I have as good as finished my novel, and a hard job it has been - but now practically over, LAUS DEO! My financial prospects better than ever before; my excellent wife a touch dolorous, like Mr. Tommy; my Bogue quite converted, and myself in good spirits. O, send Curry Powder per Baxter.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
[LA SOLITUDE, HYERES], LAST SUNDAY OF '83.
MY DEAR MOTHER, - I give my father up. I give him a parable: that the Waverley novels are better reading for every day than the tragic Life. And he takes it backside foremost, and shakes his head, and is gloomier than ever. Tell him that I give him up. I don't want no such a parent. This is not the man for my money. I do not call that by the name of religion which fills a man with bile. I write him a whole letter, bidding him beware of extremes, and telling him that his gloom is gallows-worthy; and I get back an answer - Perish the thought of it.
Here am I on the threshold of another year, when, according to all human foresight, I should long ago have been resolved into my elements; here am I, who you were persuaded was born to disgrace you - and, I will do you the justice to add, on no such insufficient grounds - no very burning discredit when all is done; here am I married, and the marriage recognised to be a blessing of the first order, A1 at Lloyd's. There is he, at his not first youth, able to take more exercise than I at thirty-three, and gaining a stone's weight, a thing of which I am incapable. There are you; has the man no gratitude? There is Smeoroch: is he blind? Tell him from me that all this is
NOT THE TRUE BLUE!
I will think more of his prayers when I see in him a spirit of PRAISE. Piety is a more childlike and happy attitude than he admits. Martha, Martha, do you hear the knocking at the door? But Mary was happy. Even the Shorter Catechism, not the merriest epitome of religion, and a work exactly as pious although not quite so true as the multiplication table - even that dry-as-dust epitome begins with a heroic note. What is man's chief end? Let him study that; and ask himself if to refuse to enjoy God's kindest gifts is in the spirit indicated. Up, Dullard! It is better service to enjoy a novel than to mump.
I have been most unjust to the Shorter Catechism, I perceive. I wish to say that I keenly admire its merits as a performance; and that all that was in my mind was its peculiarly unreligious and unmoral texture; from which defect it can never, of course, exercise the least influence on the minds of children. But they learn fine style and some austere thinking unconsciously. - Ever your loving son,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, JANUARY 1 (1884).
MY DEAR PEOPLE, - A Good New Year to you. The year closes, leaving me with 50 pounds in the bank, owing no man nothing, 100 pounds more due to me in a week or so, and 150 pounds more in the course of the month; and I can look back on a total receipt of 465 pounds, 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.