That Stevenson should make attempts to play the piano was only natural, but in that accomplishment he does not seem to have proceeded very far. When he was at Bournemouth in 1886, he tells Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin that “I write all the morning, come down, and never leave the piano till five; write letters, dine, get down again about eight, and never leave the piano until I go to bed.” At this time the whistle was Osborne’s instrument. “You should hear Lloyd on the penny whistle and me on the piano!” Stevenson exclaimed to his father, “Dear powers, what a concerto! I now live entirely for the piano; he for the whistle; the neighbors in a radius of a furlong and a half are packing up in quest of better climes.” By his own confession, it was a case of picking out the melody with one finger! In the matter of musical arrangements he proclaims himself a purist, and yet, with charming inconsistency, announces that he is arranging certain numbers of the “Magic Flute” for “two melodious forefingers.” Clearly, it does not say much for Mr. Henley’s powers as a virtuoso that Stevenson should have “counterfeited his playing on the piano.”
But Stevenson’s particular instrument was the flageolet, the same that Johnson once bought. Miss Simpson says that his flageolet-playing was merely one of his impulsive whims, an experiment undertaken to see if he liked making music. However this may have been, there can be no doubt about his assiduity in practice; indeed, the earlier Vailima letters are full of references which show his devotion to the now somewhat despised instrument. “Played on my pipe,” “took to tootling on the flageolet,” are entries which constantly occur, the context always making it clear that “pipe” is synonymous with flageolet. “If I take to my pipe,” he writes on one occasion, “I know myself all is over for the morning.” Writing to Mr. Colvin in June, 1891, he says:—“Tell Mrs. S. I have been playing ‘Le Chant d’Amour’ lately, and have arranged it, after awful trouble, rather prettily for two pipes; and it brought her before me with an effect scarce short of hallucination. I could hear her voice in every note; yet I had forgot the air entirely, and began to pipe it from notes as something new, when I was brought up with a round turn by this reminiscence.” Generally speaking, Stevenson “tootled” by himself; but now and again he took part in concerted music with Osborne and Mrs. Strong. One day he makes music “furiously” with these two. A day or two later he writes:—“Woke at the usual time, very little work, for I was tired, and had a job for the evening—to write parts for a new instrument, a violin. Lunch, chat, and up to my place to practise; but there was no practising for me—my flageolet was gone wrong, and I had to take it all to pieces, clean it, and put it up again. As this is a most intricate job—the thing dissolves into seventeen separate members; most of these have to be fitted on their individual springs as fine as needles, and sometimes two at once with the springs shoving different ways—it took me till two.” However, he got over his difficulty, and was ready for the performance. “In the evening our violinist arrived, no great virtuoso truly, but plucky, industrious, and a good reader; and we played five pieces with huge amusement, and broke up at nine.” It goes without saying that, notwithstanding all this practice, Stevenson was exceedingly modest about his accomplishments. “Even my clumsinesses are my joy,” he said—“my woodcuts, my stumbling on the pipe.”
But we must not forget the penny whistle. That instrument seems to have at one time quite ousted the flageolet. “I am a great performer before the Lord on the penny whistle,” he writes to Miss Boodle from Saranac in 1888. “We now perform duets on two D tin whistles; it is no joke to make the bass; I think I must really send you one, which I wish you would correct. I may be said to live for these instrumental labors now; but I have always some childishness on hand.” To play a bass of any kind on a tin whistle must indeed have been “no joke.” But the instrument appears to have had quite a fascination for Stevenson at this time. He even proposed to associate it with the title of what he ultimately called “A Child’s Garden of Verses.” When he sent the manuscript for publication he could not decide about the title, but after some banter on the subject he tentatively fixed on “The Penny Whistle: Nursery Verses, &c.” Then he thought of a variation—“Penny Whistles for Small Whistlers,” and directed that the title-page should be embellished with crossed penny whistles, or “a sheaf of ’em.”
But Stevenson was more than a player of music: he actually tried his hand at composition! In one letter of the year 1886 he sets down in musical notation from memory a part of a dance air of Lully’s. About the harmony, which he has evidently made himself, he talks quite learnedly. “Where I have put an A,” he says, “is that a dominant eleventh or what? or just a seventh on the D? and if the latter, is that allowed? It sounds very funny. Never mind all my questions; if I begin about music (which is my leading ignorance and curiosity) I have always to babble questions; all my friends know me now, and take no notice whatever.” A few months later and he had composed his Opus 1. He called it a Threnody, and he sent it for criticism to his cousin, Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson, who was better versed in the art. Some plain talk on the part of the cousin apparently followed, for we find the composer urging certain points in self-justification. “There may be hidden fifths in it,” he says, “and if there are it shows how damn spontaneous the thing was. I could tinker and tic-tac-toe on a piece of paper, but scorned the act with a Threnody which was poured forth like blood and water on the groaning organ.” There was the true composer, putting down his inspiration as it came to him, and allowing it to stand as it was in defiance of all rule! Nothing daunted, he made another attempt. “Herewith another shy,” he said, “more melancholy than before, but I think not so abjectly idiotic. The musical terms seem to be as good as in Beethoven, and that, after all, is the great affair. Bar the damn bareness of the base, it looks like a real piece of music from a distance. I am proud to say it was not made one hand at a time. The base was of synchronous birth with the treble; they are of the same age, and may God have mercy on their souls.” That is too characteristically charming to be spoiled by comment.
J. C. H.
Stevensoniana
| BEING A REPRINT OF VARIOUS LITERARY AND PICTORIAL MISCELLANY ASSOCIATED WITH Robert Louis Stevenson THE MAN AND HIS WORK |
The Bankside Press
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