Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson | Page 9

a pleasurable surprise. The
desultory crackling of the whin-pods[23] in the afternoon sun usurped
the ear. The hot, sweet breath of the bank, that had been saturated all
day long with sunshine, and now exhaled it into my face, was like the
breath of a fellow-creature. I remember that I was haunted by two lines
of French verse; in some dumb way they seemed to fit my surroundings
and give expression to the contentment that was in me, and I kept
repeating to myself--
"Mon coeur est un luth suspendu,[24] Sitôt qu'on le touche, il résonne."
I can give no reason why these lines came to me at this time; and for
that very cause I repeat them here. For all I know, they may serve to
complete the impression in the mind of the reader, as they were
certainly a part of it for me.
And this happened to me in the place of all others where I liked least to
stay. When I think of it I grow ashamed of my own ingratitude. "Out of
the strong came forth sweetness."[25] There, in the bleak and gusty
North, I received, perhaps, my strongest impression of peace. I saw the
sea to be great and calm; and the earth, in that little corner, was all alive
and friendly to me. So, wherever a man is, he will find something to
please and pacify him: in the town he will meet pleasant faces of men
and women, and see beautiful flowers at a window, or hear a cage-bird
singing at the corner of the gloomiest street; and for the country, there
is no country without some amenity--let him only look for it in the right
spirit, and he will surely find.
NOTES
This article first appeared in the _Portfolio_, for November 1874, and
was not reprinted until two years after Stevenson's death, in 1896, when
it was included in the Miscellanies (Edinburgh Edition, _Miscellanies_,
Vol. IV, pp. 131-142). The editor of the Portfolio was the well-known
art critic, Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1834-1894), author of the
Intellectual Life (1873). Just one year before, Stevenson had had

printed in the Portfolio his first contribution to any periodical, Roads.
Although The Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places attracted scarcely any
attention on its first appearance, and has since become practically
forgotten, there is perhaps no better essay among his earlier works with
which to begin a study of his personality, temperament, and style. In its
cheerful optimism this article is particularly characteristic of its author.
It should be remembered that when this essay was first printed,
Stevenson was only twenty-four years old.
[Note 1: _It is a difficult matter_, etc. The appreciation of nature is a
quite modern taste, for although people have always loved the scenery
which reminds them of home, it was not at all fashionable in England
to love nature for its own sake before 1740. Thomas Gray was the first
person in Europe who seems to have exhibited a real love of mountains
(see his _Letters_). A study of the development of the appreciation of
nature before and after Wordsworth (England's greatest nature poet) is
exceedingly interesting. See Myra Reynolds, The Treatment of Nature
in English Poetry between Pope and Wordsworth (1896).]
[Note 2: _This discipline in scenery._ Note what is said on this subject
in Browning's extraordinary poem, _Fra Lippo Lippi_, vs. 300-302.
"For, don't you mark? We're made so that we love First when we see
them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared
to see."]
[Note 3: _Brantôme quaintly tells us, "fait des discours en soi pour se
soutenir en chemin."_ Freely translated, "the traveller talks to himself
to keep up his courage on the road." Pierre de Bourdeille, Abbé de
Brantôme, (cir. 1534-1614), travelled all over Europe. His works were
not published till long after his death, in 1665. Several complete
editions of his writings in numerous volumes have appeared in the
nineteenth century, one edited by the famous writer, Prosper Mérimée.]
[Note 4: _We are provocative of beauty._ Compare again, _Fra Lippo
Lippi_, vs. 215 et seq.
"Or say there's beauty with no soul at all-- (I never saw it--put the case
the same--) If you get simple beauty and nought else, You get about the
best thing God invents: That's somewhat: and you'll find the soul you
have missed, Within yourself, when you return him thanks."]
[Note 5: _Callot, or Sadeler, or Paul Brill._ Jacques Callot was an
eminent French artist of the XVII century, born at Nancy in 1592, died

1635. Matthaeus and Paul Brill were two celebrated Dutch painters.
Paul, the younger brother of Matthaeus, was born about 1555, and died
in 1626. His development in landscape-painting was remarkable. Gilles
Sadeler, born at Antwerp 1570, died at Prague 1629, a famous artist,