A LETTER TO EDMUND GOSSE
June 10th 1893
["My Grandfather" in the following letter means
not the Scribner paper, but the chapters
on Robert Stevenson in the projected book of
family memoirs, variously called "Northern Lights,
History of the Stevensons," and finally "History
of a Family of Engineers."]
MY DEAR GOSSE, -- My mother tells me you never
received the very long and careful letter that
I sent you more than a year ago; or is it two
years?
I was indeed so much surprised at your silence
that I wrote to Henry James and begged him to
inquire if you had received it; his reply was
an (if possible) higher power of the same
silence; whereupon I bowed my head and acquiesced.
But there is no doubt the letter was written
and sent; and I am sorry it was lost, for it
contained, among other things, an irrecoverable
criticism of your father's "Life," with a number
of suggestions for another edition, which struck
me at the time as excellent.
Well, suppose we call that cried off, and begin
as before? It is fortunate indeed that we can
do so, being both for a while longer in the day.
But, alas! when I see "works of the late J. A. S.,"*
I can see no help and no reconciliation possible.
I wrote him a letter, I think, three years ago,
heard in some roundabout way that he had received
it, waited in vain for an answer (which had
probably miscarried), and in a humour between
frowns and smiles wrote to him no more. And
now the strange, poignant, pathetic, brilliant
creature is gone into the night, and the voice
is silent that uttered so much excellent discourse;
and I am sorry that I did not write to him again.
Yet I am glad for him; light lie the turf! The
Saturday is the only obituary I have seen,
and I thought it very good upon the whole. I
should be half tempted to write an "In Memoriam,"
but I am submerged with other work. Are you
going to do it? I very much admire your efforts
that way; you are our only academician.
So you have tried fiction? I will tell you the
truth: when I saw it announced, I was so sure
you would send it to me, that I did not order
it! But the order goes this mail, and I will
give you news of it. Yes, honestly, fiction is
very difficult; it is a terrible strain to
carry your characters all that time.
And the difficulty of according the narrative
and the dialogue (in a work in the third person)
is extreme. That is one reason out of half a
dozen why I so often prefer the first. It is
much in my mind just now, because of my last
work, just off the stocks three days ago,
"The Ebb Tide": a dreadful, grimy business
in the third person, where the strain between
a vilely realistic dialogue and a narrative
style pitched about (in phrase) "four notes
higher" than it should have been, has sown
my head with grey hairs; or I believe so -- if
my head escaped, my heart has them.
The truth is, I have a little lost my way,
and stand bemused at the cross-roads. A
subject? Ay, I have dozens; I have at least
four novels begun, they are none good enough;
and the mill waits, and I'll have to take
second best. "The Ebb Tide" I make the world
a present of; I expect, and, I suppose, deserve
to be torn to pieces; but there was all that
good work lying useless, and I had to finish
it!
All your news of your family is pleasant to
hear. My wife has been very ill, but is now
better; I may say I am ditto, "The Ebb Tide"
having left me high and dry, which is a good
example of the mixed metaphor. Our home
and estate, and our boys, and the politics of
the island, keep us perpetually amused and
busy; and I grind away with an odd, dogged,
down sensation -- and an idea in petto that
the game is about played out. I have got too
realistic, and I must break the trammels -- I
mean I would if I could; but the yoke is heavy.
I saw with amusement that Zola says the same
thing; and truly the "Debacle" was a mighty big
book, I have no need for a bigger, though the
last part is a mere mistake in my opinion.
But the Emperor, and Sedan, and the doctor
at the ambulance, and the horses in the field
of battle, Lord, how gripped it is! What an
epical performance! According to my usual
opinion, I believe I could go over that book
and leave a masterpiece by blotting and no
ulterior art. But that is an old story, ever
new with me. Taine gone, and Renan, and
Symonds, and Tennyson, and Browning; the suns
go swiftly out, and I see no suns to follow,
nothing but a universal twilight of the
demi-divinities, with parties like you and
me and Lang beating on toy drums and playing
on penny whistles about glow-worms. But
Zola is big anyway; he has plenty in his
belly; too much, that is all; he wrote the
"Debacle" and he wrote "La Bete Humaine," perhaps
the most excruciatingly silly book that I
ever read to an end. And why did I read it
to an end, W. E. G.? Because the animal in
me was interested in the lewdness. Not
sincerely, of course, my mind refusing to
partake in it; but the flesh was slightly
pleased. And when it was done, I cast it
from me with a peal of laughter, and forgot
it, as I would forget a Montepin. Taine is
to me perhaps the chief of these losses; I
did luxuriate in his "Origines"; it was something
beyond literature, not quite so good, if you
please, but so much more systematic, and the
pages that had to be "written" always so adequate.
Robespierre, Napoleon, were both excellent good.
June 18th, '93
Well, I have left fiction wholly, and gone
to my "Grandfather," and on the whole found
peace. By next month my "Grandfather" will
begin to be quite grown up. I have already
three chapters about as good as done; by
which, of course, as you know, I mean till
further notice or the next discovery. I
like biography far better than fiction myself:
fiction is too free. In biography you have
your little handful of facts, little bits
of a puzzle, and you sit and think, and fit
'em together this way and that, and get up
and throw 'em down, and say damn, and go
out for a walk. And it's real soothing; and
when done, gives an idea of finish to the
writer that is very peaceful. Of course,
it's not really so finished as quite a
rotten novel; it always has and always must
have the incurable illogicalities of life
about it, the fathoms of slack and the miles
of tedium. Still, that's where the fun
comes in; and when you have at last managed
to shut up the castle spectre (dulness),
the very outside of his door looks beautiful
by contrast. There are pages in these books
that may seem nothing to the reader; but you
remember what they were, you know what they
might have been, and they seem to you witty
beyond comparison. In my "Grandfather" I've
had (for instance) to give up the temporal
order almost entirely; doubtless the temporal
order is the great foe of the biographer;
it is so tempting, so easy, and lo! there
you are in the bog! -- Ever yours,
R. L. STEVENSON.
With all kind messages from self and wife
to you and yours. My wife is very much
better, having been the early part of this
year alarmingly ill. She is now all right,
only complaining of trifles, annoying to
her, but happily not interesting to her friends.
I am in a hideous state, having stopped
drink and smoking; yes, both. No wine, no
tobacco; and the dreadful part of it is
that -- looking forward -- I have -- what
shall I say? -- nauseating intimations that
it ought to be for ever.
* John Addington Symonds.
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