A window is, when considered as a work of fine art in color, a translucent composition, there being no part of it which can appeal to the eye by other than transmitted light. The artist has, then, the need of something strong to lean upon, some background, some fond upon which to relieve his more brilliant pieces of translucency; for it can be easily understood that color composition which is wholly translucent will tend toward feebleness, toward paleness, toward a certain evanescent and doubtful character of its colors, from which it must be saved. This needed background was found in the use of the leads; that is to say, of those strips of lead made generally in the form of a capital I, in which the edges of the separate pieces of glass are held. By taking these leads as the artistic sub-structure of the composition, by placing them where needed, and by cutting the glass accordingly, by combining the colors of the glass in such a way as to allow the leads to be put where they were needed for this purpose of background, results were obtained which no artist in glass had ever yet attempted. La Farge's use of leads, in this way, remains peculiarly his own in the subtlety and refinement of the linear design. Occasionally, indeed, a certain amount of opaque painting, of that solid non-translucent painting which the men of the Middle Ages used continually, has been used to increase the area of his lead sash-bars or to diminish the brilliancy of a background. All artists recognize the need of the repentir, of the amendment made after the work is partly done, or even, to all eyes but their own, completed; and painting in opaque color has been used by La Farge when it has appeared that the lead-sash was not quite sufficient for the background needed. In like manner, painting in translucent colored enamels has been used by him where it has appeared to him that no glass available would produce the tone desired. As such instances are occasional and rare, these devices are not a part of the essence of La Farge's work in glass, and they are mentioned here merely because their existence must be understood as accidental. The treatment of heads and hands and other necessarily nude parts of the body, in order that these surfaces may harmonize with the generally unpainted drapery and background, would require pages of discussion if entered upon at all.

The purpose of this article is not, however, to dwell in detail upon the historical development of his art, but to criticise it in its main features, and to institute an inquiry into those traits of La Farge's personality which have made his work especially interesting to all persons who care for the retention of noble design in that which is obviously novel, original, modern in art.

In the first place, then, Mr. La Farge is very individual as a designer. He hardly belongs to any school of designers. The reader will suggest at once that, as there is no school of designers at the present day, a man of force is compelled to be individual; and this dictum will be readily accepted. Inasmuch as there has been no time since La Farge reached the age of intelligence and of interest in art—no time when he has not been a student of Japanese art; inasmuch as he began, as long ago as 1860, to buy and study what few pieces of Japanese art and handicraft he could find—it has been thought that he is strongly influenced by Japanese design; but this it will be hard to establish. His design is individual and personal, and it is that whether we take design to mean his way of conceiving the human figure; or his way of composing human figures in large groups with care for the effect of line and mass; or whether we think, rather, of the filling of the panel or the canvas, the parallelogram or the half-circle, with masses of color and tendencies of line.

Now, in this individuality of his art, there is a weaker as well as a stronger side. It cannot be ignored by those who admire his larger and statelier designs that they lack something of stateliness. The figures in his small woodcuts are carried out of the strict and grave system of academic drawing into an extreme of freedom of gesture and movement, and that with the evident purpose of expressing in the strongest possible way the intense meaning of the artist; but this hardly allows of mention except as a virtue. Bishop Hatto in his screaming agony, as the rats attack him on every side while he crouches at the foot of the column on the capital of which the cat has taken refuge (for each and all the details of which see Southey's poem)—Bishop Hatto is almost liquified, has almost lost the solid substance of his corporeal form, in his horror and hopelessness. Enoch Arden, "the long-haired, long-bearded solitary," hardly shows the strong man, the vigorous sailor under his rags and through his squalor; the emphasis is laid on the fourteen years' solitary confinement in this lonely island, and the "strong heroic soul" which the poet drew has not interested the artist as part of this design. These are small drawings for wood-engraving and for book illustration; but the same character of design occurs again and again in the larger and statelier pieces; and it may there be less easy to accept. The impression made upon a student of mural painting, ancient and modern, by such a painting as that in the Church of the Ascension is that it is, in a sense, lacking in repose. The Adoring Angels around the risen Saviour are individual in their gestures, in the pose of their bodies, in the expression of their faces. They are personalities rather than parts of a "Glory of Angels." The figure of Christ itself has the same peculiarity and is marked by a singularly free and unconventional pose of the body and gesture of the right arm, suggestive rather of the teacher of men than of the Son taken up to his Father. Moreover, this effect as of too much movement and incident, as of too little stability and gravity, is heightened by the flowing drapery, which is so marked a feature of the composition that it remains uppermost in the minds of many students to the very end of their study of the picture. Something of this may be seen in the illustration given here of the noble window which was sent to the Exhibition of 1889 [page 15]. The subject is the Sealing of the Servants of God. These groups are of indubitable truth and power as illustrations of the passage in the Apocalypse; but as parts of a solemn color design another standard needs to be applied to them.

So much for the less agreeable side of this familiar and personal way of designing. In the favorable aspect there would, of course, be very much to be said, for he is no illustrator, he is no story-teller, he is no composer of pictured fable or pictured record who does not understand how to give his figures that life and movement, that action and expression, which will explain all that is explainable of their purpose and their function. Nothing, for instance, can be more perfect as a bit of mystical story-telling than the Wolf-Charmer, the picture in which the gaunt and haggard magician, with his pipe at his lips, comes out of the forest surrounded by his drove of gigantic wolves. Two studies for the wolves are given here; and the spirit of the design is interesting to trace in them. To give the savage creatures something more than their due size, and, above all, something more than their due ferocity, is a natural and obvious device; but to express, as the artist has expressed, their familiarity with their leader, their sympathy with him, their spirit entering into his as he heads and controls them, is something admirable in descriptive art. So in that grim picture in which some part of the spirit of feudal Japan is contained; the picture which tells the tale of little Kio-Sai; the rushing and turbulent stream between its high banks is gray and sombre as if with the swollen waters of a flood; and upon it, whirled along in its course, the severed head which frightened the child floats face upward with something of its living expression still lingering about the eyes and lips, but still as dead, as corpse-like as a severed head could be. This powerful drawing, made within the last two years, is to be cited as a characteristic specimen of expressional art. There is nothing in the picture but whirling water and floating head; and yet the stern, fierce, half-savage, feudal system of Japan, which coexisted with an almost too subtle refinement of manners and of thought, both literary and artistic, is expressed in this little square of grave coloring. So, in the numerous South Sea Island studies which have filled many a frame and delighted so many a student of water-color drawings, it is hard to say whether the pictures of movement and action, of fishing with cormorants, of riding and marching, of bustle and life, or the pictures of tropical and oriental men and women in repose, are more delightful—half naked girls carrying canoes, seated dancers going through the sacred movements of the siva, portraits of individuals, and studies of groups intended to preserve for the artist the recollection, and for the instruction of those at home the singular life, of these brown islanders, so different from the negroids of the southern groups, so over-civilized in ceremony and tradition, with all their lack of policing and of steady social conditions. In all this work the artist's indifference to the accepted conventional ways of expressing his meaning is altogether fortunate for his art. He knows how to tell a story in pictures which have very much, if not all, of his highest artistic qualities, and this he would hardly be capable of were he more fettered than he is by the rules of the academies as to how the action of man should be put into form and color.

In connection with this matter, the question comes up how far Mr. La Farge is a thorough draughtsman. It hardly becomes one who is not ready to go into the minute examination of his work, figure by figure, to challenge its merit in the way of anatomical correctness and academic severity of drawing; but it is to be said, at least, that the strongest reason exists for the belief that many of the draped figures would prove incorrect if an absolutely accurate drawing of the nude body in the position assumed by the draped figure could be laid upon the drapery. It is difficult here to express one's exact meaning, because there is no such thing as an absolutely correct drawing of the nude body in any position; but if we take a draped angel or a draped St. Peter or a draped Buddhist priest from this gallery of pictured men and women, we can imagine the consummate draughtsman, the Paul Veronese of the present, if there were such a man, pointing out that a figure seated or standing in that position could not get within the drapery which the artist has pictured. We can even imagine the painter aware of the fact—in advance of all criticism by others. It will be observed that La Farge has seldom painted the nude. His early work involved a great deal of drawing, both from the nude model and in the way of designed and composed nude figures. Naked figures represented on a small scale, as among his numerous Eastern subjects, exist, of course, in his work in great numbers; but the nude in the larger European sense of elaborately rendered, well modelled, thoroughly understood naked figures, male and female, is rare in his work. Mural painting in churches hardly allows of that; glass is, of course, wholly foreign in its purpose and mission from such art as includes the nude, and hardly allows even of the naked hands and head. Now, let it be admitted for the moment not only that La Farge is not given to drawing the nude, but even that he has not done consummate work in that direction; let that be admitted, and let us then see how that affects his pictures and drawings. It need not be asked whether it affects the decorative value of his work—considered as a body of art it cannot affect it badly; we need think, now, only of fine drawing considered by itself. It is a part of the true traditional doctrine of art that no man should paint from the model, nude or draped; that no man should draw from the model, nude or draped, with the intention of using the drawing upon his wall surface or canvas. It is a tradition which ought to have been left intact as it came from older men, that when the artist composes it is his duty to forget his anatomy and to forget the preparatory drawings which he has made by hundreds, and to draw directly upon his canvas or sheet of paper the figure which he now conceives as a part of his design, the figure which he desires to put into his composition as one of its elements. He is free then to do what La Farge himself does freely, to compare this result with the model, nude or draped, or first nude and then draped; but this comparison has for its purpose, not the correction of the drawing or the picture with reference to its anatomical correctness nearly so much as it has in view the lifelike appearance of the figure. Given a draped figure which does not seem to stand quite as firmly upon its feet, or to be moving quite as freely, as the composer himself desires, it is required by consultation of the model to rectify those errors in the drawing which have led to this unfortunate result and to give to that figure the lifelike character which it does not yet possess.

It is a characteristic of Mr. La Farge's art as a painter that he is primarily a colorist. Now it is fairly safe to say that no man since the great Venetians has been at once a consummate draughtsman of the human figure and a consummate master of color; and that apparently the mind of the workman cannot lead his artistic production in such paths that both of these excellences may be attained at once. The workman, if he is sincere, and if he is well advised, follows the course which is easiest for him, and if he conceives of every figure and every group of figures with their setting of landscape or architecture primarily as a piece of splendid coloring, to be taken from nature as an abstract piece of coloring, and so modified that it will tell as an abstract piece of coloring on canvas or on wall—if that is the artist's object he will not improve the work produced on these lines by giving his time and strength to the proposed consideration of accuracy of drawing.

To ask whether La Farge's work would be artistically better if it were consummate in drawing is to ask a question which no one can answer. It is certain that no wise student will go to La Farge to learn figure drawing in the technical sense. It is not that which his art offers the student. There are, however, two large pictures, which can hardly be challenged—the two lunettes in the Villard-Reid house; and it is probable that if these pictures were within easy reach of the public, and could be seen as the wall paintings in the Congressional Library can be seen by all the world and every day, they would tend to raise the general opinion of La Farge's capacity and range as a painter beyond what even his admirers now hold. The pictures represent "The Dance" and "Music." In each of them, smiling landscape forms the background, a landscape not to be called sunny because the work of the true colorist hardly allows of sunshine. Sunshine and full glowing color are not generally found possible of simultaneous presentation, and La Farge certainly makes no attempt to combine them. If, then, we consider one of these two groups of six or eight maidens invested in rather bright and high-lighted colors and set off by a landscape somewhat deeper in tone than their own figures—if we consider each of these pictures as a mural painting intended to be festal in character and to glorify and heighten the beauty of the room which it adorns, while at the same time it is in itself a piece of coloring of almost the highest quality—we have then, perhaps, the fairest and most complete idea of what one of these lunettes is as a work of art—what it has been in the artist's well-realized purpose. The beauty of composition in line and mass in either of the pictures, noticeable as it is, is not important in comparison. The power of line-composition is not very rare; except in its very highest manifestation, it is almost like correct spelling; necessary, but deserving no special remark. But when it is said of any picture that it is a piece of coloring of the highest or almost the highest rank, there has been said of it the utmost that can be said of a work of graphic art. It is not claimed that color is essentially greater or nobler than form, but that color is the graphic artist's especial domain, in which he alone can rule; and further, that color is peculiarly artistical, ideal, abstract, and in this way loftier. Is it possible for the mind of man to conceive of anything more perfect, more remote from, and, in a sense, superior to, whatever else there is in the world of humanity than a color composition of the highest quality? There is only one product of the human mind which can be compared with it; a musical composition of the highest class; a symphony of Beethoven, alone, can be compared to a great composition by Titian. That such a color-gift and such a color-purpose are to be seen in all of Mr. La Farge's work alike would be hardly too much to say. The touch of the consummate colorist is not as evident, but is as discoverable by one who knows how to look, in a piece of nature-study from Fiji, six inches square, as it is in a large composition of saints and angels. The disposition and the power to give to tinted paper the glow, the radiance, the wealth and charm of that strange and inexplicable thing, the mingling of tints into a resulting color-scheme—these are in small work the same essentially that they are in large. Nor is the background of the Ascension picture in the eponymic church to be exalted above the bits of hillside and surf in the drawings of oceanic life, otherwise than as its greater size allows it greater splendor.

That this power over color is the life and soul of the decorator need hardly be urged. Decoration which is applied to a flat surface and which is not in relief, except, perhaps, to a slight extent and occasionally, has for its main object, its main desideratum, richness or refinement of coloring, or both. If one has a wall to decorate, the first idea of the true decorator is to invest it with splendor or with delicate strength of color. He seeks for fresco, or the encaustic process, or mosaic, or, as in modern times, oil-painting upon a strained canvas, indifferently and according to the spirit of his time and the practice of his contemporaries; but his object is one and the same—to invest his wall or ceiling with noble color. Little may he care what the subject of the painting or mosaic may be. According to the requirements of the epoch or community in which he lives, it may be a procession of saints or a dance of bacchanals; the primary object which he has in view is to procure a most enjoyable and delightful piece of color—and other things are of secondary importance. Glass, then, would seem to be especially prepared for La Farge's work, and La Farge especially prepared for glass. Consider the memorial window which fills a window-opening in a church at North Easton, Mass., a town which owes much to the lady whose memory is thus honored. Upon a background of broken and changing blue are relieved the three figures larger than life-size which nearly fill the opening. Two of these figures are clothed, one in drapery of the most vivid green, the other in drapery of orange-brown; that is to say, these are the general colors offered to the eye of the spectator by the infinite number of minor tints, all passing into one another in subtle gradation, which make up the general mass of drapery. It is to be observed, then, that these figures are also seen to be clothed in rags, and that the idea, the notion of wretchedness and tatters is maintained in spite of the sumptuous clothing of glowing color which invests it all. That is an instance as good as can be found of what the colorist has to do in this world. He does not ask whether beggars have ever been dressed in such garments as have been described, but he has to express the two-fold image, Beggary and splendid color, and out of these he makes up his work of art, as unlike as may be to anything in nature, but none the worse for that. To return to mural painting; there is one merit which all La Farge's brother-painters agree in awarding to him, and that is the power of putting a painting upon the wall so that it does not change the character of the wall as a part of the building. His painting takes nothing away from the solidity of the wall which it invests. The upright mass retains its rigidity and weight, it still carries the roof, it still holds firmly to the adjoining walls, it is a massive and trustworthy part of the construction, and the painted picture has added to rather than taken from its permanent and resting quality. How this is done is fully as inexplicable as is the glow and splendor of color itself. No one can say abstractly and without having the picture immediately before him how any such result is attained, nor is it easy to explain the picture, even to the looker-on, in any such terms as will fully express this quality. It is one of the most valuable qualities which mural painting can possess—mural painting which fluctuates between the flatness which is also feebleness and a kind of realism which carries with it the effect of out-of-doors—of a hole in the wall. The same thing obtains in his minor work, and here the background, the temple, or rock, forty feet away, is as perfectly detached from the foreground figures as would be a distant and airy mountain miles away, while still the picture remains flat cardboard or flat canvass invested with light and shade and color.

We are brought naturally to the consideration of Mr. La Farge's landscape. He is not generally considered as a landscape painter; and yet he has produced a great deal of landscape in the secondary or accessory part of his work. He has also painted landscape of first intention, so to speak, landscape which is nothing but landscape, and that, at different times in his life; always succeeding, and yet always turning away from landscape to what seems to be his chosen work of figure subject used decoratively. Landscape-painting is unquestionably the art of our epoch, the one branch of the art of painting which this century has excelled in; and, therefore, La Farge was inevitably drawn toward landscape painting, he being a man of his time, if also a man of strong individual peculiarities. It would be hard for a student of art in the abstract, a theorizer, a critic and a lover of the arts of the past, to avoid painting landscape when everybody around him is painting landscape; and accordingly La Farge has turned his attention to that, but the odd thing is that he has not stayed there, that he has not continued to be a landscape painter primarily. It would seem to the hasty observer of landscape painting that this department of art alone would have afforded material for all of his artistic dreams and for all his artistic purposes, for what is more truly decorative than landscape such as is shown in the wonderful Paradise Valley? That picture is made up of light and color. The surface of thick, lush, summer grass, the surface of rock dimly seen, the surface of ocean, the hazy sky, all together go to form a mass of glowing and yet delicate color the like of which it is very hard to find in simple landscape anywhere in ancient or modern art. Until recent years there were only half a dozen such pictures of wide landscape, numerous as were his studies in that style; for otherwise his finished landscapes were chiefly those composed of foreground rock, of iris seen against a wild-rose covered bank, of three or four water-lily blossoms and a dozen little buds floating on still water; or else they were landscape backgrounds to figure subjects in which the landscape was evidently made, of deliberate purpose, a thing of less intention and of inferior interest. During the last ten years, however, La Farge has produced an immense number of singularly effective drawings in monochrome and in color, made either on the spot in Samoa, in Fiji, in Japan, or elsewhere in the far East, or made after his return home, from studies carefully noted during his stay abroad. Of these landscape drawings, some are of extended and really vast stretches of country. Mountains are introduced which are several miles away, and show in relief against a pale sky, every detail of the mountain being rendered as the eye could have seen it from the point of view occupied by the painter, and the whole wrought into a wonderfully glowing panorama of green passing into blue against the green mystery of the firmament. There are also among these drawings pictures which are Turnerian in their love of and sympathy with mist and vapor and their enjoyment of pure and delightful color produced by sunlight upon such vapor. Among these are four drawings of the Valley of Tokio seen from a hill above the city, the vision of the artist reaching across the valley and including its whole extent and the mountains which form the boundary. In other words, each of these landscapes includes a range of one hundred square miles of country at least, and its investing and overflowing drapery of cloud and of low-lying vapor; and yet these were four small drawings, mere studies on leaves of a sketch-book. It is the greatest misfortune to Americans that they have been scattered among four different owners. If it were possible for the Boston Museum, under its wise direction, to gather these four drawings into its ownership and to exhibit them side by side well lighted and isolated from other conflicting art, a real service would be done to the whole community of art students; for there is in them an abundance of the true landscape feeling, of the true landscape sympathy, of that love of the magnificence, and the refinement of nature which no transcript can give, but which the thought of the artist when stimulated powerfully by the contemplation of the glory of nature will transfer to his material medium.

Much of this character exists in the sepia drawing of the "Dry Bed of the Dayagawa River," [page 7] which hardly needs analysis in words, since it is capable of fairly complete reproduction.

In order of date the letters now to be quoted follow next on those from the French Riviera which were printed in the April number. When in the late spring of 1884 Stevenson was prostrated by the worst of all his many attacks of hemorrhage from the lung, he was still residing in that chalet at Hyères which he had hoped to make his permanent abode. Partly the renewed failure of his health, and partly a bad outbreak of cholera in the old Provençal town, which occurred in the ensuing summer, compelled him to abandon this hope. As soon as he recovered strength enough to be able to travel by even the easiest stages, he moved to Royat in Auvergne, and thence in the course of July to England. After consultation with several doctors, all of whom held out good hopes of ultimate recovery in spite of the gravity of his present symptoms, he moved to Bournemouth. Here he found in the heaths and pine-woods some distant semblance of the landscape of his native Scotland, and in sandy curves of the Channel coast a passable substitute for the bays and promontories of his beloved Mediterranean. At all events he liked the place well enough to be willing to try it for a home: and such it became for all but three years, from September, 1884, to August, 1887. These, although in the matter of health the worst and most trying years of his life, were in the matter of work some of the most active and successful. For the first two or three months the Stevensons occupied a lodging on the West Cliff called Wensleydale; for the next three or four, from December, 1884, to March, 1885, they were tenants of a house named Bonallie Towers, pleasantly situated amid the pine-woods of Branksome Park; and lastly, about Easter, 1885, they entered into occupation of a house of their own, given by the elder Stevenson to his son, and re-named by the latter Skerryvore, in reminiscence of one of the great lighthouse works carried out by the family firm off the Scottish coast. During all the time of Stevenson's residence at Bournemouth he was compelled to lead the life, irksome to him above all men, but borne with invincible sweetness and patience, of a chronic invalid and almost constant prisoner to the house. He was hardly ever free for more than a few weeks at a time from fits of hemorrhage, fever, and prostration, accompanied by the nervous exhaustion and general distress consequent equally upon the attacks themselves and upon the remedies which the physicians were constrained to employ against them. A great part of his time was spent in bed, and there almost all his literary work was produced. Often for days, and sometimes for weeks together, he was forbidden to speak aloud, and compelled to carry on conversation with his family and friends in whispers or with the help of pencil and paper. The few excursions to a distance which he attempted—most commonly to my house, at the British Museum, once to Matlock, once to Exeter, and once in 1886 as far as Paris—these excursions almost always ended in a break-down and a hurried retreat to home and bed. Nevertheless, seizing on and making the most of every week, nay, every day and hour of respite, he contrived to produce work surprising alike, under the circumstances, by quantity and quality. During the first two months of his life at Bournemouth the two plays Admiral Guinea and Beau Austin were written in collaboration with Mr. Henley. In 1885 he published three volumes, viz.: More New Arabian Nights, the Child's Garden of Verses, and Prince Otto (the two latter, it is true, having been for the most part written a year or two earlier, at Hyères). In 1886 appeared The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Kidnapped, the two books which, together with Treasure Island, did most to win for him the fame and honor which he ever afterward enjoyed among readers on both sides of the Atlantic. At the same time he was a fairly frequent contributor of essays to magazines and of stories to Christmas annuals and other periodical collections. The year 1887, the last of his life in the old country, was chiefly, with the exception of the Life of Fleeming Jenkin, a year of collections and re-prints; in it were published Underwoods, The Merry Men, Memories and Portraits, and the Black Arrow in volume form.

The correspondence of these three invalid years at Bournemouth is naturally in a less buoyant key than that of the relatively flourishing and happy year at Hyères which preceded them. But it is none the less full of interest, and of that vivid play of mood and character which never failed in him whether he was sick or well. The specimens which I shall here give will be taken, with a few exceptions, from his communications with his brother men of letters, including some whose acquaintance or friendship he had now for the first time formed, as Mr. Henry James, Mr. William Archer, and Mr. Locker-Lampson, besides such intimate friends and associates of earlier days as Mr. Henley, Mr. Gosse, Mr. Symonds and myself.

But first come two or three to his parents and other correspondents:

Bournemouth, Sunday, 28th September, 1884.

My dear People,—I keep better, and am to-day downstairs for the first time. I find the lockers entirely empty; not a cent to the front. Will you pray send us some? It blows an equinoctial gale, and has blown for nearly a week. Nimbus Britannicus; piping wind, lashing rain; the sea is a fine colour, and wind-bound ships lie at anchor under the Old Harry rocks, to make one glad to be ashore.

The Henleys are gone, and two plays practically done. I hope they may produce some of the ready.—I am, ever affectionate son,

R. L. S.

Wensleydale, Bournemouth,
October 3rd, 1884.

Dear Mr. Chatto.—I have an offer of £25 for Otto from America. I do not know if you mean to have the American rights; from the nature of the contract, I think not; but if you understood that you were to sell the sheets, I will either hand over the bargain to you, or finish it myself and hand you over the money if you are pleased with the amount. You see, I leave this quite in your hands. To parody an old Scotch story of servant and master: if you don't know that you have a good author, I know that I have a good publisher. Your fair, open, and handsome dealings are a good point in my life, and do more for my crazy health than has yet been done by any doctor.—Very truly yours,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

[Mr. Stevenson, the elder, had read the play of Admiral Guinea, written in September by his son and Mr. Henley in collaboration, and had objected, with his usual energy of expression, to the stage confrontation of profane blackguarding, in the person of Pew, with evangelical piety in that of the reformed slaving captain who gives his name to the piece.]

Bonallie Towers,
Branksome Park,
Bournemouth,
(The three B's),
(November 5th, 1884).

My Dear Father,—Allow me to say, in a strictly Pickwickian sense, that you are a silly fellow. I am pained indeed, but how should I be offended? I think you exaggerate; I cannot forget that you had the same impression of the Deacon; and yet, when you saw it played, were less revolted than you looked for; and I will still hope that the Admiral also is not so bad as you suppose. There is one point, however, where I differ from you very frankly. Religion is in the world; I do not think you are the man to deny the importance of its rôle; and I have long decided not to leave it on one side in art. The opposition of the Admiral and Mr. Pew is not, to my eyes, either horrible or irreverent; but it may be, and it probably is, very ill done: what then? This is a failure; better luck next time; more power to the elbow, more discretion, more wisdom in the design, and the old defeat becomes the scene of the new victory. Concern yourself about no failure; they do not cost lives, as in engineering; they are the pierres perdues of successes. Fame is (truly) a vapour; do not think of it; if the writer means well and tries hard, no failure will injure him, whether with God or man.

I wish I could hear a brighter account of yourself; but I am inclined to acquit the Admiral after having a share in the responsibility. My very heavy cold is, I hope, drawing off; and the change to this charming house in the forest will, I hope, complete my re-establishment.—With love to all, believe me, your ever affectionate,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

[About the same time, Mr. T. Stevenson was in some hesitation as to letting himself be proposed for the office of President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.]

Bonallie Towers, Bournemouth,
November, 1884.

My Dear Father,—I have no hesitation in recommending you to let your name go up; please yourself about an address; though, I think, if we could meet, we could arrange something suitable; but what you propose would be well enough in a way; but so modest as to suggest a whine. From that point of view it would be better to change a little; but this, whether we meet or not, we must discuss. Tait, Crystal, the Royal Society, and I, all think you amply deserve this honour and far more; it is not the True Blue to call this serious compliment a "trial"; you should be glad of this recognition. As for resigning, that is easy enough if found necessary; but to refuse would be husky, unsatisfactory, and a trifle rotten. Sic subs.

R. L. S.

My cold is still very heavy; but I carry it well. Fanny is very much out of sorts, principally through perpetual misery with me. I fear I have been a little in the dumps, which, as you know, sir, is a very great sin. I must try to be more cheerful; but my cough is so severe—my uvula, larynx, and pharynx being all to pot—that I have sometimes most exhausting nights and very peevish wakenings. However, this shall be remedied, and last night I was distinctly better than the night before. There is, my dear Mr. Stevenson (so I moralise blandly as we sit together on the devil's garden-wall), no more abominable sin than this gloom, this plaguey peevishness; why (say I) what matters it if we be a little uncomfortable—that is no reason for mangling our unhappy wives. And then I turn and girn on the unfortunate Cassandra.—Your fellow culprit,

R. L. S.

With reference to the two following letters, it should be explained that Stevenson and his old Edinburgh friend and comrade, Mr. Baxter (who was also his man of business), were accustomed in their correspondence, as the whim took them, to merge their own identities in those of two fictitious personages, Johnson-Thomson and Thomson-Johnson, ex-elders of the Kirk and types of a certain cast of Edinburgh character. Their language is of the broadest Scots; and for some readers it may be desirable to mention that "hoast" means cough and "sculduddery" loose talk.

Bonallie Towers, Branksome Park,
Bournemouth, November 11th.

My Dear Charles,—I am in my new house, thus proudly styled, as you perceive: but the deevil a tower ava' can be perceived (except out of window); this is not as it should be; one might have hoped, at least, a turret. We are all vilely unwell. I put in the dark watches imitating a donkey with some success, but little pleasure; and in the afternoon I indulge in a smart fever, accompanied by aches and shivers. There is thus little monotony to be deplored; and what might still weigh upon me my wife lightens by various inexplicable attacks, now in the pleasant morn, now at the noon of night. I, at least, am a regular invalid; I would scorn to bray in the afternoon; I would indignantly refuse the proposal to fever in the night. What is bred in the bone will come out, sir, in the flesh; and the same spirit that prompted me to date my letter regulates the hour and character of my attacks.—I am, sir, yours,

Thomson.

Postmark, Bournemouth,
13th November, 1884.

My dear Thomson,—It's a maist remarkable fac', but nae shüner had I written yon braggin', blawin' letter aboot ma business habits, when bang! that very day, my hoast begude in the aifternune. It is really remaurkable; it's providenshle, I believe. The ink wasnae fair dry, the wards werenae well ooten ma mouth, when bang, I got the lee. The mair ye think o't, Thomson, the less ye'll like the looks o't. Proavidence (I'm no sayin') is all verra weel in its place; but if proavidence has nae mainners, wha's to learn't? Proavidence is a fine thing, but hoo would you like proavidence to keep your till for ye? The richt place for proavidence is in the Kirk; it has naething to do wi' private correspondence between twa gentlemen, nor freendly cracks, nor a wee bit word of sculduddery ahint the door, nor, in shoart, wi' ony hole-and-corner wark, what I would call. I'm pairfec'ly willin' to meet in wi' Proavidence, I'll be prood to meet in wi' him, when my time's come and I cannae doe nae better; but if he's to come skinking aboot my stairfit, damned, I might as weel be deid for a' the comfort I'll can get in life. Cannae he no be made to understand that it's beneath him? Gosh, if I was in his business, I wouldnae steer my heid for a plain, auld ex-elder that, tak him the way he taks himsel', 's just aboot as honest as he can weel afford, an' but for a wheen auld scandals, near forgotten noo, is a pairfectly respectable and thoroughly decent man. Or if I fashed wi' him ava', it wad be kind o' handsome like; a punnote under his stair door, or a bottle o' auld, blended malt to his bit marnin', as a teshtymonial like you ye ken sae weel aboot, but mair successfu'.

Dear Thomson, have I ony money. If I have, send it for the loard's sake.

Johnson.

[The following to Mr. Henry James, who from about this time began to be a frequent and ever welcome visitor at the Bournemouth home, refers to the essay of R. L. S. called a "Humble Remonstrance," which had just appeared in Longman's Magazine. Mr. James had written holding out the prospect of a continuance of the friendly controversy which had thus been opened up between them on the aims and qualities of fiction.]

Bonallie Towers, Branksome Park,
Bournemouth, December 8th, 1884.

My dear Henry James,—This is a very brave hearing from more points than one. The first point is that there is a hope of a sequel. For this I laboured. Seriously, from the dearth of information and thoughtful interest in the art of literature, those who try to practice it with any deliberate purpose run the risk of finding no fit audience. People suppose it is "the stuff" that interests them; they think, for instance, that the prodigious fine thoughts and sentiments in Shakespeare impress by their own weight, not understanding that the unpolished diamond is but a stone. They think that striking situations, or good dialogue, are got by studying life; they will not rise to understand that they are prepared by deliberate artifice and set off by painful suppressions. Now, I want the whole thing well ventilated, for my own education and the public's; and I beg you to look as quick as you can, to follow me up with every circumstance of defeat where we differ, and (to prevent the flouting of the laity) to emphasise the points where we agree. I trust your paper will show me the way to a rejoinder; and that rejoinder I shall hope to make with so much art as to woo or drive you from your threatened silence. I would not ask better than to pass my life in beating out this quarter of corn with such a seconder as yourself.

Point the second, I am rejoiced indeed to hear you speak so kindly of my work: rejoiced and surprised. I seem to myself a very rude, left-handed countryman; not fit to be read, far less complimented, by a man so accomplished, so adroit, so craftsmanlike as you. You will happily never have cause to understand the despair with which a writer like myself considers (say) the park scene in Lady Barberina. Every touch surprises me by its intangible precision; and the effect when done, as light as syllabub, as distinct as a picture, fills me with envy. Each man among us prefers his own aim, and I prefer mine; but when we come to speak of performance, I recognise myself, compared with you, to be a lout and slouch of the first water.

Where we differ, both as to the design of stories and the delineation of character, I begin to lament. 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.

As you know, I belong to that besotted class of man, the invalid; this puts me to a stand in the way of visits. But it is possible that some day you may feel that a day near the sea and among pinewoods would be a pleasant change from town. If so, please let us know; and my wife and I will be delighted to put you up and give you what we can to eat and drink (I have a fair bottle of claret).—On the back of which, believe me, yours sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

P.S.—I reopen this to say that I have re-read my paper, and cannot think I have at all succeeded in being either veracious or polite. I knew, of course, that I took your paper merely as a pin to hang my own remarks upon; but, alas! what a thing is any paper! What fine remarks can you not hang on mine! How I have sinned against proportion and, with every effort to the contrary, against the merest rudiments of courtesy to you! You are, indeed, a very acute reader to have divined the real attitude of my mind, and I can only conclude, not without closed eyes and shrinking shoulders, in the well-worn words

Lay on, Macduff!

[During a crippling fit of ill-health, Stevenson had received a commission for a sensational story for the Christmas number of the Pall Mall Gazette. The commission ended in his sending the managers of the paper a recast of a gruesome tale which he had written and condemned in the Highlands three years before, The Body-Snatcher. He rightly thought this beneath his own standard of merit, and would not take the full fee which had been offered for it. Two of the following letters to Mr. Henley refer to this matter: Bloody Jack, or Jacques, let it be understood, was his regular nickname for his arch-enemy, hemorrhage from the lungs.]

[Dec. 1884.]

Dear Man,—1st Disagreeable. Do try and lay your hands on these three poems; they were surely not lost in transmission? It seems hard I should have to make them a third time.

2d Disagreeable. I have done a kind of a damned machine for the P. M. G., and have near died of it—(weakness, insomnia, Bloody Jacquerie)—and am now so dissatisfied that I have told them not to pay me till I see a proof. I think, or I fear I will think, it is not worth the money offered; in which case, of course, I will not take it.—Yours ever,

[Dec. 1884.]

Dear Lad,—I have made up my mind about the P. M. G., and send you a copy, which please keep or return. As for not giving a reduction, what are we? Are we artists or city men? Why do we sneer at stockbrokers? O nary; I will not take the £40. I took that as a fair price for my best work; I was not able to produce my best; and I will be damned if I steal with my eyes open. Sufficit. This is my lookout. As for the paper being rich, certainly it is; but I am honourable. It is no more above me in money than the poor slaveys and cads from whom I look for honesty are below me. Am I Pepys, that because I can find the countenance of "some of our ablest merchants," that because —— and —— pour forth languid twaddle and get paid for it, I, too, should "cheerfully continue to steal"? I am not Pepys. I do not live much to God and honour; but I will not wilfully turn my back on both. I am, like all the rest of us, falling ever lower from the bright ideas I began with, falling into greed, into idleness, into middle-aged and slippered fireside cowardice; but is it you, my bold blade, that I hear crying this sordid and rank twaddle in my ear? Preaching the dankest Grundyism and upholding the rank customs of our trade—you, who are so cruel hard upon the customs of the publishers? O man, look at the Beam in our own Eyes; and whatever else you do, do not plead Satan's cause, or plead it for all; either embrace the bad, or respect the good when you see a poor devil trying for it. If this is the honesty of authors—to take what you can get and console yourself because publishers are rich—take my name from the rolls of that association. 'Tis a caucus of weaker thieves, jealous of the stronger.—Ever yours,

The Roaring R. L. S.

You will see from the enclosed that I have stuck to what I think my dues pretty tightly in spite of this flourish; these are my words for a poor ten-pound note!