Details
STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS. Autograph letter signed ("R.L. Stevenson") to Charles Baxter, Edinburgh, October 1872. 12 pages, 8vo, first and last pages slightly dusty.
AN EARLY, LENGTHY, AND SPLENDIDLY PLAYFUL LETTER TO A CLOSE FRIEND
Stevenson begins by giving an account of a current illness: "I am gum-boiled and face-swollen to an unprecedented degree...Hence, I am suffering from suppressed gibber--an uneasy complaint; and, like all cases of suppressed humours, (whether gouty, rheumatic or gibberous) this hath a nasty tendency to the brain. Therefore (the more confused I get, the more I lean on Thus's and Hence's and Therefore's) you must not be down on me, Most Noble Festus, altho' this letter should smack of some infirmity of judgement." He plays with the idea of him and Baxter changing places: "Lord, Lord, if we could change personalities, how we should hate it...as for you -- why, my dear Charles, 'a mouse that hath its lodging in a cat's ear' would not be so uneasy as you in your new conditions...I do not see how your temperament would come thro' the feverish regrets for things not done, the feverish longings to do things that cannot then...be accomplished, the feverish unrests and damnable indecisions, that it takes all my easy-going spirits to come comfortably through. A vane can live out anything in the shape of wind; and that is how I can be, and am, a more serious person than you. Just as the light French seemed very serious to Sterne, light L. Stevenson...can bob about over the top of any deep sea of prospect or retrospect, where ironclad C. Baxter would incontinently go down with all hands. A fool is generally the wisest person out. The wise man must shut his eyes to all the perils and [horrors?] that be round him...My dear Baxter - a word in your ear -- 'DONT YOU WISH YOU WERE A FOOL?'"
Stevenson then gives a long and whimsical description of the land of Folly: "Take a fool's advice, and let us strive without ceasing to get into it ['the land of fool-down']. Bark in your ear again: 'THEY ALLOW PEOPLE TO REASON IN THAT LAND.' I wish I could take you by the hand and lead you away into its pleasant boundaries. There is no custom house on the frontier, and you may take in what books you will. There are no manners and customs; but men and women grow up, like trees in a still & well-walled garden, 'at their own sweet will.' There is no prescribed or customary folly - no motley, cap or bauble: out of the well of each one's own innate absurdity he is allowed and encouraged freely to draw and to communicate; and it is a strange thing how this natural fooling comes so nigh to one's better thoughts of wisdom; and stranger still, that all this strange discord of people speaking in their own natural moods and keys, masses itself into a far more perfect harmony, than all the dismal, official unison in which they sing in other countries..." Stevenson closes: "I feel relieved I have put out my gibber -- and if you have read thus far, you will have taken it in. I wonder if you will ever come this length. I shall try a trap for you, and insult you here, on this last page. 'O Baxter what a damned humbug you are!' There--shall this insult bloom and die unseen or will you come toward me, when next we meet, with a face deformed with anger and demand speedy and bloody satisfaction...Adieu! Adieu!"
Provenance: Calvin Bullock (sale, Christie's New York, 19 December 1986, lot 235).
AN EARLY, LENGTHY, AND SPLENDIDLY PLAYFUL LETTER TO A CLOSE FRIEND
Stevenson begins by giving an account of a current illness: "I am gum-boiled and face-swollen to an unprecedented degree...Hence, I am suffering from suppressed gibber--an uneasy complaint; and, like all cases of suppressed humours, (whether gouty, rheumatic or gibberous) this hath a nasty tendency to the brain. Therefore (the more confused I get, the more I lean on Thus's and Hence's and Therefore's) you must not be down on me, Most Noble Festus, altho' this letter should smack of some infirmity of judgement." He plays with the idea of him and Baxter changing places: "Lord, Lord, if we could change personalities, how we should hate it...as for you -- why, my dear Charles, 'a mouse that hath its lodging in a cat's ear' would not be so uneasy as you in your new conditions...I do not see how your temperament would come thro' the feverish regrets for things not done, the feverish longings to do things that cannot then...be accomplished, the feverish unrests and damnable indecisions, that it takes all my easy-going spirits to come comfortably through. A vane can live out anything in the shape of wind; and that is how I can be, and am, a more serious person than you. Just as the light French seemed very serious to Sterne, light L. Stevenson...can bob about over the top of any deep sea of prospect or retrospect, where ironclad C. Baxter would incontinently go down with all hands. A fool is generally the wisest person out. The wise man must shut his eyes to all the perils and [horrors?] that be round him...My dear Baxter - a word in your ear -- 'DONT YOU WISH YOU WERE A FOOL?'"
Stevenson then gives a long and whimsical description of the land of Folly: "Take a fool's advice, and let us strive without ceasing to get into it ['the land of fool-down']. Bark in your ear again: 'THEY ALLOW PEOPLE TO REASON IN THAT LAND.' I wish I could take you by the hand and lead you away into its pleasant boundaries. There is no custom house on the frontier, and you may take in what books you will. There are no manners and customs; but men and women grow up, like trees in a still & well-walled garden, 'at their own sweet will.' There is no prescribed or customary folly - no motley, cap or bauble: out of the well of each one's own innate absurdity he is allowed and encouraged freely to draw and to communicate; and it is a strange thing how this natural fooling comes so nigh to one's better thoughts of wisdom; and stranger still, that all this strange discord of people speaking in their own natural moods and keys, masses itself into a far more perfect harmony, than all the dismal, official unison in which they sing in other countries..." Stevenson closes: "I feel relieved I have put out my gibber -- and if you have read thus far, you will have taken it in. I wonder if you will ever come this length. I shall try a trap for you, and insult you here, on this last page. 'O Baxter what a damned humbug you are!' There--shall this insult bloom and die unseen or will you come toward me, when next we meet, with a face deformed with anger and demand speedy and bloody satisfaction...Adieu! Adieu!"
Provenance: Calvin Bullock (sale, Christie's New York, 19 December 1986, lot 235).