The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson — Volume 1

Оглавление

Роберт Стивенсон. The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson — Volume 1

CHAPTER I — STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH, TRAVELS AND EXCURSIONS, 1868-1873

CHAPTER II — STUDENT DAYS — ORDERED SOUTH, SEPTEMBER 1873-JULY 1875

CHAPTER III — ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR, EDINBURGH — PARIS — FONTAINEBLEAU, JULY 1875-JULY 1879

CHAPTER IV — THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT, MONTEREY AND SAN FRANCISCO, JULY 1879-JULY 1880

CHAPTER V — ALPINE WINTERS AND HIGHLAND SUMMERS, AUGUST 1880- OCTOBER 1882

CHAPTER VI — MARSEILLES AND HYERES, OCTOBER 1882-AUGUST 1884

CHAPTER VII — LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH, SEPTEMBER 1884-DECEMBER 1885

Отрывок из книги

Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON

MY DEAR MOTHER, — I am too happy to be much of a correspondent. Yesterday we were away to Melford and Lavenham, both exceptionally placid, beautiful old English towns. Melford scattered all round a big green, with an Elizabethan Hall and Park, great screens of trees that seem twice as high as trees should seem, and everything else like what ought to be in a novel, and what one never expects to see in reality, made me cry out how good we were to live in Scotland, for the many hundredth time. I cannot get over my astonishment — indeed, it increases every day — at the hopeless gulf that there is between England and Scotland, and English and Scotch. Nothing is the same; and I feel as strange and outlandish here as I do in France or Germany. Everything by the wayside, in the houses, or about the people, strikes me with an unexpected unfamiliarity: I walk among surprises, for just where you think you have them, something wrong turns up.

.....

Whenever Nelitchka cries — and she never cries except from pain — all that one has to do is to start 'Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre.' She cannot resist the attraction; she is drawn through her sobs into the air; and in a moment there is Nelly singing, with the glad look that comes into her face always when she sings, and all the tears and pain forgotten.

It is wonderful, before I shut this up, how that child remains ever interesting to me. Nothing can stale her infinite variety; and yet it is not very various. You see her thinking what she is to do or to say next, with a funny grave air of reserve, and then the face breaks up into a smile, and it is probably 'Berecchino!' said with that sudden little jump of the voice that one knows in children, as the escape of a jack-in-the-box, and, somehow, I am quite happy after that!

.....