POETS Day! Mirrors and Robert Louis Stevenson

Illustration by Rene Sears

I have a $50 Australian coin. It’s a 1/20 oz. gold coin from 2002. I’ve found its twin on eBay and a few other sites selling for around $210 US. It was in a desk drawer and I have no idea how it got there or what it was doing previously. Boom. Here’s a weird coin to look up on the internet.

As far as I can tell, these coins were issued with various weights of gold content, mine being the lowest, and sold to investors. Nobody in Australia is paying for a round of tappy waddles with one of these. I paid in one and two pound coins in England and it was awkward. Every so often someone starts making noise about doing away with the American paper dollar and replacing it with a coin. They say that the coin will last longer and reduce something bad. I’m against it. I don’t like change.

That’s it. I just wanted to say “I don’t like change” so it had a double meaning. It’s not even a joke, really. It was a stupid waste of time and you read it. That’s what happens at work on Friday afternoons. You waste time. Cut it out and just leave already. You’re not going to do anything productive between now and quitting time. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

But first, a little verse.

***

Robert Louis Stevenson begins his Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with a dedication.

To Katherine de Mattos

It’s ill to loose the bands that God decreed to bind;
Still we will be the children of the heather and the wind.
Far away from home, O it’s still for you and me
That the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie.

Katherine, nee Stevenson, was a cousin of Robert’s. I don’t know the politics of the Stevenson family or even if there was a politic that applied evenly enough to qualify as that of the family. It may be that they were anti-Fabians as a rule, but it is certain that they were, pace Katherine, anti one particular well-known Fabian in W.S. de Mattos. Despite their objections, Katherine married him. His determined and adaptative infidelity split them apart, thus “It’s ill to loose the bands that God decreed to bind.”

Multiple sources can claim to have inspired Stevenson in writing Dr. Jekyll. I’ve written here about James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner and the double life of William Brodie which scandalized late 18^th Century Edinburgh. Katherine was close to Stevenson. He would certainly have been abreast of her marital troubles and they came about before Dr. Jekyll was published. In the aftermath he helped her start a career as a journalist. It’s tempting to say that her husband’s carousing made its way into thinking about duality. Maybe.

When I was a real estate agent – and this started on day one – I was suddenly aware of “for sale” signs. They’d been background to me before, but hand in hand with a new interest came a new perception. They were everywhere. So-and-so was in competition with what’s-her-name for Forest Park and Mountain Brook over a certain size went to a handful of Rotary Club oligarchs whose name plates were suddenly leaping out at me. My wife told me that when she was pregnant, suddenly the world was pregnant too. There were extended bellies shopping at Publix, awkwardly getting out of restaurant booths, being walked by their dogs. Everywhere.

My suspicion is that Stevenson noted a great deal of duplicitous behaviors that informed his thinking when he was planning out his book, but the Matteos would have been more confirmation of a phenomenon than inspiration. Hogg’s novel, Brodie, and Scottish Calvinism were central, but it’s interesting to spot themes in his other writings, note things that pop up more than once.

Katherine
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

We see you as we see a face
That trembles in a forest place
Upon the mirror of a pool
Forever quiet, clear and cool;
And in the wayward glass, appears
To hover between smiles and tears,
Elfin and human, airy and true,
And backed by the reflected blue.

Stevenson’s wife Fanny wrote a short story called “The Nixie.” William Ernest Henley, a cousin common to Katherine and Louis and the father of Margaret Henley whom J.M. Barrie based Wendy on in his Peter Pan, claimed Fanny took the story from a conversation with Katherine. In a letter, Henley asked why there wasn’t a “double signature” at the end of the story. Things got ugly between all parties and as far as I can tell, that was it. They were done with each other. I’d assumed that Stevenson wrote the poem about a sad memory of a friend whose company and he no longer kept and was left with only a remembered image. That made sense; “Forever quiet, clear and cool.”

As it turns out, the poem was published in an 1887 collection called Underwoods. The plagiarism accusations weren’t flying until 1888. It’s an image of a beautiful friend whose thoughts can only be guessed at.

That’s not the only mention of reflections in Underwoods.

To Minnie
With a hand-glass

A PICTURE-FRAME for you to fill,
A paltry setting for your face,
A thing that has no worth until
You lend it something of your grace,

I send (unhappy I that sing
Laid by awhile upon the shelf)
Because I would not send a thing
Less charming than you are yourself.

And happier than I, alas!
(Dumb thing, I envy its delight)
‘Twill wish you well, the looking-glass,
and look you in the face to-night.

Minnie was yet another cousin, this one a former nursery mate of Stevenson’s who moved to India and, at least it seems from the poem, was much missed. It’s a different view, if you’ll excuse the pun. In “To Katherine” we’re given only a beautiful image. In this case the mirror will be imbued with “grace.” It seems as if the image will enliven the mirror. It’s a very different expectation than we were given with “Forever quiet, clear and cool.”

That’s not the first poem he wrote for his nursery mate, nor is it the first poem he titled “To Minnie.” He wrote to her in A Child’s Garden of Verse (1885). He goes on for a few pages about their early life together, but this caught my eye.

from To Minnie

Smiling and kind, you grace a shelf
Too high for me to reach myself.
Reach down a hand, my dear, and take
These rhymes for old acquaintance’ sake.

The shelf and grace, again. It’s very pretty. She must have played with the mirror as a child and memorably so, at least to him. He can’t recreate her so in the later poem he sends the mirror in hope that his recollection continues, even though it’s at a distance, disconnected from him. Probably so she’d be happy too, but I like the idea he’s rejuvenating a joy.

This last one’s from Underwoods as well, and it makes me giggle. In the notes of Robert Louis Stevenson: Collected Poems, editor Janet Adam Smith includes a brief story.

“Henry James, a regular evening visitor at Skerryvore, Stevenson’s house in Bournmouth, had sent them a mirror which they hung in the drawing room. Mrs. Stevenson wrote to James on 25 February, 1886:

‘A magic mirror has come to us which seems to reflect not only our own plain faces, but the kindly one of a friend entwined in the midst of all sorts of pleasant memories. Louis felt that verse alone woud fitly convey his sentiments concerning this beautiful present, but his muse, I believe, has not yet responded to his call!’

Ten days later, on 7 March, Stevenson sent this poem, introduced by, ‘This is what the glass says.’”

You can hear the argument in her note. I imagine it carrying on as he sits at a desk while she

“When are you going to thank them for the mirror?”

“I’m working on it.”

“It’s been days. They think we don’t like it.”

“I’m working on it.”

“What must they think of us? Who doesn’t thank people for a kindly gift?”

“You’re starting to sound a lot like Katherine.”

Here’s the belated thank you poem. In the book I have, the mentioned Collected Poems, it’s broken into stanzas, but I’ve found it variously online presented without breaks. I trust Janet Adam Smith more than I do people like me, so I’ve presented as she did with one exception. The poem bridges two pages and I don’t know if there should be a stanza break between the last line on 128 and the first line on 129 or not. I tried to see if any other poems in the book would give me a hint, but I couldn’t find any indicators one way or the other. I’ve put a “——-” to indicate where uncertainty lies.

The Mirror Speaks

WHERE the bells peal far at sea
Cunning fingers fashioned me.
There on palace walls I hung
While that Cunsuelo sung;
But I heard, though I listened well,
Never a note, never a trill,
Never a beat of the chiming bell.
There I hung and looked, and there
In my gray face, faces fair
Shone from under shining hair.
———
Well I saw the poising head,
But the lips moved and nothing said;
And when lights were in the hall,
Silent moved the dancers all.

So awhile I glowed, and then
Fell on dusty days and men;
Long I slumbered packed in straw,
Long I none but dealers saw;
Till before my silent eye
One that sees came passing by.

Now with an outlandish grace,
To the sparkling fire I face
In the blue room at Skerryvore;
Where I wait until the door
Open, and the Prince of Men,
Henry James, shall come again.

Underwoods came out a year after Dr. Jekyll was published. Not all of the poems are about reflected images and mirrors. To my knowledge it’s just the three above, but I miss things. When writing Dr. Jekyll, he was likely thinking about dualism, doppelgangers, charlatans, and hidden desires. I bet reflections came in to it, as did opposites, but I figured he was a pregnant real estate agent at the time.

It’s interesting to guess what he was thinking. T.S. Eliot used cut lines from his play Murder In The Cathedral in “Burnt Norton,” the first of his Four Quartets. Never let anything go to waste. I can see mirror thoughts as Dr. Jekyll scraps. It’s fun to try to put together what was in Stevenson’s mind.