A LETTER TO EDMUND GOSSE
VAILIMA, (SAMOA), APRIL 1891
MY DEAR GOSSE, -- I have to thank you and
Mrs. Gosse for many mementoes, chiefly for
your "Life" of your father. There is a very
delicate task, very delicately done. I noted
one or two carelessnesses, which I meant to
point out to you for another edition; but I
find I lack the time, and you will remark them
for yourself against a new edition. They were
two, or perhaps three, flabbinesses of style
which (in your work) amazed me. Am I right in
thinking you were a shade bored over the last
chapters? or was it my own fault that made me
think them susceptible of a more athletic
compression? (The flabbinesses were not there,
I think, but in the more admirable part, where
they showed the bigger.) Take it all together,
the book struck me as if you had been hurried
at the last, but particularly hurried over the
proofs, and could still spend a very profitable
fortnight in earnest revision and (towards the
end) heroic compression. The book, in design,
subject, and general execution, is well worth
the extra trouble. And even if I were wrong in
thinking it specially wanted, it will not be
lost; for do we not know, in Flaubert's dread
confession, that "prose is never done"? What
a medium to work in, for a man tired, perplexed
among different aims and subjects, and spurred
by the immediate need of "siller"! However,
it's mine for what it's worth; and it's one of
yours, the devil take it; and you know, as well
as Flaubert, and as well as me, that it is never
done; in other words, it is a torment of the
pit, usually neglected by the bards who (lucky
beggars!) approached the Styx in measure. I
speak bitterly at the moment, having just detected
in myself the last fatal symptom, three blank
verses in succession -- and I believe, God help
me, a hemistich at the tail of them; hence I
have deposed the labourer, come out of hell by
my private trap, and now write to you from my
little place in purgatory. But I prefer hell:
would I could always dig in those red coals -- or
else be at sea in a schooner, bound for isles
unvisited: to be on shore and not to work is
emptiness -- suicidal vacancy.
I was the more interested in your "Life" of your
father, because I meditate one of mine, or rather
of my family. I have no such materials as you,
and (our objections already made) your attack
fills me with despair; it is direct and elegant,
and your style is always admirable to me -- lenity,
lucidity, usually a high strain of breeding, an
elegance that has a pleasant air of the accidental.
But beware of purple passages. I wonder if you
think as well of your purple passages as I do of
mine? I wonder if you think as ill of mine as
I do of yours? I wonder; I can tell you at least
what is wrong with yours -- they are treated in
the spirit of verse. The spirit -- I don't mean
the measure, I don't mean you fall into bastard
cadences; what I mean is that they seem vacant
and smoothed out, ironed, if you like. And in
a style which (like yours) aims more and more
successfully at the academic, one purple word is
already much; three -- a whole phrase -- is
inadmissible. Wed yourself to a clean austerity:
that is your force. Wear a linen ephod,
splendidly candid. Arrange its folds, but do
not fasten it with any brooch. I swear to you,
in your talking robes, there should be no patch
of adornment; and where the subject forces, let
it force you no further than it must; and be
ready with a twinkle of your pleasantry. Yours
is a fine tool, and I see so well how to hold
it; I wonder if you see how to hold mine? But
then I am to the neck in prose, and just now
in the "dark interstylar cave," all methods
and effects wooing me, myself in the midst
impotent to follow any. I look for dawn
presently, and a full flowing river of expression,
running whither it wills. But these useless
seasons, above all, when a man must continue
to spoil paper, are infinitely weary.
We are in our house after a fashion; without
furniture, 'tis true, camping there, like the
family after a sale. But the bailiff has not
yet appeared; he will probably come after.
The place is beautiful beyond dreams; some
fifty miles of the Pacific spread in front;
deep woods all round; a mountain making in
the sky a profile of huge trees upon our left;
about us, the little island of our clearing,
studded with brave old gentlemen (or ladies,
or "the twa o' them") whom we have spared.
It is a good place to be in; night and morning,
we have Theodore Rousseaus (always a new one)
hung to amuse us on the walls of the world;
and the moon -- this is our good season, we
have a moon just now -- makes the night a
piece of heaven. It amazes me how people
can live on in the dirty north; yet if you
saw our rainy season (which is really a caulker
for wind, wet, and darkness -- howling showers,
roaring winds, pit-blackness at noon) you
might marvel how we could endure that. And
we can't. But there's a winter everywhere;
only ours is in the summer. Mark my words:
there will be a winter in heaven -- and in
hell. Cela rentre dans les procedes du bon
Dieu; et vous verrez! There's another very
good thing about Vailima, I am away from the
little bubble of the literary life. It is
not all beer and skittles, is it? By the by,
my "Ballads" seem to have been dam bad; all the
crickets sing so in their crickety papers;
and I have no ghost of an idea on the point
myself: verse is always to me the unknowable.
You might tell me how it strikes a professional
bard: not that it really matters, for, of
course, good or bad, I don't think I shall get
into that galley any more. But I should like
to know if you join the shrill chorus of the
crickets. The crickets are the devil in all
to you: 'tis a strange thing, they seem to
rejoice like a strong man in their injustice.
I trust you got my letter about your Browning
book. In case it missed, I wish to say again
that your publication of Browning's kind letter,
as an illustration of his character, was modest,
proper, and in radiant good taste. -- In Witness whereof, etc., etc.,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
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