"What a giggle-iggle-orious moment!" - Robert Louis Stevenson - 1893

#RLSletters

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 flowerplots and admire God’s pleasant wonders. Winter green (otherwise known as Resignation, or the “ false gratitude plant ”) springs in much the same soil ; is little hardier, if at all ; and requires to be so dug about and dunged, that there is little margin left for profit. The variety known as the Black Winter green (H. V. Stevensoniana) is rather for ornament than profit. “John, do you see that bed of resignation ?” — “It’s doin’ bravely, sir.” — “John, I will not have it in my garden; it flatters not the eye and comforts not the stomach; root it out.”— “Sir, I ha’e seen 0’ them that rase as high as nettles; gran’ plants!” — “What then? Were they as tall as alps, if still unsavoury and bleak, what matters it? Out with it, then; and in its place put Laughter and a Good Conceit (that capital home evergreen), and a bush of Flowering Piety — but see it be the flowering sort — the other species is no ornament to any gentleman’s Back Garden.”

RLS on emotions #RLSletters

A screenshot of the book of RLS's letters. Middle section reads in all caps IF NOBODYWRITES TO ME I SHALL DIE. Followed by "I now write no more, Richard Lefanu Stevenson, Duke of Indignation". Witnesses are listed as Isaac Blood, John Blind, Vain-hope Go-to-bed, Israel Sciatica. Mark Tacebo Secretary. To the left, sideways, text reads Teminus; silentia. To the right, sideways, text reads FINIS Finaliter finium. Beneath all of this, text reads "the finger on the mouth."

RLS, during a bout of ill-health where few people wrote to him because they didn't think he was well enough to receive mail. He may have been a little bit testy about it. The rest of this letter is complaining in rhyming poetry about the lack of mail.
#RLSLetters

The great double danger of taking life too easily, and taking it too hard, how difficult it is to balance that ! But we are all too little inclined to faith; we are all, in our serious moments, too much inclined to forget that all are sinners, and fall justly by their faults, and therefore that we have no more to do with that than with the thundercloud; only to trust, and do our best, and wear as smiling a face as may be for others and ourselves. Robert Louis Stevenson being philosophical

did I mention I love him? Because I love him #RLSletters

RLS always including his pets in the letters gives me joy:

"My wife begs to be remembered to both of you ; I cannot say as much for my dog, who has never seen you, but he would like, on general principles, to bite you."
#RLSletters

Back to RLS and our man got told he was not necessarily being historically accurate 😂

"Of course, my seamanship is jimmy ; did I not beseech you I know not how often to find me an ancient mariner — and you, whose own wife’s own brother is one of the ancientest, did nothing for me?"

#RLSletters

"Do not think me unhappy; I have not been so for years; but I am blurred, inhabit the debatable frontier of sleep, and have but dim designs upon activity. All is at a standstill; books closed, paper put aside, the voice, the eternal voice of R. L. S. silenced. Hence this plaint reaches you with no very great meaning, no very great purpose, and written part in slumber by a heavy, dull, somnolent, superannuated son of a bedpost." — Robert Louis Stevenson dealing with a bout of chronic illness

On a roll with my lad's quotes tonight
#RLSletters

And again, my lad, on inviting Henry James over for another visit:

"We have a new room, too, to introduce to you— our last baby, the drawing-room; it never cries, and has cut its teeth. Likewise, there is a cat now. It promises to be a monster of laziness and self-sufficiency."

#RLSletters

I love this little nerd so much.

RLS received his first illustrated copy of Treasure Island and wrote to his father: "I would send you my copy, but *I cannot* ; it is my new toy, and I cannot divorce myself from this enjoyment."

#RLSletters

In my view, one dank, dispirited word is harmful, a crime of lèse-humanité, a piece of acquired evil; every gay, every bright word or picture, like every pleasant air of music, is a piece of pleasure set afloat; the reader catches it, and, if he be healthy, goes on his way rejoicing; and it is the business of art so to send him, as often as possible. Robert Louis Stevenson on despair and countering it with art

Be more like Robert Louis Stevenson 🥹
#RLSletters

Robert Louis Stevenson buttering up Thomas Hardy to try and persuade him to write an adventure book :D Quote follows: Of course, I am not so dull as to ask you to desert your walk; but could you not, in one novel, to oblige a sincere admirer, and to enrich his shelves with a beloved volume, could you not, and might you not, cast your characters in a mould a little more abstract and academic (dear Mrs. Pennyman had already, among your other work, a taste of what I mean), and pitch the incidents, I do not say in any stronger, but in a slightly more emphatic key — as it were an episode from one of the old (so-called) novels of adventure ? I fear you will not; and I suppose I must sighingly admit you to be right. And yet, when I see, as it were, a book of Tom Jones handled with your exquisite precision and shot through with those side-lights of reflection in which you excel, I relinquish the dear vision with regret. Think upon it.

So for some context, RLS loved adventure books but they weren't being written so much. He lamented that someone else hadn't written Treasure Island, so he could read it and enjoy it. And then started tweaking the coat tails of his author peers to get them to do it for him 😂
#RLSletters

an oil painting of a red room where a tall gangly dark haired man is standing, body facing the left side of the room, his head turned to look at the painter, scratching his cheek with his right hand. In the wall behind him, there is an open door, showing a dark hallway, and inside the room, to the right of the door, RLS's wife is reclined, draped in yellow, gold and white fabrics in an armchair, partly out of frame

I'm crying 😂

RLS wrote "O, Sargent has been and painted my portrait; a very nice fellow he is, and is supposed to have done well; it is a poetical but very chicken-boned figure-head, as thus represented"

This is the painting.
#RLSletters

If you are in love with repose, here is your occasion : change with me. I am too blind to read, hence no reading; I am too weak to walk, hence no walking; I am not allowed to speak, hence no talking; but the great simplification has yet to be named; for, if this goes on, I shall soon have nothing to eat — and hence, O Hallelujah! hence no eating. The offer is a fair one : I have not sold myself to the devil, for I could never find him. I am married, but so are you. I sometimes write verses, but so do you. Come! Hie quies ! As for the commandments, I have broken them so small that they are the dust of my chambers; you walk upon them, triturate and toothless; and with the Golosh of Philosophy, they shall not bite your heel. True, the tenement is falling. Ay, friend, but yours also. Take a larger view ; what is a year or two? dust in the balance! T is done, behold you Cosmo Stevenson, and me R. L. Monkhouse; you at Hyeres, I in London; you rejoicing in the clammiest repose, me proceeding to tear your tabernacle into rags, as I have already so admirably torn my own. My place to which I now introduce you — it is yours — is like a London house, high and very narrow; upon the lungs I will not linger; the heart is large enough for a ballroom; the belly greedy and inefficient; the brain stocked with the most damnable explosives, like a dynamiter's den. The whole place is well furnished, though not in a very pure taste; Corinthian much of it; showy and not strong. About your place I shall try to find my way alone, an interesting exploration. Imagine me, as I go to bed, falling over a blood-stained remorse; opening that cupboard in the cerebellum and being welcomed by the spirit of your murdered uncle. I should probably not like your remorses; I wonder if you will like mine; I have a spirited assortment; they whistle in my ear o' nights like a north-easter. I trust yours don't dine with the family; mine are better mannered; you will hear naught of them till 2 A.M., except on…

RLS's response to the equivalent of "it must be so nice to rest so much"

(also, alas, looks like it's cut off my alt text. I'll do a second post with it in bits)
#RLSletters

I am all at a standstill ; as idle as a painted ship, but not so pretty. My romance, which has so nearly butchered me in the writing, not even finished ; though so near, thank God, that a few days of tolerable strength will see the roof upon that structure. I have worked very hard at it, and so do not expect any great public favour. In moments of effort, one learns to do the easy things that people like. There is the golden maxim; thus one should strain and then play, strain again and play again. The strain is for us, it educates; the play is for the reader, and pleases. Do you not feel so ? We are ever threatened by two contrary faults: both deadly. To sink into what my forefathers would have called "rank conformity," and to pour forth cheap replicas, upon the one hand; upon the other, and still more insidiously present, to forget that art is a diversion and a decoration, that no triumph or effort is of value, nor anything worth reaching except charm. Robert Louis Stevenson on writing

This feels very topical at the moment.
#RLSletters

Seriously, do you like to repose ? Ye gods, I hate it. I never rest with any acceptation; I do not know what people mean who say they like sleep and that damned bedtime which, since long ere I was breeched, has rung a knell to all my day's doings and beings. And when a man, seemingly sane, tells me he has "fallen in love with stagnation," I can only say to him, "You will never be a Pirate!" Robert Louis Stevenson on inaction while his health keeps leveling him

For context, RLS was chronically ill so much of his life and spent months confined to beds and chairs, unable to do anything.
#RLSletters

Robert Louis Stevenson on writing I beg to inform you that I, Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Brasbiana and other works, am merely beginning to commence to prepare to make a first start at trying to understand my profession. O the height and depth of novelty and worth in any art! and O that I am privileged to swim and shoulder through such oceans! Could one get out of sight of land— all in the blue ? Alas not, being anchored here in flesh, and the bonds of logic being still about us. But what a great space and a great air there is in these small shallows where alone we venture! and how new each sight, squall, calm, or sunrise! An art is a fine fortune, a palace in a park, a band of music, health, and physical beauty; all but love— to any worthy practiser. I sleep upon my art for a pillow; I waken in my art; I am unready for death, because I hate to leave it. I love my wife, I do not know how much, nor can, nor shall, unless I lost her; but while I can conceive my being widowed, I refuse the offering of life without my art. I am not but in my art; it is me; I am the body of it merely. And yet I produce nothing, am the author of Brashiana and other works: tiddy-iddity— as if the works one wrote were anything but prentice's experiments. Dear reader, I deceive you with husks, the real works and all the pleasure are still mine and incommunicable. (June 1883)

Up in my feelings, because this is me and writing as well. Likewise the stuff that is "still mine and incommunicable"
#RLSletters

MY DEAREST PEOPLE, —I have had a great piece of news. There has been offered for Treasure Island— how much do you suppose ? I believe it would be an excellent jest to keep the answer till my next letter. For two cents I would do so. Shall I? Anyway, I'll turn the page first. No— well— A hundred pounds, all alive, O! A hundred jingling, tingling, golden, minted quid. Is not this wonderful? Add that I have now finished, in draft, the fifteenth chapter of my novel, and have only five before me, and you will see what cause of gratitude I have. Robert Louis Stevenson to his parents about selling Treasure Island

I love how excited he was about this :)

#RLSletters

I am going to make a fortune, it has not yet begun, for I am not yet clear of debt; but as soon as I can, I begin upon the fortune. I shall begin it with a halfpenny, and it shall end with horses and yachts and all the fun of the fair. This is the first real grey hair in my character: rapacity has begun to show, the greed of the protuberant guttler. Well, doubtless, when the hour strikes, we must all guttle and protube. But it comes hard on one who was always so willow-slender and as careless as the daisies. Robert Louis Stevenson on making a fortune

My lad and his hopes of a fortune
#RLSletters

RLS being relatable once again:
"I had meant to go on for a great while, and say all manner of entertaining things. But all's gone. I am now an idiot."

#RLSletters

I am now on another lay for the moment, purely owing to Lloyd, this one; but I believe there's more coin in it than in any amount of crawlers: now, see here, "The Sea-Cook, or Treasure Island: A Story for Boys." If this don't fetch the kids, why, they have gone rotten since my day. Will you be surprised to learn that it is about Buccaneers, that it begins in the Admiral Benbow public-house on Devon coast, that it 's all about a map, and a treasure, and a mutiny, and a derelict ship, and a current, and a fine old Squire Trelawney (the real Tre, purged of literature and sin, to suit the infant mind), and a doctor, and another doctor, and a seacook with one leg, and a sea-song with the chorus " Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum " (at the third Ho you heave at the capstan bars), which is a real buccaneer's song, only known to the crew of the late Captain Flint (died of rum at Key West, much regretted, friends will please accept this intimation) ; and lastly, would you be surprised to hear, in this connection, the name of Routledge ? That 's the kind of man I am, blast your eyes. Two chapters are written, and have been tried on Lloyd with great success; the trouble is to work it off without oaths. Buccaneers without oaths — bricks without straw. But youth and the fond parent have to be consulted. And now look here — this is next day — and three chapters are written and read. (Chapter I. The Old Seadog at the Admiral Benbow. Chapter II. Black Dog appears and disappears. Chapter III. The Black Spot.) All now heard by Lloyd, F., and my father and mother, with high approval. It's quite silly and horrid fun, and what I want is the best book about the Buccaneers that can be had — the latter B's above all, Blackbeard and sich, and get Nutt or Bain to send it skimming by the fastest post. And now I know you'll write to me, for " The Sea-Cook's " sake.

Robert Louis Stevenson on writing Treasure Island. I love that one of his grumbles is that he had to make sure not to include swearing 😂 "Buccaneers without oaths — bricks without straw"
#RLSletters

The mere extent of a man's travels has in it something consolatory. That he should have left friends and enemies in many different and distant quarters gives a sort of earthly dignity to his existence. And I think the better of myself for the belief that I have left some in California interested in me and my successes. Let me assure you, you who have made friends already among such various and distant races, that there is a certain phthisical Scot who will always be pleased to hear good news of you, and would be better pleased by nothing than to learn that you had thrown off your present incubus, largely consisting of letters, I believe, and had sailed into some square work by way of change. And by way of change in itself, let me copy on the other pages some broad Scotch I wrote for you when I was ill last spring in Oakland. It is no muckle worth: but ye should na look a gien horse in the moo'. Robert Louis Stevenson on travel, friendship and reassuring a pal having a rough time

Some more my favourite
#RLSletters

Talking, I say, of Robert Burns, the inspired poet is a very gay subject for study. I made a kind of chronological table of his various loves and lusts, and have been comparatively speechless ever since. I am sorry to say it, but there was something in him of the vulgar, bagmanlike, professional seducer. — Oblige me by taking down and reading, for the hundredth time I hope, his Twa Dogs and his Address to the Unco Quid. I am only a Scotchman, after all, you see; and when I have beaten Burns, I am driven at once, by my parental feelings, to console him with a sugar-plum. But hang me if I know anything I like so well as the Twa Dogs. Even a common Englishman may have a glimpse, as it were from Pisgah, of its extraordinary merits. "English, The: — a dull people, incapable of comprehending the Scottish tongue. Their history is so intimately connected with that of Scotland, that we must refer our readers to that heading. Their literature is principally the work of venal Scots." — Stevenson's Handy Cyclopaedia. Glescow : Blaikie & Bannock. Remember me in suitable fashion to Mrs. Gosse, the offspring, and the cat. — And believe me ever yours, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

RLS slutshamming Robert Burns and then roasting the English comprehension of Scots in 4 short paragraphs XD
#RLSletters

But who wrote the review of my book ? Whoever he was, he cannot write; he is humane, but a duffer; I could weep when I think of him; for surely to be virtuous and incompetent is a hard lot. I should prefer to be a bold pirate, the gay sailor-boy of immorality, and a publisher at once. Robert Louis Stevenson

hello, i love him 🥰
#RLSletters

MY DEAR HENLEY, — Heavens! have I done the like? " Clarify and strain," indeed ? "Make it like Marvell," no less. I'll tell you what — you may go to the devil; that's what I think. "Be eloquent" is another of your pregnant suggestions. I cannot sufficiently thank you for that one. Portrait of a person about to be eloquent at the request of a literary friend. You seem to forget, sir, that rhyme is rhyme, sir, and — go to the devil. I'll try to improve it, but I sha'n't be able to — O, go to the devil. Seriously, you're a cool hand. And then you have the brass to ask me why "my steps went one by one"? Why ? Powers of man! to rhyme with sun, to be sure. Why else could it be? And you yourself have been a poet! G-r-r-r-r-r! I'll never be a poet any more. Men are so d — d ungrateful and captious, I declare I could weep.

0 Henley, in my hours of ease You may say anything you please, But when I join the Muses' revel, Begad, I wish you at the devil! In vain my verse I plane and bevel, Like Banville's rhyming devotees; In vain by many an artful swivel Lug in my meaning by degrees; I'm sure to hear my Henley cavil; And grovelling prostrate on my knees, Devote his body to the seas, His correspondence to the devil! Impromptu poem.

I'm going to Shandon Hydropathic cum parentibus. Write here. I heard from Lang. Ferrier prayeth to be remembered; he means to write, likes his Tourgenieff greatly. Also likes my "What was on the Slate," which, under a new title, yet unfound, and with a new and, on the whole, kindly denouement, is going to shoot up and become a star. . . . I see I must write some more to you about my Monastery. I am a weak brother in verse. You ask me to rewrite things that I have already managed just to write with the skin of my teeth. If I don't rewrite them, it 's because I don't see how to write them better, not because I don't think they should be. But, curiously enough, you condemn two of my favourite passages, one of which is J. W. Ferrier's favourite of the whole. Here I shall think it 's you who are wrong. You see, I did not try to make good verse, but to say what I wanted as well as verse would let me. I don't like the rhyme "ear "and "hear." But the couplet, "My undissuaded heart I hear Whisper courage in my ear," is exactly what I want for the thought, and to me seems very energetic as speech, if not as verse. Would "daring" be better than "courage"? Je me le demande. No, it would be ambiguous, as though I had used it licentiously for "daringly," and that would cloak the sense.

In short, your suggestions have broken the heart of the scald. He doesn't agree with them all; and those he does agree with, the, spirit indeed is willing, but the d — d flesh cannot, cannot, cannot see its way to profit by. I think I'll lay it by for nine years, like Horace. I think the well of Castaly 's run out. No more the Muses round my pillow haunt. I am fallen once more to the mere proser. God bless you. R. L. S.

This was and remains the letter that entirely won my adoration of Robert Louis Stevenson. It's a delight and a response to some concrit on his poetry XD
It's so good, I'm sharing the whole thing.
#RLSletters

About criticisms, I was more surprised at the tone of the critics than I suppose any one else. And the effect it has produced in me is one of shame. If they liked that so much, I ought to have given them something better, that 's all. And I shall try to do so. Still, it strikes me as odd; and I don't understand the vogue. It should sell the thing. Robert Louis Stevenson after receiving a review on his writing

Receiving feedback is haaaaaard.
#RLSletters

RLS after sending some poems and prose to a friend for review: Do, for God's sake, answer me about them also; it is a horrid thing for a fond architect to find his monuments received in silence.

That is a familiar vibe XD
#RLSletters

Yesterday I was twenty-five; so please wish me many happy returns - directly. This one was not unhappy anyway. I have got back a good deal into my old random, little-thought way of life, and do not care whether I read, write, speak, or walk, so long as I do something. I have a great delight in this wheel-skating; I have made a great advance in it of late, can do a good many amusing things (I mean amusing in *my* sense - amusing to do)

TIL that Robert Louis Stevenson liked rollerskating :D
#RLSletters

"I have no confidence in myself; I feel such an ass. What have I been doing? As near as I can calculate, nothing."
Robert Louis Stevenson after asking a friend to proof-read his writing.
#RLSletters

I sometimes hate the children I see on the street - you know what I mean by hate - wish they were somewhere else, and not there to mock me; and sometimes, again, I don't know how to go by them for the love of them, especially the very wee ones. 20-something year old Robert Louis Stevenson on children.

This man and his love of kids delights me
#RLSletters

I must be very strong to have all this vexation and still to be well. I was weighed the other day, and the gross weight of my large person was eight stone six! Does it not seem surprising that I can keep the lamp alight, through all this gusty weather, in so frail a lantern? And yet it burns cheerily. Robert Louis Stevenson during a recurring bout of illness

Today's RLS quote from a letter written when he'd been dealing with another bout of his illness. He was chronically ill his whole life with a lung-condition that left him very frail. #RLSletters