Read Ebook: Dekameron (2. rész) Száz novella by J Kai M R

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 101 lines and 19413 words, and 3 pages

PAGE INTRODUCTION xvii

TRAVELS AND EXCURSIONS

INTRODUCTORY 3

LETTERS-- To Thomas Stevenson 13 To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 14 To the Same 15 To the Same 17 To the Same 19 To the Same 21 To the Same 24 To Mrs. Churchill Babington 30 To Alison Cunningham 32 To Charles Baxter 33 To the Same 35 To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 36 To the Same 38 To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 39 To Thomas Stevenson 42 To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 44 To Charles Baxter 46 To Charles Baxter 49 To the Same 52

NEW FRIENDSHIPS--ORDERED SOUTH

INTRODUCTORY 54

LETTERS-- To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 56 To Mrs. Sitwell 57 To the Same 58 To the Same 61 To the Same 63 To the Same 66 To the Same 68 To the Same 71 To the Same 74 To Sidney Colvin 76 To the Same 76 To Mrs. Sitwell 77 To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 81 To Mrs. Sitwell 83 To the Same 83 To the Same 86 To Charles Baxter 89 To Mrs. Sitwell 91 To the Same 93 To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 94 To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 96 To the Same 97 To the Same 99 To Mrs. Sitwell 101 To the Same 103 To the Same 104 To Sidney Colvin 105 To the Same 106 To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 107 To Sidney Colvin 108 To Mrs. Sitwell 110 To Thomas Stevenson 111 To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 112 To Thomas Stevenson 113 To Mrs. Sitwell 115 To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 116 To the Same 117 To the Same 118 To the Same 118 To the Same 120 To Mrs. Sitwell 121

HOME AGAIN--LITERATURE AND LAW

INTRODUCTORY 123

LETTERS-- To Sidney Colvin 124 To Mrs. Sitwell 125 To Sidney Colvin 127 To Mrs. Sitwell 127 To Sidney Colvin 129 To Mrs. Sitwell 131 To the Same 133 To the Same 137 To the Same 139 To Sidney Colvin 140 To Mrs. Sitwell 140 To Sidney Colvin 141 To the Same 143 To Mrs. Sitwell 144 To the Same 148 To the Same 149 To the Same 151 To the Same 153 To the Same 155 To the Same 156 To Sidney Colvin 157 To Mrs. Sitwell 158 To the Same 161 To the Same 164 To the Same 166 To Sidney Colvin 167 To Mrs. Sitwell 168 To Sidney Colvin 169 To Mrs. Sitwell 171 To Sidney Colvin 173 To Mrs. Sitwell 174 To the Same 174 To the Same 175 To the Same 177 To Sidney Colvin 178 To the Same 178 To Mrs. Sitwell 179 To the Same 180 To the Same 181

EDINBURGH--PARIS--FONTAINEBLEAU

INTRODUCTORY 182

LETTERS-- To Sidney Colvin 186 To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 187 To Mrs. Sitwell 187 To the Same 189 To Sidney Colvin 191 To Charles Baxter 193 To Sidney Colvin 195 To the Same 196 To Mrs. Sitwell 197 To the Same 198 To Mrs. de Mattos 199 To Mrs. Sitwell 200 To Sidney Colvin 201 To the Same 202 To Mrs. Sitwell 203 To W. E. Henley 204 To Mrs. Sitwell 205 To Sidney Colvin 206 To Mrs. Sitwell 207 To A. Patchett Martin 208 To the Same 209 To Sidney Colvin 211 To the Same 212 To Thomas Stevenson 213 To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 215 To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 215 To the Same 216 To W. E. Henley 217 To Charles Baxter 217 To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 218 To W. E. Henley 219 To Edmund Gosse 219 To W. E. Henley 221 To Miss Jane Balfour 223 To Edmund Gosse 224 To Sidney Colvin 225 To Edmund Gosse 226

INTRODUCTORY 228

LETTERS-- To Sidney Colvin 230 To the Same 232 To W. E. Henley 233 To Sidney Colvin 234 To the Same 235 To Edmund Gosse 236 To W. E. Henley 238 To the Same 238 To Sidney Colvin 241 To P. G. Hamerton 242 To Edmund Gosse 243 To Sidney Colvin 244 To Edmund Gosse 245 To Sidney Colvin 247 To W. E. Henley 249 To Sidney Colvin 251 To the Same 253 To W. E. Henley 255 To the Same 256 To Sidney Colvin 258 To Edmund Gosse 260 To Charles Baxter 262 To Professor Meiklejohn 263 To W. E. Henley 265 To Sidney Colvin 267 To the Same 269 To J. W. Ferrier 269 To Edmund Gosse 271 To Dr. W. Bamford 272 To Sidney Colvin 272 To the Same 273 To the Same 274 To C. W. Stoddard 275 To Sidney Colvin 276

INTRODUCTORY 279

LETTERS-- To Sidney Colvin 284 To Charles Baxter 285 To Isobel Strong 286 To A. G. Dew-Smith 287 To Thomas Stevenson 290 To Sidney Colvin 291 To Edmund Gosse 292 To the Same 293 To Charles Warren Stoddard 294 To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 296 To Sidney Colvin 297 To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 298 To Sidney Colvin 300 To Horatio F. Brown 303 To the Same 303 To the Same 304 To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 305 To Edmund Gosse 306 To Sidney Colvin 308 To Professor AEneas Mackay 309 To the Same 309 To Sidney Colvin 310 To Edmund Gosse 311 To Charles J. Guthrie 312 To the Same 312 To Edmund Gosse 313 To P. G. Hamerton 314 To Sidney Colvin 316 To W. E. Henley 317 To the Same 319 To Sidney Colvin 320 To Dr. Alexander Japp 321 To Mrs. Sitwell 323 To Edmund Gosse 324 To the Same 325 To the Same 325 To W. E. Henley 326 To Dr. Alexander Japp 327 To W. E. Henley 328 To the Same 330 To Thomas Stevenson 331 To Edmund Gosse 332 To W. E. Henley 333 To P. G. Hamerton 335 To Charles Baxter 336 To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 337 To Edmund Gosse 338 To Sidney Colvin 339 To Alison Cunningham 340 To Charles Baxter 341 To W. E. Henley 341 To the Same 342 To Alexander Ireland 345 To Mrs. Gosse 347 To Sidney Colvin 349 To Edmund Gosse 350 To Dr. Alexander Japp 351 To the Same 351 To W. E. Henley 352 To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 354 To R. A. M. Stevenson 356 To Trevor Haddon 357 To Edmund Gosse 359 To Trevor Haddon 360 To Edmund Gosse 360 To W. E. Henley 361

INTRODUCTION

The circumstances which have made me responsible for selecting and editing the correspondence of Robert Louis Stevenson are the following. He was for many years my closest friend. We first met in 1873, when he was in his twenty-third year and I in my twenty-ninth, at the place and in the manner mentioned at page 54 of this volume. It was my good fortune then to be of use to him, partly by such technical hints as even the most brilliant beginner may take from an older hand, partly by recommending him to editors--first, if I remember right, to Mr. Hamerton and Mr. Richmond Seeley, of the Portfolio, then in succession to Mr. George Grove , Mr. Leslie Stephen , and Dr. Appleton ; and somewhat, lastly, by helping to raise him in the estimation of parents who loved but for the moment failed to understand him. It belonged to the richness of his nature to repay in all things much for little, , and from these early relations sprang the affection and confidence, to me inestimable, of which the following correspondence bears evidence.

"Another advocate on the same side, in the United States, has made much of the supposed dependence of this author on his models, and classed him among writers whose inspiration is imitative and second-hand. But this is to be quite misled by the well-known passage of Stevenson's own, in which he speaks of himself as having in his prentice years played the 'sedulous ape' to many writers of different styles and periods. In doing this he was not seeking inspiration, but simply practising the use of the tools which were to help him to express his own inspirations. Truly he was always much of a reader: but it was life, not books, that always in the first degree allured and taught him.

'He loved of life the myriad sides, Pain, prayer, or pleasure, act or sleep, As wallowing narwhals love the deep'--

"Not by reason, then, of 'externality,' for sure, nor yet of imitativeness, will this writer lose his hold on the attention and regard of his countrymen. The debate, before his place in literature is settled, must rather turn on other points: as whether the genial essayist and egoist or the romantic inventor and narrator was the stronger in him--whether the Montaigne and Pepys elements prevailed in his literary composition or the Scott and Dumas elements--a question indeed which among those who care for him most has always been at issue. Or again, what degree of true inspiring and illuminating power belongs to the gospel, or gospels, airily encouraging or gravely didactic, which are set forth in the essays with so captivating a grace? Or whether in romance and tale he had a power of inventing and constructing a whole fable comparable to his admitted power of conceiving and presenting single scenes and situations in a manner which stamps them indelibly on the reader's mind? And whether his figures are sustained continuously by the true spontaneous breath of creation, or are but transitorily animated at happy moments by flashes of spiritual and dramatic insight, aided by the conscious devices of his singularly adroit and spirited art? These are questions which no criticism but that of time can solve. To contend, as some do, that strong creative impulse and so keen an artistic self-consciousness as Stevenson's was cannot exist together, is quite idle. The truth, of course, is that the deep-seated energies of imaginative creation are found sometimes in combination, and sometimes not in combination, with an artistic intelligence thus keenly conscious of its own purpose and watchful of its own working.

"Once more, it may be questioned whether, among the many varieties of work which Stevenson has left, all distinguished by a grace and precision of workmanship which are the rarest qualities in English art, there are any which can be pointed to as absolute masterpieces, such as the future cannot be expected to let die. Let the future decide. What is certain is that posterity must either be very well or very ill occupied if it can consent to give up so much sound entertainment, and better than entertainment, as this writer afforded his contemporaries. In the meantime, among judicious readers on both sides of the Atlantic, Stevenson stands, I think it may safely be said, as a true master of English prose; scarcely surpassed for the union of lenity and lucidity with suggestive pregnancy and poetic animation; for harmony of cadence and the well-knit structure of sentences; and for the art of imparting to words the vital quality of things, and making them convey the precise--sometimes, let it be granted, the too curiously precise--expression of the very shade and colour of the thought, feeling, or vision in his mind. He stands, moreover, as the writer who, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, has handled with the most of freshness and inspiriting power the widest range of established literary forms--the moral, critical, and personal essay, travels sentimental and other, romances and short tales both historical and modern, parables and tales of mystery, boys' stories of adventure, memoirs--nor let lyrical and meditative verse both English and Scottish, and especially nursery verse, a new vein for genius to work in, be forgotten. To some of these forms Stevenson gave quite new life; through all alike he expressed vividly an extremely personal way of seeing and being, a sense of nature and romance, of the aspects of human existence and problems of human conduct, which was essentially his own. And in so doing he contrived to make friends and even lovers of his readers. Those whom he attracts at all are drawn to him over and over again, finding familiarity not lessen but increase the charm of his work, and desiring ever closer intimacy with the spirit and personality which they divine behind it.

"As to the fitting scale, then, on which to treat the memory of a man who fills five years after his death such a place as this in the general regard, and who has desired that a selection from his letters shall be made public, the word 'selection' has evidently to be given a pretty liberal interpretation. Readers, it must be supposed, will scarce be content without the opportunity of a fairly ample intercourse with such a man as he was accustomed to reveal himself in writing to his familiars. In choosing from among the material before me" , "I have used the best discretion that I could. Stevenson's feelings and relations throughout life were in almost all directions so warm and kindly, that very little had to be suppressed from fear of giving pain. On the other hand, he drew people towards him with so much confidence and affection, and met their openness with so much of his own, that an editor could not but feel the frequent risk of inviting readers to trespass too far on purely private affairs and feelings, including those of the living. This was a point upon which in his lifetime he felt strongly. That excellent critic, Mr. Walter Raleigh, has noticed, as one of the merits of Stevenson's personal essays and accounts of travel, that few men have written more or more attractively of themselves without ever taking the public unduly into familiarity or overstepping proper bounds of reticence. Public prying into private lives, the propagation of gossip by the press, and printing of private letters during the writer's lifetime, were things he hated. Once, indeed, he very superfluously gave himself a dangerous cold, by dancing before a bonfire in his garden at the news of a 'society' editor having been committed to prison; and the only approach to a difference he ever had with one of his lifelong friends arose from the publication, without permission, of one of his letters written during his first Pacific voyage.

Much, of course, remains and ought to remain unprinted. Some of the outpourings of the early time are too sacred and intimate for publicity. Many of the letters of his maturer years are dry business letters of no general interest: many others are mere scraps tossed in jest to his familiars and full of catchwords and code-words current in their talk but meaningless to outsiders. Above all, many have to be omitted because they deal with the intimate affairs of private persons. Stevenson has been sometimes called an egoist, as though he had been one in the practical sense as well as in the sense of taking a lively interest in his own moods and doings. Nothing can be more untrue. The letters printed in these volumes are indeed for the most part about himself: but it was of himself that his correspondents of all things most cared to hear. If the letters concerned with the private affairs of other people could be printed, as of course they cannot, the balance would come more than even. We should see him throwing himself with sympathetic ardour and without thought of self into the cares and interests of his correspondents, and should learn to recognise him as having been truly the helper in many a relation where he might naturally have been taken for the person helped.

As to the form in which the Letters are now presented, they fill three volumes instead of the four of the 1911 edition, the division into fourteen sections according to date being retained. As to the text, it is faithful to the original except in so far as I have freely used the editorial privilege of omission when I thought it desirable, and as I have not felt myself bound to reproduce slips and oddities, however characteristic, of spelling. In formal matters like the use of quote-marks, italics, and so forth, I have adopted a more uniform practice than his, which was very casual and variable.

"to hear The great bell beating far and near-- The odd, unknown, enchanted gong That on the road hales men along, That from the mountain calls afar, That lures the vessel from a star, And with a still, aerial sound Makes all the earth enchanted ground."

He had not only the poet's mind but the poet's senses: in youth ginger was only too hot in his mouth, and the chimes at midnight only too favourite a music. At the same time he was not less a born preacher and moralist and son of the Covenanters after his fashion. He had about him, as has been said, little spirit of social or other conformity; but an active and searching private conscience kept him for ever calling in question both the grounds of his own conduct and the validity of the accepted codes and compromises of society. He must try to work out a scheme of morality suitable to his own case and temperament, which found the prohibitory law of Moses chill and uninspiring, but in the Sermon on the Mount a strong incentive to all those impulses of pity and charity to which his heart was prone. In early days his sense of social injustice and the inequalities of human opportunity made him inwardly much of a rebel, who would have embraced and acted on theories of socialism or communism, could he have found any that did not seem to him at variance with ineradicable instincts of human nature. All his life the artist and the moralist in him alike were in rebellion against the bourgeois spirit,--against timid, negative, and shuffling substitutes for active and courageous well-doing,--and declined to worship at the shrine of what he called the bestial goddesses Comfort and Respectability. The moralist in him helped the artist by backing with the force of a highly sensitive conscience his instinctive love of perfection in his work. The artist qualified the moralist by discountenancing any preference for the harsh, the sour, or the self-mortifying forms of virtue, and encouraging the love for all tender or heroic, glowing, generous, and cheerful forms.

There was yet another and very different side to Stevenson which struck others more than it struck myself, namely, that of the freakish or elvish, irresponsible madcap or jester which sometimes appeared in him. It is true that his demoniac quickness of wit and intelligence suggested occasionally a "spirit of air and fire" rather than one of earth; that he was abundantly given to all kinds of quirk and laughter; and that there was no jest he would not make and relish. The late Mr. J. A. Symonds always called him Sprite; qualifying the name, however, by the epithets "most fantastic, but most human." To me the essential humanity was always the thing most apparent. In a fire well nourished of seasoned ship-timber, the flames glance fantastically and of many colours, but the glow at heart is ever deep and strong; it was at such a glow that the friends of Stevenson were accustomed to warm their hands, while they admired and were entertained by the shifting lights.

It was only in company, as I have said, that all these many lights and colours could be seen in full play. He would begin no matter how--perhaps with a jest at some absurd adventure of his own, perhaps with the recitation, in his vibrating voice and full Scotch accent, of some snatch of poetry that was haunting him, perhaps with a rhapsody of analytic delight over some minute accident of beauty or expressiveness that had struck him in man, woman, child, or external nature. And forthwith the floodgates would be opened, and the talk would stream on in endless, never importunate, flood and variety. A hundred fictitious characters would be invented and launched on their imaginary careers; a hundred ingenious problems of conduct and cases of honour would be set and solved; romantic voyages would be planned and followed out in vision, with a thousand incidents; the possibilities of life and art would be illuminated with search-lights of bewildering range and penetration, sober argument and high poetic eloquence alternating with coruscations of insanely apposite slang--the earthiest jape anon shooting up into the empyrean and changing into the most ethereal fantasy--the stalest and most vulgarised forms of speech gaining brilliancy and illuminating power from some hitherto undreamt-of application--and all the while an atmosphere of goodwill diffusing itself from the speaker, a glow of eager benignity and affectionate laughter emanating from his presence, till every one about him seemed to catch something of his own gift and inspiration. This sympathetic power of inspiring others was the special and distinguishing note of Stevenson's conversation. He would keep a houseful or a single companion entertained all day, and day after day and half the nights, yet never seemed to monopolise the talk or absorb it; rather he helped every one about him to discover and to exercise unexpected powers of their own.

Imagine all this helped by the most speaking of presences: a steady, penetrating fire in the brown, wide-set eyes, a compelling power and richness in the smile; courteous, waving gestures of the arms and long, nervous hands, a lit cigarette generally held between the fingers; continual rapid shiftings and pacings to and fro as he conversed: rapid, but not flurried nor awkward, for there was a grace in his attenuated but well-carried figure, and his movements were light, deft, and full of spring. There was something for strangers, and even for friends, to get over in the queer garments which in youth it was his whim to wear--the badge, as they always seemed to me, partly of a genuine carelessness, certainly of a genuine lack of cash , partly of a deliberate detachment from any particular social class or caste, partly of his love of pickles and adventures, which he thought befel a man thus attired more readily than another. But this slender, slovenly, nondescript apparition, long-visaged and long-haired, had only to speak in order to be recognised in the first minute for a witty and charming gentleman, and within the first five for a master spirit and man of genius. There were, indeed, certain stolidly conventional and superciliously official kinds of persons, both at home and abroad, who were incapable of looking beyond the clothes, and eyed him always with frozen suspicion. This attitude used sometimes in youth to drive him into fits of flaming anger, which put him helplessly at a disadvantage unless, or until, he could call the sense of humour to his help. Apart from these his human charm was the same for all kinds of people, without distinction of class or caste; for worldly-wise old great ladies, whom he reminded of famous poets in their youth; for his brother artists and men of letters, perhaps, above all; for the ordinary clubman; for his physicians, who could never do enough for him; for domestic servants, who adored him; for the English policeman even, on whom he often tried, quite in vain, to pass himself as one of the criminal classes; for the shepherd, the street arab, or the tramp, the common seaman, the beach-comber, or the Polynesian high-chief. Even in the imposed silence and restraint of extreme sickness the power and attraction of the man made themselves felt, and there seemed to be more vitality and fire of the spirit in him as he lay exhausted and speechless in bed than in an ordinary roomful of people in health.

But I have strayed from my purpose, which was only to indicate that in the best of these letters of Stevenson's you have some echo, far away indeed, but yet the nearest, of his talk--talk which could not possibly be taken down, and of which nothing remains save in the memory of his friends an impression magical and never to be effaced.

SIDNEY COLVIN.

FOOTNOTES:

From 1876 to 1879--see p. 185.

The point was one on which Stevenson himself felt strongly. In a letter of instructions to his wife found among his posthumous papers he writes: "It is never worth while to inflict pain upon a snail for any literary purpose; and where events may appear to be favourable to me and contrary to others, I would rather be misunderstood than cause a pang to any one whom I have known, far less whom I have loved." Whether an editor or biographer would be justified in carrying out this principle to the full may perhaps be doubted.

THE LETTERS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

THE LETTERS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH

TRAVELS AND EXCURSIONS

The following section consists chiefly of extracts from the correspondence and journals addressed by Louis Stevenson, as a lad of eighteen to twenty-two, to his father and mother during summer excursions to the Scottish coast or to the Continent. There exist enough of them to fill a volume; but it is not in letters of this kind to his family that a young man unbosoms himself most freely, and these are perhaps not quite devoid of the qualities of the guide-book and the descriptive exercise. Nevertheless they seem to me to contain enough signs of the future master-writer, enough of character, observation, and skill in expression, to make a certain number worth giving by way of an opening chapter to the present book. Among them are interspersed four or five of a different character addressed to other correspondents, and chiefly to his lifelong friend and intimate, Mr. Charles Baxter.

In January 1853 Stevenson's parents moved to Inverleith Terrace, and in May 1857 to 17 Heriot Row, which continued to be their Edinburgh home until the death of Thomas Stevenson in 1887. Much of the boy's time was also spent in the manse of Colinton on the Water of Leith, the home of his maternal grandfather. Ill-health prevented him getting much regular or continuous schooling. He attended first a preparatory school kept by a Mr. Henderson in India Street; and next the Edinburgh Academy.

Schooling was interrupted in the end of 1862 and first half of 1863 by excursions with his parents to Germany, the Riviera, and Italy. The love of wandering, which was a rooted passion in Stevenson's nature, thus began early to find satisfaction. For a few months in the autumn of 1863, when his parents had been ordered for a second time to Mentone for the sake of his mother's health, he was sent to a boarding-school kept by a Mr. Wyatt at Spring Grove, near London. It is not my intention to treat the reader to the series of childish and boyish letters of these days which parental fondness has preserved. But here is one written from his English school when he was about thirteen, which is both amusing in itself and had a certain influence on his destiny, inasmuch as his appeal led to his being taken out to join his parents on the French Riviera; which from these days of his boyhood he never ceased to love, and for which the longing, amid the gloom of Edinburgh winters, often afterwards gripped him by the heart.

MA CHERE MAMAN,--Jai recu votre lettre Aujourdhui et comme le jour prochaine est mon jour de naisance je vous ?crit ce lettre. Ma grande gatteaux est arriv? il leve 12 livres et demi le prix etait 17 shillings. Sur la soir?e de Monseigneur Faux il y etait quelques belles feux d'artifice. Mais les polissons entrent dans notre champ et nos feux d'artifice et handkerchiefs disappeared quickly, but we charged them out of the field. Je suis presque driven mad par une bruit terrible tous les garcons kik up comme grand un bruit qu'il est possible. I hope you will find your house at Mentone nice. I have been obliged to stop from writing by the want of a pen, but now I have one, so I will continue.

My dear papa, you told me to tell you whenever I was miserable. I do not feel well, and I wish to get home. Do take me with you.

R. STEVENSON.

This young French scholar has yet, it will be discerned, a good way to travel; in later days he acquired a complete reading and speaking, with a less complete writing, mastery of the language, and was as much at home with French ways of thought and life as with English.

For one more specimen of his boyish style, it may be not amiss to give the text of another appeal which dates from two and a half years later, and is also typical of much in his life's conditions both then and later:--

RESPECTED PATERNAL RELATIVE,--I write to make a request of the most moderate nature. Every year I have cost you an enormous--nay, elephantine--sum of money for drugs and physician's fees, and the most expensive time of the twelve months was March.

But this year the biting Oriental blasts, the howling tempests, and the general ailments of the human race have been successfully braved by yours truly.

Does not this deserve remuneration?

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet