Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson — Volume 2 by Robert Louis Stevenson
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page 32 of 426 (07%)
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after all; 'tis so quaint and pretty and clever and simple and
French, and gives such a good sight of Fleeming: the plum of the book, I think. You misunderstood me in one point: I always hoped to found such a society; that was the outside of my dream, and would mean entire success. BUT - I cannot play Peter the Hermit. In these days of the Fleet Street journalist, I cannot send out better men than myself, with wives or mothers just as good as mine, and sisters (I may at least say) better, to a danger and a long-drawn dreariness that I do not share. My wife says it's cowardice; what brave men are the leader-writers! Call it cowardice; it is mine. Mind you, I may end by trying to do it by the pen only: I shall not love myself if I do; and is it ever a good thing to do a thing for which you despise yourself? - even in the doing? And if the thing you do is to call upon others to do the thing you neglect? I have never dared to say what I feel about men's lives, because my own was in the wrong: shall I dare to send them to death? The physician must heal himself; he must honestly TRY the path he recommends: if he does not even try, should he not be silent? I thank you very heartily for your letter, and for the seriousness you brought to it. You know, I think when a serious thing is your own, you keep a saner man by laughing at it and yourself as you go. So I do not write possibly with all the really somewhat sickened gravity I feel. And indeed, what with the book, and this business to which I referred, and Ireland, I am scarcely in an enviable state. Well, I ought to be glad, after ten years of the worst training on earth - valetudinarianism - that I can still be troubled by a duty. You shall hear more in time; so far, I am at |
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