocky stairs and pots ”

“ A kind of black, angry look goes with that statement of the law of negatives. 'To love one's neighbour as oneself' is certainly much harder, but states life so much more actively, gladly, and kindly, that you begin to see some pleasure in it; and till you can see pleasure in these hard choices and bitter necessities, where is there any Good News to men? It is much more important to do right than not to do wrong ”

“ Faith is not to believe the Bible, but to believe in God; if you believe in God (or, for it's the same thing, have that assurance you speak about) , where is there any more room for terror? There are only three possible attitudes - Optimism, which has gone to smash; Pessimism, which is on the rising hand, and very popular with many clergymen who seem to think they are Christians. ”

“ I am in treaty with Bentley for a life of Hazlitt; I hope it will not fall through, as I love the subject, and appear to have found a publisher who loves it also. That, I think, makes things more pleasant. You know I am a fervent Hazlittite; I mean regarding him as THE English writer who has had the scantiest justice. Besides which, I am anxious to write biography; really, if I understand myself in quest of profit, I think it must be good to live with another man from birth to death. ”

“ I observe the old man's style is stronger on me than ever it was, and by rights, too, since I have just laid down his most attaching book. God rest the baith o' them! But even if they do not meet again, how we should all be strengthened to be kind, and not only in act, in speech also, that so much more important part. ”

“ The whole necessary morality is kindness; and it should spring, of itself, from the one fundamental doctrine, Faith. If you are sure that God, in the long run, means kindness by you, you should be happy ”

“ I am a beggar: ask Dobson, Saintsbury, yourself, and any other of these cheeses who know something of the eighteenth century, what became of Jean Cavalier between his coming to England and his death in 1740. ”

“ I see more and more that Meredith is built for immortality.
Talking of which, Heywood, as a small immortal, an immortalet, claims some attention. THE WOMAN KILLED WITH KINDNESS is one of the most striking novels - not plays, though it's more of a play than anything else of his - I ever read. ”

“ About John Brown, I have been breaking my heart to finish a Scotch poem to him. Some of it is not really bad, but the rest will not come, and I mean to get it right before I do anything else.
The bazaar is over, 160 pounds gained, and everybody's health lost: altogether, I never had a more uncomfortable time; apply to Fanny for further details of the discomfort.
We have our Wogg in somewhat better trim now, and vastly better spirits. The weather has been bad - for Davos, but indeed it is a wonderful climate. It never feels cold ”

“ TO W. E. HENLEY
[STOBO MANSE, JULY 1882.]
DEAR HENLEY, . . . I am not worth an old damn. I am also crushed by bad news of Symonds; his good lung going; I cannot help reading it as a personal hint; God help us all! Really I am not very fit for work; but I try, try, and nothing comes of it.
I believe we shall have to leave this place; it is low, damp, and MAUCHY; the rain it raineth every day ”

“ I know you will give us some others of those surprising masterpieces where there is more sustained eloquence and harmony of English numbers than in all that has been written since; there is a machine about a poetical young lady, and another about either Charles or James, I know not which; and they are both indescribably fine. (Is Marvell's Horatian Ode good enough? I half think so.) But my great point is a fear that you are one of those who are unjust to our old Tennyson's Duke of Wellington. I have just been talking it over with Symonds ”

“ Let me assure you, you who have made friends already among such various and distant races, that there is a certain phthisical Scot who will always be pleased to hear good news of you, and would be better pleased by nothing than to learn that you had thrown off your present incubus, largely consisting of letters I believe, and had sailed into some square work by way of change. ”

“ I had a fair experience of that kind of illness when all the women (God bless them!) turn round upon the streets and look after you with a look that is only too kind not to be cruel. I have had nearly two years of more or less prostration. I have done no work whatever since the February before last until quite of late. To be precise, until the beginning of last month, exactly two essays. All last winter I was at Davos ”

“ Now that I illustrate my own books, I can always offer you a situation in our house - S. L. Osbourne and Co. As an author gets a halfpenny a copy of verses, and an artist a penny a cut, perhaps a proof-reader might get several pounds a year. ”

“ A cottage near a moor is soon to receive our human forms; it is also near a burn to which Professor Blackie (no less!) has written some verses in his hot old age, and near a farm from whence we shall draw cream and fatness. Should I be moved to join Blackie, I shall go upon my knees and pray hard against temptation; although, since the new Version, I do not know the proper form of words. The swollen, childish, and pedantic vanity that moved the said revisers to put 'bring' for 'lead,' is a sort of literary fault that calls for an eternal hell ”

“ That he should have left friends and enemies in many different and distant quarters gives a sort of earthly dignity to his existence. And I think the better of myself for the belief that I have left some in California interested in me and my successes. ”

“ That people do not have it more than they do is, I believe, because persons speak so much in large-drawn, theological similitudes, and won't say out what they mean about life, and man, and God, in fair and square human language. ”

“ And I think one may say that every man who publicly declines a plurality of offices, makes it perceptibly more difficult for the next man to accept them.
Every one tells me that I come too late upon the field, every one being pledged, which, seeing it is yet too early for any one to come upon the field, I must regard as a polite evasion. ”

“ TO EDMUND GOSSE
[BRAEMAR] , AUGUST 19, 1881.
MY DEAR WEG, - I have by an extraordinary drollery of Fortune sent off to you by this day's post a P. C. inviting you to appear in sealskin. But this had reference to the weather, and not at all, as you may have been led to fancy, to our rustic raiment of an evening.
As to that question, I would deal, in so far as in me lies, fairly with all men. We are not dressy people by nature; but it sometimes occurs to us to entertain angels. In the country, I believe, even angels may be decently welcomed in tweed ”

“ CORNHILL pages of magazine work. No man can say I have been idle. - Your affectionate son,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
[EDINBURGH] SUNDAY [JUNE 1882] .
. . . NOTE turned up, but no gray opuscule, which, however, will probably turn up to-morrow in time to go out with me to Stobo Manse, Peeblesshire, where, if you can make it out, you will be a good soul to pay a visit. I shall write again about the opuscule; and about Stobo, which I have not seen since I was thirteen, though my memory speaks delightfully of it. ”

“ The edition, briefly, SINE QUA NON. Before that, I shall hope to send you my essays, which are in the printer's hands. I look to get yours soon. I am sorry to hear that the Custom House has proved fallible, like all other human houses and customs. Life consists of that sort of business, and I fear that there is a class of man, of which you offer no inapt type, doomed to a kind of mild, general disappointment through life. I do not believe that a man is the more unhappy for that. Disappointment, except with one's self, is not a very capital affair ”