L. S.
Ay, but you know, until a man can write that 'Enter God,' he has made no art! None! Come, let us take counsel together and make some!
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES [SUMMER 1883].
DEAR LAD, - Glad you like FONTAINEBLEAU. I am going to be the means, under heaven, of aerating or liberating your pages. The idea that because a thing is a picture-book all the writing should be on the wrong tack is TRISTE but widespread. Thus Hokusai will be really a gossip on convention, or in great part. And the Skelt will be as like a Charles Lamb as I can get it. The writer should write, and not illustrate pictures: else it's bosh. . . .
Your remarks about the ugly are my eye. Ugliness is only the prose of horror. It is when you are not able to write MACBETH that you write THERESE RAQUIN. Fashions are external: the essence of art only varies in so far as fashion widens the field of its application; art is a mill whose thirlage, in different ages, widens and contracts; but, in any case and under any fashion, the great man produces beauty, terror, and mirth, and the little man produces cleverness (personalities, psychology) instead of beauty, ugliness instead of terror, and jokes instead of mirth. As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be ever, world without end. Amen!
And even as you read, you say, 'Of course, QUELLE RENGAINE!'
R. L. S.
Letter: TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES [SUMMER 1883].
MY DEAR CUMMY, - Yes, I own I am a real bad correspondent, and am as bad as can be in most directions.
I have been adding some more poems to your book. I wish they would look sharp about it; but, you see, they are trying to find a good artist to make the illustrations, without which no child would give a kick for it. It will be quite a fine work, I hope. The dedication is a poem too, and has been quite a long while written, but I do not mean you to see it till you get the book; keep the jelly for the last, you know, as you would often recommend in former days, so now you can take your own medicine.
I am very sorry to hear you have been so poorly; I have been very well; it used to be quite the other way, used it not? Do you remember making the whistle at Mount Chessie? I do not think it WAS my knife; I believe it was yours; but rhyme is a very great monarch, and goes before honesty, in these affairs at least. Do you remember, at Warriston, one autumn Sunday, when the beech nuts were on the ground, seeing heaven open? I would like to make a rhyme of that, but cannot.
Is it not strange to think of all the changes: Bob, Cramond, Delhi, Minnie, and Henrietta, all married, and fathers and mothers, and your humble servant just the one point better off? And such a little while ago all children together! The time goes swift and wonderfully even; and if we are no worse than we are, we should be grateful to the power that guides us. For more than a generation I have now been to the fore in this rough world, and been most tenderly helped, and done cruelly wrong, and yet escaped; and here I am still, the worse for wear, but with some fight in me still, and not unthankful - no, surely not unthankful, or I were then the worst of human beings!
My little dog is a very much better child in every way, both more loving and more amiable; but he is not fond of strangers, and is, like most of his kind, a great, specious humbug.
Fanny has been ill, but is much better again; she now goes donkey rides with an old woman, who compliments her on her French. That old woman - seventy odd - is in a parlous spiritual state.
Pretty soon, in the new sixpenny illustrated magazine, Wogg's picture is to appear: this is a great honour! And the poor soul whose vanity would just explode if he could understand it, will never be a bit the wiser! - With much love, in which Fanny joins, believe me, your affectionate boy,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, SUMMER 1883.
DEAR LAD, - Snatches in return for yours; for this little once, I'm well to windward of you.