Colvin

“ Colvin stood in no greater fear of death than most other men who have more than once seen it very near; yet that helpless sense of being shut up, to meet it in cold blood at a given time, was a trifle creepy and unnerving. More than once, in his dreams, he had been under sentence of death, had even come to the steps of the scaffold, and each time had seemed every bit as realistic as the last, or, if possible, more so. Was this, too, a dream? Should he wake up directly and find himself back again at Pretoria, or at Ratels Hoek, or his own farm? ”

“ COLVIN, Sir AUCKLAND (1838–1908) , Anglo-Indian and Egyptian administrator, born at Calcutta on 8 March 1838, was third son of the ten children of John Russell Colvin [q. v.] , lieutenant-governor of the North-Western Provinces, by his wife Emma Sophia, daughter of Wetenhall Sneyd, vicar of Newchurch, Isle of Wight. Three of his brothers, Bazett Wetenhall Colvin, Elliott Graham Colvin, and Sir Walter Mytton Colvin (see below) , all passed distinguished careers in India, and a fourth, Clement Sneyd, C.S.I., was secretary of the public works department of the India office in London. ”

“ I wonder if this exquisite fellow, all made of fiddle-strings and scent and intelligence, could bear any of my bald prose. If you think he could, ask Colvin to send him a copy of these last essays of mine when they appear; and tell Bourget they go to him from a South Sea Island as literal homage. I have read no new book for years that gave me the same literary thrill as his Sensations d’Italie. If (as I imagine) my cut-and-dry literature would be death to him, and worse than death—journalism—be silent on the point. ”

“ We entirely absolve Professor Colvin from any suspicion of being actuated by unworthy motives in publishing them. It is abundantly clear that he has not published them to puff himself, that his labour has been a labour of love, and that he believed himself to be piously fulfilling a duty to his friend. But they ought never to have been given to the world. More than two-thirds have nothing whatever to justify their appearance in print, and merely show, what will surprise those who knew Stevenson by his literary writings, how vapid, vulgar and commonplace he could be. ”

“ Now, there is nothing more tiresome than having to put up with a stable-companion at sea, and I asked him rather pointedly:
"Surely there is room for all of us?" I thought that perhaps he had been partnered off with some mangy Levantine, and wanted to escape from him at all hazards.
Colvin, still somewhat confused, said: "Yes; I am in a cabin by myself. But you would do me the greatest favor if you would allow me to share yours." ”

“ Then they get up, more and more of them, by twos and threes, and by the time there are no more of them, and Colvin has picked up eight birds and is beginning to search for three more that have run, he is conscious that life can hold no improvement on the sheer ecstasy of that moment. ”

“ R. L S.
p. 194to Sidney Colvin [Hotel Belvedere, Davos, Christmas 1880.]
MY DEAR COLVIN,—Thanks for yours; I waited, as said I would. I now expect no answer from you, regarding you as a mere dumb cock-shy, or a target, at which we fire our arrows diligently all day long, with no anticipation it will bring them back to us. We are both sadly mortified you are not coming, but health comes first; alas, that man should be so crazy. What fun we could have, if we were all well, what work we could do, what a happy place we could make it for each other! If I were able to do what I want ”

“ In 1873 Mr Stevenson made the acquaintance of Mr Sydney Colvin and a life-long friendship ensued. The older man was of great use in many ways to the younger, whose genius he early discovered, and whose leaning to literature he encouraged. In the interesting preface to The Vailima Letters Mr Colvin tells of his help in that time of trial, and that he used his influence to persuade the parents that Louis had found his real vocation in literature, and ought to follow it. ”

“ The greater scheme, apart from the incidental one of love, would always remain untouched. Colvin, he had already discovered, was in Pretoria. So far he was within the toils, or at any rate within appreciable distance of so being.
“It will make the working out of it so much the easier,” he said to himself. “Great God alive! why should Colvin have all the good things of earth? And the ungrateful dog isn’t capable of appreciating them either. ”

“ I dreamed last night I was walking by moonlight round the place where the scene of my story is laid; it was all so quiet and sweet, and the blackbirds were singing as if it was day; it made my heart very cool and happy.—Ever yours,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Sidney Colvin
[Edinburgh] February 8, 1875.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—Forgive my bothering you. Here is the proof of my second Knox. Glance it over, like a good fellow, and if there’s anything very flagrant send it to me marked. I have no confidence in myself; I feel such an ass. What have I been doing? As near as I can calculate, nothing. ”

“ MAY COLVIN, OR FALSE SIR JOHN.
In the very ancient though corrupted ballads of Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight, and The Water o' Wearie's Well (vol. i. p. 195, 198) , an Elf or a Merman occupies the place here assigned to False Sir John. Perhaps May Colvin is the result of the same modernizing process by which Hynde Etin has been converted into Young Hastings the Groom (vol. i. p. 294, 189) . The coincidence of the name with Clerk Colvill, in vol. i. p. ”

“ Repose he never tasted of, for his zest in life, his adventurous inclination to explore, his insatiable curiosity, kept him ever moving at topmost speed. To understand the mainspring which affected the man's character—the machinery that supplied him with an inexhaustible nerve force and vitality—Mr Colvin explains, "besides humour, which kept wholesome laughter always ready at his lips, was a perfectly warm, loyal, and tender heart, which, through all his experiments and agitations, made the law of kindness the one ruling law of his life." ”

“ To Sidney Colvin
608 Bush Street, San Francisco [December 26, 1879] .
MY DEAR COLVIN,—I am now writing to you in a café waiting for some music to begin. For four days I have spoken to no one but to my landlady or landlord or to restaurant waiters. This is not a gay way to pass Christmas, is it? and I must own the guts are a little knocked 252 out of me. If I could work, I could worry through better. But I have no style at command for the moment, with the second part of the Emigrant, the last of the novel, the essay on Thoreau, and God knows all, waiting for me. ”

“ Thou, Colvin, hadst better remain here, and see some holy man, to be assoilzied for thy hasty speech on the battle-field of Morat. There was offence in it without doubt, but it will be ill atoned for by quitting a generous master when he hath most need of your good service; and it is but an act of cowardice to retreat into the cloister, till we have no longer active duties to perform in this world."
"It is true," said Colvin, "that should I leave the Duke now, perhaps not a man would stay behind that could stell a cannon properly. ”

“ TO SIDNEY COLVIN
SKERRYVORE, DEC. 14, 1886.
MY DEAR COLVIN, - This is first-rate of you, the Lord love you for it! I am truly much obliged. He - my father - is very changeable; at times, he seems only a slow quiet edition of himself; again, he will be very heavy and blank; but never so violent as last spring; and therefore, to my mind, better on the whole.
Fanny is pretty peepy; I am splendid. I have been writing much verse - quite the bard, in fact ”

“ In various ways, and not least by his work as Egyptian correspondent of the ‘Pall Mall Gazette,’ he influenced public opinion at home, and forced the reluctant hands of Gladstone's government towards acceptance of responsibility in Egypt. Mr. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Colvin's bitterest opponent, in his ‘Secret History of the English Occupation’ (1907) , pays unwilling homage to the resource with which Colvin conducted the struggle. After the British occupation Colvin became financial adviser to the Khedive, who conferred on him the grand cordons of Osmanieh and Medjidie. ”

“ No rest but the grave for Sir Walter! O the words ring in a man’s head.)
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin [Vailima] August 1893.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—Quite impossible to write. Your letter is due to-day; a nasty, rainy-like morning with huge blue clouds, and a huge indigo shadow on the sea, and my lamp still burning at near 7. Let me humbly give you news. Fanny seems on the whole the most, or the only, powerful member of the family; for some days she has been the Flower of the Flock. Belle is begging for quinine. Lloyd and Graham have both been down with “belly belong him” (Black Boy speech) . ”

“ So saying, he rudely turned off from the mortified chief magistrate, and, mounting his horse, rode back to his camp, conversing earnestly on the way with the Count of Campo-basso.
"I would offer you dinner, my Lord of Oxford," said Colvin to that nobleman, when he alighted at his tent, "but I foresee, ere you could swallow a mouthful, you will be summoned to the Duke's presence; for it is our Charles's way, when he has fixed on a wrong course, to wrangle with his friends and counsellors, in order to prove it is a right one. Marry, he always makes a convert of yon supple Italian." ”

“ At last Mr Colvin, who, from his post at Agra, the importance of which I have pointed out, had the best reason in the world to dread the consequences of inaction, noting its continuance, addressed Brigadier Wilson, passing over his senior officer. ”

“ TO SIDNEY COLVIN
[SARANAC, MARCH 1888.]
MY DEAR COLVIN, - Fanny has been very unwell. She is not long home, has been ill again since her return, but is now better again to a degree. You must not blame her for not writing, as she is not allowed to write at all, not even a letter. To add to our misfortunes, Valentine is quite ill and in bed. Lloyd and I get breakfast ”

“ That talented woman, who later became the wife of Sidney Colvin, one of the nearest and most loyal of all of Stevenson's friends, was long the recipient of Stevenson's confidences, and among the persons whom he most admired. ”

“ But indeed all the book is manly, with the manliness of Scott's Journal or of Fielding's Voyage to Lisbon. "To the English-speaking world," concludes Mr. Colvin, "he has left behind a treasure which it would be vain as yet to attempt to estimate; to the profession of letters one of the most ennobling and inspiriting of examples; and to his friends an image of memory more vivid and more dear than are the presences of almost any of the living." Very few men of our time have been followed Pg 191out of this world with the same regret. ”

“ My dear Colvin,—Your pleasing letter re The Ebb Tide, to hand. I propose, if it be not too late, to delete Lloyd’s name. He has nothing to do with the last half. The first we wrote together, as the beginning of a long yarn. The second is entirely mine; and I think it rather unfair on the young man to couple his name with so infamous a work. ”

“ I smiled to myself as he said it, but I remembered in a moment that the man—if he were really what he claimed to be, and I make no doubt that he was—must have been sorely put to it before he urged the fact as a guarantee of his respectability to a total stranger at a Brindisi hotel.
That evening, as we cleared the red and green harbor-lights of Brindisi, Colvin explained. This is his story in his own words:
"When I was traveling in India some years ago, I made the acquaintance of a youngish man in the Woods and Forests. ”

“ I pray you be made accessible some day in a talkative armchair by the fire. If it hadn't been for Catriona we couldn't, this year, have held up our head. It had been long, before that, since any decent sentence was turned in English. We grow systematically vulgarer and baser. The only blur of light is that your books are tasted. I shall try to see Colvin before I post this—otherwise I haven't seen him for three months. ”

“ With ordinary people in England, you have more or less chance of re-encountering one another; at least you may see their death in the papers; but with these people, they die for me and I die for them when we separate.
Andrew Lang, O you of little comprehension, called on Colvin.
You had not told me before about the fatuous person who thought Roads like Ruskin—surely the vaguest of contemporaneous humanity. Again my letter writing is of an enfeebled sort.—Ever your affectionate son,
Robert Louis Stevenson. ”

“ All young men ought to be married as soon as possible; it is a duty they owe to themselves and the community, and you are rather an old young man. Nee, I do not believe you. Your grandfather, the great and good Calvinus, would not have said what was not true; and I have heard this from many people, so it must be true.”
“Well, it is not true, Tanta, however many people say it,” said Colvin, with emphasis, and an unpleasant consciousness of feeling ever so slightly foolish. ”

“ Nor was Colvin, and his despondency was fully justified when, after nearly an hour, Morkel returned. Commandant Schoeman flatly refused to see him that night, nor would he authorise him to hold an interview with the prisoner, or any communication whatever, on peril of the utmost penalty.
“The infernal old brute!” was the only comment Colvin could make.
“Yes, he is,” rejoined Morkel gloomily. “And now I must clear out—for he has a lot of ‘secretarial’ work for me to-night, he says. Well, we have done all we could, and if we can’t help the poor chap we can’t. It’s the fortune of war. ”