to W. H. Low.

Vailima, January 15th, 1894.

MY DEAR LOW,—. . . Pray you, stoop your proud head, and sell yourself to some Jew magazine, and make the visit out.  I assure you, this is the spot for a sculptor or painter.  This, and no other—I don’t say to stay there, but to come once and get the living colour into them.  I am used to it; I do not notice it; rather prefer my grey, freezing recollections of Scotland; but there it is, and every morning is a thing to give thanks for, and every night another—bar when it rains, of course.

About The Wrecker—rather late days, and I still suspect I had somehow offended you; however, all’s well that ends well, and I am glad I am forgiven—did you not fail to appreciate the attitude of Dodd?  He was a fizzle and a stick, he knew it, he knew nothing else, and there is an undercurrent of bitterness in him.  And then the problem that Pinkerton laid down: why the artist can do nothing else? is one that continually exercises myself.  He cannot: granted.  But Scott could.  And Montaigne.  And Julius Cæsar.  And many more.  And why can’t R. L. S.?  Does it not amaze you?  It does me.  I think of the Renaissance fellows, and their all-round human sufficiency, and compare it with the ineffable smallness of the field in which we labour and in which we do so little.  I think David Balfour a nice little book, and very artistic, and just the thing to occupy the leisure of a busy man; but for the top flower of a man’s life it seems to me inadequate.  Small is the word; it is a small age, and I am of it.  I could have wished to be otherwise busy in this world.  I ought to have been able to build lighthouses and write David Balfours too.  Hinc illae lacrymae.  I take my own case as most handy, but it is as illustrative of my quarrel with the age.  We take all these pains, and we don’t do as well as Michael Angelo or Leonardo, or even Fielding, who was an active magistrate, or Richardson, who was a busy bookseller.  J’ai honte pour nous; my ears burn.

I am amazed at the effect which this Chicago exhibition has produced upon you and others.  It set Mrs. Fairchild literally mad—to judge by her letters.  And I wish I had seen anything so influential.  I suppose there was an aura, a halo, some sort of effulgency about the place; for here I find you louder than the rest.  Well, it may be there is a time coming; and I wonder, when it comes, whether it will be a time of little, exclusive, one-eyed rascals like you and me, or parties of the old stamp who can paint and fight, and write and keep books of double entry, and sculp, and scalp.  It might be.  You have a lot of stuff in the kettle, and a great deal of it Celtic.  I have changed my mind progressively about England, practically the whole of Scotland is Celtic, and the western half of England, and all Ireland, and the Celtic blood makes a rare blend for art.  If it is stiffened up with Latin blood, you get the French.  We were less lucky: we had only Scandinavians, themselves decidedly artistic, and the Low-German lot.  However, that is a good starting-point, and with all the other elements in your crucible, it may come to something great very easily.  I wish you would hurry up and let me see it.  Here is a long while I have been waiting for something good in art; and what have I seen?  Zola’s Débâcle and a few of Kipling’s tales.  Are you a reader of Barbey d’Aurevilly?  He is a never-failing source of pleasure to me, for my sins, I suppose.  What a work is the Rideau Cramoisi! and L’Ensorcelée! and Le Chevalier Des Touches!

This is degenerating into mere twaddle.  So please remember us all most kindly to Mrs. Low, and believe me ever yours,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

P.S.—Were all your privateers voiceless in the war of 1812?  Did no one of them write memoirs?  I shall have to do my privateer from chic, if you can’t help me. [320]  My application to Scribner has been quite in vain.  See if you can get hold of some historic sharp in the club, and tap him; they must some of them have written memoirs or notes of some sort; perhaps still unprinted; if that be so, get them copied for me.

R. L. S.