INNUENDO OF THE SCENE (PAVILION ON THE LINKS)

   The country, I have said, was mixed sand hill and links, LINKS being a Scottish name for sand which has ceased drifting and become more or less solidly covered with turf. The pavilion stood on an even space: a little behind it, the wood began in a hedge of elders huddled together by the wind; in front, a few tumbled sand hills stood between it and the sea. An outcropping of rock had formed a bastion for the sand, so that there was here a promontory in the coast line between two shallow bays; and just beyond the tides, the rock again cropped out and formed an islet of small dimensions but strikingly designed. The quicksands were of great extent at low water, and had an infamous reputation in the country. Close in shore, between the islet and the promontory, it was said they would swallow a man in four minutes and a half; but there may have been little ground for this precision. The district was alive with rabbits, and haunted by gulls which made a continual piping about the pavilion. On summer days the outlook was bright and even gladsome; but at sundown in September, with a high wind, and a heavy surf rolling in close along the links, the place told of nothing but dead mariners and sea disaster. A ship beating to windward on the horizon, and a huge truncheon of wreck half buried in the sands at my feet, 
completed the innuendo of the scene.  

   Note:  Ever since I saw Gerard Manley Hopkins' letter to Robert Bridges from October 28, 1886, posing the future poet laureate the question: "Have you read the Pavilion on the Links in the volume of Arabian Nights (not one of them)?  The absconding banker is admirably characterised, the horror is nature itself, and the whole piece is genius from beginning to end.", I have wanted to experience Robert Louis Stevenson's story.  It took me a bit of searching to locate a non-electronic copy, but's it's finally mine and I'm happily diving in.

  

Excerpt:  Robert Louis Stevenson,  “The Pavilion On The Links,” first published in Cornhill Magazine 42-43, London (Sept-Oct 1880).

SO FINE (GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS ON STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE)

Gerard Manley Hopkins

     ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ I have read.  You speak of the ‘gross absurdity’ of the interchange.  Enough that it is impossible and might perhaps have been a little better masked: it must be connived at, and it gives rise to a fine situation.  It is not more impossible than fairies, giants, heathen gods, and lots of things that literature teems with – and none more than yours.  You are certainly wrong about Hyde being overdrawn: my Hyde is worse.  The trampling scene is perhaps a convention: he was thinking of something unsuitable for fiction.  I can by no means grant that the characters are not characterized, though how deep the springs of their surface action are I am not yet clear.  But the superficial touches of character are admirable: how can you be so blind as not to see them?  e.g.  Utterson frowning, biting the end of this finger, and saying to the butler ‘This is a strange tale you tell me, my man, a very strange tale.’  And Dr. Lanyon:  ‘I used to like it, sir [life]; yes sir, I liked it.  Sometimes I think if we knew all’ etc.   These are worthy of Shakespeare. 

Excerpt:  Gerard Manley Hopkins, In Defense of Treasure Island and Jekyll and Hyde, from a letter to Robert Bridges, October 28, 1886.

Robert Bridges


The Byrds: So Fine (Link)