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The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson to his
Family and Friends - Volume 1 [of 2], by Robert Louis Stevenson, Edited by
Sidney Colvin


This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.




Title: The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson to his Family and Friends - Volume 1 [of 2]


Author: Robert Louis Stevenson

Editor: Sidney Colvin

Release Date: August 25, 2019  [eBook #622]
[This file was first posted on June 30, 1996]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)


***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LETTERS OF ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON TO HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS - VOLUME 1 [OF 2]***
</pre>
<p>Transcribed from the 1906 Methuen and Co. edition by David
Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<a href="images/cover.jpg">
<img alt=
"Book cover"
title=
"Book cover"
 src="images/cover.jpg" />
</a></p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<a href="images/fpb.jpg">
<img alt=
"Robert Louis Stevenson"
title=
"Robert Louis Stevenson"
 src="images/fps.jpg" />
</a></p>
<h1><span class="GutSmall">THE LETTERS OF</span><br />
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON<br />
<span class="GutSmall">TO HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS</span></h1>
<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">SELECTED AND
EDITED WITH</span><br />
<span class="GutSmall">NOTES AND INTRODUCTIONS BY</span></p>
<p style="text-align: center">SIDNEY COLVIN</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">VOLUME
I</span></p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p style="text-align: center">LONDON<br />
METHUEN AND CO.<br />
<span class="GutSmall">36 ESSEX STREET</span></p>
<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall"><i>Seventh
Edition</i></span></p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<table>
<tr>
<td><p><i>First Published</i></p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><i>November 1899</i></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p><i>Second Edition</i></p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><i>November 1899</i></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p><i>Third Edition</i></p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><i>April 1900</i></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p><i>Fourth Edition</i></p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><i>November 1900</i></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p><i>Fifth Edition</i></p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><i>January 1901</i></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p><i>Sixth Edition</i></p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><i>October 1902</i></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p><i>Seventh Edition</i></p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><i>December 1906</i></p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the present edition, several
minor errors and misprints have been corrected, and three new
letters have been printed, one addressed to Mr. Austin Dobson
(vol. i. p. <span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page340">340</a></span>), one to Mr. Rudyard Kipling (vol.
ii. p. 215), and one to Mr. George Meredith (vol. ii. p.
302).&nbsp; The two former replace other letters which seemed of
less interest; the last is an addition to the book.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">S. C.</p>
<h2><a name="pagev"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
v</span>CONTENTS</h2>
<table>
<tr>
<td><p style="text-align: center">&nbsp;</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
class="GutSmall"><b>PAGE</b></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>INTRODUCTION</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#pagexv">xv</a></span>&ndash;xliv</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center"><b>I</b></p>
<p style="text-align: center"><b>STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH</b><br
/>
<span class="GutSmall"><b>TRAVELS AND EXCURSIONS</b></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p><span class="smcap">Introductory</span></p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page3">3</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2"><p class="gutindent"><span
class="smcap">letters</span>:&mdash;</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page15">15</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page17">17</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page19">19</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page20">20</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Churchill Babington</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page24">24</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Alison Cunningham</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page26">26</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Charles Baxter</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page27">27</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page29">29</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page30">30</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page32">32</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page33">33</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page36">36</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page38">38</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Charles Baxter</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page40">40</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center"><a
name="pagevi"></a><span class="pagenum">p. vi</span><b>II</b></p>
<p style="text-align: center"><b>STUDENT
DAYS&mdash;</b><b><i>continued</i></b><br />
<span class="GutSmall"><b>ORDERED SOUTH</b></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2"><p><span class="smcap">Letters</span>:&mdash;</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page48">48</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Sitwell</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page49">49</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page51">51</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page53">53</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page57">57</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page61">61</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page62">62</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Sitwell</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page65">65</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page67">67</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page69">69</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Sitwell</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page71">71</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page73">73</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page74">74</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Sitwell</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page75">75</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page77">77</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page79">79</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page81">81</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page83">83</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page84">84</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Sitwell</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page85">85</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page87">87</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Sitwell</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page88">88</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page88">88</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page91">91</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page92">92</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a name="pagevii"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. vii</span>To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page95">95</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page95">95</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center"><b>III</b></p>
<p style="text-align: center"><b>ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR</b><br />
<span
class="GutSmall"><b>EDINBURGH&mdash;PARIS&mdash;FONTAINEBLEAU</b></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2"><p><span class="smcap">Letters</span>:&mdash;</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page104">104</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Sitwell</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page104">104</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page106">106</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Charles Baxter</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page109">109</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page110">110</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Sitwell</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page111">111</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. de Mattos</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page112">112</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Sitwell</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page114">114</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page115">115</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page115">115</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Sitwell</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page116">116</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page117">117</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Sitwell</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page118">118</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page119">119</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Sitwell</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page120">120</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To A. Patchett Martin</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page121">121</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page122">122</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page124">124</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page125">125</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page126">126</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page126">126</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page127">127</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a name="pageviii"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. viii</span>To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page128">128</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Charles Baxter.</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page128">128</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page129">129</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page129">129</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Edmund Gosse</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page130">130</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page132">132</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Edmund Gosse</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page134">134</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page136">136</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Edmund Gosse</p>
</td>
<td><p><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page136">136</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center"><b>IV</b></p>
<p style="text-align: center"><b>THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT</b><br />
<span class="GutSmall"><b>MONTEREY AND SAN
FRANCISCO</b></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2"><p><span class="smcap">letters</span>:&mdash;</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page144">144</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page144">144</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page146">146</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page147">147</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page148">148</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page149">149</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Edmund Gosse</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page150">150</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page151">151</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page152">152</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To P. G. Hamerton</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page155">155</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Edmund Gosse</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page156">156</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page157">157</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Edmund Gosse</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page158">158</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page160">160</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page162">162</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a name="pageix"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. ix</span>To Charles Baxter</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page164">164</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page165">165</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page167">167</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page169">169</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Edmund Gosse</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page169">169</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Dr. W. Bamford</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page170">170</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page171">171</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page171">171</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page172">172</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To C. W. Stoddard</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page173">173</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page174">174</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center"><b>V</b></p>
<p style="text-align: center"><b>ALPINE WINTERS</b><br />
<b>AND HIGHLAND SUMMERS</b></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2"><p><span class="smcap">Letters</span>:&mdash;</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To A. G. Dew-Smith</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page185">185</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page187">187</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Edmund Gosse</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page188">188</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page189">189</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To C. W. Stoddard</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page191">191</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page192">192</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page194">194</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page195">195</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page197">197</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Horatio F. Brown</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page199">199</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page200">200</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page200">200</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a name="pagex"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. x</span>To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page201">201</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Edmund Gosse</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page202">202</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page204">204</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Professor &AElig;neas Mackay</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page205">205</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page205">205</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Edmund Gosse</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page206">206</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page207">207</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To P. G. Hamerton</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page208">208</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page209">209</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page211">211</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page212">212</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page213">213</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Dr. Alexander Japp</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page215">215</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Sitwell</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page216">216</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Edmund Gosse</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page217">217</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page218">218</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page219">219</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page219">219</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Dr. Alexander Japp</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page221">221</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page222">222</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page223">223</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To P. G. Hamerton</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page224">224</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Charles Baxter</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page226">226</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page227">227</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Alison Cunningham</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page228">228</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Charles Baxter</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page228">228</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page229">229</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page230">230</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Alexander Ireland</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page233">233</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Edmund Gosse</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page235">235</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Dr. Alexander Japp</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page236">236</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a name="pagexi"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. xi</span>To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page236">236</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page238">238</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. T. Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page240">240</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Edmund Gosse</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page241">241</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page242">242</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page242">242</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center"><b>VI</b></p>
<p style="text-align: center"><b>MARSEILLES AND
HY&Egrave;RES</b></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p><span class="smcap">Letters</span>:&mdash;</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: center">&nbsp;</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Editor of the <i>New York
Tribune</i></p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page251">251</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To R. A. M. Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page252">252</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page253">253</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page254">254</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Charles Baxter</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page254">254</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Alison Cunningham</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page256">256</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page257">257</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page261">261</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page262">262</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Sitwell</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page263">263</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Edmund Gosse</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page265">265</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page266">266</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page267">267</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Edmund Gosse</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page268">268</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page269">269</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page270">270</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page271">271</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page272">272</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a name="pagexii"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. xii</span>To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page273">273</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page274">274</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Alison Cunningham</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page275">275</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page277">277</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Edmund Gosse</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page278">278</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page279">279</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Edmund Gosse</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page283">283</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page284">284</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. H. Low</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page286">286</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To R. A. M. Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page288">288</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page291">291</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. H. Low</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page292">292</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page294">294</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page295">295</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page296">296</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Milne</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page297">297</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Miss Ferrier</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page299">299</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. H. Low</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page300">300</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page301">301</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page302">302</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page303">303</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page304">304</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page305">305</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mr. Dick</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page308">308</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Cosmo Monkhouse</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page310">310</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Edmund Gosse</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page312">312</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Miss Ferrier</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page313">313</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. H. Low</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page314">314</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page315">315</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Cosmo Monkhouse</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page316">316</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page318">318</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a name="pagexiii"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. xiii</span>To Edmund Gosse</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page319">319</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page320">320</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page321">321</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center"><b>VII</b></p>
<p style="text-align: center"><b>LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH</b></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p><span class="smcap">Letters</span>:&mdash;</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: center">&nbsp;</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page328">328</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page328">328</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Rev. Professor Lewis Campbell</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page330">330</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Andrew Chatto</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page331">331</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. H. Low</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page332">332</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page334">334</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page335">335</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page335">335</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Charles Baxter</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page337">337</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page337">337</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Miss Ferrier</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page338">338</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Edmund Gosse</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page339">339</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Austin Dobson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page340">340</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Henry James</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page341">341</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page343">343</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page344">344</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page345">345</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To H. A. Jones</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page346">346</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page346">346</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page347">347</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Sidney Colvin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page348">348</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page349">349</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a name="pagexiv"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. xiv</span>To J. A. Symonds</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page350">350</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Edmund Gosse</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page352">352</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. H. Low</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page354">354</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To P. G. Hamerton</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page356">356</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To William Archer</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page358">358</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page359">359</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page360">360</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. H. Low</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page361">361</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. E. Henley</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page363">363</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To William Archer</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page364">364</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Thomas Stevenson</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page367">367</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Henry James</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page368">368</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To William Archer</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page369">369</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To the Same</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page371">371</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To W. H. Low</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page374">374</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p style="text-align: center"><i>Frontispiece</i>&mdash;PORTRAIT
OF R. L. STEVENSON, <i>&aelig;t.</i> 35<br />
<i>From a photograph by</i> Mr. <span class="smcap">Lloyd
Osbourne</span></p>
<h2><a name="pagexv"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
xv</span>INTRODUCTION</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">One</span> day in the autumn of 1888, in
the island of Tahiti, during an illness which he supposed might
be his last, Stevenson put into the hands of his stepson, Mr.
Lloyd Osbourne, a sealed paper with the request that it should be
opened after his death.&nbsp; He recovered, as every one knows,
and had strength enough to enjoy six years more of active life
and work in the Pacific Islands.&nbsp; When the end came, and the
paper was opened, it was found to contain, among other things,
the expression of his wish that I should be asked to prepare for
publication &lsquo;a selection of his letters and a sketch of his
life.&rsquo;&nbsp; The journal letters written to myself from his
Samoan home, subsequently to the date of the request, offered the
readiest material towards fulfilling promptly a part at least of
the duty thus laid upon me; and a selection from these was
accordingly published in the autumn following his death. <a
name="citationxv"></a><a href="#footnotexv"
class="citation">[xv]</a></p>
<p>The scanty leisure of an official life (chiefly employed as it
was for several years in seeing my friend&rsquo;s collected and
posthumous works through the press) did not allow me to complete
the remainder of my task without considerable delay.&nbsp; For
one thing, the body of correspondence <a name="pagexvi"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. xvi</span>which came in from various quarters
turned out much larger than had been anticipated, and the labour
of sifting and arranging it much greater.&nbsp; The author of
<i>Treasure Island</i> and <i>Across the Plains</i> and <i>Weir
of Hermiston</i> did not love writing letters, and will be found
somewhere in the following pages referring to himself as one
&lsquo;essentially and originally incapable of the art
epistolary.&rsquo;&nbsp; That he was a bad correspondent had even
come to be an accepted view among his friends; but in truth it
was only during one particular period of his life (see below,
vol. i. p. 103) that he at all deserved such a reproach.&nbsp; At
other times, as is now apparent, he had shown a degree of
industry and spirit in letter-writing extraordinary considering
his health and occupations, and especially considering his
declared aversion for the task.&nbsp; His letters, it is true,
were often the most informal in the world, and he generally
neglected to date them, a habit which is the despair of editors;
but after his own whim and fashion he wrote a vast number; so
that for every one here included some half-a-dozen at least have
had to be rejected.</p>
<p>In considering the scale and plan on which my friend&rsquo;s
instruction should be carried out, it seemed necessary to take
into account, not his own always modest opinion of himself, but
the place which, as time went on, he seemed likely to take
ultimately in the world&rsquo;s regard.&nbsp; The four or five
years following the death of a writer much applauded in his
lifetime are generally the years when the decline of his
reputation begins, if it is going to suffer decline at all.&nbsp;
At present, certainly, Stevenson&rsquo;s name <a
name="pagexvii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xvii</span>seems in
no danger of going down.&nbsp; On the stream of daily literary
reference and allusion it floats more actively than ever.&nbsp;
In another sense its vitality is confirmed by the material test
of continued sales and of the market.&nbsp; Since we have lost
him other writers, whose beginnings he watched with sympathetic
interest, have come to fill a greater immediate place in public
attention; one especially has struck notes which appeal to
dominant fibres in our Anglo-Saxon stock with irresistible force;
but none has exercised Stevenson&rsquo;s peculiar and personal
power to charm, to attach, and to inspirit.&nbsp; By his study of
perfection in form and style&mdash;qualities for which his
countrymen in general have been apt to care little&mdash;he might
seem destined to give pleasure chiefly to the fastidious and the
artistically minded.&nbsp; But as to its matter, the main appeal
of his work is not to any mental tastes and fashions of the few;
it is rather to universal, hereditary instincts, to the primitive
sources of imaginative excitement and entertainment in the
race.</p>
<p>By virtue, then, of this double appeal of form and matter; by
his especial hold upon the young, in whose spirit so much of his
best work was done; by his undecaying influence on other writers;
by the spell which he still exercises from the grave, and
exercises most strongly on those who are most familiar with the
best company whether of the living or the dead, Stevenson&rsquo;s
name and memory, so far as can be judged at present, seem
destined not to dwindle, but to grow.&nbsp; The voice of the
<i>advocatus diaboli</i> has been heard against him, as it is
right and proper that it should be heard <a
name="pagexviii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xviii</span>against
any man before his reputation can be held fully
established.&nbsp; One such advocate in this country has thought
to dispose of him by the charge of
&lsquo;externality.&rsquo;&nbsp; But the reader who remembers
things like the sea-frenzy of Gordon Darnaway, or the dialogue of
Markheim with his other self in the house of murder, or the
re-baptism of the spirit of Seraphina in the forest dews, or the
failure of Herrick to find in the waters of the island lagoon a
last release from dishonour, or the death of Goguelat, or the
appeal of Kirstie Elliot in the midnight chamber&mdash;such a
reader can only smile at a criticism like this and put it
by.&nbsp; These and a score of other passages breathe the
essential poetry and significance of things as they reveal
themselves to true masters only&mdash;are instinct at once with
the morality and the romance which lie deep together at the soul
of nature and experience.&nbsp; Not in vain had Stevenson read
the lesson of the Lantern-Bearers, and hearkened to the music of
the pipes of Pan.&nbsp; He was feeling his way all his life
towards a fuller mastery of his means, preferring always to leave
unexpressed what he felt that he could not express perfectly; and
in much of his work was content merely to amuse himself and
others.&nbsp; But even when he is playing most fancifully with
his art and his readers, as in the shudders, tempered with
laughter, of the Suicide Club, or the airy sentimental comedy of
Providence and the Guitar, or the schoolboy historical inventions
of Dickon Crookback and the old sailor Arblaster, a writer of his
quality cannot help striking notes from the heart of life and the
inwardness <a name="pagexix"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
xix</span>of things deeper than will ever be struck, or even
apprehended, by another who labours, with never a smile either of
his own or of his reader&rsquo;s, upon the most solemn
enterprises of realistic fiction, but is born without the
magician&rsquo;s touch and insight.</p>
<p>Another advocate on the same side, in the United States, has
made much of the supposed dependence of this author on his
models, and classed him among writers whose inspiration is
imitative and second-hand.&nbsp; But this, surely, is to be quite
misled by the well-known passage of Stevenson&rsquo;s own, in
which he speaks of himself as having in his prentice years played
the &lsquo;sedulous ape&rsquo; to many writers of different
styles and periods.&nbsp; In doing this he was not seeking
inspiration, but simply practising the use of the tools which
were to help him to express his own inspirations.&nbsp; Truly he
was always much of a reader; but it was life, not books, that
always in the first degree allured and taught him.</p>
<blockquote><p>&lsquo;He loved of life the myriad sides,<br />
Pain, prayer, or pleasure, act or sleep,<br />
As wallowing narwhals love the deep&rsquo;&mdash;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>so with just self-knowledge he wrote of himself; and the books
which he most cared for and lived with were those of which the
writers seemed&mdash;to quote again a phrase of his own&mdash;to
have been &lsquo;eavesdropping at the door of his heart&rsquo;;
those which told of moods, impressions, experiences or cravings
after experience, pains, pleasures, opinions or conflicts of the
spirit, which in the eagerness of youthful living and thinking
had already <a name="pagexx"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
xx</span>been his own.&nbsp; No man, in fact, was ever less
inclined to take anything at second-hand.&nbsp; The root of all
originality was in him, in the shape of an extreme natural
vividness of perception, imagination, and feeling.&nbsp; An
instinctive and inbred unwillingness to accept the accepted and
conform to the conventional was of the essence of his character,
whether in life or art, and was a source to him both of strength
and weakness.&nbsp; He would not follow a general
rule&mdash;least of all if it was a prudential rule&mdash;of
conduct unless he was clear that it was right according to his
private conscience; nor would he join, in youth, in the ordinary
social amusements of his class when he had once found out that
they did not amuse <i>him</i>; nor wear their clothes if he could
not feel at ease and be himself in them; nor use, whether in
speech or writing, any trite or inanimate form of words that did
not faithfully and livingly express his thought.&nbsp; A readier
acceptance of current usages might have been better for him, but
was simply not in his nature.&nbsp; &lsquo;Damp gingerbread
puppets&rsquo; were to him the persons who lived and thought and
felt and acted only as was expected of them.&nbsp; &lsquo;To see
people skipping all round us with their eyes sealed up with
indifference, knowing nothing of the earth or man or woman, going
automatically to offices and saying they are happy or unhappy,
out of a sense of duty I suppose, surely at least from no sense
of happiness or unhappiness, unless perhaps they have a tooth
that twinges&mdash;is it not like a bad dream?&rsquo;&nbsp; No
reader of this book will close it, I am sure, without feeling
that he has been throughout in the company of a spirit various <a
name="pagexxi"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xxi</span>indeed and
many-mooded, but profoundly sincere and real.&nbsp; Ways that in
another might easily have been mere signs of affectation were in
him the true expression of a nature ten times more spontaneously
itself and individually alive than that of others.&nbsp;
Self-consciousness, in many characters that possess it, deflects
and falsifies conduct; and so does the dramatic instinct.&nbsp;
Stevenson was self-conscious in a high degree, but only as a part
of his general activity of mind; only in so far as he could not
help being an extremely intelligent spectator of his own doings
and feelings; these themselves came from springs of character and
impulse much too deep and strong to be diverted.&nbsp; He loved
also, with a child&rsquo;s or actor&rsquo;s gusto, to play a part
and make a drama out of life; <a name="citationxxi"></a><a
href="#footnotexxi" class="citation">[xxi]</a> but the part was
always for the moment his very own: he had it not in him to pose
for anything but what he truly was.</p>
<p>When a man so constituted had once mastered his craft of
letters, he might take up whatever instrument he pleased with the
instinctive and just confidence that he would play upon it to a
tune and with a manner of his own.&nbsp; This is indeed the true
mark and test of his originality.&nbsp; He has no need to be, or
to seem, especially original in the form and mode of literature
which he attempts.&nbsp; By his choice of these he may at any
time give himself and his reader the pleasure of recalling, like
a familiar air, some strain of literary association; but in so
doing he only adds a secondary charm to his work; the vision, the
temperament, the mode of conceiving and handling, are in every
case <a name="pagexxii"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
xxii</span>strongly personal to himself.&nbsp; He may try his
hand in youth at a Sentimental Journey, but R. L. S. cannot
choose but be at the opposite pole of human character and feeling
from Laurence Sterne.&nbsp; In tales of mystery, allegorical or
other, he may bear in mind the precedent of Edgar Poe, and yet
there is nothing in style and temper much wider apart than
<i>Markheim</i> and <i>Jekyll and Hyde</i> are from the
<i>Murders in the Rue Morgue</i> or <i>William Wilson</i>.&nbsp;
He may set out to tell a pirate story for boys &lsquo;exactly in
the ancient way,&rsquo; and it will come from him not in the
ancient way at all, but re-minted; marked with a sharpness and
saliency in the characters, a private stamp of buccaneering
ferocity combined with smiling humour, an energy of vision and
happy vividness of presentment, which are shiningly his
own.&nbsp; Another time, he may desert the paths of Kingston and
Ballantyne the brave for those of Sir Walter Scott; but
literature presents few stronger contrasts than between any scene
of <i>Waverley</i> or <i>Redgauntlet</i> and any scene of the
<i>Master of Ballantrae</i> or <i>Catriona</i>, whether in their
strength or weakness: and it is the most loyal lovers of the
older master who take the greatest pleasure in reading the work
of the younger, so much less opulently gifted as is
probable&mdash;though we must remember that Stevenson died at the
age when Scott wrote <i>Waverley</i>&mdash;so infinitely more
careful of his gift.&nbsp; Stevenson may even blow upon the pipe
of Burns, and yet his tune will be no echo, but one which utters
the heart and mind of a Scots poet who has his own outlook on
life, his own special and profitable vein of smiling or satirical
contemplation.</p>
<p><a name="pagexxiii"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
xxiii</span>Not by reason, then, of &lsquo;externality,&rsquo;
for sure, nor yet of imitativeness, will this writer lose his
hold on the attention and regard of his countrymen.&nbsp; The
debate, before his place in literature is settled, must rather
turn on other points: as whether the genial essayist and egoist
or the romantic inventor and narrator was the stronger in
him&mdash;whether the Montaigne and Pepys elements prevailed in
his literary composition or the Scott and Dumas elements&mdash;a
question indeed which among those who care for him most has
always been at issue.&nbsp; Or again, what degree of true
inspiring and illuminating power belongs to the gospel, or
gospels, airily encouraging or gravely didactic, which are set
forth in the essays with so captivating a grace?&nbsp; Or whether
in romance and tale he had a power of happily inventing and
soundly constructing a whole fable comparable to his
unquestionable power of conceiving and presenting single scenes
and situations in a manner which stamps them indelibly on the
reader&rsquo;s mind.&nbsp; And whether his figures are sustained
continuously by the true, large, spontaneous breath of creation,
or are but transitorily animated at critical and happy moments by
flashes of spiritual and dramatic insight, aided by the conscious
devices of his singularly adroit and spirited art?&nbsp; This is
a question which no criticism but that of time can solve; it
takes the consenting instinct of generations to feel whether the
creatures of fiction, however powerfully they may strike at
first, are durably and equably, or ephemerally and fitfully,
alive.&nbsp; To contend, as some do, that strong creative
impulse, and so keen an artistic <a name="pagexxiv"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. xxiv</span>self-consciousness as
Stevenson&rsquo;s was, cannot exist together, is quite
idle.&nbsp; The truth, of course, is that the deep-seated
energies of imaginative creation are found sometimes in
combination, and sometimes not in combination, with an artistic
intelligence thus keenly conscious of its own purpose and
watchful of its own working.</p>
<p>Once more, it may be questioned whether, among the many
varieties of work which Stevenson has left, all touched with
genius, all charming and stimulating to the literary sense, all
distinguished by a grace and precision of workmanship which are
the rarest qualities in English art, there are any which can be
pointed to as absolute masterpieces, such as the future cannot be
expected to let die.&nbsp; Let the future decide.&nbsp; What is
certain is that posterity must either be very well, or very ill,
occupied if it can consent to give up so much sound
entertainment, and better than entertainment, as this writer
afforded his contemporaries.&nbsp; In the meantime, among
judicious readers on both sides of the Atlantic, Stevenson
stands, I think it may safely be said, as a true master of
English prose; unsurpassed for the union of lenity and lucidity
with suggestive pregnancy and poetic animation; for harmony of
cadence and the well-knit structure of sentences; and for the art
of imparting to words the vital quality of things, and making
them convey the precise&mdash;sometimes, let it be granted, the
too curiously precise&mdash;expression of the very shade and
colour of the thought, feeling, or vision in his mind.&nbsp; He
stands, moreover, as the writer who, in the last quarter of the
nineteenth <a name="pagexxv"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
xxv</span>century, has handled with the most of freshness and
inspiriting power the widest range of established literary
forms&mdash;the moral, critical, and personal essay, travels
sentimental and other, romances and short tales both historical
and modern, parables and tales of mystery, boys&rsquo; stories of
adventure, memoirs&mdash;nor let lyrical and meditative verse
both English and Scottish, and especially nursery verse, a new
vein for genius to work in, be forgotten.&nbsp; To some of these
forms Stevenson gave quite new life; through all alike he
expressed vividly an extremely personal way of seeing and being,
a sense of nature and romance, of the aspects of human existence
and problems of human conduct, which was essentially his
own.&nbsp; And in so doing he contrived to make friends and even
lovers of his readers.&nbsp; Those whom he attracts at all (and
there is no writer who attracts every one) are drawn to him over
and over again, finding familiarity not lessen but increase the
charm of his work, and desiring ever closer intimacy with the
spirit and personality which they divine behind it.</p>
<p>As to the fitting scale, then, on which to treat the memory of
a man who fills five years after his death such a place as this
in the public regard, the words &lsquo;selection&rsquo; and
&lsquo;sketch&rsquo; have evidently to be given a pretty liberal
interpretation.&nbsp; Readers, it must be supposed, will scarce
be content without both a fairly full biography, and the
opportunity of a fairly ample intercourse with the man as he was
accustomed to reveal himself in writing to his familiars.&nbsp;
As to form&mdash;Stevenson&rsquo;s own words and the nature of
the material alike seem to <a name="pagexxvi"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. xxvi</span>indicate that the <i>Life</i> and
the <i>Letters</i> should be kept separate.&nbsp; There are some
kinds of correspondence which can conveniently be woven into the
body and texture of a biography, though indeed I think it is a
plan to which biographers are much too partial.&nbsp; Nothing,
surely, more checks the flow of a narrative than its interruption
by stationary blocks of correspondence; nothing more disconcerts
the reader than a too frequent or too abrupt alternation of
voices between the subject of a biography speaking in his letters
and the writer of it speaking in his narrative.&nbsp; At least it
is only when letters are occupied, as Macaulay&rsquo;s for
instance were, almost entirely with facts and events, that they
can without difficulty be handled in this way.&nbsp; But events
and facts, &lsquo;sordid facts,&rsquo; as he called them, were
not very often suffered to intrude into Stevenson&rsquo;s
correspondence.&nbsp; &lsquo;I deny,&rsquo; he writes,
&lsquo;that letters should contain news (I mean mine; those of
other people should).&nbsp; But mine should contain appropriate
sentiments and humorous nonsense, or nonsense without the
humour.&rsquo;&nbsp; Business letters, letters of information,
and letters of courtesy he had sometimes to write: but when he
wrote best was under the influence of the affection or
impression, or the mere whim or mood, of the moment; pouring
himself out in all manner of rhapsodical confessions and
speculations, grave or gay, notes of observation and criticism,
snatches of remembrance and autobiography, moralisings on matters
uppermost for the hour in his mind, comments on his own work or
other people&rsquo;s, or mere idle fun and foolery.</p>
<p><a name="pagexxvii"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
xxvii</span>With a letter-writer of this character, as it seems
to me, a judicious reader desires to be left as much alone as
possible.&nbsp; What he wants is to relish the correspondence by
itself, or with only just so much in the way of notes and
introductions as may serve to make allusions and situations
clear.&nbsp; Two volumes, then, of letters so edited, to be
preceded by a separate introductory volume of narrative and
critical memoir, or <i>&eacute;tude</i>&mdash;such was to be the
memorial to my friend which I had planned, and hoped by this time
to have ready.&nbsp; Unfortunately, the needful leisure has
hitherto failed me, and might fail me for some time yet, to
complete the separate volume of biography.&nbsp; That is now, at
the wish of the family, to be undertaken by Stevenson&rsquo;s
cousin and my friend, Mr. Graham Balfour.&nbsp; Meanwhile the
<i>Letters</i>, with introductions and notes somewhat extended
from the original plan, are herewith presented as a substantive
work by themselves.</p>
<p>The book will enable those who know and love their Stevenson
already to know him more intimately, and, as I hope, to love him
more.&nbsp; It contains, certainly, much that is most essentially
characteristic of the man.&nbsp; To some, perhaps, that very lack
of art as a correspondent of which we have found him above
accusing himself may give the reading an added charm and
flavour.&nbsp; What he could do as an artist we know&mdash;what a
telling power and heightened thrill he could give to all his
effects, in so many different modes of expression and
composition, by calculated skill and the deliberate exercise of a
perfectly trained faculty.&nbsp; This is the quality which nobody
<a name="pagexxviii"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
xxviii</span>denies him, and which so deeply impressed his
fellow-craftsmen of all kinds.&nbsp; I remember the late Sir John
Millais, a shrewd and very independent judge of books, calling
across to me at a dinner-table, &lsquo;You know Stevenson,
don&rsquo;t you?&rsquo; and then going on, &lsquo;Well, I wish
you would tell him from me, if he cares to know, that to my mind
he is the very first of living artists.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t mean
writers merely, but painters and all of us: nobody living can see
with such an eye as that fellow, and nobody is such a master of
his tools.&rsquo;&nbsp; Now in his letters, excepting a few
written in youth, and having more or less the character of
exercises, and a few in after years which were intended for the
public eye, Stevenson the deliberate artist is scarcely
forthcoming at all.&nbsp; He does not care a fig for order or
logical sequence or congruity, or for striking a key of
expression and keeping it, but becomes simply the most
spontaneous and unstudied of human beings.&nbsp; He will write
with the most distinguished elegance on one day, with simple good
sense and good feeling on a second, with flat triviality on
another, and with the most slashing, often ultra-colloquial,
vehemence on a fourth, or will vary through all these moods and
more in one and the same letter.&nbsp; He has at his command the
whole vocabularies of the English and Scottish languages,
classical and slang, with good stores of the French, and tosses
and tumbles them about irresponsibly to convey the impression or
affection, the mood or freak of the moment.&nbsp; Passages or
phrases of the craziest schoolboy or seafaring slang come
tumbling after and capping others of classical <a
name="pagexxix"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xxix</span>cadence
and purity, of poetical and heartfelt eloquence.&nbsp; By<span
class="smcap"> </span>this medley of moods and manners,
Stevenson&rsquo;s letters at their best&mdash;the pick, let us
say, of those in the following volumes which were written from
Hy&egrave;res or Bournemouth&mdash;come nearer than anything else
to the full-blooded charm and variety of his conversation.</p>
<p>Nearer, yet not quite near; for it was in company only that
this genial spirit rose to his very best.&nbsp; Those whom his
writings charm or impress, but who never knew him, can but
imagine how doubly they would have been charmed and impressed by
his presence.&nbsp; Few men probably, certainly none that I have
ever seen or read of, have had about them such a richness and
variety of human nature; and few can ever have been better gifted
than he was to express the play of being that was in him by means
of the apt, expressive word and the animated look and
gesture.&nbsp; <i>Divers et ondoyant</i>, in the words of
Montaigne, beyond other men, he seemed to contain within himself
a whole troop of singularly assorted characters&mdash;the poet
and artist, the moralist and preacher, the humourist and jester,
the man of great heart and tender conscience, the man of eager
appetite and curiosity, the Bohemian, impatient of restraints and
shams, the adventurer and lover of travel and of action:
characters, several of them, not rare separately, especially
among his Scottish fellow-countrymen, but rare indeed to be found
united, and each in such fulness and intensity, within the bounds
of a single personality.</p>
<p>Before all things Stevenson was a born poet, to whom the world
was full of enchantment and of latent romance, <a
name="pagexxx"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xxx</span>only
waiting to take shape and substance in the forms art.&nbsp; It
was his birthright&mdash;</p>

<blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lsquo;to
hear<br />
The great bell beating far and near&mdash;<br />
The odd, unknown, enchanted gong<br />
That on the road hales men along,<br />
That from the mountain calls afar,<br />
That lures the vessel from a star,<br />
And with a still, aerial sound<br />
Makes all the earth enchanted ground.&rsquo;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At the same time, he was not less a born preacher and moralist
after his fashion.&nbsp; A true son of the Covenanters, he had
about him little spirit of social or other conformity; but an
active and searching private conscience kept him for ever calling
in question both the grounds of his own conduct and the validity
of the accepted codes and compromises of society.&nbsp; He must
try to work out a scheme of morality suitable to his own case and
temperament, which found the prohibitory law of Moses chill and
uninspiring, but in the Sermon on the Mount a strong incentive to
all those impulses of pity and charity to which his heart was
prone.&nbsp; In youth his sense of social injustice and the
inequalities of human opportunity made him inwardly much of a
rebel, who would have embraced and acted on theories of socialism
or communism, could he have found any that did not seem to him at
variance with ineradicable instincts of human nature. <a
name="citationxxx"></a><a href="#footnotexxx"
class="citation">[xxx]</a>&nbsp; <a name="pagexxxi"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. xxxi</span>All his life the artist and the
moralist in him alike were in rebellion against the bourgeois
spirit,&mdash;against timid, negative, and shuffling substitutes
for active and courageous well-doing,&mdash;and declined to
worship at the shrine of what he called the bestial goddesses
Comfort and Respectability.&nbsp; The moralist in him helped the
artist by backing with the force of a highly sensitive conscience
his instinctive love of perfection in his work.&nbsp; The poet
and artist qualified the moralist by discountenancing any
preference for the harsh, the sour, or the self-mortifying forms
of virtue, and encouraging the love for all tender or heroic,
glowing, generous and cheerful forms.</p>
<p>In another aspect of his many-sided being Stevenson was not
less a born adventurer and practical experimentalist in
life.&nbsp; Many poets are content to dream, and many, perhaps
most, moralists to preach; but Stevenson must ever be doing and
undergoing.&nbsp; He was no sentimentalist, to pay himself with
fine feelings whether for mean action or slack inaction.&nbsp; He
had an insatiable zest for all experiences, not the pleasurable
only, but including even the more harsh and biting&mdash;those
that bring home to a man the pinch and sting of existence as it
is realised by the disinherited of the world, and excluding only
what he thought the prim, the conventional, the dead-alive, and
the cut-and-dry.&nbsp; On occasion the experimentalist and man of
adventure in him would enter into special partnership with the
moralist and man of conscience; he loved to find himself in
difficult social passes and ethical dilemmas for the sake of
trying to behave in them to the utmost <a
name="pagexxxii"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
xxxii</span>according to his own personal sense of the
obligations of honour, duty, and kindness.&nbsp; In yet another
part of his being, he cherished, as his great countryman Scott
had done before him, an intense underlying longing for the life
of action, danger, and command.&nbsp; &lsquo;Action, Colvin,
action,&rsquo; I remember his crying eagerly to me with his hand
on my arm as we lay basking for his health&rsquo;s sake in a boat
off the scented shores of the Cap St. Martin.&nbsp; Another
time&mdash;this was on his way to a winter cure at
Davos&mdash;some friend had given him General Hamley&rsquo;s
<i>Operations of War</i>:&mdash;&lsquo;in which,&rsquo; he writes
to his father, &lsquo;I am drowned a thousand fathoms deep, and O
that I had been a soldier is still my cry.&rsquo;&nbsp; In so
frail a tabernacle was it that the aspirations of the artist, the
unconventional moralist, the lover of all experience, and the
lover of daring action had to learn to reconcile themselves as
best they might.&nbsp; Frail as it was, it contained withal a
strong animal nature, and he was as much exposed to the storms
and solicitations of sense as to the cravings and questionings of
the spirit.&nbsp; Fortunately, with all these ardent and divers
instincts, there were present two invaluable gifts
besides&mdash;that of humour, which for all his stress of being
and vivid consciousness of self saved him from ever seeing
himself for long together out of a just proportion, and kept
wholesome laughter always ready at his lips; and that of a
perfectly warm, loyal, and tender heart, which through all his
experiments and agitations made the law of kindness the one
ruling law of his life.&nbsp; In the end, lack of health
determined his <a name="pagexxxiii"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
xxxiii</span>career, giving the chief part in his life to the
artist and man of imagination, and keeping the man of action a
prisoner in the sickroom until, by a singular turn of destiny, he
was able to wring a real, prolonged, and romantically successful
adventure out of that voyage to the Pacific which had been, in
its origin, the last despairing resource of the invalid.</p>
<p>To take this multiple personality from another point of view,
it was part of his genius that he never seemed to be cramped like
the rest of us, at any given time of life, within the limits of
his proper age, but to be child, boy, young man, and old man all
at once.&nbsp; There was never a time in his life when Stevenson
had to say with St. Augustine, &lsquo;Behold! my childhood is
dead, but I am alive.&rsquo;&nbsp; The child, as his <i>Garden of
Verses</i> vividly attests, and as will be seen by abundant
evidence in the course of the following pages, lived on always in
him, not in memory only, but in real survival, with all its
freshness of perception unimpaired, and none of its play
instincts in the least degree extinguished or made ashamed.&nbsp;
As for the perennial boy in Stevenson, that is too apparent to
need remark.&nbsp; It was as a boy for boys that he wrote the
best known of his books, <i>Treasure Island</i>; with all boys
that he met, provided they were really boys and not prigs nor
puppies, he was instantly at home; and the ideal of a career
which he most inwardly and longingly cherished, the ideals of
practical adventure and romance, of desirable predicaments and
gratifying modes of escape from them, were from first to last
those of a boy.&nbsp; At the same time, even when I first <a
name="pagexxxiv"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xxxiv</span>knew
him, there were about him occasional traits and glimpses of old
sagacity, of premature life-wisdom and experience, such as find
expression, for instance, in the essay <i>Virginibus
Puerisque</i>, among other matter more according with his then
age of twenty-six.</p>
<p>Again, it is said that in every poet there must be something
of the woman&mdash;the receptivity, the emotional nature.&nbsp;
If to be impressionable in the extreme, quick in sympathy and
feeling, ardent in attachment, and full of pity for the weak and
suffering, is to be womanly, Stevenson was certainly all those;
he was even like a woman in being
<i>&#7936;&rho;&tau;&#943;&delta;&alpha;&kappa;&rho;&upsilon;&sigmaf;</i>,
easily moved to tears at the touch of pity or affection, or even
at any specially poignant impression of art or beauty.&nbsp; But
yet, if any one word were to be chosen for the predominant
quality of his character and example, I suppose that word would
be manly.&nbsp; In all his habits and instincts he was the least
effeminate of men; and effeminacy, or aught approaching
sexlessness, was perhaps the only quality in man with which he
had no patience.&nbsp; In his gentle and complying nature there
were strains of iron tenacity and will.&nbsp; He had both kinds
of physical courage&mdash;the active, delighting in danger, and
the passive, unshaken in endurance.&nbsp; In the moral courage of
facing situations and consequences, of cheerful self-discipline
and readiness to pay for faults committed, of outspokenness,
admitting no ambiguous relations and clearing away the clouds
from human intercourse, I have not known his equal.&nbsp; His
great countryman Scott, as this book will prove, was not more
manfully free from artistic jealousy or the <a
name="pagexxxv"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xxxv</span>least
shade of irritability under criticism, or more modestly and
unfeignedly inclined to exaggerate the qualities of other
people&rsquo;s work and to underrate those of his own.&nbsp; His
severest critic was always himself; the next most severe, those
of his own household and intimacy, whose love made them jealous
lest he should fall short of his best; for he lived in an
atmosphere of love, indeed, but not of flattery.&nbsp; Of the
humorous and engaging parts of vanity and egoism, which led him
to make infinite talk and fun about himself, and use his own
experiences as a key for unlocking the confidences of others,
Stevenson had plenty; but of the morose and fretful parts never a
shade.&nbsp; &lsquo;A little Irish girl,&rsquo; he wrote once
during a painful crisis of his life, &lsquo;is now reading my
book aloud to her sister at my elbow; they chuckle, and I feel
flattered.&mdash;Yours, R. L. S.&nbsp; <i>P.S.</i> Now they yawn,
and I am indifferent.&nbsp; Such a wisely conceived thing is
vanity.&rsquo;&nbsp; If only vanity so conceived were
commoner!&nbsp; And whatever might be the abstract and
philosophical value of that somewhat grimly stoical conception of
the universe, of conduct and duty, at which in mature years he
had arrived, want of manliness is certainly not its fault.&nbsp;
Nor is any such want to be found in the practice which he founded
on or combined with it; in his invincible gaiety and sweetness
under sufferings and deprivations the most galling to him; in the
temper which made his presence in health or sickness a perpetual
sunshine to those about him.&nbsp; Take the kind of maxims of
life which he was accustomed to forge for himself and to act
by:&mdash;&lsquo;Acts may be forgiven; not <a
name="pagexxxvi"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xxxvi</span>even
God can forgive the hanger-back.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Choose the
best, if you can; or choose the worst; that which hangs in the
wind dangles from a gibbet.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;&ldquo;Shall
I?&rdquo; said Feeble-mind; and the echo said,
&ldquo;Fie!&rdquo;&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;&ldquo;Do I love?&rdquo;
said Loveless; and the echo laughed.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;A fault
known is a fault cured to the strong; but to the weak it is a
fetter riveted.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;The mean man doubts, the
great-hearted is deceived.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Great-heart was
deceived.&nbsp; &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said
Great-heart.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;&ldquo;I have not forgotten my
umbrella,&rdquo; said the careful man; but the lightning struck
him.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Nullity wanted nothing; so he supposed
he wanted advice.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Evil was called Youth till
he was old, and then he was called Habit.&rsquo;&nbsp;
&lsquo;Fear kept the house; and still he must pay
taxes.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Shame had a fine bed, but where was
slumber?&nbsp; Once he was in jail he slept.&rsquo;&nbsp; With
this moralist maxims meant actions; and where shall we easily
find a much manlier spirit of wisdom than this?</p>
<p>There was yet another and very different side to Stevenson
which struck others more than it struck myself, namely, that of
the perfectly freakish, not perfectly human, irresponsible madcap
or jester which sometimes appeared in him.&nbsp; It is true that
his demoniac quickness of wit and intelligence suggested
occasionally a &lsquo;spirit of air and fire&rsquo; rather than
one of earth; that he was abundantly given to all kinds of quirk
and laughter; and that there was no jest (saving the unkind) he
would not make and relish.&nbsp; In the streets of Edinburgh he
had certainly been known for queer pranks and mystifications in
youth; and up to middle life there seemed <a
name="pagexxxvii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xxxvii</span>to
some of his friends to be much, if not of the Puck, at least of
the Ariel, about him.&nbsp; The late Mr. J. A. Symonds always
called him Sprite; qualifying the name, however, by the epithets
&lsquo;most fantastic, but most human.&rsquo;&nbsp; To me the
essential humanity was always the thing most apparent.&nbsp; In a
fire well nourished of seasoned ship-timber, the flames glance
fantastically and of many colours, but the glow at heart is ever
deep and strong; it was at such a glow that the friends of
Stevenson were accustomed to warm their hands, while they admired
and were entertained by the shifting lights.</p>
<p>It was only in talk, as I have said, that all the many lights
and colours of this richly compounded spirit could be seen in
full play.&nbsp; He would begin no matter how&mdash;in early days
often with a jest at his own absurd garments, or with the
recitation, in his vibrating voice and full Scotch accent, of
some snatch of poetry that was haunting him, or with a rhapsody
of analytic delight over some minute accident of beauty or
expressiveness that had struck his observation, and would have
escaped that of everybody else, in man, woman, child, or external
nature.&nbsp; And forthwith the floodgates would be opened, and
the talk would stream on in endless, never importunate, flood and
variety.&nbsp; A hundred fictitious characters would be invented,
differentiated, and launched on their imaginary careers; a
hundred ingenious problems of conduct and cases of honour would
be set and solved, in a manner often quite opposed to
conventional precept; romantic voyages would be planned and
followed out in vision, with a thousand incidents, to all the
corners <a name="pagexxxviii"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
xxxviii</span>of our own planet and of others; the possibilities
of life and art would be illuminated with glancing search-lights
of bewildering range and penetration, the most sober argument
alternating with the maddest freaks of fancy, high poetic
eloquence with coruscations of insanely apposite slang&mdash;the
earthiest jape anon shooting up into the empyrean and changing
into the most ethereal fantasy&mdash;the stalest and most
vulgarised forms of speech gaining brilliancy and illuminating
power from some hitherto undreamt-of application&mdash;and all
the while an atmosphere of goodwill diffusing itself from the
speaker, a glow of eager benignity and affectionate laughter
emanating from his presence, till every one about him seemed to
catch something of his own gift and inspiration.&nbsp; This
sympathetic power of inspiring others was the special and
distinguishing note of Stevenson&rsquo;s conversation.&nbsp; He
would keep a houseful or a single companion entertained all day,
and day after day and half the nights, yet never seemed to
dominate the talk or absorb it; rather he helped every one about
him to discover and to exercise unexpected powers of their
own.&nbsp; The point could hardly be better brought out than it
is in a fragment which I borrow from Mr. Henley of an unpublished
character-sketch of his friend: &lsquo;I leave his praise in this
direction (the telling of Scottish vernacular stories) to
others.&nbsp; It is more to my purpose to note that he will
discourse with you of morals, music, marbles, men, manners,
metaphysics, medicine, mangold-wurzel&mdash;<i>que
scays-je</i>?&mdash;with equal insight into essentials and equal
pregnancy and felicity of utterance; and that he will <a
name="pagexxxix"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xxxix</span>stop
with you to make mud pies in the first gutter, range in your
company whatever heights of thought and feeling you have found
accessible, and end by guiding you to altitudes far nearer the
stars than you have ever dreamed of footing it; and that at the
last he makes you wonder which to admire the more&mdash;his easy
familiarity with the Eternal Veracities or the brilliant flashes
of imbecility with which his excursions into the Infinite are
sometimes diversified.&nbsp; He radiates talk, as the sun does
light and heat; and after an evening&mdash;or a week&mdash;with
him, you come forth with a sense of satisfaction in your own
capacity which somehow proves superior even to the inevitable
conclusion that your brilliance was but the reflection of his
own, and that all the while you were only playing the part of
Rubinstein&rsquo;s piano or Sarasate&rsquo;s violin.&rsquo;</p>
<p>All this the reader should imagine as helped by the most
speaking of presences: a steady, penetrating fire in the wide-set
eyes, a compelling power and sweetness in the smile; courteous,
waving gestures of the arms and long, nervous hands, a lit
cigarette generally held between the fingers; continual rapid
shiftings and pacings to and fro as he conversed: rapid, but not
flurried nor awkward, for there was a grace in his attenuated but
well-carried figure, and his movements were light, deft, and full
of spring.&nbsp; When I first knew him he was passing through a
period of neatness between two of Bohemian carelessness as to
dress; so that the effect of his charm was immediate.&nbsp; At
other times of his youth there was something for strangers, and
even for friends, to get over in <a name="pagexl"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. xl</span>the odd garments which it was his
whim to wear&mdash;the badge, as they always seemed to me, partly
of a genuine carelessness, certainly of a genuine lack of cash
(the little he had was always absolutely at the disposal of his
friends), partly of a deliberate detachment from any particular
social class or caste, partly of his love of pickles and
adventures, which he thought befel a man thus attired more
readily than another.&nbsp; But this slender, slovenly,
nondescript apparition, long-visaged and long-haired, had only to
speak in order to be recognised in the first minute for a witty
and charming gentleman, and within the first five for a master
spirit and man of genius.&nbsp; There were, indeed, certain
stolidly conventional and superciliously official kinds of
persons, both at home and abroad, who were incapable of looking
beyond the clothes, and eyed him always with frozen
suspicion.&nbsp; This attitude used sometimes in youth to drive
him into fits of flaming anger, which put him helplessly at a
disadvantage unless, or until, he could call the sense of humour
to his help.&nbsp; For the rest, his human charm was the same for
all kinds of people, without the least distinction of class or
caste; for worldly wise old great ladies, whom he reminded of
famous poets in their youth; for his brother artists and men of
letters, perhaps, above all; for the ordinary clubman; for his
physicians, who could never do enough for him; for domestic
servants, who adored him; for the English policeman even, on whom
he often tried, quite in vain, to pass himself as one of the
criminal classes; for the common seaman, the shepherd, the street
arab, or the tramp.&nbsp; Even in the imposed silence <a
name="pagexli"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xli</span>and
restraint of extreme sickness the magnetic power and attraction
of the man made itself felt, and there seemed to be more vitality
and fire of the spirit in him as he lay exhausted and speechless
in bed than in an ordinary roomful of people in health.</p>
<p>But I have strayed from my purpose, which is only to indicate
that in the best of these letters of Stevenson&rsquo;s you have
some echo, far away indeed, but yet the nearest, of his
talk&mdash;talk which could never be taken down, and has left
only an ineffaceable impression in the memory of his
friends.&nbsp; The letters, it should be added, do not represent
him at all fully until about the thirtieth year of his age, the
beginning of the settled and married period of his life.&nbsp;
From then onwards, and especially from the beginning of Part
<span class="GutSmall">VI</span>. (the Hy&egrave;res period),
they present a pretty full and complete autobiography, if not of
doings, at any rate of moods and feelings.&nbsp; In the earlier
periods, his correspondence for the most part expresses his real
self either too little or else one-sidedly.&nbsp; I have omitted
very many letters of his boyish and student days as being too
immature or uninteresting; and many of the confidences and
confessions of his later youth, though they are those of a
beautiful spirit, whether as too intimate, or as giving a
disproportionate prominence to passing troubles.&nbsp; When he is
found in these days writing in a melancholy or minor key, it must
be remembered that at the same moment, in direct intercourse with
any friend, his spirits would instantly rise, and he would be
found the gayest of laughing companions.&nbsp; Very many letters
or snatches <a name="pagexlii"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
xlii</span>of letters of nearly all dates to his familiars have
also been omitted as not intelligible without a knowledge of the
current jests, codes, and catchwords of conversation between him
and them.&nbsp; At one very interesting period of his life, from
about his twenty-fifth to his twenty-ninth year, he disused the
habit of letter-writing almost entirely.</p>
<p>In choosing from among what remained I have used the best
discretion that I could.&nbsp; Stevenson&rsquo;s feelings and
relations throughout life were in almost all directions so warm
and kindly, that next to nothing had to be suppressed from fear
of giving pain.&nbsp; On the other hand, he drew people towards
him with so much confidence and affection, and met their openness
with so much of his own, that an editor could not but feel the
frequent risk of inviting readers to trespass too far on purely
private affairs and feelings, including those of the
living.&nbsp; This was a point upon which in his lifetime he felt
strongly.&nbsp; That excellent critic, Mr. Walter Raleigh, has
noticed, as one of the merits of Stevenson&rsquo;s personal
essays and accounts of travel, that few men have written more or
more attractively of themselves without ever taking the public
unduly into familiarity or overstepping proper bounds of
reticence.&nbsp; Public prying into private lives, the
propagation of gossip by the press, and printing of private
letters during the writer&rsquo;s lifetime, were things he
hated.&nbsp; Once, indeed, he very superfluously gave himself a
dangerous cold by dancing before a bonfire in his garden at the
news of a &lsquo;society&rsquo; editor having been committed to
prison; and the only approach to a difference he ever had with
one of his lifelong friends <a name="pagexliii"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. xliii</span>arose from the publication,
without permission, of one of his letters written on his first
Pacific voyage (see below, vol. ii. p. 121).</p>
<p>How far, then, must I regard his instructions about
publication as authorising me to go after his death beyond the
limits which he had been so careful in observing and desiring
others to observe in life?&nbsp; How much may now fairly become
public of that which had been held sacred and hitherto private
among his friends?&nbsp; To cut out all that is strictly personal
and intimate were to leave his story untold and half the charm of
his character unrevealed; to put in too much were to break all
bonds of that privacy which he so carefully regarded while he
lived.&nbsp; I know not if I have at all been able to hit the
mean, and to succeed in making these letters, as it has been my
object to make them, present, without offence or intrusion, a
just, a living, and a proportionate picture of the man, so far as
they will yield it.&nbsp; There is one respect in which his own
practice and principle has had to be in some degree violated, if
the work was to be done at all.&nbsp; Except in the single case
of the essay &lsquo;Ordered South,&rsquo; he would never in
writing for the public adopt the invalid point of view, or invite
any attention to his infirmities.&nbsp; &lsquo;To me,&rsquo; he
says, &lsquo;the medicine bottles on my chimney and the blood on
my handkerchief are accidents; they do not colour my view of
life; and I should think myself a trifler and in bad taste if I
introduced the world to these unimportant privacies.&rsquo;&nbsp;
But from his letters to his family and friends, these matters
could not possibly be quite left out.&nbsp; <a
name="pagexliv"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xliv</span>The tale
of his life, in the years when he was most of a correspondent,
was in truth a tale of daily and nightly battle against weakness
and physical distress and danger.&nbsp; To those who loved him,
the incidents of this battle were communicated, sometimes
gravely, sometimes laughingly.&nbsp; I have very greatly cut down
such bulletins, but could not manage to omit them
altogether.&nbsp; Generally speaking, I have used the editorial
privilege of omission without scruple where I thought it
desirable.&nbsp; And in regard to the text, I have not held
myself bound to reproduce all the author&rsquo;s minor
eccentricities of spelling and the like.&nbsp; As all his friends
are aware, to spell in a quite accurate and grown-up manner was a
thing which this master of English letters was never able to
learn; but to reproduce such trivial slips in print is, I think,
to distract the reader&rsquo;s attention from the main
matter.&nbsp; A normal orthography has therefore been adopted
throughout.</p>
<p>Lastly, I have to express my thanks to my friend Mr. George
Smith, proprietor of the <i>Dictionary of National Biography</i>,
for permission to reprint in this and in following sectional
introductions a few paragraphs from that work.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">S. C.</p>
<p><i>August</i> 1899.</p>
<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>I<br />
STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH<br />
<span class="GutSmall">TRAVELS AND EXCURSIONS</span><br />
<span class="GutSmall">1868&ndash;1873</span></h2>
<h3><a name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
3</span>INTRODUCTION.</h3>
<p><span class="smcap">The</span> following section consists
chiefly of extracts from the correspondence and journals
addressed by Louis Stevenson, as a lad of eighteen to twenty-two,
to his father and mother during summer excursions to the Scottish
coast or to the continent.&nbsp; There exist enough of them to
fill a volume; but it is not in letters of this kind to his
family that a young man unbosoms himself most freely, and these
are perhaps not quite devoid of the qualities of the guide-book
and the descriptive exercise.&nbsp; Nevertheless, they seem to me
to contain enough signs of the future master-writer, enough of
character, observation, and skill in expression, to make a few
worth giving by way of an opening chapter to the present
book.&nbsp; Among them are interspersed one or two of a different
character addressed to other correspondents.</p>
<p>But, first, it is desirable that readers not acquainted with
the circumstances and conditions of Stevenson&rsquo;s parentage
and early life should be here, as briefly as possible, informed
of them.&nbsp; On both sides of the house he came of capable and
cultivated stock.&nbsp; His grandfather was Robert Stevenson,
civil engineer, highly distinguished as the builder of the Bell
Rock lighthouse.&nbsp; By this Robert Stevenson, his three sons,
and two of his grandsons now living, the business of civil
engineers in general, and of official engineers to the
Commissioners <a name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
4</span>of Northern Lights in particular, has been carried on at
Edinburgh with high credit and public utility for almost a
century.&nbsp; Thomas Stevenson, the youngest of the three sons
of the original Robert, was Robert Louis Stevenson&rsquo;s
father.&nbsp; He was a man not only of mark, zeal, and
inventiveness in his profession, but of a singularly interesting
personality; a staunch friend and sagacious adviser, trenchant in
judgment and demonstrative in emotion, outspoken,
dogmatic,&mdash;despotic, even, in little things, but withal
essentially chivalrous and soft-hearted; apt to pass with the
swiftest transition from moods of gloom or sternness to those of
tender or freakish gaiety, and commanding a gift of humorous and
figurative speech second only to that of his more famous son.</p>
<p>Thomas Stevenson was married to Margaret Isabella, youngest
daughter of the Rev. Lewis Balfour, for many years minister of
the parish of Colinton in Midlothian.&nbsp; This Mr. Balfour
(described by his grandson in the essay called &lsquo;The
Manse&rsquo;) was of the stock of the Balfours of Pilrig, and
grandson to that James Balfour, professor first of moral
philosophy, and afterwards of the law of nature and of nations,
who was held in particular esteem as a philosophical
controversialist by David Hume.&nbsp; His wife, Henrietta Smith,
a daughter of the Rev. George Smith of Galston, to whose gift as
a preacher Burns refers scoffingly in the <i>Holy Fair</i>, is
said to have been a woman of uncommon beauty and charm of
manner.&nbsp; Their daughter, Mrs. Thomas Stevenson, suffered in
early and middle life from chest and nerve troubles, and her son
may have inherited from her some of his constitutional <a
name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 5</span>weakness as
well as of his social and intellectual vivacity and his taste for
letters.&nbsp; Robert Louis (baptized Robert Lewis Balfour)
Stevenson was born on November 13, 1850, at 8 Howard Place,
Edinburgh, and was the only child of his parents.&nbsp; His
health was infirm from the first, and he was with difficulty kept
alive by the combined care of a capable and watchful mother and a
perfectly devoted nurse, Alison Cunningham; to whom his lifelong
gratitude will be found touchingly expressed in the course of the
following letters.&nbsp; In 1858 he was near dying of a gastric
fever, and was at all times subject to acute catarrhal and
bronchial affections and extreme nervous excitability.&nbsp; In
January 1853 his parents moved to 1 Inverleith Terrace, and in
May 1857 to 17 Heriot Row, which continued to be their Edinburgh
home until the death of Thomas Stevenson in 1887.&nbsp; Much of
his time was also spent in the manse of Colinton on the Water of
Leith, the home of his maternal grandfather.&nbsp; Of this place
his childish recollections were happy and idyllic, while those of
city life were coloured rather by impressions of sickness, fever,
and nocturnal terrors.&nbsp; If, however, he suffered much as a
child from the distresses, he also enjoyed to the full the
pleasures, of imagination.&nbsp; Illness confined him much within
the house, but imagination kept him always content and
busy.&nbsp; In the days of the Crimean war some one gave the
child a cheap toy sword; and when his father depreciated it, he
said, &lsquo;I tell you, the sword is of gold, and the sheath of
silver, and the boy is very well off and quite
contented.&rsquo;&nbsp; As disabilities closed in on him in after
<a name="page6"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 6</span>life, he
would never grumble at any gift, however niggardly, of fortune,
and the anecdote is as characteristic of the man as of the
child.&nbsp; He was eager and full of invention in every kind of
play, whether solitary or sociable, and seems to have been
treated as something of a small, sickly prince among a whole
cousinhood of playmates of both the Balfour and the Stevenson
connections.&nbsp; He was also a greedy reader, or rather
listener to reading; for it was not until his eighth year that he
began to read easily or habitually to himself.&nbsp; He has
recorded how his first conscious impression of pleasure from the
sound and cadence of words was received from certain passages in
M&lsquo;Cheyne&rsquo;s hymns as recited to him by his
nurse.&nbsp; Bible stories, the <i>Pilgrim&rsquo;s Progress</i>,
and Mayne Reid&rsquo;s tales were especially, and it would seem
equally, his delight.&nbsp; He began early to take pleasure in
attempts at composition of his own.&nbsp; A history of Moses,
dictated in his sixth year, and an account of travels in Perth,
in his ninth, are still extant.&nbsp; Ill health prevented him
getting much regular or continuous schooling.&nbsp; He attended
first (1858&ndash;61) a preparatory school kept by a Mr.
Henderson in India Street; and next (at intervals for some time
after the autumn of 1861) the Edinburgh Academy.&nbsp; One of his
tutors at the former school writes: &lsquo;He was the most
delightful boy I ever knew; full of fun, full of tender feeling,
ready for his lessons, ready for a story, ready for
fun.&rsquo;&nbsp; From very early days, both as child and boy, he
must have had something of that power to charm which
distinguished him above other men in after life.&nbsp; &lsquo;I
loike that bo-o-o-o-y,&rsquo; a heavy Dutchman <a
name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span>was heard
saying to himself over and over again, whom at the age of about
thirteen he had held in amused conversation during a whole
passage from Ostend.&nbsp; The same quality, with the signs which
he always showed of quick natural intelligence when he chose to
learn, must have helped to spare him many punishments from
teachers which he earned by persistent and ingenious
truantry.&nbsp; &lsquo;I think,&rsquo; remarks his mother,
&lsquo;they liked talking to him better than teaching
him.&rsquo;</p>
<p>For a few months in the autumn of 1863, when his parents had
been ordered to winter at Mentone for the sake of his
mother&rsquo;s health, he was sent to a boarding-school kept by a
Mr. Wyatt at Spring Grove, near London.&nbsp; It is not my
intention to treat the reader to the series of childish and
boyish letters of these days which parental fondness has
preserved.&nbsp; But here is one written from his English school
when he was about thirteen, which is both amusing in itself and
had a certain influence on his destiny, inasmuch as his appeal
led to his being taken out to join his parents on the French
Riviera; which from that day forward he never ceased to love, and
for which the longing, amid the gloom of Edinburgh winters, often
afterwards gripped him by the heart.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Spring Grove School</i>,
12<i>th</i> <i>November</i> 1863.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MA CHERE MAMAN</span>,&mdash;Jai recu
votre lettre Aujourdhui et comme le jour prochaine est mon jour
de naisance je vous &eacute;crit ce lettre.&nbsp; Ma grande
gatteaux est arriv&eacute; il leve 12 livres et demi le prix
etait 17 shillings.&nbsp; Sur la soir&eacute;e de Monseigneur
Faux il y etait quelques belles feux d&rsquo;artifice.&nbsp; Mais
les polissons entrent dans notre champ et nos feux <a
name="page8"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
8</span>d&rsquo;artifice et handkerchiefs disappeared quickly,
but we charged them out of the field.&nbsp; Je suis presque
driven mad par une bruit terrible tous les garcons kik up comme
grand un bruit qu&rsquo;ll est possible.&nbsp; I hope you will
find your house at Mentone nice.&nbsp; I have been obliged to
stop from writing by the want of a pen, but now I have one, so I
will continue.</p>
<p>My dear papa, you told me to tell you whenever I was
miserable.&nbsp; I do not feel well, and I wish to get home.</p>
<p>Do take me with you.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">2 <i>Sulyarde Terrace</i>,
<i>Torquay</i>, <i>Thursday</i> (<i>April</i> 1866).</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">RESPECTED PATERNAL
RELATIVE</span>,&mdash;I write to make a request of the most
moderate nature.&nbsp; Every year I have cost you an
enormous&mdash;nay, elephantine&mdash;sum of money for drugs and
physician&rsquo;s fees, and the most expensive time of the twelve
months was March.</p>
<p>But this year the biting Oriental blasts, the howling
tempests, and the general ailments of the human race have been
successfully braved by yours truly.</p>
<p>Does not this deserve remuneration?</p>
<p>I appeal to your charity, I appeal to your generosity, I <a
name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 9</span>appeal to your
justice, I appeal to your accounts, I appeal, in fine, to your
purse.</p>
<p>My sense of generosity forbids the receipt of more&mdash;my
sense of justice forbids the receipt of less&mdash;than
half-a-crown.&mdash;Greeting from, Sir, your most affectionate
and needy son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><a name="page15"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 15</span><span
class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Wick</i>, <i>Friday</i>,
<i>September</i> 11, 1868.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,&mdash;. . . Wick
lies at the end or elbow of an open triangular bay, hemmed on
either side by shores, either cliff or steep earth-bank, of no
great height.&nbsp; The grey houses of Pulteney extend along the
southerly shore almost to the cape; and it is about half-way down
this shore&mdash;no, six-sevenths way down&mdash;that the new
breakwater extends athwart the bay.</p>
<p>Certainly Wick in itself possesses no beauty: bare, grey
shores, grim grey houses, grim grey sea; not even the gleam of
red tiles; not even the greenness of a tree.&nbsp; The southerly
heights, when I came here, were black with people, fishers
waiting on wind and night.&nbsp; Now all the S.Y.S. (Stornoway
boats) have beaten out of the bay, and the Wick men stay indoors
or wrangle on the quays <a name="page16"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 16</span>with dissatisfied fish-curers,
knee-high in brine, mud, and herring refuse.&nbsp; The day when
the boats put out to go home to the Hebrides, the girl here told
me there was &lsquo;a black wind&rsquo;; and on going out, I
found the epithet as justifiable as it was picturesque.&nbsp; A
cold, <i>black</i> southerly wind, with occasional rising showers
of rain; it was a fine sight to see the boats beat out a-teeth of
it.</p>
<p>In Wick I have never heard any one greet his neighbour with
the usual &lsquo;Fine day&rsquo; or &lsquo;Good
morning.&rsquo;&nbsp; Both come shaking their heads, and both
say, &lsquo;Breezy, breezy!&rsquo;&nbsp; And such is the
atrocious quality of the climate, that the remark is almost
invariably justified by the fact.</p>
<p>The streets are full of the Highland fishers, lubberly,
stupid, inconceivably lazy and heavy to move.&nbsp; You bruise
against them, tumble over them, elbow them against the
wall&mdash;all to no purpose; they will not budge; and you are
forced to leave the pavement every step.</p>
<p>To the south, however, is as fine a piece of coast scenery as
I ever saw.&nbsp; Great black chasms, huge black cliffs, rugged
and over-hung gullies, natural arches, and deep green pools below
them, almost too deep to let you see the gleam of sand among the
darker weed: there are deep caves too.&nbsp; In one of these
lives a tribe of gipsies.&nbsp; The men are <i>always</i> drunk,
simply and truthfully always.&nbsp; From morning to evening the
great villainous-looking fellows are either sleeping off the last
debauch, or hulking about the cove &lsquo;in the
horrors.&rsquo;&nbsp; The cave is deep, high, and airy, and might
be made comfortable enough.&nbsp; But they just live among heaped
boulders, damp with continual droppings from above, with no more
furniture than two or three tin pans, a truss of rotten straw,
and a few ragged cloaks.&nbsp; In winter the surf bursts into the
mouth and often forces them to abandon it.</p>
<p>An <i>&eacute;meute</i> of disappointed fishers was feared,
and two ships of war are in the bay to render assistance to the
municipal authorities.&nbsp; This is the ides; and, to all
intents and purposes, said ides are passed.&nbsp; Still there is
a good <a name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
17</span>deal of disturbance, many drunk men, and a double supply
of police.&nbsp; I saw them sent for by some people and enter an
inn, in a pretty good hurry: what it was for I do not know.</p>
<p>You would see by papa&rsquo;s letter about the carpenter who
fell off the staging: I don&rsquo;t think I was ever so much
excited in my life.&nbsp; The man was back at his work, and I
asked him how he was; but he was a Highlander, and&mdash;need I
add it?&mdash;dickens a word could I understand of his
answer.&nbsp; What is still worse, I find the people
here-about&mdash;that is to say, the Highlanders, not the
northmen&mdash;don&rsquo;t understand <i>me</i>.</p>
<p>I have lost a shilling&rsquo;s worth of postage stamps, which
has damped my ardour for buying big lots of &rsquo;em: I&rsquo;ll
buy them one at a time as I want &rsquo;em for the future.</p>
<p>The Free Church minister and I got quite thick.&nbsp; He left
last night about two in the morning, when I went to turn
in.&nbsp; He gave me the enclosed.&mdash;I remain your
affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Wick</i>, September 5,
1868.&nbsp; <i>Monday</i>.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MAMMA</span>,&mdash;This
morning I got a delightful haul: your letter of the fourth
(surely mis-dated); Papa&rsquo;s of same day; Virgil&rsquo;s
<i>Bucolics</i>, very thankfully received; and Aikman&rsquo;s
<i>Annals</i>, <a name="citation17"></a><a href="#footnote17"
class="citation">[17]</a> a precious and most acceptable
donation, for which I tender my most ebullient
thanksgivings.&nbsp; I almost forgot to drink my tea and eat mine
egg.</p>
<p>It contains more detailed accounts than anything I ever saw,
except Wodrow, without being so portentously tiresome and so
desperately overborne with footnotes, proclamations, acts of
Parliament, and citations as that last history.</p>
<p><a name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>I have
been reading a good deal of Herbert.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s a clever
and a devout cove; but in places awfully twaddley (if I may use
the word).&nbsp; Oughtn&rsquo;t this to rejoice Papa&rsquo;s
heart&mdash;</p>
<p class="poetry">&lsquo;Carve or discourse; do not a famine
fear.<br />
Who carves is kind to two, who talks to all.&rsquo;</p>
<p>You understand?&nbsp; The &lsquo;fearing a famine&rsquo; is
applied to people gulping down solid vivers without a word, as if
the ten lean kine began to-morrow.</p>
<p>Do you remember condemning something of mine for being too
obtrusively didactic.&nbsp; Listen to Herbert&mdash;</p>
<p class="poetry">&lsquo;Is it not verse except enchanted
groves<br />
And sudden arbours shadow coarse-spun lines?<br />
Must purling streams refresh a lover&rsquo;s loves?<br />
<i>Must all be veiled</i>, <i>while he that reads divines</i><br
/>
<i>Catching the sense at two removes</i>?&rsquo;</p>
<p>You see, &lsquo;except&rsquo; was used for
&lsquo;unless&rsquo; before 1630.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p><i>Tuesday</i>.&mdash;The riots were a hum.&nbsp; No more has
been heard; and one of the war-steamers has deserted in
disgust.</p>
<p>The <i>Moonstone</i> is frightfully interesting: isn&rsquo;t
the detective prime?&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t say anything about the
plot; for I have only read on to the end of Betteredge&rsquo;s
narrative, so don&rsquo;t know anything about it yet.</p>
<p>I thought to have gone on to Thurso to-night, but the coach
was full; so I go to-morrow instead.</p>
<p>To-day I had a grouse: great glorification.</p>
<p>There is a drunken brute in the house who disturbed my rest
last night.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s a very respectable man in general,
but when on the &lsquo;spree&rsquo; a most consummate fool.&nbsp;
When he came in he stood on the top of the stairs and preached in
the dark with great solemnity and no audience from 12 <span
class="GutSmall">P.M.</span> to half-past one.&nbsp; At last I
opened my door.&nbsp; &lsquo;Are we to have no sleep at all for
that <i>drunken brute</i>?&rsquo;&nbsp; I said.&nbsp; As I hoped,
it had the desired effect.&nbsp; <a name="page19"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 19</span>&lsquo;Drunken brute!&rsquo; he
howled, in much indignation; then after a pause, in a voice of
some contrition, &lsquo;Well, if I am a drunken brute, it&rsquo;s
only once in the twelvemonth!&rsquo;&nbsp; And that was the end
of him; the insult rankled in his mind; and he retired to
rest.&nbsp; He is a fish-curer, a man over fifty, and pretty rich
too.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s as bad again to-day; but I&rsquo;ll be shot
if he keeps me awake, I&rsquo;ll douse him with water if he makes
a row.&mdash;Ever your affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Wick</i>, <i>September</i>
1868.&nbsp; <i>Saturday</i>, 10 <span
class="GutSmall">A.M.</span></p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,&mdash;The last
two days have been dreadfully hard, and I was so tired in the
evenings that I could not write.&nbsp; In fact, last night I went
to sleep immediately after dinner, or very nearly so.&nbsp; My
hours have been 10&ndash;2 and 3&ndash;7 out in the lighter or
the small boat, in a long, heavy roll from the
nor&rsquo;-east.&nbsp; When the dog was taken out, he got awfully
ill; one of the men, Geordie Grant by name and surname, followed
<i>shoot</i> with considerable <i>&eacute;clat</i>; but,
wonderful to relate! I kept well.&nbsp; My hands are all skinned,
blistered, discoloured, and engrained with tar, some of which
latter has established itself under my nails in a position of
such natural strength that it defies all my efforts to dislodge
it.&nbsp; The worst work I had was when David (MacDonald&rsquo;s
eldest) and I took the charge ourselves.&nbsp; He remained in the
lighter to tighten or slacken the guys as we raised the pole
towards the perpendicular, with two men.&nbsp; I was with four
men in the boat.&nbsp; We dropped an anchor out a good bit, then
tied a cord to the pole, took a turn round the sternmost thwart
with it, and pulled on the anchor line.&nbsp; As the great, big,
wet hawser came in it soaked you to the skin: I was the sternest
(used, by way of variety, for sternmost) of the lot, and had to
coil it&mdash;a work which involved, from <i>its</i> being so
stiff and <i>your</i> <a name="page20"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 20</span>being busy pulling with all your
might, no little trouble and an extra ducking.&nbsp; We got it
up; and, just as we were going to sing &lsquo;Victory!&rsquo; one
of the guys slipped in, the pole tottered&mdash;went over on its
side again like a shot, and behold the end of our labour.</p>
<p>You see, I have been roughing it; and though some parts of the
letter may be neither very comprehensible nor very interesting to
<i>you</i>, I think that perhaps it might amuse Willie Traquair,
who delights in all such dirty jobs.</p>
<p>The first day, I forgot to mention, was like mid-winter for
cold, and rained incessantly so hard that the livid white of our
cold-pinched faces wore a sort of inflamed rash on the windward
side.</p>
<p>I am not a bit the worse of it, except fore-mentioned state of
hands, a slight crick in my neck from the rain running down, and
general stiffness from pulling, hauling, and tugging for dear
life.</p>
<p>We have got double weights at the guys, and hope to get it up
like a shot.</p>
<p>What fun you three must be having!&nbsp; I hope the cold
don&rsquo;t disagree with you.&mdash;I remain, my dear mother,
your affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Pulteney</i>, <i>Wick</i>,
<i>Sunday</i>, <i>September</i> 1868.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,&mdash;Another
storm: wind higher, rain thicker: the wind still rising as the
night closes in and the sea slowly rising along with it; it looks
like a three days&rsquo; gale.</p>
<p><a name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 21</span>Last
week has been a blank one: always too much sea.</p>
<p>I enjoyed myself very much last night at the R.&rsquo;s.&nbsp;
There was a little dancing, much singing and supper.</p>
<p>Are you not well that you do not write?&nbsp; I haven&rsquo;t
heard from you for more than a fortnight.</p>
<p>The wind fell yesterday and rose again to-day; it is a
dreadful evening; but the wind is keeping the sea down as
yet.&nbsp; Of course, nothing more has been done to the poles;
and I can&rsquo;t tell when I shall be able to leave, not for a
fortnight yet, I fear, at the earliest, for the winds are
persistent.&nbsp; Where&rsquo;s Murra?&nbsp; Is Cummie struck
dumb about the boots?&nbsp; I wish you would get somebody to
write an interesting letter and say how you are, for you&rsquo;re
on the broad of your back I see.&nbsp; There hath arrived an
inroad of farmers to-night; and I go to avoid them to M&mdash; if
he&rsquo;s disengaged, to the R.&rsquo;s if not.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p><i>Sunday</i> (<i>later</i>).&mdash;Storm without: wind and
rain: a confused mass of wind-driven rain-squalls, wind-ragged
mist, foam, spray, and great, grey waves.&nbsp; Of this
hereafter; in the meantime let us follow the due course of
historic narrative.</p>
<p>Seven <span class="GutSmall">P.M.</span> found me at
Breadalbane Terrace, clad in spotless blacks, white tie, shirt,
et c&aelig;tera, and finished off below with a pair of
navvies&rsquo; boots.&nbsp; How true that the devil is betrayed
by his feet!&nbsp; A message to Cummy at last.&nbsp; Why, O
treacherous woman! were my dress boots withheld?</p>
<p>Dramatis person&aelig;: p&egrave;re R., amusing, long-winded,
in many points like papa; m&egrave;re R., nice, delicate, likes
hymns, knew Aunt Margaret (&rsquo;t&rsquo;ould man knew Uncle
Alan); fille R., nomm&eacute;e Sara (no h), rather nice, lights
up well, good voice, <i>interested</i> face; Miss L., nice also,
washed out a little, and, I think, a trifle sentimental; fils R.,
in a Leith office, smart, full of happy epithet, amusing.&nbsp;
They are very nice and very kind, asked me to come
back&mdash;&lsquo;any night you feel dull; and any night <a
name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 22</span>doesn&rsquo;t
mean no night: we&rsquo;ll be so glad to see you.&rsquo;&nbsp;
<i>Cest la m&egrave;re qui parle</i>.</p>
<p>I was back there again to-night.&nbsp; There was hymn-singing,
and general religious controversy till eight, after which talk
was secular.&nbsp; Mrs. S. was deeply distressed about the boot
business.&nbsp; She consoled me by saying that many would be glad
to have such feet whatever shoes they had on.&nbsp;
Unfortunately, fishers and seafaring men are too facile to be
compared with!&nbsp; This looks like enjoyment: better speck than
Anster.</p>
<p>I have done with frivolity.&nbsp; This morning I was awakened
by Mrs. S. at the door.&nbsp; &lsquo;There&rsquo;s a ship ashore
at Shaltigoe!&rsquo;&nbsp; As my senses slowly flooded, I heard
the whistling and the roaring of wind, and the lashing of
gust-blown and uncertain flaws of rain.&nbsp; I got up, dressed,
and went out.&nbsp; The mizzled sky and rain blinded you.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<a href="images/p22b.jpg">
<img alt=
"Diagram"
title=
"Diagram"
 src="images/p22s.jpg" />
</a></p>
<p>C D is the new pier.</p>
<p>A the schooner ashore.&nbsp; B the salmon house.</p>
<p>She was a Norwegian: coming in she saw our first gauge-pole,
standing at point E. Norse skipper thought it was a sunk smack,
and dropped his anchor in full drift of sea: chain broke:
schooner came ashore.&nbsp; Insured laden with wood: skipper
owner of vessel and cargo bottom out.</p>
<p>I was in a great fright at first lest we should be liable; but
it seems that&rsquo;s all right.</p>
<p>Some of the waves were twenty feet high.&nbsp; The spray <a
name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 23</span>rose eighty
feet at the new pier.&nbsp; Some wood has come ashore, and the
roadway seems carried away.&nbsp; There is something fishy at the
far end where the cross wall is building; but till we are able to
get along, all speculation is vain.</p>
<p>I am so sleepy I am writing nonsense.</p>
<p>I stood a long while on the cope watching the sea below me; I
hear its dull, monotonous roar at this moment below the shrieking
of the wind; and there came ever recurring to my mind the verse I
am so fond of:&mdash;</p>
<p class="poetry">&lsquo;But yet the Lord that is on high<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Is more of might by far<br />
Than noise of many waters is<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Or great sea-billows are.&rsquo;</p>
<p>The thunder at the wall when it first struck&mdash;the rush
along ever growing higher&mdash;the great jet of snow-white spray
some forty feet above you&mdash;and the &lsquo;noise of many
waters,&rsquo; the roar, the hiss, the &lsquo;shrieking&rsquo;
among the shingle as it fell head over heels at your feet.&nbsp;
I watched if it threw the big stones at the wall; but it never
moved them.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p><i>Monday</i>.&mdash;The end of the work displays gaps, cairns
of ten ton blocks, stones torn from their places and turned right
round.&nbsp; The damage above water is comparatively little: what
there may be below, <i>on ne sait pas encore</i>.&nbsp; The
roadway is torn away, cross heads, broken planks tossed here and
there, planks gnawn and mumbled as if a starved bear had been
trying to eat them, planks with spales lifted from them as if
they had been dressed with a rugged plane, one pile swaying to
and fro clear of the bottom, the rails in one place sunk a foot
at least.&nbsp; This was not a great storm, the waves were light
and short.&nbsp; Yet when we are standing at the office, I felt
the ground beneath me <i>quail</i> as a huge roller thundered on
the work at the last year&rsquo;s cross wall.</p>
<p><a name="page24"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 24</span>How
could <i>noster amicus Q. maximus</i> appreciate a storm at
Wick?&nbsp; It requires a little of the artistic temperament, of
which Mr. T. S., <a name="citation24"></a><a href="#footnote24"
class="citation">[24]</a> C.E., possesses some, whatever he may
say.&nbsp; I can&rsquo;t look at it practically however: that
will come, I suppose, like grey hair or coffin nails.</p>
<p>Our pole is snapped: a fortnight&rsquo;s work and the loss of
the Norse schooner all for nothing!&mdash;except experience and
dirty clothes.&mdash;Your affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Churchill babington</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Swanston Cottage</i>,
<i>Lothianburn</i>, <i>Summer</i> 1871.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MAUD</span>,&mdash;If you have
forgotten the hand-writing&mdash;as is like enough&mdash;you will
find the name of a former correspondent (don&rsquo;t know how to
spell that word) at the end.&nbsp; I have begun to write to you
before now, but always stuck somehow, and left it to drown in a
drawerful of like fiascos.&nbsp; This time I am determined to
carry through, though I have nothing specially to say.</p>
<p>We look fairly like summer this morning; the trees are
blackening out of their spring greens; the warmer suns have
melted the hoarfrost of daisies of the paddock; and the
blackbird, I fear, already beginning to &lsquo;stint his pipe of
mellower days&rsquo;&mdash;which is very apposite (I can&rsquo;t
spell anything to-day&mdash;<i>one</i> p or <i>two</i>?) and
pretty.&nbsp; All the same, we have been having shocking
weather&mdash;cold winds and grey skies.</p>
<p>I have been reading heaps of nice books; but I can&rsquo;t go
<a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 25</span>back so
far.&nbsp; I am reading Clarendon&rsquo;s <i>Hist. Rebell.</i> at
present, with which I am more pleased than I expected, which is
saying a good deal.&nbsp; It is a pet idea of mine that one gets
more real truth out of one avowed partisan than out of a dozen of
your sham impartialists&mdash;wolves in sheep&rsquo;s
clothing&mdash;simpering honesty as they suppress
documents.&nbsp; After all, what one wants to know is not what
people did, but why they did it&mdash;or rather, why they
<i>thought</i> they did it; and to learn that, you should go to
the men themselves.&nbsp; Their very falsehood is often more than
another man&rsquo;s truth.</p>
<p>I have possessed myself of Mrs. Hutchinson, which, of course,
I admire, etc.&nbsp; But is there not an irritating deliberation
and correctness about her and everybody connected with her?&nbsp;
If she would only write bad grammar, or forget to finish a
sentence, or do something or other that looks fallible, it would
be a relief.&nbsp; I sometimes wish the old Colonel had got drunk
and beaten her, in the bitterness of my spirit.&nbsp; I know I
felt a weight taken off my heart when I heard he was
extravagant.&nbsp; It is quite possible to be too good for this
evil world; and unquestionably, Mrs. Hutchinson was.&nbsp; The
way in which she talks of herself makes one&rsquo;s blood run
cold.&nbsp; There&mdash;I am glad to have got that out&mdash;but
don&rsquo;t say it to anybody&mdash;seal of secrecy.</p>
<p>Please tell Mr. Babington that I have never forgotten one of
his drawings&mdash;a Rubens, I think&mdash;a woman holding up a
model ship.&nbsp; That woman had more life in her than ninety per
cent. of the lame humans that you see crippling about this
earth.</p>
<p>By the way, that is a feature in art which seems to have come
in with the Italians.&nbsp; Your old Greek statues have scarce
enough vitality in them to keep their monstrous bodies fresh
withal.&nbsp; A shrewd country attorney, in a turned white
neckcloth and rusty blacks, would just take one of these
Agamemnons and Ajaxes quietly by his beautiful, strong arm, trot
the unresisting statue down a <a name="page26"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 26</span>little gallery of legal shams, and
turn the poor fellow out at the other end, &lsquo;naked, as from
the earth he came.&rsquo;&nbsp; There is more latent life, more
of the coiled spring in the sleeping dog, about a recumbent
figure of Michael Angelo&rsquo;s than about the most excited of
Greek statues.&nbsp; The very marble seems to wrinkle with a wild
energy that we never feel except in dreams.</p>
<p>I think this letter has turned into a sermon, but I had
nothing interesting to talk about.</p>
<p>I do wish you and Mr. Babington would think better of it and
come north this summer.&nbsp; We should be so glad to see you
both.&nbsp; <i>Do</i> reconsider it.&mdash;Believe me, my dear
Maud, ever your most affectionate cousin,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Alison Cunningham</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">1871?</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CUMMY</span>,&mdash;I was
greatly pleased by your letter in many ways.&nbsp; Of course, I
was glad to hear from you; you know, you and I have so many old
stories between us, that even if there was nothing else, even if
there was not a very sincere respect and affection, we should
always be glad to pass a nod.&nbsp; I say &lsquo;even if there
was not.&rsquo;&nbsp; But you know right well there is.&nbsp; Do
not suppose that I shall ever forget those long, bitter nights,
when I coughed and coughed and was so unhappy, and you were so
patient and loving with a poor, sick child.&nbsp; Indeed, Cummy,
I wish I might become a man worth talking of, if it were only
that you should not have thrown away your pains.</p>
<p><a name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
27</span>Happily, it is not the result of our acts that makes
them brave and noble, but the acts themselves and the unselfish
love that moved us to do them.&nbsp; &lsquo;Inasmuch as you have
done it unto one of the least of these.&rsquo;&nbsp; My dear old
nurse, and you know there is nothing a man can say nearer his
heart except his mother or his wife&mdash;my dear old nurse, God
will make good to you all the good that you have done, and
mercifully forgive you all the evil.&nbsp; And next time when the
spring comes round, and everything is beginning once again, if
you should happen to think that you might have had a child of
your own, and that it was hard you should have spent so many
years taking care of some one else&rsquo;s prodigal, just you
think this&mdash;you have been for a great deal in my life; you
have made much that there is in me, just as surely as if you had
conceived me; and there are sons who are more ungrateful to their
own mothers than I am to you.&nbsp; For I am not ungrateful, my
dear Cummy, and it is with a very sincere emotion that I write
myself your little boy,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Louis</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Charles Baxter</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Dunblane</i>, <i>Friday</i>,
5<i>th</i> <i>March</i> 1872.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BAXTER</span>,&mdash;By the
date you may perhaps understand the purport of my letter without
any words wasted about the matter.&nbsp; I cannot walk with you
to-morrow, and you must not expect me.&nbsp; I came yesterday
afternoon to Bridge of Allan, and have been very happy ever
since, as every place is sanctified by the eighth sense,
Memory.&nbsp; I walked up here this morning (three miles,
<i>tu-dieu</i>! a good stretch for me), and passed one of my
favourite places in the world, and one that I very much affect in
spirit when the body is tied down and brought immovably <a
name="page28"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 28</span>to anchor on
a sickbed.&nbsp; It is a meadow and bank on a corner on the
river, and is connected in my mind inseparably with
Virgil&rsquo;s <i>Eclogues</i>.&nbsp; <i>Hic corulis mistos inter
consedimus ulmos</i>, or something very like that, the passage
begins (only I know my short-winded Latinity must have come to
grief over even this much of quotation); and here, to a wish, is
just such a cavern as Menalcas might shelter himself withal from
the bright noon, and, with his lips curled backward, pipe himself
blue in the face, while <i>Messieurs les Arcadiens</i> would roll
out those cloying hexameters that sing themselves in one&rsquo;s
mouth to such a curious lifting chant.</p>
<p>In such weather one has the bird&rsquo;s need to whistle; and
I, who am specially incompetent in this art, must content myself
by chattering away to you on this bit of paper.&nbsp; All the way
along I was thanking God that he had made me and the birds and
everything just as they are and not otherwise; for although there
was no sun, the air was so thrilled with robins and blackbirds
that it made the heart tremble with joy, and the leaves are far
enough forward on the underwood to give a fine promise for the
future.&nbsp; Even myself, as I say, I would not have had changed
in one <i>iota</i> this forenoon, in spite of all my idleness and
Guthrie&rsquo;s lost paper, which is ever present with me&mdash;a
horrible phantom.</p>
<p>No one can be alone at home or in a quite new place.&nbsp;
Memory and you must go hand in hand with (at least) decent
weather if you wish to cook up a proper dish of solitude.&nbsp;
It is in these little flights of mine that I get more pleasure
than in anything else.&nbsp; Now, at present, I am supremely
uneasy and restless&mdash;almost to the extent of pain; but O!
how I enjoy it, and how I <i>shall</i> enjoy it afterwards
(please God), if I get years enough allotted to me for the thing
to ripen in.&nbsp; When I am a very old and very respectable
citizen with white hair and bland manners and a gold watch, I
shall hear three crows cawing in my heart, as I heard them this
morning: I vote for <a name="page29"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
29</span>old age and eighty years of retrospect.&nbsp; Yet, after
all, I dare say, a short shrift and a nice green grave are about
as desirable.</p>
<p>Poor devil! how I am wearying you!&nbsp; Cheer up.&nbsp; Two
pages more, and my letter reaches its term, for I have no more
paper.&nbsp; What delightful things inns and waiters and bagmen
are!&nbsp; If we didn&rsquo;t travel now and then, we should
forget what the feeling of life is.&nbsp; The very cushion of a
railway carriage&mdash;&lsquo;the things restorative to the
touch.&rsquo;&nbsp; I can&rsquo;t write, confound it!&nbsp;
That&rsquo;s because I am so tired with my walk.&nbsp; Believe
me, ever your affectionate friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Charles Baxter</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Dunblane</i>, <i>Tuesday</i>,
9<i>th</i> <i>April</i> 1872.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BAXTER</span>,&mdash;I
don&rsquo;t know what you mean.&nbsp; I know nothing about the
Standing Committee of the Spec., did not know that such a body
existed, and even if it doth exist, must sadly repudiate all
association with such &lsquo;goodly fellowship.&rsquo;&nbsp; I am
a &lsquo;Rural Voluptuary&rsquo; at present.&nbsp; <i>That</i> is
what is the matter with me.&nbsp; The Spec. may go whistle.&nbsp;
As for &lsquo;C. Baxter, Esq.,&rsquo; who is he?&nbsp; &lsquo;One
Baxter, or Bagster, a secretary,&rsquo; I say to mine
acquaintance, &lsquo;is at present disquieting my leisure with
certain illegal, uncharitable, unchristian, and unconstitutional
documents called <i>Business Letters</i>: <i>The affair is in the
hands of the Police</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp; Do you hear <i>that</i>,
you evildoer?&nbsp; Sending business letters is surely a far more
hateful and slimy degree of wickedness than sending threatening
letters; the man who throws grenades and torpedoes is less
malicious; the Devil in red-hot hell rubs his hands with glee as
he reckons <a name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
30</span>up the number that go forth spreading pain and anxiety
with each delivery of the post.</p>
<p>I have been walking to-day by a colonnade of beeches along the
brawling Allan.&nbsp; My character for sanity is quite gone,
seeing that I cheered my lonely way with the following, in a
triumphant chaunt: &lsquo;Thank God for the grass, and the
fir-trees, and the crows, and the sheep, and the sunshine, and
the shadows of the fir-trees.&rsquo;&nbsp; I hold that he is a
poor mean devil who can walk alone, in such a place and in such
weather, and doesn&rsquo;t set up his lungs and cry back to the
birds and the river.&nbsp; Follow, follow, follow me.&nbsp; Come
hither, come hither, come hither&mdash;here shall you
see&mdash;no enemy&mdash;except a very slight remnant of winter
and its rough weather.&nbsp; My bedroom, when I awoke this
morning, was full of bird-songs, which is the greatest pleasure
in life.&nbsp; Come hither, come hither, come hither, and when
you come bring the third part of the <i>Earthly Paradise</i>; you
can get it for me in Elliot&rsquo;s for two and tenpence (2s.
10d.) (<i>business habits</i>).&nbsp; Also bring an ounce of
honeydew from Wilson&rsquo;s.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Brussels</i>, <i>Thursday</i>,
25<i>th July</i> 1872.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,&mdash;I am here
at last, sitting in my room, without coat or waistcoat, and with
both window and door open, and yet perspiring like a terra-cotta
jug or a Gruy&egrave;re cheese.</p>
<p>We had a very good passage, which we certainly <a
name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 31</span>deserved, in
compensation for having to sleep on cabin floor, and finding
absolutely nothing fit for human food in the whole filthy
embarkation.&nbsp; We made up for lost time by sleeping on deck a
good part of the forenoon.&nbsp; When I woke, Simpson was still
sleeping the sleep of the just, on a coil of ropes and (as
appeared afterwards) his own hat; so I got a bottle of Bass and a
pipe and laid hold of an old Frenchman of somewhat filthy aspect
(<i>fiat</i> <i>experimentum in corpore vili</i>) to try my
French upon.&nbsp; I made very heavy weather of it.&nbsp; The
Frenchman had a very pretty young wife; but my French always
deserted me entirely when I had to answer her, and so she soon
drew away and left me to her lord, who talked of French politics,
Africa, and domestic economy with great vivacity.&nbsp; From
Ostend a smoking-hot journey to Brussels.&nbsp; At Brussels we
went off after dinner to the Parc.&nbsp; If any person wants to
be happy, I should advise the Parc.&nbsp; You sit drinking iced
drinks and smoking penny cigars under great old trees.&nbsp; The
band place, covered walks, etc., are all lit up.&nbsp; And you
can&rsquo;t fancy how beautiful was the contrast of the great
masses of lamplit foliage and the dark sapphire night sky with
just one blue star set overhead in the middle of the largest
patch.&nbsp; In the dark walks, too, there are crowds of people
whose faces you cannot see, and here and there a colossal white
statue at the corner of an alley that gives the place a nice,
<i>artificial</i>, eighteenth century sentiment.&nbsp; There was
a good deal of summer lightning blinking overhead, and the black
avenues and white statues leapt out every minute into short-lived
distinctness.</p>
<p>I get up to add one thing more.&nbsp; There is in the hotel a
boy in whom I take the deepest interest.&nbsp; I cannot tell you
his age, but the very first time I saw him (when I was at dinner
yesterday) I was very much struck with his appearance.&nbsp;
There is something very leonine in his face, with a dash of the
negro especially, if I remember aright, in the mouth.&nbsp; He
has a great quantity of dark <a name="page32"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 32</span>hair, curling in great rolls, not in
little corkscrews, and a pair of large, dark, and very steady,
bold, bright eyes.&nbsp; His manners are those of a prince.&nbsp;
I felt like an overgrown ploughboy beside him.&nbsp; He speaks
English perfectly, but with, I think, sufficient foreign accent
to stamp him as a Russian, especially when his manners are taken
into account.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t think I ever saw any one who
looked like a hero before.&nbsp; After breakfast this morning I
was talking to him in the court, when he mentioned casually that
he had caught a snake in the Riesengebirge.&nbsp; &lsquo;I have
it here,&rsquo; he said; &lsquo;would you like to see
it?&rsquo;&nbsp; I said yes; and putting his hand into his
breast-pocket, he drew forth not a dried serpent skin, but the
head and neck of the reptile writhing and shooting out its
horrible tongue in my face.&nbsp; You may conceive what a fright
I got.&nbsp; I send off this single sheet just now in order to
let you know I am safe across; but you must not expect letters
often.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;The snake was about a yard long, but
harmless, and now, he says, quite tame.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Hotel Landsberg</i>,
<i>Frankfurt</i>, <i>Monday</i>, 29<i>th</i> <i>July</i>
1872.</p>
<p>. . . <span class="smcap">Last</span> night I met with rather
an amusing adventurette.&nbsp; Seeing a church door open, I went
in, and was led by most importunate finger-bills up a long stair
to the top of the tower.&nbsp; The father smoking at the door,
the mother and the three daughters received me as if I was a
friend of the family and had come in for an evening visit.&nbsp;
The youngest daughter (about thirteen, I suppose, and a pretty
little girl) had been learning English at the school, and was
anxious to play it off upon a real, veritable Englander; so we
had a long talk, and I was shown photographs, etc., Marie and I
talking, and the others looking on with evident delight at having
such a linguist in the family.&nbsp; <a name="page33"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 33</span>As all my remarks were duly
translated and communicated to the rest, it was quite a good
German lesson.&nbsp; There was only one contretemps during the
whole interview&mdash;the arrival of another visitor, in the
shape (surely) the last of God&rsquo;s creatures, a wood-worm of
the most unnatural and hideous appearance, with one great striped
horn sticking out of his nose like a boltsprit.&nbsp; If there
are many wood-worms in Germany, I shall come home.&nbsp; The most
courageous men in the world must be entomologists.&nbsp; I had
rather be a lion-tamer.</p>
<p>To-day I got rather a curiosity&mdash;<i>Lieder und Balladen
von Robert Burns</i>, translated by one Silbergleit, and not so
ill done either.&nbsp; Armed with which, I had a swim in the
Main, and then bread and cheese and Bavarian beer in a sort of
caf&eacute;, or at least the German substitute for a caf&eacute;;
but what a falling off after the heavenly forenoons in
Brussels!</p>
<p>I have bought a meerschaum out of local sentiment, and am now
very low and nervous about the bargain, having paid dearer than I
should in England, and got a worse article, if I can form a
judgment.</p>
<p>Do write some more, somebody.&nbsp; To-morrow I expect I shall
go into lodgings, as this hotel work makes the money disappear
like butter in a furnace.&mdash;Meanwhile believe me, ever your
affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Hotel Landsberg</i>,
<i>Thursday</i>, 1<i>st</i> <i>August</i> 1872.</p>
<p>. . . <span class="smcap">Yesterday</span> I walked to
Eckenheim, a village a little way out of Frankfurt, and turned
into the alehouse.&nbsp; In the room, which was just such as it
would have been in Scotland, were the landlady, two neighbours,
and an old peasant eating raw sausage at the far end.&nbsp; I
soon got into conversation; and was astonished when the landlady,
having asked whether I were an Englishman, <a
name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 34</span>and received
an answer in the affirmative, proceeded to inquire further
whether I were not also a Scotchman.&nbsp; It turned out that a
Scotch doctor&mdash;a professor&mdash;a poet&mdash;who wrote
books&mdash;<i>gross wie das</i>&mdash;had come nearly every day
out of Frankfurt to the <i>Eckenheimer Wirthschaft</i>, and had
left behind him a most savoury memory in the hearts of all its
customers.&nbsp; One man ran out to find his name for me, and
returned with the news that it was <i>Cobie</i> (Scobie, I
suspect); and during his absence the rest were pouring into my
ears the fame and acquirements of my countryman.&nbsp; He was, in
some undecipherable manner, connected with the Queen of England
and one of the Princesses.&nbsp; He had been in Turkey, and had
there married a wife of immense wealth.&nbsp; They could find
apparently no measure adequate to express the size of his
books.&nbsp; In one way or another, he had amassed a princely
fortune, and had apparently only one sorrow, his daughter to wit,
who had absconded into a <i>kloster</i>, with a considerable
slice of the mother&rsquo;s <i>geld</i>.&nbsp; I told them we had
no klosters in Scotland, with a certain feeling of
superiority.&nbsp; No more had they, I was
told&mdash;&lsquo;<i>Hier ist unser Kloster</i>!&rsquo; and the
speaker motioned with both arms round the taproom.&nbsp; Although
the first torrent was exhausted, yet the Doctor came up again in
all sorts of ways, and with or without occasion, throughout the
whole interview; as, for example, when one man, taking his pipe
out of his mouth and shaking his head, remarked
<i>&agrave;propos</i> of nothing and with almost defiant
conviction, &lsquo;<i>Er war ein feiner Mann</i>, <i>der Herr
Doctor</i>,&rsquo; and was answered by another with
&lsquo;<i>Yaw</i>, <i>yaw</i>, <i>und trank immer rothen
Wein</i>.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Setting aside the Doctor, who had evidently turned the brains
of the entire village, they were intelligent people.&nbsp; One
thing in particular struck me, their honesty in admitting that
here they spoke bad German, and advising me to go to Coburg or
Leipsic for German.&mdash;&lsquo;<i>Sie sprechen da
rein</i>&rsquo; (clean), said one; and they all nodded their <a
name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 35</span>heads
together like as many mandarins, and repeated <i>rein</i>, <i>so
rein</i> in chorus.</p>
<p>Of course we got upon Scotland.&nbsp; The hostess said,
&lsquo;<i>Die Schottl&auml;nder trinken gern Schnapps</i>,&rsquo;
which may be freely translated, &lsquo;Scotchmen are horrid fond
of whisky.&rsquo;&nbsp; It was impossible, of course, to combat
such a truism; and so I proceeded to explain the construction of
toddy, interrupted by a cry of horror when I mentioned the
<i>hot</i> water; and thence, as I find is always the case, to
the most ghastly romancing about Scottish scenery and manners,
the Highland dress, and everything national or local that I could
lay my hands upon.&nbsp; Now that I have got my German Burns, I
lean a good deal upon him for opening a conversation, and read a
few translations to every yawning audience that I can
gather.&nbsp; I am grown most insufferably national, you
see.&nbsp; I fancy it is a punishment for my want of it at
ordinary times.&nbsp; Now, what do you think, there was a waiter
in this very hotel, but, alas! he is now gone, who sang (from
morning to night, as my informant said with a shrug at the
recollection) what but <i>&lsquo;s ist lange her</i>, the German
version of Auld Lang Syne; so you see, madame, the finest lyric
ever written will make its way out of whatsoever corner of patois
it found its birth in.</p>
<p class="poetry">&lsquo;<i>Meitz Herz ist im Hochland</i>,
<i>mean Herz ist nicht hier</i>,<br />
<i>Mein Herz ist im Hochland im gr&uuml;nen Revier</i>.<br />
<i>Im gr&uuml;nen Reviere zu jagen das Reh</i>;<br />
<i>Mein Herz ist im Hochland</i>, <i>wo immer ich
geh</i>.&rsquo;</p>
<p>I don&rsquo;t think I need translate that for you.</p>
<p>There is one thing that burthens me a good deal in my
patriotic garrulage, and that is the black ignorance in which I
grope about everything, as, for example, when I gave yesterday a
full and, I fancy, a startlingly incorrect account of Scotch
education to a very stolid German on a garden bench: he sat and
perspired under it, however with much composure.&nbsp; I am
generally glad enough to <a name="page36"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 36</span>fall back again, after these
political interludes, upon Burns, toddy, and the Highlands.</p>
<p>I go every night to the theatre, except when there is no
opera.&nbsp; I cannot stand a play yet; but I am already very
much improved, and can understand a good deal of what goes
on.</p>
<p><i>Friday</i>, <i>August</i> 2, 1872.&mdash;In the evening, at
the theatre, I had a great laugh.&nbsp; Lord Allcash in <i>Fra
Diavolo</i>, with his white hat, red guide-books, and bad German,
was the <i>pi&egrave;ce-de-r&eacute;sistance</i> from a humorous
point of view; and I had the satisfaction of knowing that in my
own small way I could minister the same amusement whenever I
chose to open my mouth.</p>
<p>I am just going off to do some German with Simpson.&mdash;Your
affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Frankfurt</i>, <i>Rosengasse</i>
13, <i>August</i> 4, 1872.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR FATHER</span>,&mdash;You will
perceive by the head of this page that we have at last got into
lodgings, and powerfully mean ones too.&nbsp; If I were to call
the street anything but <i>shady</i>, I should be boasting.&nbsp;
The people sit at their doors in shirt-sleeves, smoking as they
do in Seven Dials of a Sunday.</p>
<p>Last night we went to bed about ten, for the first time
<i>householders</i> in Germany&mdash;real Teutons, with no
deception, spring, or false bottom.&nbsp; About half-past one
there began such a trumpeting, shouting, pealing of bells, and
scurrying hither and thither of feet as woke every person in
Frankfurt out of their first sleep with a vague sort of
apprehension that the last day was at hand.&nbsp; The whole
street was alive, and we could hear people talking in their
rooms, or crying to passers-by from their windows, all around
us.&nbsp; At last I made out what a man was <a
name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 37</span>saying in the
next room.&nbsp; It was a fire in Sachsenhausen, he said
(Sachsenhausen is the suburb on the other side of the Main), and
he wound up with one of the most tremendous falsehoods on record,
&lsquo;<i>Hier alles ruht</i>&mdash;here all is
still.&rsquo;&nbsp; If it can be said to be still in an engine
factory, or in the stomach of a volcano when it is meditating an
eruption, he might have been justified in what he said, but not
otherwise.&nbsp; The tumult continued unabated for near an hour;
but as one grew used to it, it gradually resolved itself into
three bells, answering each other at short intervals across the
town, a man shouting, at ever shorter intervals and with
superhuman energy, &lsquo;<i>Feuer</i>,&mdash;<i>im
Sachsenhausen</i>, and the almost continuous winding of all
manner of bugles and trumpets, sometimes in stirring flourishes,
and sometimes in mere tuneless wails.&nbsp; Occasionally there
was another rush of feet past the window, and once there was a
mighty drumming, down between us and the river, as though the
soldiery were turning out to keep the peace.&nbsp; This was all
we had of the fire, except a great cloud, all flushed red with
the glare, above the roofs on the other side of the Gasse; but it
was quite enough to put me entirely off my sleep and make me
keenly alive to three or four gentlemen who were strolling
leisurely about my person, and every here and there leaving me
somewhat as a keepsake. . . . However, everything has its
compensation, and when day came at last, and the sparrows awoke
with trills and <i>carol-ets</i>, the dawn seemed to fall on me
like a sleeping draught.&nbsp; I went to the window and saw the
sparrows about the eaves, and a great troop of doves go strolling
up the paven Gasse, seeking what they may devour.&nbsp; And so to
sleep, despite fleas and fire-alarms and clocks chiming the hours
out of neighbouring houses at all sorts of odd times and with the
most charming want of unanimity.</p>
<p>We have got settled down in Frankfurt, and like the place very
much.&nbsp; Simpson and I seem to get on very well
together.&nbsp; We suit each other capitally; and it is an <a
name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 38</span>awful joke to
be living (two would-be advocates, and one a baronet) in this
supremely mean abode.</p>
<p>The abode is, however, a great improvement on the hotel, and I
think we shall grow quite fond of it.&mdash;Ever your
affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">13 <i>Rosengasse</i>,
<i>Frankfurt</i>, <i>Tuesday Morning</i>, <i>August</i> 1872.</p>
<p>. . . Last night I was at the theatre and heard <i>Die
Judin</i> (<i>La Juive</i>), and was thereby terribly
excited.&nbsp; At last, in the middle of the fifth act, which was
perfectly beastly, I had to slope.&nbsp; I could stand even
seeing the cauldron with the sham fire beneath, and the two
hateful executioners in red; but when at last the girl&rsquo;s
courage breaks down, and, grasping her father&rsquo;s arm, she
cries out&mdash;O so shudderfully!&mdash;I thought it high time
to be out of that <i>gal&egrave;re</i>, and so I do not know yet
whether it ends well or ill; but if I ever afterwards find that
they do carry things to the extremity, I shall think more meanly
of my species.&nbsp; It was raining and cold outside, so I went
into a <i>Bierhalle</i>, and sat and brooded over a
<i>Schnitt</i> (half-glass) for nearly an hour.&nbsp; An opera is
far more <i>real</i> than real life to me.&nbsp; It seems as if
stage illusion, and particularly this hardest to swallow and most
conventional illusion of them all&mdash;an opera&mdash;would
never stale upon me.&nbsp; I wish that life was an opera.&nbsp; I
should like to <i>live</i> in one; but I don&rsquo;t know in what
quarter of the globe I shall find a society so constituted.&nbsp;
Besides, it would soon pall: imagine asking for three-kreuzer
cigars in recitative, or giving the washerwoman the inventory of
your dirty clothes in a sustained and <i>flourishous</i>
aria.</p>
<p>I am in a right good mood this morning to sit here and write
to you; but not to give you news.&nbsp; There is a great stir of
life, in a quiet, almost country fashion, all about us
here.&nbsp; Some one is hammering a beef-steak in <a
name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 39</span>the
<i>rez-de-chauss&eacute;e</i>: there is a great clink of pitchers
and noise of the pump-handle at the public well in the little
square-kin round the corner.&nbsp; The children, all seemingly
within a month, and certainly none above five, that always go
halting and stumbling up and down the roadway, are ordinarily
very quiet, and sit sedately puddling in the gutter, trying, I
suppose, poor little devils! to understand their
<i>Muttersprache</i>; but they, too, make themselves heard from
time to time in little incomprehensible antiphonies, about the
drift that comes down to them by their rivers from the strange
lands higher up the Gasse.&nbsp; Above all, there is here such a
twittering of canaries (I can see twelve out of our window), and
such continual visitation of grey doves and big-nosed sparrows,
as make our little bye-street into a perfect aviary.</p>
<p>I look across the Gasse at our opposite neighbour, as he
dandles his baby about, and occasionally takes a spoonful or two
of some pale slimy nastiness that looks like <i>dead
porridge</i>, if you can take the conception.&nbsp; These two are
his only occupations.&nbsp; All day long you can hear him singing
over the brat when he is not eating; or see him eating when he is
not keeping baby.&nbsp; Besides which, there comes into his house
a continual round of visitors that puts me in mind of the
luncheon hour at home.&nbsp; As he has thus no ostensible
avocation, we have named him &lsquo;the W.S.&rsquo; to give a
flavour of respectability to the street.</p>
<p>Enough of the Gasse.&nbsp; The weather is here much
colder.&nbsp; It rained a good deal yesterday; and though it is
fair and sunshiny again to-day, and we can still sit, of course,
with our windows open, yet there is no more excuse for the
siesta; and the bathe in the river, except for cleanliness, is no
longer a necessity of life.&nbsp; The Main is very swift.&nbsp;
In one part of the baths it is next door to impossible to swim
against it, and I suspect that, out in the open, it would be
quite impossible.&mdash;Adieu, my dear mother, and believe me,
ever your affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span><br />
(<i>Rentier</i>).</p>
<h3><a name="page40"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 40</span><span
class="smcap">to Charles Baxter</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">17 <i>Heriot Row</i>,
<i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>Sunday</i>, <i>February</i> 2, 1873.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BAXTER</span>,&mdash;The
thunderbolt has fallen with a vengeance now.&nbsp; On Friday
night after leaving you, in the course of conversation, my father
put me one or two questions as to beliefs, which I candidly
answered.&nbsp; I really hate all lying so much now&mdash;a new
found honesty that has somehow come out of my late
illness&mdash;that I could not so much as hesitate at the time;
but if I had foreseen the real hell of everything since, I think
I should have lied, as I have done so often before.&nbsp; I so
far thought of my father, but I had forgotten my mother.&nbsp;
And now! they are both ill, both silent, both as down in the
mouth as if&mdash;I can find no simile.&nbsp; You may fancy how
happy it is for me.&nbsp; If it were not too late, I think I
could almost find it in my heart to retract, but it is too late;
and again, am I to live my whole life as one falsehood?&nbsp; Of
course, it is rougher than hell upon my father, but can I help
it?&nbsp; They don&rsquo;t see either that my game is not the
light-hearted scoffer; that I am not (as they call me) a careless
infidel.&nbsp; I believe as much as they do, only generally in
the inverse ratio: I am, I think, as honest as they can be in
what I hold.&nbsp; I have not come hastily to my views.&nbsp; I
reserve (as I told them) many points until I acquire fuller
information, and do not think I am thus justly to be called
&lsquo;horrible atheist.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Now, what is to take place?&nbsp; What a curse I am to my
parents!&nbsp; O Lord, what a pleasant thing it is to have just
<i>damned</i> the happiness of (probably) the only two people who
care a damn about you in the world.</p>
<p>What is my life to be at this rate?&nbsp; What, you
rascal?&nbsp; <a name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
41</span>Answer&mdash;I have a pistol at your throat.&nbsp; If
all that I hold true and most desire to spread is to be such
death, and a worse than death, in the eyes of my father and
mother, what the <i>devil</i> am I to do?</p>
<p>Here is a good heavy cross with a vengeance, and all rough
with rusty nails that tear your fingers, only it is not I that
have to carry it alone; I hold the light end, but the heavy
burden falls on these two.</p>
<p>Don&rsquo;t&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know what I was going to
say.&nbsp; I am an abject idiot, which, all things considered, is
not remarkable.&mdash;Ever your affectionate and horrible
atheist,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h2><a name="page44"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 44</span>II<br
/>
STUDENT DAYS&mdash;<i>Continued</i><br />
<span class="GutSmall">ORDERED SOUTH</span><br />
<span class="GutSmall">SEPTEMBER 1873-JULY 1875</span></h2>
<h3><a name="page48"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 48</span><span
class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Cockfield Rectory</i>,
<i>Sudbury</i>, <i>Suffolk</i>,<br />
<i>Tuesday</i>, <i>July</i> 28, 1873.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,&mdash;I am too
happy to be much of a correspondent.&nbsp; Yesterday we were away
to Melford and Lavenham, both exceptionally placid, beautiful old
English towns.&nbsp; 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 <a name="page49"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 49</span>time.&nbsp; I cannot get over my
astonishment&mdash;indeed, it increases every day&mdash;at the
hopeless gulf that there is between England and Scotland, and
English and Scotch.&nbsp; Nothing is the same; and I feel as
strange and outlandish here as I do in France or Germany.&nbsp;
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.</p>
<p>I got a little Law read yesterday, and some German this
morning, but on the whole there are too many amusements going for
much work; as for correspondence, I have neither heart nor time
for it to-day.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">17 <i>Heriot Row</i>,
<i>Edinburgh</i>,<br />
<i>Saturday</i>, <i>September</i> 6, 1873.</p>
<p>I <span class="smcap">have</span> been to-day a very long walk
with my father through some of the most beautiful ways
hereabouts; the day was cold with an iron, windy sky, and only
glorified now and then with autumn sunlight.&nbsp; For it is
fully autumn with us, with a blight already over the greens, and
a keen wind in the morning that makes one rather timid of
one&rsquo;s tub when it finds its way indoors.</p>
<p>I was out this evening to call on a friend, and, coming back
through the wet, crowded, lamp-lit streets, was singing after my
own fashion, <i>Du hast Diamanten und</i> <i>Perlen</i>, when I
heard a poor cripple man in the gutter wailing over a pitiful
Scotch air, his club-foot supported on the other knee, and his
whole woebegone body propped sideways against a crutch.&nbsp; The
nearest lamp threw a strong light on his worn, sordid face and
the three boxes of lucifer matches that he held for sale.&nbsp;
My own false notes stuck in my chest.&nbsp; How well off I am! is
the burthen of my songs all day long&mdash;<i>Drum ist so wohl
mir in der Welt</i>! and the ugly reality of the cripple man was
<a name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 50</span>an
intrusion on the beautiful world in which I was walking.&nbsp; He
could no more sing than I could; and his voice was cracked and
rusty, and altogether perished.&nbsp; To think that that wreck
may have walked the streets some night years ago, as glad at
heart as I was, and promising himself a future as golden and
honourable!</p>
<p><i>Sunday</i>, 11.20 <i>a.m.</i>&mdash;I wonder what you are
doing now?&mdash;in church likely, at the <i>Te Deum</i>.&nbsp;
Everything here is utterly silent.&nbsp; I can hear men&rsquo;s
footfalls streets away; the whole life of Edinburgh has been
sucked into sundry pious edifices; the gardens below my windows
are steeped in a diffused sunlight, and every tree seems standing
on tiptoes, strained and silent, as though to get its head above
its neighbour&rsquo;s and <i>listen</i>.&nbsp; You know what I
mean, don&rsquo;t you?&nbsp; How trees do seem silently to assert
themselves on an occasion!&nbsp; I have been trying to write
<i>Roads</i> until I feel as if I were standing on my head; but I
mean <i>Roads</i>, and shall do something to them.</p>
<p>I wish I could make you feel the hush that is over everything,
only made the more perfect by rare interruptions; and the rich,
placid light, and the still, autumnal foliage.&nbsp; Houses, you
know, stand all about our gardens: solid, steady blocks of
houses; all look empty and asleep.</p>
<p><i>Monday night</i>.&mdash;The drums and fifes up in the
Castle are sounding the guard-call through the dark, and there is
a great rattle of carriages without.&nbsp; I have had (I must
tell you) my bed taken out of this room, so that I am alone in it
with my books and two tables, and two chairs, and a coal-skuttle
(or <i>scuttle</i>) (?) and a <i>d&eacute;bris</i> of broken
pipes in a corner, and my old school play-box, so full of papers
and books that the lid will not shut down, standing reproachfully
in the midst.&nbsp; There is something in it that is still a
little gaunt and vacant; it needs a little populous disorder over
it to give it the feel of homeliness, and perhaps a bit more
furniture, just to take the edge off the sense of <a
name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 51</span>illimitable
space, eternity, and a future state, and the like, that is
brought home to one, even in this small attic, by the wide, empty
floor.</p>
<p>You would require to know, what only I can ever know, many
grim and many maudlin passages out of my past life to feel how
great a change has been made for me by this past summer.&nbsp;
Let me be ever so poor and thread-paper a soul, I am going to try
for the best.</p>
<p>These good booksellers of mine have at last got a
<i>Werther</i> without illustrations.&nbsp; I want you to like
Charlotte.&nbsp; Werther himself has every feebleness and vice
that could tend to make his suicide a most virtuous and
commendable action; and yet I like Werther too&mdash;I
don&rsquo;t know why, except that he has written the most
delightful letters in the world.&nbsp; Note, by the way, the
passage under date June 21st not far from the beginning; it finds
a voice for a great deal of dumb, uneasy, pleasurable longing
that we have all had, times without number.&nbsp; I looked that
up the other day for <i>Roads</i>, so I know the reference; but
you will find it a garden of flowers from beginning to end.&nbsp;
All through the passion keeps steadily rising, from the
thunderstorm at the country-house&mdash;there was thunder in that
story too&mdash;up to the last wild delirious interview; either
Lotte was no good at all, or else Werther should have remained
alive after that; either he knew his woman too well, or else he
was precipitate.&nbsp; But an idiot like that is hopeless; and
yet, he wasn&rsquo;t an idiot&mdash;I make reparation, and will
offer eighteen pounds of best wax at his tomb.&nbsp; Poor devil!
he was only the weakest&mdash;or, at least, a very weak strong
man.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">17 <i>Heriot Row</i>,
<i>Edinburgh</i>,<br />
<i>Friday</i>, <i>September</i> 12, 1873.</p>
<p>. . . I <span class="smcap">was</span> over last night,
contrary to my own wish, in Leven, Fife; and this morning I had a
conversation of <a name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
52</span>which, I think, some account might interest you.&nbsp; I
was up with a cousin who was fishing in a mill-lade, and a shower
of rain drove me for shelter into a tumbledown steading attached
to the mill.&nbsp; There I found a labourer cleaning a byre, with
whom I fell into talk.&nbsp; The man was to all appearance as
heavy, as <i>h&eacute;b&eacute;t&eacute;</i>, as any English
clodhopper; but I knew I was in Scotland, and launched out
forthright into Education and Politics and the aims of
one&rsquo;s life.&nbsp; I told him how I had found the peasantry
in Suffolk, and added that their state had made me feel quite
pained and down-hearted.&nbsp; &lsquo;It but to do that,&rsquo;
he said, &lsquo;to onybody that thinks at a&rsquo;!&rsquo;&nbsp;
Then, again, he said that he could not conceive how anything
could daunt or cast down a man who had an aim in life.&nbsp;
&lsquo;They that have had a guid schoolin&rsquo; and do nae mair,
whatever they do, they have done; but him that has aye something
ayont need never be weary.&rsquo;&nbsp; I have had to mutilate
the dialect much, so that it might be comprehensible to you; but
I think the sentiment will keep, even through a change of words,
something of the heartsome ring of encouragement that it had for
me: and that from a man cleaning a byre!&nbsp; You see what John
Knox and his schools have done.</p>
<p><i>Saturday</i>.&mdash;This has been a charming day for me
from morning to now (5 <span class="GutSmall">P.M.</span>).&nbsp;
First, I found your letter, and went down and read it on a seat
in those Public Gardens of which you have heard already.&nbsp;
After lunch, my father and I went down to the coast and walked a
little way along the shore between Granton and Cramond.&nbsp;
This has always been with me a very favourite walk.&nbsp; The
Firth closes gradually together before you, the coast runs in a
series of the most beautifully moulded bays, hill after hill,
wooded and softly outlined, trends away in front till the two
shores join together.&nbsp; When the tide is out there are great,
gleaming flats of wet sand, over which the gulls go flying and
crying; and every cape runs down into <a name="page53"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 53</span>them with its little spit of wall and
trees.&nbsp; We lay together a long time on the beach; the sea
just babbled among the stones; and at one time we heard the
hollow, sturdy beat of the paddles of an unseen steamer somewhere
round the cape.&nbsp; I am glad to say that the peace of the day
and scenery was not marred by any unpleasantness between us
two.</p>
<p>I am, unhappily, off my style, and can do nothing well;
indeed, I fear I have marred <i>Roads</i> finally by patching at
it when I was out of the humour.&nbsp; Only, I am beginning to
see something great about John Knox and Queen Mary: I like them
both so much, that I feel as if I could write the history
fairly.</p>
<p>I have finished <i>Roads</i> to-day, and send it off to you to
see.&nbsp; The Lord knows whether it is worth
anything!&mdash;some of it pleases me a good deal, but I fear it
is quite unfit for any possible magazine.&nbsp; However, I wish
you to see it, as you know the humour in which it was conceived,
walking alone and very happily about the Suffolk highways and
byeways on several splendid sunny afternoons.&mdash;Believe me,
ever your faithful friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p><i>Monday</i>.&mdash;I have looked over <i>Roads</i> again,
and I am aghast at its feebleness.&nbsp; It is the trial of a
very &lsquo;&rsquo;prentice hand&rsquo; indeed.&nbsp; Shall I
ever learn to do anything well?&nbsp; However, it shall go to
you, for the reasons given above.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>Tuesday</i>,
<i>September</i> 16, 1873.</p>
<p>. . . I <span class="smcap">must</span> be very strong to have
all this vexation and still to be well.&nbsp; I was weighed the
other day, and the gross weight of my large person was eight
stone six!&nbsp; <a name="page54"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
54</span>Does it not seem surprising that I can keep the lamp
alight, through all this gusty weather, in so frail a
lantern?&nbsp; And yet it burns cheerily.</p>
<p>My mother is leaving for the country this morning, and my
father and I will be alone for the best part of the week in this
house.&nbsp; Then on Friday I go south to Dumfries till
Monday.&nbsp; I must write small, or I shall have a tremendous
budget by then.</p>
<p>7.20 <i>p.m.</i>&mdash;I must tell you a thing I saw
to-day.&nbsp; I was going down to Portobello in the train, when
there came into the next compartment (third class) an artisan,
strongly marked with smallpox, and with sunken, heavy
eyes&mdash;a face hard and unkind, and without anything
lovely.&nbsp; There was a woman on the platform seeing him
off.&nbsp; At first sight, with her one eye blind and the whole
cast of her features strongly plebeian, and even vicious, she
seemed as unpleasant as the man; but there was something
beautifully soft, a sort of light of tenderness, as on some Dutch
Madonna, that came over her face when she looked at the
man.&nbsp; They talked for a while together through the window;
the man seemed to have been asking money.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ye ken the
last time,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;I gave ye two shillin&rsquo;s
for your ludgin&rsquo;, and ye said&mdash;&rsquo; it died off
into whisper.&nbsp; Plainly Falstaff and Dame Quickly over
again.&nbsp; The man laughed unpleasantly, even cruelly, and said
something; and the woman turned her back on the carriage and
stood a long while so, and, do what I might, I could catch no
glimpse of her expression, although I thought I saw the heave of
a sob in her shoulders.&nbsp; At last, after the train was
already in motion, she turned round and put two shillings into
his hand.&nbsp; I saw her stand and look after us with a perfect
heaven of love on her face&mdash;this poor one-eyed
Madonna&mdash;until the train was out of sight; but the man,
sordidly happy with his gains, did not put himself to the
inconvenience of one glance to thank her for her ill-deserved
kindness.</p>
<p><a name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 55</span>I have
been up at the Spec. and looked out a reference I wanted.&nbsp;
The whole town is drowned in white, wet vapour off the sea.&nbsp;
Everything drips and soaks.&nbsp; The very statues seem wet to
the skin.&nbsp; I cannot pretend to be very cheerful; I did not
see one contented face in the streets; and the poor did look so
helplessly chill and dripping, without a stitch to change, or so
much as a fire to dry themselves at, or perhaps money to buy a
meal, or perhaps even a bed.&nbsp; My heart shivers for them.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p><i>Dumfries</i>, <i>Friday</i>.&mdash;All my thirst for a
little warmth, a little sun, a little corner of blue sky avails
nothing.&nbsp; Without, the rain falls with a long drawn
<i>swish</i>, and the night is as dark as a vault.&nbsp; There is
no wind indeed, and that is a blessed change after the unruly,
bedlamite gusts that have been charging against one round street
corners and utterly abolishing and destroying all that is
peaceful in life.&nbsp; Nothing sours my temper like these coarse
termagant winds.&nbsp; I hate practical joking; and your
vulgarest practical joker is your flaw of wind.</p>
<p>I have tried to write some verses; but I find I have nothing
to say that has not been already perfectly said and perfectly
sung in <i>Adela&iuml;de</i>.&nbsp; I have so perfect an idea out
of that song!&nbsp; The great Alps, a wonder in the
starlight&mdash;the river, strong from the hills, and turbulent,
and loudly audible at night&mdash;the country, a scented
<i>Fr&uuml;hlingsgarten</i> of orchards and deep wood where the
nightingales harbour&mdash;a sort of German flavour over
all&mdash;and this love-drunken man, wandering on by sleeping
village and silent town, pours out of his full heart,
<i>Einst</i>, <i>O Wunder</i>, <i>einst</i>, etc.&nbsp; I wonder
if I am wrong about this being the most beautiful and perfect
thing in the world&mdash;the only marriage of really accordant
words and music&mdash;both drunk with the same poignant,
unutterable sentiment.</p>
<p>To-day in Glasgow my father went off on some business, and my
mother and I wandered about for two hours.&nbsp; We <a
name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 56</span>had lunch
together, and were very merry over what the people at the
restaurant would think of us&mdash;mother and son they could not
suppose us to be.</p>
<p><i>Saturday</i>.&mdash;And to-day it came&mdash;warmth,
sunlight, and a strong, hearty living wind among the trees.&nbsp;
I found myself a new being.&nbsp; My father and I went off a long
walk, through a country most beautifully wooded and various,
under a range of hills.&nbsp; You should have seen one place
where the wood suddenly fell away in front of us down a long,
steep hill between a double row of trees, with one small
fair-haired child framed in shadow in the foreground; and when we
got to the foot there was the little kirk and kirkyard of
Irongray, among broken fields and woods by the side of the
bright, rapid river.&nbsp; In the kirkyard there was a wonderful
congregation of tombstones, upright and recumbent on four legs
(after our Scotch fashion), and of flat-armed fir-trees.&nbsp;
One gravestone was erected by Scott (at a cost, I learn, of
&pound;70) to the poor woman who served him as heroine in the
<i>Heart of Midlothian</i>, and the inscription in its stiff,
Jedediah Cleishbotham fashion is not without something touching.
<a name="citation56"></a><a href="#footnote56"
class="citation">[56]</a>&nbsp; We went up the stream a little
further to where two Covenanters lie buried in an oakwood; the
tombstone (as the custom is) containing the details of their grim
little tragedy in funnily bad rhyme, one verse of which sticks in
my memory:&mdash;</p>
<p class="poetry">&lsquo;We died, their furious rage to stay,<br
/>
Near to the kirk of Iron-gray.&rsquo;</p>
<p>We then fetched a long compass round about through Holywood
Kirk and Lincluden ruins to Dumfries.&nbsp; But the walk came
sadly to grief as a pleasure excursion before our return . .
.</p>
<p><a name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
57</span><i>Sunday</i>.&mdash;Another beautiful day.&nbsp; My
father and I walked into Dumfries to church.&nbsp; When the
service was done I noted the two halberts laid against the pillar
of the churchyard gate; and as I had not seen the little weekly
pomp of civic dignitaries in our Scotch country towns for some
years, I made my father wait.&nbsp; You should have seen the
provost and three bailies going stately away down the sunlit
street, and the two town servants strutting in front of them, in
red coats and cocked hats, and with the halberts most
conspicuously shouldered.&nbsp; We saw Burns&rsquo;s
house&mdash;a place that made me deeply sad&mdash;and spent the
afternoon down the banks of the Nith.&nbsp; I had not spent a day
by a river since we lunched in the meadows near Sudbury.&nbsp;
The air was as pure and clear and sparkling as spring water;
beautiful, graceful outlines of hill and wood shut us in on every
side; and the swift, brown river fled smoothly away from before
our eyes, rippled over with oily eddies and dimples.&nbsp; White
gulls had come up from the sea to fish, and hovered and flew
hither and thither among the loops of the stream.&nbsp; By good
fortune, too, it was a dead calm between my father and me.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Edinburgh</i>], <i>Saturday</i>,
<i>October</i> 4, 1873.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">It</span> is a little sharp to-day; but
bright and sunny with a sparkle in the air, which is delightful
after four days of unintermitting rain.&nbsp; In the streets I
saw two men meet after a long separation, it was plain.&nbsp;
They came forward <a name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
58</span>with a little run and <i>leaped</i> at each
other&rsquo;s hands.&nbsp; You never saw such bright eyes as they
both had.&nbsp; It put one in a good humour to see it.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p>8 <i>p.m.</i>&mdash;I made a little more out of my work than I
have made for a long while back; though even now I cannot make
things fall into sentences&mdash;they only sprawl over the paper
in bald orphan clauses.&nbsp; Then I was about in the afternoon
with Baxter; and we had a good deal of fun, first rhyming on the
names of all the shops we passed, and afterwards buying needles
and quack drugs from open-air vendors, and taking much pleasure
in their inexhaustible eloquence.&nbsp; Every now and then as we
went, Arthur&rsquo;s Seat showed its head at the end of a
street.&nbsp; Now, to-day the blue sky and the sunshine were both
entirely wintry; and there was about the hill, in these glimpses,
a sort of thin, unreal, crystalline distinctness that I have not
often seen excelled.&nbsp; As the sun began to go down over the
valley between the new town and the old, the evening grew
resplendent; all the gardens and low-lying buildings sank back
and became almost invisible in a mist of wonderful sun, and the
Castle stood up against the sky, as thin and sharp in outline as
a castle cut out of paper.&nbsp; Baxter made a good remark about
Princes Street, that it was the most elastic street for length
that he knew; sometimes it looks, as it looked to-night,
interminable, a way leading right into the heart of the red
sundown; sometimes, again, it shrinks together, as if for warmth,
on one of the withering, clear east-windy days, until it seems to
lie underneath your feet.</p>
<p>I want to let you see these verses from an <i>Ode to the
Cuckoo</i>, written by one of the ministers of Leith in the
middle of last century&mdash;the palmy days of
Edinburgh&mdash;who was a friend of Hume and Adam Smith and the
whole constellation.&nbsp; The authorship of these beautiful
verses has been most truculently fought about; but whoever <a
name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span>wrote them
(and it seems as if this Logan had) they are lovely&mdash;</p>
<p class="poetry">&lsquo;What time the pea puts on the bloom,<br
/>
&nbsp;&nbsp; Thou fliest the vocal vale,<br />
An annual guest, in other lands<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Another spring to hail.</p>
<p class="poetry">Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Thy sky is ever clear;<br />
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; No winter in thy year.</p>
<p class="poetry">O could I fly, I&rsquo;d fly with thee!<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; We&rsquo;d make on joyful wing<br />
Our annual visit o&rsquo;er the globe,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Companions of the spring.&rsquo;</p>
<p><i>Sunday</i>.&mdash;I have been at church with my mother,
where we heard &lsquo;Arise, shine,&rsquo; sung excellently well,
and my mother was so much upset with it that she nearly had to
leave church.&nbsp; This was the antidote, however, to fifty
minutes of solid sermon, varra heavy.&nbsp; I have been sticking
in to Walt Whitman; nor do I think I have ever laboured so hard
to attain so small a success.&nbsp; Still, the thing is taking
shape, I think; I know a little better what I want to say all
through; and in process of time, possibly I shall manage to say
it.&nbsp; I must say I am a very bad workman, <i>mais j&rsquo;ai
du courage</i>; I am indefatigable at rewriting and bettering,
and surely that humble quality should get me on a little.</p>
<p><i>Monday</i>, <i>October</i> 6.&mdash;It is a magnificent
glimmering moonlight night, with a wild, great west wind abroad,
flapping above one like an immense banner, and every now and
again swooping furiously against my windows.&nbsp; The wind is
too strong perhaps, and the trees are certainly too leafless for
much of that wide rustle that we both <a name="page60"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 60</span>remember; there is only a sharp,
angry, sibilant hiss, like breath drawn with the strength of the
elements through shut teeth, that one hears between the gusts
only.&nbsp; I am in excellent humour with myself, for I have
worked hard and not altogether fruitlessly; and I wished before I
turned in just to tell you that things were so.&nbsp; My dear
friend, I feel so happy when I think that you remember me
kindly.&nbsp; I have been up to-night lecturing to a friend on
life and duties and what a man could do; a coal off the altar had
been laid on my lips, and I talked quite above my average, and
hope I spread, what you would wish to see spread, into one
person&rsquo;s heart; and with a new light upon it.</p>
<p>I shall tell you a story.&nbsp; Last Friday I went down to
Portobello, in the heavy rain, with an uneasy wind blowing <i>par
rafales</i> off the sea (or &lsquo;<i>en rafales</i>&rsquo;
should it be? or what?).&nbsp; As I got down near the beach a
poor woman, oldish, and seemingly, lately at least, respectable,
followed me and made signs.&nbsp; She was drenched to the skin,
and looked wretched below wretchedness.&nbsp; You know, I did not
like to look back at her; it seemed as if she might misunderstand
and be terribly hurt and slighted; so I stood at the end of the
street&mdash;there was no one else within sight in the
wet&mdash;and lifted up my hand very high with some money in
it.&nbsp; I heard her steps draw heavily near behind me, and,
when she was near enough to see, I let the money fall in the mud
and went off at my best walk without ever turning round.&nbsp;
There is nothing in the story; and yet you will understand how
much there is, if one chose to set it forth.&nbsp; You see, she
was so ugly; and you know there is something terribly, miserably
pathetic in a certain smile, a certain sodden aspect of
invitation on such faces.&nbsp; It is so terrible, that it is in
a way sacred; it means the outside of degradation and (what is
worst of all in life) false position.&nbsp; I hope you understand
me rightly.&mdash;Ever your faithful friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><a name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 61</span><span
class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Edinburgh</i>], <i>Tuesday</i>,
<i>October</i> 14, 1873.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">My</span> father has returned in better
health, and I am more delighted than I can well tell you.&nbsp;
The one trouble that I can see no way through is that his health,
or my mother&rsquo;s, should give way.&nbsp; To-night, as I was
walking along Princes Street, I heard the bugles sound the
recall.&nbsp; I do not think I had ever remarked it before; there
is something of unspeakable appeal in the cadence.&nbsp; I felt
as if something yearningly cried to me out of the darkness
overhead to come thither and find rest; one felt as if there must
be warm hearts and bright fires waiting for one up there, where
the buglers stood on the damp pavement and sounded their friendly
invitation forth into the night.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p><i>Wednesday</i>.&mdash;I may as well tell you exactly about
my health.&nbsp; I am not at all ill; have quite recovered; only
I am what <i>MM. les m&eacute;decins</i> call below par; which,
in plain English, is that I am weak.&nbsp; With tonics, decent
weather, and a little cheerfulness, that will go away in its
turn, and I shall be all right again.</p>
<p>I am glad to hear what you say about the Exam.; until quite
lately I have treated that pretty cavalierly, for I say honestly
that I do not mind being plucked; I shall just have to go up
again.&nbsp; We travelled with the Lord Advocate the other day,
and he strongly advised me in my father&rsquo;s hearing to go to
the English Bar; and the Lord Advocate&rsquo;s advice goes a long
way in Scotland.&nbsp; It is a sort of special legal
revelation.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t misunderstand me.&nbsp; I
don&rsquo;t, of course, want to be plucked; but so far as my
style of knowledge suits them, I cannot make much betterment on
it in a month.&nbsp; If they wish scholarship more exact, I must
take a new lease altogether.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p><i>Thursday</i>.&mdash;My head and eyes both gave in this
morning, <a name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
62</span>and I had to take a day of complete idleness.&nbsp; I
was in the open air all day, and did no thought that I could
avoid, and I think I have got my head between my shoulders again;
however, I am not going to do much.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t want you
to run away with any fancy about my being ill.&nbsp; Given a
person weak and in some trouble, and working longer hours than he
is used to, and you have the matter in a nutshell.&nbsp; You
should have seen the sunshine on the hill to-day; it has lost now
that crystalline clearness, as if the medium were spring-water
(you see, I am stupid!); but it retains that wonderful thinness
of outline that makes the delicate shape and hue savour better in
one&rsquo;s mouth, like fine wine out of a finely-blown
glass.&nbsp; The birds are all silent now but the crows.&nbsp; I
sat a long time on the stairs that lead down to Duddingston
Loch&mdash;a place as busy as a great town during frost, but now
solitary and silent; and when I shut my eyes I heard nothing but
the wind in the trees; and you know all that went through me, I
dare say, without my saying it.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">II</span>.&mdash;I am now all
right.&nbsp; I do not expect any tic to-night, and shall be at
work again to-morrow.&nbsp; I have had a day of open air, only a
little modified by <i>Le Capitaine Fracasse</i> before the
dining-room fire.&nbsp; I must write no more, for I am sleepy
after two nights, and to quote my book, &lsquo;<i>sinon
blanches</i>, <i>du moins grises</i>&rsquo;; and so I must go to
bed and faithfully, hoggishly slumber.&mdash;Your faithful</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><a name="page63"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 63</span><i>Mentone</i>, <i>November</i> 13,
1873.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,&mdash;The
<i>Place</i> is not where I thought; it is about where the old
Post Office was.&nbsp; The Hotel de Londres is no more an
hotel.&nbsp; I have found a charming room in the Hotel du
Pavillon, just across the road from the Prince&rsquo;s Villa; it
has one window to the south and one to the east, with a superb
view of Mentone and the hills, to which I move this
afternoon.&nbsp; In the old great <i>Place</i> there is a kiosque
for the sale of newspapers; a string of omnibuses (perhaps
thirty) go up and down under the plane-trees of the Turin Road on
the occasion of each train; the Promenade has crossed both
streams, and bids fair to reach the Cap St. Martin.&nbsp; The old
chapel near Freeman&rsquo;s house at the entrance to the Gorbio
valley is now entirely submerged under a shining new villa, with
Pavilion annexed; over which, in all the pride of oak and
chestnut and divers coloured marbles, I was shown this morning by
the obliging proprietor.&nbsp; The Prince&rsquo;s Palace itself
is rehabilitated, and shines afar with white window-curtains from
the midst of a garden, all trim borders and greenhouses and
carefully kept walks.&nbsp; On the other side, the villas are
more thronged together, and they have arranged themselves, shelf
after shelf, behind each other.&nbsp; I see the glimmer of new
buildings, too, as far eastward as Grimaldi; and a viaduct
carries (I suppose) the railway past the mouth of the bone
caves.&nbsp; F. Bacon (Lord Chancellor) made the remark that
&lsquo;Time was the greatest innovator&rsquo;; it is perhaps as
meaningless a remark as was ever made; but as Bacon made it, I
suppose it is better than any that I could make.&nbsp; Does it
not seem as if things were fluid?&nbsp; They are displaced and
altered in ten years so that one has difficulty, even <a
name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 64</span>with a memory
so very vivid and retentive for that sort of thing as mine, in
identifying places where one lived a long while in the past, and
which one has kept piously in mind during all the interval.&nbsp;
Nevertheless, the hills, I am glad to say, are unaltered; though
I dare say the torrents have given them many a shrewd scar, and
the rains and thaws dislodged many a boulder from their heights,
if one were only keen enough to perceive it.&nbsp; The sea makes
the same noise in the shingle; and the lemon and orange gardens
still discharge in the still air their fresh perfume; and the
people have still brown comely faces; and the Pharmacie Gros
still dispenses English medicines; and the invalids (eheu!) still
sit on the promenade and trifle with their fingers in the fringes
of shawls and wrappers; and the shop of Pascal Amarante still, in
its present bright consummate flower of aggrandisement and new
paint, offers everything that it has entered into people&rsquo;s
hearts to wish for in the idleness of a sanatorium; and the
&lsquo;Ch&acirc;teau des Morts&rsquo; is still at the top of the
town; and the fort and the jetty are still at the foot, only
there are now two jetties; and&mdash;I am out of breath.&nbsp;
(To be continued in our next.)</p>
<p>For myself, I have come famously through the journey; and as I
have written this letter (for the first time for ever so long)
with ease and even pleasure, I think my head must be
better.&nbsp; I am still no good at coming down hills or stairs;
and my feet are more consistently cold than is quite
comfortable.&nbsp; But, these apart, I feel well; and in good
spirits all round.</p>
<p>I have written to Nice for letters, and hope to get them
to-night.&nbsp; Continue to address Poste Restante.&nbsp; Take
care of yourselves.</p>
<p>This is my birthday, by the way&mdash;O, I said that
before.&nbsp; Adieu.&mdash;Ever your affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 65</span><span
class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Mentone</i>, <i>Sunday</i>,
<i>November</i> 1873.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR FRIEND</span>,&mdash;I sat a
long while up among the olive yards to-day at a favourite corner,
where one has a fair view down the valley and on to the blue
floor of the sea.&nbsp; I had a Horace with me, and read a
little; but Horace, when you try to read him fairly under the
open heaven, sounds urban, and you find something of the escaped
townsman in his descriptions of the country, just as somebody
said that Morris&rsquo;s sea-pieces were all taken from the
coast.&nbsp; I tried for long to hit upon some language that
might catch ever so faintly the indefinable shifting colour of
olive leaves; and, above all, the changes and little silverings
that pass over them, like blushes over a face, when the wind
tosses great branches to and fro; but the Muse was not
favourable.&nbsp; A few birds scattered here and there at wide
intervals on either side of the valley sang the little broken
songs of late autumn and there was a great stir of insect life in
the grass at my feet.&nbsp; The path up to this coign of vantage,
where I think I shall make it a habit to ensconce myself a while
of a morning, is for a little while common to the peasant and a
little clear brooklet.&nbsp; It is pleasant, in the tempered grey
daylight of the olive shadows, to see the people picking their
way among the stones and the water and the brambles; the women
especially, with the weights poised on their heads and walking
all from the hips with a certain graceful deliberation.</p>
<p><i>Tuesday</i>.&mdash;I have been to Nice to-day to see Dr.
Bennet; he agrees with Clark that there is no disease; but I
finished up my day with a lamentable exhibition of
weakness.&nbsp; I could not remember French, or at least I was
afraid to go into any place lest I should not be able to remember
<a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 66</span>it, and so
could not tell when the train went.&nbsp; At last I crawled up to
the station and sat down on the steps, and just steeped myself
there in the sunshine until the evening began to fall and the air
to grow chilly.&nbsp; This long rest put me all right; and I came
home here triumphantly and ate dinner well.&nbsp; There is the
full, true, and particular account of the worst day I have had
since I left London.&nbsp; I shall not go to Nice again for some
time to come.</p>
<p><i>Thursday</i>.&mdash;I am to-day quite recovered, and got
into Mentone to-day for a book, which is quite a creditable
walk.&nbsp; As an intellectual being I have not yet begun to
re-exist; my immortal soul is still very nearly extinct; but we
must hope the best.&nbsp; Now, do take warning by me.&nbsp; I am
set up by a beneficent providence at the corner of the road, to
warn you to flee from the hebetude that is to follow.&nbsp; Being
sent to the South is not much good unless you take your soul with
you, you see; and my soul is rarely with me here.&nbsp; I
don&rsquo;t see much beauty.&nbsp; I have lost the key; I can
only be placid and inert, and see the bright days go past
uselessly one after another; therefore don&rsquo;t talk foolishly
with your mouth any more about getting liberty by being ill and
going south <i>vi&acirc;</i> the sickbed.&nbsp; It is not the old
free-born bird that gets thus to freedom; but I know not what
manacled and hide-bound spirit, incapable of pleasure, the clay
of a man.&nbsp; Go south!&nbsp; Why, I saw more beauty with my
eyes healthfully alert to see in two wet windy February
afternoons in Scotland than I can see in my beautiful olive
gardens and grey hills in a whole week in my low and lost estate,
as the Shorter Catechism puts it somewhere.&nbsp; It is a
pitiable blindness, this blindness of the soul; I hope it may not
be long with me.&nbsp; So remember to keep well; and remember
rather anything than not to keep well; and again I say,
<i>anything</i> rather than not to keep well.</p>
<p>Not that I am unhappy, mind you.&nbsp; I have found the words
already&mdash;placid and inert, that is what I am.&nbsp; I sit <a
name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 67</span>in the sun
and enjoy the tingle all over me, and I am cheerfully ready to
concur with any one who says that this is a beautiful place, and
I have a sneaking partiality for the newspapers, which would be
all very well, if one had not fallen from heaven and were not
troubled with some reminiscence of the <i>ineffable
aurore</i>.</p>
<p>To sit by the sea and to be conscious of nothing but the sound
of the waves, and the sunshine over all your body, is not
unpleasant; but I was an Archangel once.</p>
<p><i>Friday</i>.&mdash;If you knew how old I felt!&nbsp; I am
sure this is what age brings with it&mdash;this carelessness,
this disenchantment, this continual bodily weariness.&nbsp; I am
a man of seventy: O Medea, kill me, or make me young again! <a
name="citation67"></a><a href="#footnote67"
class="citation">[67]</a></p>
<p>To-day has been cloudy and mild; and I have lain a great while
on a bench outside the garden wall (my usual place now) and
looked at the dove-coloured sea and the broken roof of cloud, but
there was no seeing in my eye.&nbsp; Let us hope to-morrow will
be more profitable.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><a name="page68"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 68</span><i>Hotel Mirabeau</i>,
<i>Mentone</i>, <i>Sunday</i>, <i>January</i> 4, 1874.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,&mdash;We have
here fallen on the very pink of hotels.&nbsp; I do not say that
it is more pleasantly conducted than the Pavillon, for that were
impossible; but the rooms are so cheery and bright and new, and
then the food!&nbsp; I never, I think, so fully appreciated the
phrase &lsquo;the fat of the land&rsquo; as I have done since I
have been here installed.&nbsp; There was a dish of eggs at
<i>d&eacute;je&ucirc;ner</i> the other day, over the memory of
which I lick my lips in the silent watches.</p>
<p>Now that the cold has gone again, I continue to keep well in
body, and already I begin to walk a little more.&nbsp; My head is
still a very feeble implement, and easily set a-spinning; and I
can do nothing in the way of work beyond reading books that may,
I hope, be of some use to me afterwards.</p>
<p>I was very glad to see that M&lsquo;Laren was sat upon, and
principally for the reason why.&nbsp; Deploring as I do much of
the action of the Trades Unions, these conspiracy clauses and the
whole partiality of the Master and Servant Act are a disgrace to
our equal laws.&nbsp; Equal laws become a byeword when what is
legal for one class becomes a criminal offence for another.&nbsp;
It did my heart good to hear that man tell M&lsquo;Laren how, as
he had talked much of getting the franchise for working men, he
must now be content to see them use it now they had got it.&nbsp;
This is a smooth stone well planted in the foreheads of certain
dilettanti radicals, after M&lsquo;Laren&rsquo;s fashion, who are
willing to give the working men words and wind, and votes and the
like, and yet think to keep all the advantages, just or unjust,
of the wealthier classes without abatement.&nbsp; I do hope wise
men will not attempt to fight the working men on the head of this
notorious injustice.&nbsp; Any such step will only precipitate
the action of the newly enfranchised <a name="page69"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 69</span>classes, and irritate them into
acting hastily; when what we ought to desire should be that they
should act warily and little for many years to come, until
education and habit may make them the more fit.</p>
<p>All this (intended for my father) is much after the fashion of
his own correspondence.&nbsp; I confess it has left my own head
exhausted; I hope it may not produce the same effect on
yours.&nbsp; But I want him to look really into this question
(both sides of it, and not the representations of rabid
middle-class newspapers, sworn to support all the little
tyrannies of wealth), and I know he will be convinced that this
is a case of unjust law; and that, however desirable the end may
seem to him, he will not be Jesuit enough to think that any end
will justify an unjust law.</p>
<p>Here ends the political sermon of your affectionate (and
somewhat dogmatical) son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Mentone</i>, <i>January</i> 7,
1874.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,&mdash;I received
yesterday two most charming letters&mdash;the nicest I have had
since I left&mdash;December 26th and January 1st: this morning I
got January 3rd.</p>
<p>Into the bargain with Marie, the American girl, who is grace
itself, and comes leaping and dancing simply like a
wave&mdash;like nothing else, and who yesterday was Queen out of
the Epiphany cake and chose Robinet (the French Painter) as her
<i>favori</i> with the most pretty confusion possible&mdash;into
the bargain with Marie, we have two little Russian girls, with
the youngest of whom, a little polyglot button of a three-year
old, I had the most laughable little scene at lunch to-day.&nbsp;
I was watching her being fed with great amusement, her face being
as broad as it is long, and her mouth capable of unlimited
extension; when <a name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
70</span>suddenly, her eye catching mine, the fashion of her
countenance was changed, and regarding me with a really admirable
appearance of offended dignity, she said something in Italian
which made everybody laugh much.&nbsp; It was explained to me
that she had said I was very <i>polisson</i> to stare at
her.&nbsp; After this she was somewhat taken up with me, and
after some examination she announced emphatically to the whole
table, in German, that I was a <i>M&auml;dchen</i>; which word
she repeated with shrill emphasis, as though fearing that her
proposition would be called in
question&mdash;<i>M&auml;dchen</i>, <i>M&auml;dchen</i>,
<i>M&auml;dchen</i>, <i>M&auml;dchen</i>.&nbsp; This hasty
conclusion as to my sex she was led afterwards to revise, I am
informed; but her new opinion (which seems to have been something
nearer the truth) was announced in a third language quite unknown
to me, and probably Russian.&nbsp; To complete the scroll of her
accomplishments, she was brought round the table after the meal
was over, and said good-bye to me in very commendable
English.</p>
<p>The weather I shall say nothing about, as I am incapable of
explaining my sentiments upon that subject before a lady.&nbsp;
But my health is really greatly improved: I begin to recognise
myself occasionally now and again, not without satisfaction.</p>
<p>Please remember me very kindly to Professor Swan; I wish I had
a story to send him; but story, Lord bless you, I have none to
tell, sir, unless it is the foregoing adventure with the little
polyglot.&nbsp; The best of that depends on the significance of
<i>polisson</i>, which is beautifully out of place.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p><i>Saturday</i>, 10<i>th</i> <i>January</i>.&mdash;The little
Russian kid is only two and a half: she speaks six
languages.&nbsp; She and her sister (&aelig;t. 8) and May
Johnstone (&aelig;t. 8) are the delight of my life.&nbsp; Last
night I saw them all dancing&mdash;O it was jolly; kids are what
is the matter with me.&nbsp; After the dancing, we all&mdash;that
is the two Russian ladies, Robinet the French painter, Mr. and
Mrs. Johnstone, two governesses, <a name="page71"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 71</span>and fitful kids joining us at
intervals&mdash;played a game of the stool of repentance in the
Gallic idiom.</p>
<p>O&mdash;I have not told you that Colvin is gone; however, he
is coming back again; he has left clothes in pawn to
me.&mdash;Ever your affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Mentone</i>, <i>Tuesday</i>,
13<i>th</i> <i>January</i> 1874.</p>
<p>. . . I <span class="smcap">lost</span> a Philipine to little
Mary Johnstone last night; so to-day I sent her a rubbishing
doll&rsquo;s toilet, and a little note with it, with some verses
telling how happy children made every one near them happy also,
and advising her to keep the lines, and some day, when she was
&lsquo;grown a stately demoiselle,&rsquo; it would make her
&lsquo;glad to know she gave pleasure long ago,&rsquo; all in a
very lame fashion, with just a note of prose at the end, telling
her to mind her doll and the dog, and not trouble her little head
just now to understand the bad verses; for some time when she was
ill, as I am now, they would be plain to her and make her
happy.&nbsp; She has just been here to thank me, and has left me
very happy.&nbsp; Children are certainly too good to be true.</p>
<p>Yesterday I walked too far, and spent all the afternoon on the
outside of my bed; went finally to rest at nine, and slept nearly
twelve hours on the stretch.&nbsp; Bennet (the doctor), when told
of it this morning, augured well for my recovery; he said youth
must be putting in strong; of course I ought not to have slept at
all.&nbsp; As it was, I dreamed <i>horridly</i>; but not my usual
dreams of social miseries and misunderstandings and all sorts of
crucifixions of the spirit; but of good, cheery, physical
things&mdash;of long successions of vaulted, dimly lit cellars
full of black water, in which I went swimming among toads and
unutterable, cold, blind fishes.&nbsp; Now and then these cellars
opened up into sort of domed music-hall places, where one <a
name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 72</span>could land
for a little on the slope of the orchestra, but a sort of horror
prevented one from staying long, and made one plunge back again
into the dead waters.&nbsp; Then my dream changed, and I was a
sort of Siamese pirate, on a very high deck with several
others.&nbsp; The ship was almost captured, and we were fighting
desperately.&nbsp; The hideous engines we used and the perfectly
incredible carnage that we effected by means of them kept me
cheery, as you may imagine; especially as I felt all the time my
sympathy with the boarders, and knew that I was only a prisoner
with these horrid Malays.&nbsp; Then I saw a signal being given,
and knew they were going to blow up the ship.&nbsp; I leaped
right off, and heard my captors splash in the water after me as
thick as pebbles when a bit of river bank has given way beneath
the foot.&nbsp; I never heard the ship blow up; but I spent the
rest of the night swimming about some piles with the whole sea
full of Malays, searching for me with knives in their
mouths.&nbsp; They could swim any distance under water, and every
now and again, just as I was beginning to reckon myself safe, a
cold hand would be laid on my ankle&mdash;ugh!</p>
<p>However, my long sleep, troubled as it was, put me all right
again, and I was able to work acceptably this morning and be very
jolly all day.&nbsp; This evening I have had a great deal of talk
with both the Russian ladies; they talked very nicely, and are
bright, likable women both.&nbsp; They come from Georgia.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p><i>Wednesday</i>, 10.30.&mdash;We have all been to tea
to-night at the Russians&rsquo; villa.&nbsp; Tea was made out of
a samovar, which is something like a small steam engine, and
whose principal advantage is that it burns the fingers of all who
lay their profane touch upon it.&nbsp; After tea Madame Z. played
Russian airs, very plaintive and pretty; so the evening was
Muscovite from beginning to end.&nbsp; Madame G.&rsquo;s daughter
danced a tarantella, which was very pretty.</p>
<p>Whenever Nelitchka cries&mdash;and she never cries except <a
name="page73"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 73</span>from
pain&mdash;all that one has to do is to start &lsquo;Malbrook
s&rsquo;en va-t-en guerre.&rsquo;&nbsp; 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.</p>
<p>It is wonderful, before I shut this up, how that child remains
ever interesting to me.&nbsp; Nothing can stale her infinite
variety; and yet it is not very various.&nbsp; 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 &lsquo;Berecchino!&rsquo; 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!</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Mentone</i>, <i>January</i>
1874.]</p>
<p>. . . <span class="smcap">last</span> night I had a quarrel
with the American on politics.&nbsp; It is odd how it irritates
you to hear certain political statements made.&nbsp; He was
excited, and he began suddenly to abuse our conduct to
America.&nbsp; I, of course, admitted right and left that we had
behaved disgracefully (as we had); until somehow I got tired of
turning alternate cheeks and getting duly buffeted; and when he
said that the Alabama money had not wiped out the injury, I
suggested, in language (I remember) of admirable directness and
force, that it was a pity they had taken the money in that
case.&nbsp; He lost his temper at once, and cried out that his
dearest wish was a war with England; whereupon I also lost my
temper, and, thundering at the pitch of my voice, I left him and
went away by myself to another part of the garden.&nbsp; A very
tender reconciliation took place, and I think there will come no
more harm out of it.&nbsp; We are both of us nervous people, and
he had had a very long walk and a good deal of beer at dinner:
that <a name="page74"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
74</span>explains the scene a little.&nbsp; But I regret having
employed so much of the voice with which I have been endowed, as
I fear every person in the hotel was taken into confidence as to
my sentiments, just at the very juncture when neither the
sentiments nor (perhaps) the language had been sufficiently
considered.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p><i>Friday</i>.&mdash;You have not yet heard of my
book?&mdash;<i>Four Great Scotsmen</i>&mdash;John Knox, David
Hume, Robert Burns, Walter Scott.&nbsp; These, their lives, their
work, the social media in which they lived and worked, with, if I
can so make it, the strong current of the race making itself felt
underneath and throughout&mdash;this is my idea.&nbsp; You must
tell me what you think of it.&nbsp; The Knox will really be new
matter, as his life hitherto has been disgracefully written, and
the events are romantic and rapid; the character very strong,
salient, and worthy; much interest as to the future of Scotland,
and as to that part of him which was truly modern under his
Hebrew disguise.&nbsp; Hume, of course, the urbane, cheerful,
gentlemanly, letter-writing eighteenth century, full of
attraction, and much that I don&rsquo;t yet know as to his
work.&nbsp; Burns, the sentimental side that there is in most
Scotsmen, his poor troubled existence, how far his poems were his
personally, and how far national, the question of the framework
of society in Scotland, and its fatal effect upon the finest
natures.&nbsp; Scott again, the ever delightful man, sane,
courageous, admirable; the birth of Romance, in a dawn that was a
sunset; snobbery, conservatism, the wrong thread in History, and
notably in that of his own land.&nbsp; <i>Voil&agrave;</i>,
<i>madame</i>, <i>le menu</i>.&nbsp; <i>Comment le
trouvez-vous</i>?&nbsp; <i>Il y a</i> <i>de la bonne viando</i>,
<i>si on parvient &agrave; la cuire convenablement</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><a name="page75"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 75</span>[<i>Mentone</i>, <i>March</i> 28,
1874.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,&mdash;Beautiful
weather, perfect weather; sun, pleasant cooling winds; health
very good; only incapacity to write.</p>
<p>The only new cloud on my horizon (I mean this in no menacing
sense) is the Prince.&nbsp; I have philosophical and artistic
discussions with the Prince.&nbsp; He is capable of talking for
two hours upon end, developing his theory of everything under
Heaven from his first position, which is that there is no
straight line.&nbsp; Doesn&rsquo;t that sound like a game of my
father&rsquo;s&mdash;I beg your pardon, you haven&rsquo;t read
it&mdash;I don&rsquo;t mean <i>my</i> father, I mean Tristram
Shandy&rsquo;s.&nbsp; He is very clever, and it is an immense
joke to hear him unrolling all the problems of
life&mdash;philosophy, science, what you will&mdash;in this
charmingly cut-and-dry, here-we-are-again kind of manner.&nbsp;
He is better to listen to than to argue withal.&nbsp; When you
differ from him, he lifts up his voice and thunders; and you know
that the thunder of an excited foreigner often miscarries.&nbsp;
One stands aghast, marvelling how such a colossus of a man, in
such a great commotion of spirit, can open his mouth so much and
emit such a still small voice at the hinder end of it all.&nbsp;
All this while he walks about the room, smokes cigarettes,
occupies divers chairs for divers brief spaces, and casts his
huge arms to the four winds like the sails of a mill.&nbsp; He is
a most sportive Prince.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Swanston</i>], <i>May</i> 1874,
<i>Monday</i>.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">We</span> are now at Swanston Cottage,
Lothianburn, Edinburgh.&nbsp; The garden is but little clothed
yet, for, you <a name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
76</span>know, here we are six hundred feet above the sea.&nbsp;
It is very cold, and has sleeted this morning.&nbsp; Everything
wintry.&nbsp; I am very jolly, however, having finished Victor
Hugo, and just looking round to see what I should next take
up.&nbsp; I have been reading Roman Law and Calvin this
morning.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p><i>Evening</i>.&mdash;I went up the hill a little this
afternoon.&nbsp; The air was invigorating, but it was so cold
that my scalp was sore.&nbsp; With this high wintry wind, and the
grey sky, and faint northern daylight, it was quite wonderful to
hear such a clamour of blackbirds coming up to me out of the
woods, and the bleating of sheep being shorn in a field near the
garden, and to see golden patches of blossom already on the
furze, and delicate green shoots upright and beginning to frond
out, among last year&rsquo;s russet bracken.&nbsp; Flights of
crows were passing continually between the wintry leaden sky and
the wintry cold-looking hills.&nbsp; It was the oddest conflict
of seasons.&nbsp; A wee rabbit&mdash;this year&rsquo;s making,
beyond question&mdash;ran out from under my feet, and was in a
pretty perturbation, until he hit upon a lucky juniper and
blotted himself there promptly.&nbsp; Evidently this gentleman
had not had much experience of life.</p>
<p>I have made an arrangement with my people: I am to have
&pound;84 a year&mdash;I only asked for &pound;80 on mature
reflection&mdash;and as I should soon make a good bit by my pen,
I shall be very comfortable.&nbsp; We are all as jolly as can be
together, so that is a great thing gained.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p><i>Wednesday</i>.&mdash;Yesterday I received a letter that
gave me much pleasure from a poor fellow-student of mine, who has
been all winter very ill, and seems to be but little better even
now.&nbsp; He seems very much pleased with <i>Ordered
South</i>.&nbsp; &lsquo;A month ago,&rsquo; he says, &lsquo;I
could scarcely have ventured to read it; to-day I felt on reading
it as I did on the first day that I was able to sun myself a
little <a name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 77</span>in
the open air.&rsquo;&nbsp; And much more to the like
effect.&nbsp; It is very gratifying.&mdash;Ever your faithful
friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Swanston</i>, <i>Wednesday</i>,
<i>May</i> 1874.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Struggling</span> away at <i>Fables in
Song</i>.&nbsp; I am much afraid I am going to make a real
failure; the time is so short, and I am so out of the
humour.&nbsp; Otherwise very calm and jolly: cold still
<i>impossible</i>.</p>
<p><i>Thursday</i>.&mdash;I feel happier about the <i>Fables</i>,
and it is warmer a bit; but my body is most decrepit, and I can
just manage to be cheery and tread down hypochondria under foot
by work.&nbsp; I lead such a funny life, utterly without interest
or pleasure outside of my work: nothing, indeed, but work all day
long, except a short walk alone on the cold hills, and meals, and
a couple of pipes with my father in the evening.&nbsp; It is
surprising how it suits me, and how happy I keep.</p>
<p><i>Saturday</i>.&mdash;I have received such a nice long letter
(four sides) from Leslie Stephen to-day about my Victor
Hugo.&nbsp; It is accepted.&nbsp; This ought to have made me gay,
but it hasn&rsquo;t.&nbsp; I am not likely to be much of a tonic
to-night.&nbsp; I have been very cynical over myself to-day,
partly, perhaps, because I have just finished some of the deedest
rubbish about Lord Lytton&rsquo;s fables that an intelligent
editor ever shot into his wastepaper basket.&nbsp; If Morley
prints it I shall be glad, but my respect for him will be
shaken.</p>
<p><i>Tuesday</i>.&mdash;Another cold day; yet I have been along
the hillside, wondering much at idiotic sheep, and raising
partridges at every second step.&nbsp; One little plover is the
<a name="page78"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 78</span>object of
my firm adherence.&nbsp; I pass his nest every day, and if you
saw how he files by me, and almost into my face, crying and
flapping his wings, to direct my attention from his little
treasure, you would have as kind a heart to him as I.&nbsp;
To-day I saw him not, although I took my usual way; and I am
afraid that some person has abused his simple wiliness and
harried (as we say in Scotland) the nest.&nbsp; I feel much
righteous indignation against such imaginary aggressor.&nbsp;
However, one must not be too chary of the lower forms.&nbsp;
To-day I sat down on a tree-stump at the skirt of a little strip
of planting, and thoughtlessly began to dig out the touchwood
with an end of twig.&nbsp; I found I had carried ruin, death, and
universal consternation into a little community of ants; and this
set me a-thinking of how close we are environed with frail lives,
so that we can do nothing without spreading havoc over all manner
of perishable homes and interests and affections; and so on to my
favourite mood of an holy terror for all action and all inaction
equally&mdash;a sort of shuddering revulsion from the necessary
responsibilities of life.&nbsp; We must not be too scrupulous of
others, or we shall die.&nbsp; Conscientiousness is a sort of
moral opium; an excitant in small doses, perhaps, but at bottom a
strong narcotic.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p><i>Saturday</i>.&mdash;I have been two days in Edinburgh, and
so had not the occasion to write to you.&nbsp; Morley has
accepted the <i>Fables</i>, and I have seen it in proof, and
think less of it than ever.&nbsp; However, of course, I shall
send you a copy of the <i>Magazine</i> without fail, and you can
be as disappointed as you like, or the reverse if you can.&nbsp;
I would willingly recall it if I could.</p>
<p>Try, by way of change, Byron&rsquo;s <i>Mazeppa</i>; you will
be astonished.&nbsp; It is grand and no mistake, and one sees
through it a fire, and a passion, and a rapid intuition of
genius, that makes one rather sorry for one&rsquo;s own
generation of better writers, and&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know what
to say; I <a name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
79</span>was going to say &lsquo;smaller men&rsquo;; but
that&rsquo;s not right; read it, and you will feel what I cannot
express.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t be put out by the beginning;
persevere, and you will find yourself thrilled before you are at
an end with it.&mdash;Ever your faithful friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Train between Edinburgh and
Chester</i>, <i>August</i> 8, 1874.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">My</span> father and mother reading.&nbsp;
I think I shall talk to you for a moment or two.&nbsp; This
morning at Swanston, the birds, poor creatures, had the most
troubled hour or two; evidently there was a hawk in the
neighbourhood; not one sang; and the whole garden thrilled with
little notes of warning and terror.&nbsp; I did not know before
that the voice of birds could be so tragically expressive.&nbsp;
I had always heard them before express their trivial satisfaction
with the blue sky and the return of daylight.&nbsp; Really, they
almost frightened me; I could hear mothers and wives in terror
for those who were dear to them; it was easy to translate, I wish
it were as easy to write; but it is very hard in this flying
train, or I would write you more.</p>
<p><i>Chester</i>.&mdash;I like this place much; but somehow I
feel glad when I get among the quiet eighteenth century
buildings, in cosy places with some elbow room about them, after
the older architecture.&nbsp; This other is bedevilled and
furtive; it seems to stoop; I am afraid of trap-doors, and could
not go pleasantly into such houses.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t know how
much of this is legitimately the effect of the architecture;
little enough possibly; possibly far the most part of it comes
from bad historical novels and the disquieting statuary that
garnishes some fa&ccedil;ades.</p>
<p>On the way, to-day, I passed through my dear Cumberland
country.&nbsp; Nowhere to as great a degree can one find <a
name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 80</span>the
combination of lowland and highland beauties; the outline of the
blue hills is broken by the outline of many tumultuous
tree-clumps; and the broad spaces of moorland are balanced by a
network of deep hedgerows that might rival Suffolk, in the
foreground.&mdash;How a railway journey shakes and discomposes
one, mind and body!&nbsp; I grow blacker and blacker in humour as
the day goes on; and when at last I am let out, and have the
fresh air about me, it is as though I were born again, and the
sick fancies flee away from my mind like swans in spring.</p>
<p>I want to come back on what I have said about eighteenth
century and middle-age houses: I do not know if I have yet
explained to you the sort of loyalty, of urbanity, that there is
about the one to my mind; the spirit of a country orderly and
prosperous, a flavour of the presence of magistrates and
well-to-do merchants in bag-wigs, the clink of glasses at night
in fire-lit parlours, something certain and civic and domestic,
is all about these quiet, staid, shapely houses, with no
character but their exceeding shapeliness, and the comely
external utterance that they make of their internal
comfort.&nbsp; Now the others are, as I have said, both furtive
and bedevilled; they are sly and grotesque; they combine their
sort of feverish grandeur with their sort of secretive baseness,
after the manner of a Charles the Ninth.&nbsp; They are peopled
for me with persons of the same fashion.&nbsp; Dwarfs and
sinister people in cloaks are about them; and I seem to divine
crypts, and, as I said, trap-doors.&nbsp; O God be praised that
we live in this good daylight and this good peace.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p><i>Barmouth</i>, <i>August</i> 9<i>th</i>.&mdash;To-day we saw
the cathedral at Chester; and, far more delightful, saw and heard
a certain inimitable verger who took us round.&nbsp; He was full
of a certain recondite, far-away humour that did not quite make
you laugh at the time, but was somehow laughable to
recollect.&nbsp; Moreover, he had so far a just imagination, <a
name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 81</span>and could put
one in the right humour for seeing an old place, very much as,
according to my favourite text, Scott&rsquo;s novels and poems do
for one.&nbsp; His account of the monks in the Scriptorium, with
their cowls over their heads, in a certain sheltered angle of the
cloister where the big Cathedral building kept the sun off the
parchments, was all that could be wished; and so too was what he
added of the others pacing solemnly behind them and dropping,
ever and again, on their knees before a little shrine there is in
the wall, &lsquo;to keep &rsquo;em in the frame of
mind.&rsquo;&nbsp; You will begin to think me unduly biassed in
this verger&rsquo;s favour if I go on to tell you his opinion of
me.&nbsp; We got into a little side chapel, whence we could hear
the choir children at practice, and I stopped a moment listening
to them, with, I dare say, a very bright face, for the sound was
delightful to me.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ah,&rsquo; says he,
&lsquo;you&rsquo;re <i>very</i> fond of music.&rsquo;&nbsp; I
said I was.&nbsp; &lsquo;Yes, I could tell that by your
head,&rsquo; he answered.&nbsp; &lsquo;There&rsquo;s a deal in
that head.&rsquo;&nbsp; And he shook his own solemnly.&nbsp; I
said it might be so, but I found it hard, at least, to get it
out.&nbsp; Then my father cut in brutally, said anyway I had no
ear, and left the verger so distressed and shaken in the
foundations of his creed that, I hear, he got my father aside
afterwards and said he was sure there was something in my face,
and wanted to know what it was, if not music.&nbsp; He was
relieved when he heard that I occupied myself with litterature
(which word, note here, I do not spell correctly).&nbsp;
Good-night, and here&rsquo;s the verger&rsquo;s health!</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Swanston</i>, <i>Wednesday</i>,
[<i>Autumn</i>] 1874.</p>
<p>I <span class="smcap">have</span> been hard at work all
yesterday, and besides had to write a long letter to Bob, so I
found no time until <a name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
82</span>quite late, and then was sleepy.&nbsp; Last night it
blew a fearful gale; I was kept awake about a couple of hours,
and could not get to sleep for the horror of the wind&rsquo;s
noise; the whole house shook; and, mind you, our house <i>is</i>
a house, a great castle of jointed stone that would weigh up a
street of English houses; so that when it quakes, as it did last
night, it means something.&nbsp; But the quaking was not what put
me about; it was the horrible howl of the wind round the corner;
the audible haunting of an incarnate anger about the house; the
evil spirit that was abroad; and, above all, the shuddering
silent pauses when the storm&rsquo;s heart stands dreadfully
still for a moment.&nbsp; O how I hate a storm at night!&nbsp;
They have been a great influence in my life, I am sure; for I can
remember them so far back&mdash;long before I was six at least,
for we left the house in which I remember listening to them times
without number when I was six.&nbsp; And in those days the storm
had for me a perfect impersonation, as durable and unvarying as
any heathen deity.&nbsp; I always heard it, as a horseman riding
past with his cloak about his head, and somehow always carried
away, and riding past again, and being baffled yet once more,
<i>ad infinitum</i>, all night long.&nbsp; I think I wanted him
to get past, but I am not sure; I know only that I had some
interest either for or against in the matter; and I used to lie
and hold my breath, not quite frightened, but in a state of
miserable exaltation.</p>
<p>My first John Knox is in proof, and my second is on the
anvil.&nbsp; It is very good of me so to do; for I want so much
to get to my real tour and my sham tour, the real tour first: it
is always working in my head, and if I can only turn on the right
sort of style at the right moment, I am not much afraid of
it.&nbsp; One thing bothers me; what with hammering at this J.
K., and writing necessary letters, and taking necessary exercise
(that even not enough, the weather is so repulsive to me, cold
and windy), I find I have no time for reading except times of
fatigue, when I wish merely to relax myself.&nbsp; O&mdash;and I
read over again <a name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
83</span>for this purpose Flaubert&rsquo;s <i>Tentation de St.
Antoine</i>; it struck me a good deal at first, but this second
time it has fetched me immensely.&nbsp; I am but just done with
it, so you will know the large proportion of salt to take with my
present statement, that it&rsquo;s the finest thing I ever
read!&nbsp; Of course, it isn&rsquo;t that, it&rsquo;s full of
<i>longueurs</i>, and is not quite &lsquo;redd up,&rsquo; as we
say in Scotland, not quite articulated; but there are splendid
things in it.</p>
<p>I say, <i>do</i> take your maccaroni with oil: <i>do</i>,
<i>please</i>.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s <i>beastly</i> with
butter.&mdash;Ever your faithful friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Edinburgh</i>], <i>December</i>
23, 1874.</p>
<p><i>Monday</i>.&mdash;I have come from a concert, and the
concert was rather a disappointment.&nbsp; Not so my afternoon
skating&mdash;Duddingston, our big loch, is bearing; and I wish
you could have seen it this afternoon, covered with people, in
thin driving snow flurries, the big hill grim and white and
alpine overhead in the thick air, and the road up the gorge, as
it were into the heart of it, dotted black with traffic.&nbsp;
Moreover, I <i>can</i> skate a little bit; and what one can do is
always pleasant to do.</p>
<p><i>Tuesday</i>.&mdash;I got your letter to-day, and was so
glad thereof.&nbsp; It was of good omen to me also.&nbsp; I
worked from ten to one (my classes are suspended now for Xmas
holidays), and wrote four or five Portfolio pages of my
Buckinghamshire affair.&nbsp; Then I went to Duddingston and
skated all afternoon.&nbsp; If you had seen the moon rising, a
perfect sphere of smoky gold, in the dark air above the trees,
and the white loch thick with skaters, and the great hill,
snow-sprinkled, overhead!&nbsp; It was a sight for a king.</p>
<p><i>Wednesday</i>.&mdash;I stayed on Duddingston to-day till
after nightfall.&nbsp; The little booths that hucksters set up
round the edge were marked each one by its little lamp.&nbsp;
There were some fires too; and the light, and the shadows of <a
name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 84</span>the people
who stood round them to warm themselves, made a strange pattern
all round on the snow-covered ice.&nbsp; A few people with
torches began to travel up and down the ice, a lit circle
travelling along with them over the snow.&nbsp; A gigantic moon
rose, meanwhile, over the trees and the kirk on the promontory,
among perturbed and vacillating clouds.</p>
<p>The walk home was very solemn and strange.&nbsp; Once, through
a broken gorge, we had a glimpse of a little space of mackerel
sky, moon-litten, on the other side of the hill; the broken
ridges standing grey and spectral between; and the hilltop over
all, snow-white, and strangely magnified in size.</p>
<p>This must go to you to-morrow, so that you may read it on
Christmas Day for company.&nbsp; I hope it may be good company to
you.</p>
<p><i>Thursday</i>.&mdash;Outside, it snows thick and
steadily.&nbsp; The gardens before our house are now a wonderful
fairy forest.&nbsp; And O, this whiteness of things, how I love
it, how it sends the blood about my body!&nbsp; Maurice de
Gu&eacute;rin hated snow; what a fool he must have been!&nbsp;
Somebody tried to put me out of conceit with it by saying that
people were lost in it.&nbsp; As if people don&rsquo;t get lost
in love, too, and die of devotion to art; as if everything worth
were not an occasion to some people&rsquo;s end.</p>
<p>What a wintry letter this is!&nbsp; Only I think it is winter
seen from the inside of a warm greatcoat.&nbsp; And there is, at
least, a warm heart about it somewhere.&nbsp; Do you know, what
they say in Xmas stories is true?&nbsp; I think one loves their
friends more dearly at this season.&mdash;Ever your faithful
friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">17 <i>Heriot Road</i>,
<i>Edinburgh</i> [<i>January</i> 1875].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;I have
worked too hard; I have given myself one day of rest, and that
was not enough; <a name="page85"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
85</span>so I am giving myself another.&nbsp; I shall go to bed
again likewise so soon as this is done, and slumber most
potently.</p>
<p>9 <span class="GutSmall">P.M.</span>, slept all afternoon like
a lamb.</p>
<p>About my coming south, I think the still small unanswerable
voice of coins will make it impossible until the session is over
(end of March); but for all that, I think I shall hold out
jolly.&nbsp; I do not want you to come and bother yourself;
indeed, it is still not quite certain whether my father will be
quite fit for you, although I have now no fear of that
really.&nbsp; Now don&rsquo;t take up this wrongly; I wish you
could come; and I do not know anything that would make me
happier, but I see that it is wrong to expect it, and so I resign
myself: some time after.&nbsp; I offered Appleton a series of
papers on the modern French school&mdash;the Parnassiens, I think
they call them&mdash;de Banville, Copp&eacute;e, Soulary, and
Sully Prudhomme.&nbsp; But he has not deigned to answer my
letter.</p>
<p>I shall have another Portfolio paper so soon as I am done with
this story, that has played me out; the story is to be called
<i>When the Devil was well</i>: scene, Italy, Renaissance;
colour, purely imaginary of course, my own unregenerate idea of
what Italy then was.&nbsp; O, when shall I find the story of my
dreams, that shall never halt nor wander nor step aside, but go
ever before its face, and ever swifter and louder, until the pit
receives it, roaring?&nbsp; The Portfolio paper will be about
Scotland and England.&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>Tuesday</i>
[<i>February</i> 1875].</p>
<p>I <span class="smcap">got</span> your nice long gossiping
letter to-day&mdash;I mean by that that there was more news in it
than usual&mdash;and <a name="page86"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 86</span>so, of course, I am pretty
jolly.&nbsp; I am in the house, however, with such a beastly cold
in the head.&nbsp; Our east winds begin already to be very
cold.</p>
<p>O, I have such a longing for children of my own; and yet I do
not think I could bear it if I had one.&nbsp; I fancy I must feel
more like a woman than like a man about that.&nbsp; I sometimes
hate the children I see on the street&mdash;you know what I mean
by hate&mdash;wish they were somewhere else, and not there to
mock me; and sometimes, again, I don&rsquo;t know how to go by
them for the love of them, especially the very wee ones.</p>
<p><i>Thursday</i>.&mdash;I have been still in the house since I
wrote, and I <i>have</i> worked.&nbsp; I finished the Italian
story; not well, but as well as I can just now; I must go all
over it again, some time soon, when I feel in the humour to
better and perfect it.&nbsp; And now I have taken up an old
story, begun years ago; and I have now re-written all I had
written of it then, and mean to finish it.&nbsp; What I have lost
and gained is odd.&nbsp; As far as regards simple writing, of
course, I am in another world now; but in some things, though
more clumsy, I seem to have been freer and more plucky: this is a
lesson I have taken to heart.&nbsp; I have got a jolly new name
for my old story.&nbsp; I am going to call it <i>A Country
Dance</i>; the two heroes keep changing places, you know; and the
chapter where the most of this changing goes on is to be called
&lsquo;Up the middle, down the middle.&rsquo;&nbsp; It will be in
six, or (perhaps) seven chapters.&nbsp; I have never worked
harder in my life than these last four days.&nbsp; If I can only
keep it up.</p>
<p><i>Saturday</i>.&mdash;Yesterday, Leslie Stephen, who was down
here to lecture, called on me and took me up to see a poor
fellow, a poet who writes for him, and who has been eighteen
months in our infirmary, and may be, for all I know, eighteen
months more.&nbsp; It was very sad to see him there, in a little
room with two beds, and a couple of sick children in the other
bed; a girl came in to visit the children, <a
name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 87</span>and played
dominoes on the counterpane with them; the gas flared and
crackled, the fire burned in a dull economical way; Stephen and I
sat on a couple of chairs, and the poor fellow sat up in his bed
with his hair and beard all tangled, and talked as cheerfully as
if he had been in a King&rsquo;s palace, or the great
King&rsquo;s palace of the blue air.&nbsp; He has taught himself
two languages since he has been lying there.&nbsp; I shall try to
be of use to him.</p>
<p>We have had two beautiful spring days, mild as milk, windy
withal, and the sun hot.&nbsp; I dreamed last night I was walking
by moonlight round the place where the scene of my story is laid;
it was all so quiet and sweet, and the blackbirds were singing as
if it was day; it made my heart very cool and happy.&mdash;Ever
yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>February</i> 8, 1875.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;Forgive my
bothering you.&nbsp; Here is the proof of my second
<i>Knox</i>.&nbsp; Glance it over, like a good fellow, and if
there&rsquo;s anything very flagrant send it to me marked.&nbsp;
I have no confidence in myself; I feel such an ass.&nbsp; What
have I been doing?&nbsp; As near as I can calculate,
nothing.&nbsp; And yet I have worked all this month from three to
five hours a day, that is to say, from one to three hours more
than my doctor allows me; positively no result.</p>
<p>No, I can write no article just now; I am <i>pioching</i>,
like a madman, at my stories, and can make nothing of them; my
simplicity is tame and dull&mdash;my passion tinsel, boyish,
hysterical.&nbsp; Never mind&mdash;ten years hence, if I live, I
shall have learned, so help me God.&nbsp; I know one must work,
in the meantime (so says Balzac) <i>comme le mineur enfoui sous
un &eacute;boulement</i>.</p>
<p><i>J&rsquo;y parviendrai</i>, <i>nom de nom de nom</i>!&nbsp;
But it&rsquo;s a long look forward.&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><a name="page88"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 88</span><span
class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Barbizon</i>, <i>April</i>
1875.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR FRIEND</span>,&mdash;This is
just a line to say I am well and happy.&nbsp; I am here in my
dear forest all day in the open air.&nbsp; It is very
be&mdash;no, not beautiful exactly, just now, but very bright and
living.&nbsp; There are one or two song birds and a cuckoo; all
the fruit-trees are in flower, and the beeches make sunshine in a
shady place, I begin to go all right; you need not be vexed about
my health; I really was ill at first, as bad as I have been for
nearly a year; but the forest begins to work, and the air, and
the sun, and the smell of the pines.&nbsp; If I could stay a
month here, I should be as right as possible.&nbsp; Thanks for
your letter.&mdash;Your faithful</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">17 <i>Heriot Row</i>,
<i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>Sunday</i> [<i>April</i> 1875].</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Here</span> is my long story: yesterday
night, after having supped, I grew so restless that I was obliged
to go out in search of some excitement.&nbsp; There was a
half-moon lying over on its back, and incredibly bright in the
midst of a faint grey sky set with faint stars: a very inartistic
moon, that would have damned a picture.</p>
<p>At the most populous place of the city I found a little boy,
three years old perhaps, half frantic with terror, and crying to
every one for his &lsquo;Mammy.&rsquo;&nbsp; This was about
eleven, mark you.&nbsp; People stopped and spoke to him, and then
went on, leaving him more frightened than before.&nbsp; <a
name="page89"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 89</span>But I and a
good-humoured mechanic came up together; and I instantly
developed a latent faculty for setting the hearts of children at
rest.&nbsp; Master Tommy Murphy (such was his name) soon stopped
crying, and allowed me to take him up and carry him; and the
mechanic and I trudged away along Princes Street to find his
parents.&nbsp; I was soon so tired that I had to ask the mechanic
to carry the bairn; and you should have seen the puzzled contempt
with which he looked at me, for knocking in so soon.&nbsp; He was
a good fellow, however, although very impracticable and
sentimental; and he soon bethought him that Master Murphy might
catch cold after his excitement, so we wrapped him up in my
greatcoat.&nbsp; &lsquo;Tobauga (Tobago) Street&rsquo; was the
address he gave us; and we deposited him in a little
grocer&rsquo;s shop and went through all the houses in the street
without being able to find any one of the name of Murphy.&nbsp;
Then I set off to the head police office, leaving my greatcoat in
pawn about Master Murphy&rsquo;s person.&nbsp; As I went down one
of the lowest streets in the town, I saw a little bit of life
that struck me.&nbsp; It was now half-past twelve, a little shop
stood still half-open, and a boy of four or five years old was
walking up and down before it imitating cockcrow.&nbsp; He was
the only living creature within sight.</p>
<p>At the police offices no word of Master Murphy&rsquo;s
parents; so I went back empty-handed.&nbsp; The good groceress,
who had kept her shop open all this time, could keep the child no
longer; her father, bad with bronchitis, said he must
forth.&nbsp; So I got a large scone with currants in it, wrapped
my coat about Tommy, got him up on my arm, and away to the police
office with him: not very easy in my mind, for the poor child,
young as he was&mdash;he could scarce speak&mdash;was full of
terror for the &lsquo;office,&rsquo; as he called it.&nbsp; He
was now very grave and quiet and communicative with me; told me
how his father thrashed him, and divers household matters.&nbsp;
Whenever he saw a woman on our way he looked after <a
name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 90</span>her over my
shoulder and then gave his judgment: &lsquo;That&rsquo;s no
<i>her</i>,&rsquo; adding sometimes, &lsquo;She has a wean
wi&rsquo; her.&rsquo;&nbsp; Meantime I was telling him how I was
going to take him to a gentleman who would find out his mother
for him quicker than ever I could, and how he must not be afraid
of him, but be brave, as he had been with me.&nbsp; We had just
arrived at our destination&mdash;we were just under the
lamp&mdash;when he looked me in the face and said appealingly,
&lsquo;He&rsquo;ll no put&mdash;me in the office?&rsquo;&nbsp;
And I had to assure him that he would not, even as I pushed open
the door and took him in.</p>
<p>The serjeant was very nice, and I got Tommy comfortably seated
on a bench, and spirited him up with good words and the scone
with the currants in it; and then, telling him I was just going
out to look for Mammy, I got my greatcoat and slipped away.</p>
<p>Poor little boy! he was not called for, I learn, until ten
this morning.&nbsp; This is very ill written, and I&rsquo;ve
missed half that was picturesque in it; but to say truth, I am
very tired and sleepy: it was two before I got to bed.&nbsp;
However, you see, I had my excitement.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p><i>Monday</i>.&mdash;I have written nothing all morning; I
cannot settle to it.&nbsp; Yes&mdash;I <i>will</i> though.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p>10.45.&mdash;And I did.&nbsp; I want to say something more to
you about the three women.&nbsp; I wonder so much why they should
have been <i>women</i>, and halt between two opinions in the
matter.&nbsp; Sometimes I think it is because they were made by a
man for men; sometimes, again, I think there is an abstract
reason for it, and there is something more substantive about a
woman than ever there can be about a man.&nbsp; I can conceive a
great mythical woman, living alone among inaccessible
mountain-tops or in some lost island in the pagan seas, and ask
no more.&nbsp; Whereas if I hear of a Hercules, I ask after Iole
or Dejanira.&nbsp; I cannot think him a man without women.&nbsp;
But I can think of these three deep-breasted <a
name="page91"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 91</span>women, living
out all their days on remote hilltops, seeing the white dawn and
the purple even, and the world outspread before them for ever,
and no more to them for ever than a sight of the eyes, a hearing
of the ears, a far-away interest of the inflexible heart, not
pausing, not pitying, but austere with a holy austerity, rigid
with a calm and passionless rigidity; and I find them none the
less women to the end.</p>
<p>And think, if one could love a woman like that once, see her
once grow pale with passion, and once wring your lips out upon
hers, would it not be a small thing to die?&nbsp; Not that there
is not a passion of a quite other sort, much less epic, far more
dramatic and intimate, that comes out of the very frailty of
perishable women; out of the lines of suffering that we see
written about their eyes, and that we may wipe out if it were but
for a moment; out of the thin hands, wrought and tempered in
agony to a fineness of perception, that the indifferent or the
merely happy cannot know; out of the tragedy that lies about such
a love, and the pathetic incompleteness.&nbsp; This is another
thing, and perhaps it is a higher.&nbsp; I look over my shoulder
at the three great headless Madonnas, and they look back at me
and do not move; see me, and through and over me, the foul life
of the city dying to its embers already as the night draws on;
and over miles and miles of silent country, set here and there
with lit towns, thundered through here and there with night
expresses scattering fire and smoke; and away to the ends of the
earth, and the furthest star, and the blank regions of nothing;
and they are not moved.&nbsp; My quiet, great-kneed,
deep-breasted, well-draped ladies of Necessity, I give my heart
to you!</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Swanston</i>, <i>Tuesday</i>,
<i>April</i> 1875.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR FRIEND</span>,&mdash;I have
been so busy, away to Bridge Of Allan with my father first, and
then with Simpson and <a name="page92"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 92</span>Baxter out here from Saturday till
Monday.&nbsp; I had no time to write, and, as it is, am strangely
incapable.&nbsp; Thanks for your letter.&nbsp; I have been
reading such lots of law, and it seems to take away the power of
writing from me.&nbsp; From morning to night, so often as I have
a spare moment, I am in the embrace of a law book&mdash;barren
embraces.&nbsp; I am in good spirits; and my heart smites me as
usual, when I am in good spirits, about my parents.&nbsp; If I
get a bit dull, I am away to London without a scruple; but so
long as my heart keeps up, I am all for my parents.</p>
<p>What do you think of Henley&rsquo;s hospital verses?&nbsp;
They were to have been dedicated to me, but Stephen
wouldn&rsquo;t allow it&mdash;said it would be pretentious.</p>
<p><i>Wednesday</i>.&mdash;I meant to have made this quite a
decent letter this morning, but listen.&nbsp; I had pain all last
night, and did not sleep well, and now am cold and sickish, and
strung up ever and again with another flash of pain.&nbsp; Will
you remember me to everybody?&nbsp; My principal characteristics
are cold, poverty, and Scots Law&mdash;three very bad
things.&nbsp; Oo, how the rain falls!&nbsp; The mist is quite low
on the hill.&nbsp; The birds are twittering to each other about
the indifferent season.&nbsp; O, here&rsquo;s a gem for
you.&nbsp; An old godly woman predicted the end of the world,
because the seasons were becoming indistinguishable; my cousin
Dora objected that last winter had been pretty well marked.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Yes, my dear,&rsquo; replied the soothsayeress; &lsquo;but
I think you&rsquo;ll find the summer will be rather
coamplicated.&rsquo;&mdash;Ever your faithful</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>Saturday</i>,
<i>April</i> 1875.]</p>
<p>I <span class="smcap">am</span> getting on with my rehearsals,
but I find the part very hard.&nbsp; I rehearsed yesterday from a
quarter to seven, <a name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
93</span>and to-day from four (with interval for dinner) to
eleven.&nbsp; You see the sad strait I am in for
ink.&mdash;<i>&Agrave; demain</i>.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p><i>Sunday</i>.&mdash;This is the third ink-bottle I have
tried, and still it&rsquo;s nothing to boast of.&nbsp; My journey
went off all right, and I have kept ever in good spirits.&nbsp;
Last night, indeed, I did think my little bit of gaiety was going
away down the wind like a whiff of tobacco smoke, but to-day it
has come back to me a little.&nbsp; The influence of this place
is assuredly all that can be worst against one; <i>mail il faut
lutter</i>.&nbsp; I was haunted last night when I was in bed by
the most cold, desolate recollections of my past life here; I was
glad to try and think of the forest, and warm my hands at the
thought of it.&nbsp; O the quiet, grey thickets, and the yellow
butterflies, and the woodpeckers, and the outlook over the plain
as it were over a sea!&nbsp; O for the good, fleshly stupidity of
the woods, the body conscious of itself all over and the mind
forgotten, the clean air nestling next your skin as though your
clothes were gossamer, the eye filled and content, the whole
<span class="GutSmall">MAN HAPPY</span>!&nbsp; Whereas here it
takes a pull to hold yourself together; it needs both hands, and
a book of stoical maxims, and a sort of bitterness at the heart
by way of armour.&mdash;Ever your faithful</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<p><i>Wednesday</i>.&mdash;I am so played out with a cold in my
eye that I cannot see to write or read without difficulty.&nbsp;
It is swollen <i>horrible</i>; so how I shall look as Orsino, God
knows!&nbsp; I have my fine clothes tho&rsquo;.&nbsp;
Henley&rsquo;s sonnets have been taken for the
<i>Cornhill</i>.&nbsp; He is out of hospital now, and dressed,
but still not too much to brag of in health, poor fellow, I am
afraid.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p><i>Sunday</i>.&mdash;So.&nbsp; I have still rather bad eyes,
and a nasty sore throat.&nbsp; I play Orsino every day, in all
the pomp of Solomon, splendid Francis the First clothes, heavy
with gold and stage jewellery.&nbsp; I play it ill enough, I
believe; but me and the clothes, and the wedding wherewith the
clothes and me are reconciled, produce every night a thrill <a
name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 94</span>of
admiration.&nbsp; Our cook told my mother (there is a
servants&rsquo; night, you know) that she and the housemaid were
&lsquo;just prood to be able to say it was oor young
gentleman.&rsquo;&nbsp; To sup afterwards with these clothes on,
and a wonderful lot of gaiety and Shakespearean jokes about the
table, is something to live for.&nbsp; It is so nice to feel you
have been dead three hundred years, and the sound of your
laughter is faint and far off in the centuries.&mdash;Ever your
faithful</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p><i>Wednesday</i>.&mdash;A moment at last.&nbsp; These last few
days have been as jolly as days could be, and by good fortune I
leave to-morrow for Swanston, so that I shall not feel the whole
fall back to habitual self.&nbsp; The pride of life could scarce
go further.&nbsp; To live in splendid clothes, velvet and gold
and fur, upon principally champagne and lobster salad, with a
company of people nearly all of whom are exceptionally good
talkers; when your days began about eleven and ended about
four&mdash;I have lost that sentence; I give it up; it is very
admirable sport, any way.&nbsp; Then both my afternoons have been
so pleasantly occupied&mdash;taking Henley drives.&nbsp; I had a
business to carry him down the long stair, and more of a business
to get him up again, but while he was in the carriage it was
splendid.&nbsp; It is now just the top of spring with us.&nbsp;
The whole country is mad with green.&nbsp; To see the
cherry-blossom bitten out upon the black firs, and the black firs
bitten out of the blue sky, was a sight to set before a
king.&nbsp; You may imagine what it was to a man who has been
eighteen months in an hospital ward.&nbsp; The look of his face
was a wine to me.</p>
<p>I shall send this off to-day to let you know of my new
address&mdash;Swanston Cottage, Lothianburn, Edinburgh.&nbsp;
Salute the faithful in my name.&nbsp; Salute Priscilla, salute
Barnabas, salute Ebenezer&mdash;O no, he&rsquo;s too much, I
withdraw Ebenezer; enough of early Christians.&mdash;Ever your
faithful</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><a name="page95"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 95</span><span
class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>June</i>
1875.]</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Simply</span> a scratch.&nbsp; All right,
jolly, well, and through with the difficulty.&nbsp; My father
pleased about the Burns.&nbsp; Never travel in the same carriage
with three able-bodied seamen and a fruiterer from Kent; the
A.-B.&rsquo;s speak all night as though they were hailing vessels
at sea; and the fruiterer as if he were crying fruit in a noisy
market-place&mdash;such, at least, is my <i>funeste</i>
experience.&nbsp; I wonder if a fruiterer from some place
else&mdash;say Worcestershire&mdash;would offer the same
phenomena? insoluble doubt.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<p><i>Later</i>.&mdash;Forgive me, couldn&rsquo;t get it
off.&nbsp; Awfully nice man here to-night.&nbsp; Public
servant&mdash;New Zealand.&nbsp; Telling us all about the South
Sea Islands till I was sick with desire to go there: beautiful
places, green for ever; perfect climate; perfect shapes of men
and women, with red flowers in their hair; and nothing to do but
to study oratory and etiquette, sit in the sun, and pick up the
fruits as they fall.&nbsp; Navigator&rsquo;s Island is the place;
absolute balm for the weary.&mdash;Ever your faithful friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><a name="page96"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 96</span><i>Swanston</i>.&nbsp; <i>End of
June</i>, 1875.</p>
<p><i>Thursday</i>.&mdash;This day fortnight I shall fall or
conquer.&nbsp; Outside the rain still soaks; but now and again
the hilltop looks through the mist vaguely.&nbsp; I am very
comfortable, very sleepy, and very much satisfied with the
arrangements of Providence.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p><i>Saturday</i>&mdash;<i>no</i>, <i>Sunday</i>,
12.45.&mdash;Just been&mdash;not grinding, alas!&mdash;I
couldn&rsquo;t&mdash;but doing a bit of Fontainebleau.&nbsp; I
don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ll be plucked.&nbsp; I am not sure
though&mdash;I am so busy, what with this d-d law, and this
Fontainebleau always at my elbow, and three plays (three, think
of that!) and a story, all crying out to me, &lsquo;Finish,
finish, make an entire end, make us strong, shapely, viable
creatures!&rsquo;&nbsp; It&rsquo;s enough to put a man
crazy.&nbsp; Moreover, I have my thesis given out now, which is a
fifth (is it fifth? I can&rsquo;t count) incumbrance.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p><i>Sunday</i>.&mdash;I&rsquo;ve been to church, and am not
depressed&mdash;a great step.&nbsp; I was at that beautiful
church my <i>petit po&euml;me en prose</i> was about.&nbsp; It is
a little cruciform place, with heavy cornices and string course
to match, and a steep slate roof.&nbsp; The small kirkyard is
full of old grave-stones.&nbsp; One of a Frenchman from
Dunkerque&mdash;I suppose he died prisoner in the military prison
hard by&mdash;and one, the most pathetic memorial I ever saw, a
poor school-slate, in a wooden frame, with the inscription cut
into it evidently by the father&rsquo;s own hand.&nbsp; In
church, old Mr. Torrence preached&mdash;over eighty, and a relic
of times forgotten, with his black thread gloves and mild old
foolish face.&nbsp; One of the nicest parts of it was to see John
Inglis, the greatest man in Scotland, our Justice-General, and
the only born lawyer I ever heard, listening to the piping old
body, as though it had all been a revelation, grave and
respectful.&mdash;Ever your faithful</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h2><a name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 97</span>III<br
/>
ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR<br />
<span
class="GutSmall">EDINBURGH&mdash;PARIS&mdash;FONTAINEBLEAU</span><br
/>
<span class="GutSmall">JULY 1875-JULY 1879</span></h2>
<h3><a name="page104"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
104</span><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas
Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Chez Siron</i>, <i>Barbizon</i>,
<i>Seine et Marne</i>, <i>August</i> 1875.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,&mdash;I have
been three days at a place called Grez, a pretty and very
melancholy village on the plain.&nbsp; A low bridge of many
arches choked with sedge; great fields of white and yellow
water-lilies; poplars and willows innumerable; and about it all
such an atmosphere of sadness and slackness, one could do nothing
but get into the boat and out of it again, and yawn for
bedtime.</p>
<p>Yesterday Bob and I walked home; it came on a very creditable
thunderstorm; we were soon wet through; sometimes the rain was so
heavy that one could only see by holding the hand over the eyes;
and to crown all, we lost our way and wandered all over the
place, and into the artillery range, among broken trees, with big
shot lying about among the rocks.&nbsp; It was near dinner-time
when we got to Barbizon; and it is supposed that we walked from
twenty-three to twenty-five miles, which is not bad for the
Advocate, who is not tired this morning.&nbsp; I was very glad to
be back again in this dear place, and smell the wet forest in the
morning.</p>
<p>Simpson and the rest drove back in a carriage, and got about
as wet as we did.</p>
<p>Why don&rsquo;t you write?&nbsp; I have no more to
say.&mdash;Ever your affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><a name="page105"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 105</span><i>Ch&acirc;teau Renard</i>,
<i>Loiret</i>, <i>August</i> 1875.</p>
<p>. . . I <span class="smcap">have</span> been walking these
last days from place to place; and it does make it hot for
walking with a sack in this weather.&nbsp; I am burned in horrid
patches of red; my nose, I fear, is going to take the lead in
colour; Simpson is all flushed, as if he were seen by a
sunset.&nbsp; I send you here two rondeaux; I don&rsquo;t suppose
they will amuse anybody but me; but this measure, short and yet
intricate, is just what I desire; and I have had some good times
walking along the glaring roads, or down the poplar alley of the
great canal, pitting my own humour to this old verse.</p>
<p class="poetry">Far have you come, my lady, from the town,<br
/>
And far from all your sorrows, if you please,<br />
To smell the good sea-winds and hear the seas,<br />
And in green meadows lay your body down.</p>
<p class="poetry">To find your pale face grow from pale to
brown,<br />
Your sad eyes growing brighter by degrees;<br />
Far have you come, my lady, from the town,<br />
And far from all your sorrows, if you please.</p>
<p class="poetry">Here in this seaboard land of old renown,<br />
In meadow grass go wading to the knees;<br />
Bathe your whole soul a while in simple ease;<br />
There is no sorrow but the sea can drown;<br />
Far have you come, my lady, from the town.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><i>Nous n&rsquo;irons plus au
bois</i>.</p>
<p class="poetry">We&rsquo;ll walk the woods no more,<br />
But stay beside the fire,<br />
To weep for old desire<br />
And things that are no more.<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page106"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 106</span>The woods are spoiled and hoar,<br
/>
The ways are full of mire;<br />
We&rsquo;ll walk the woods no more,<br />
But stay beside the fire.<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We loved, in days of yore,<br />
Love, laughter, and the lyre.<br />
Ah God, but death is dire,<br />
And death is at the door&mdash;<br />
We&rsquo;ll walk the woods no more.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Edinburgh</i>, [<i>Autumn</i>]
1875.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;Thanks for
your letter and news.&nbsp; No&mdash;my <i>Burns</i> is not done
yet, it has led me so far afield that I cannot finish it; every
time I think I see my way to an end, some new game (or perhaps
wild goose) starts up, and away I go.&nbsp; And then, again, to
be plain, I shirk the work of the critical part, shirk it as a
man shirks a long jump.&nbsp; It is awful to have to express and
differentiate <i>Burns</i> in a column or two.&nbsp; O golly, I
say, you know, it <i>can&rsquo;t</i> be done at the money.&nbsp;
All the more as I&rsquo;m going <a name="page107"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 107</span>to write a book about it.&nbsp;
<i>Ramsay</i>, <i>Fergusson</i>, <i>and Burns</i>: <i>an
Essay</i> (or <i>a critical essay</i>? but then I&rsquo;m going
to give lives of the three gentlemen, only the gist of the book
is the criticism) <i>by Robert Louis Stevenson</i>,
<i>Advocate</i>.&nbsp; How&rsquo;s that for cut and dry?&nbsp;
And I <i>could</i> write this book.&nbsp; Unless I deceive
myself, I could even write it pretty adequately.&nbsp; I feel as
if I was really in it, and knew the game thoroughly.&nbsp; You
see what comes of trying to write an essay on <i>Burns</i> in ten
columns.</p>
<p>Meantime, when I have done Burns, I shall finish Charles of
Orleans (who is in a good way, about the fifth month, I should
think, and promises to be a fine healthy child, better than any
of his elder brothers for a while); and then perhaps a Villon,
for Villon is a very essential part of my
<i>Ramsay-Fergusson-Burns</i>; I mean, is a note in it, and will
recur again and again for comparison and illustration; then,
perhaps, I may try Fontainebleau, by the way.&nbsp; But so soon
as Charles of Orleans is polished off, and immortalised for ever,
he and his pipings, in a solid imperishable shrine of R. L. S.,
my true aim and end will be this little book.&nbsp; Suppose I
could jerk you out 100 Cornhill pages; that would easy make 200
pages of decent form; and then thickish paper&mdash;eh? would
that do?&nbsp; I dare say it could be made bigger; but I know
what 100 pages of copy, bright consummate copy, imply behind the
scenes of weary manuscribing; I think if I put another nothing to
it, I should not be outside the mark; and 100 Cornhill pages of
500 words means, I fancy (but I never was good at figures), means
500,00 words.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s a prospect for an idle young
gentleman who lives at home at ease!&nbsp; The future is thick
with inky fingers.&nbsp; And then perhaps nobody would
publish.&nbsp; <i>Ah nom de dieu</i>!&nbsp; What do you think of
all this? will it paddle, think you?</p>
<p>I hope this pen will write; it is the third I have tried.</p>
<p>About coming up, no, that&rsquo;s impossible; for I am worse
than a bankrupt.&nbsp; I have at the present six shillings and <a
name="page108"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 108</span>a penny; I
have a sounding lot of bills for Christmas; new dress suit, for
instance, the old one having gone for Parliament House; and new
white shirts to live up to my new profession; I&rsquo;m as gay
and swell and gummy as can be; only all my boots leak; one pair
water, and the other two simple black mud; so that my rig is more
for the eye, than a very solid comfort to myself.&nbsp; That is
my budget.&nbsp; Dismal enough, and no prospect of any coin
coming in; at least for months.&nbsp; So that here I am, I almost
fear, for the winter; certainly till after Christmas, and then it
depends on how my bills &lsquo;turn out&rsquo; whether it shall
not be till spring.&nbsp; So, meantime, I must whistle in my
cage.&nbsp; My cage is better by one thing; I am an Advocate
now.&nbsp; If you ask me why that makes it better, I would remind
you that in the most distressing circumstances a little
consequence goes a long way, and even bereaved relatives stand on
precedence round the coffin.&nbsp; I idle finely.&nbsp; I read
Boswell&rsquo;s <i>Life of Johnson</i>, Martin&rsquo;s <i>History
of France</i>, <i>Allan Ramsay</i>, <i>Olivier Bosselin</i>, all
sorts of rubbish, <i>&agrave;propos</i> of <i>Burns</i>,
<i>Commines</i>, <i>Juv&eacute;nal des Ursins</i>, etc.&nbsp; I
walk about the Parliament House five forenoons a week, in wig and
gown; I have either a five or six mile walk, or an hour or two
hard skating on the rink, every afternoon, without fail.</p>
<p>I have not written much; but, like the seaman&rsquo;s parrot
in the tale, I have thought a deal.&nbsp; You have never, by the
way, returned me either <i>Spring</i> or <i>B&eacute;ranger</i>,
which is certainly a d-d shame.&nbsp; I always comforted myself
with that when my conscience pricked me about a letter to
you.&nbsp; &lsquo;Thus conscience&rsquo;&mdash;O no, that&rsquo;s
not appropriate in this connection.&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p>I say, is there any chance of your coming north this
year?&nbsp; Mind you that promise is now more respectable for age
than is becoming.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><a name="page109"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
109</span><span class="smcap">to Charles Baxter</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>October</i>
1875.]</p>
<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Noo</span> lyart leaves
blaw ower the green,<br />
Red are the bonny woods o&rsquo; Dean,<br />
An&rsquo; here we&rsquo;re back in Embro, freen&rsquo;,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To pass the winter.<br />
Whilk noo, wi&rsquo; frosts afore, draws in,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; An&rsquo; snaws ahint her.</p>
<p class="poetry">I&rsquo;ve seen&rsquo;s hae days to fricht us
a&rsquo;,<br />
The Pentlands poothered weel wi&rsquo; snaw,<br />
The ways half-smoored wi&rsquo; liquid thaw,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; An&rsquo;
half-congealin&rsquo;,<br />
The snell an&rsquo; scowtherin&rsquo; norther blaw<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Frae blae Brunteelan&rsquo;.</p>
<p class="poetry">I&rsquo;ve seen&rsquo;s been unco sweir to
sally,<br />
And at the door-cheeks daff an&rsquo; dally,<br />
Seen&rsquo;s daidle thus an&rsquo; shilly-shally<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For near a minute&mdash;<br />
Sae cauld the wind blew up the valley,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The deil was in it!&mdash;</p>
<p class="poetry">Syne spread the silk an&rsquo; tak the gate,<br
/>
In blast an&rsquo; blaudin&rsquo; rain, deil hae&rsquo;t!<br />
The hale toon glintin&rsquo;, stane an&rsquo; slate,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Wi&rsquo; cauld an&rsquo; weet,<br
/>
An&rsquo; to the Court, gin we&rsquo;se be late,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Bicker oor feet.</p>
<p class="poetry">And at the Court, tae, aft I saw<br />
Whaur Advocates by twa an&rsquo; twa<br />
Gang gesterin&rsquo; end to end the ha&rsquo;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In weeg an&rsquo; goon,<br />
To crack o&rsquo; what ye wull but Law<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The hale forenoon.</p>
<p class="poetry"><a name="page110"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
110</span>That muckle ha,&rsquo; maist like a kirk,<br />
I&rsquo;ve kent at braid mid-day sae mirk<br />
Ye&rsquo;d seen white weegs an&rsquo; faces lurk<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Like ghaists frae Hell,<br />
But whether Christian ghaist or Turk<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Deil ane could tell.</p>
<p class="poetry">The three fires lunted in the gloom,<br />
The wind blew like the blast o&rsquo; doom,<br />
The rain upo&rsquo; the roof abune<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Played Peter Dick&mdash;<br />
Ye wad nae&rsquo;d licht enough i&rsquo; the room<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Your teeth to pick!</p>
<p class="poetry">But, freend, ye ken how me an&rsquo; you,<br />
The ling-lang lanely winter through,<br />
Keep&rsquo;d a guid speerit up, an&rsquo; true<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To lore Horatian,<br />
We aye the ither bottle drew<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To inclination.</p>
<p class="poetry">Sae let us in the comin&rsquo; days<br />
Stand sicker on our auncient ways&mdash;<br />
The strauchtest road in a&rsquo; the maze<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Since Eve ate apples;<br />
An&rsquo; let the winter weet our cla&rsquo;es&mdash;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We&rsquo;ll weet oor
thrapples.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>Autumn</i>
1875.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;<i>Fous ne
me gombrennez pas</i>.&nbsp; Angry with you?&nbsp; No.&nbsp; Is
the thing lost?&nbsp; Well, so be it.&nbsp; There is one
masterpiece fewer in the world.&nbsp; The world can ill spare it,
but I, sir, I (and here I strike my hollow <a
name="page111"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 111</span>bosom so
that it resounds) I am full of this sort of bauble; I am made of
it; it comes to me, sir, as the desire to sneeze comes upon poor
ordinary devils on cold days, when they should be getting out of
bed and into their horrid cold tubs by the light of a seven
o&rsquo;clock candle, with the dismal seven o&rsquo;clock
frost-flowers all over the window.</p>
<p>Show Stephen what you please; if you could show him how to
give me money, you would oblige, sincerely yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<p>I have a scroll of <i>Springtime</i> somewhere, but I know
that it is not in very good order, and do not feel myself up to
very much grind over it.&nbsp; I am damped about
<i>Springtime</i>, that&rsquo;s the truth of it.&nbsp; It might
have been four or five quid!</p>
<p>Sir, I shall shave my head, if this goes on.&nbsp; All men
take a pleasure to gird at me.&nbsp; The laws of nature are in
open war with me.&nbsp; The wheel of a dog-cart took the toes off
my new boots.&nbsp; Gout has set in with extreme rigour, and cut
me out of the cheap refreshment of beer.&nbsp; I leant my back
against an oak, I thought it was a trusty tree, but first it
bent, and syne&mdash;it lost the Spirit of Springtime, and so did
Professor Sidney Colvin, Trinity College, to me.&mdash;Ever
yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p>Along with this, I send you some P.P.P&rsquo;s; if you lose
them, you need not seek to look upon my face again.&nbsp; Do, for
God&rsquo;s sake, answer me about them also; it is a horrid thing
for a fond architect to find his monuments received in
silence.&mdash;Yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>November</i>
12, 1875.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR FRIEND</span>,&mdash;Since I
got your letter I have been able to do a little more work, and I
have been much <a name="page112"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
112</span>better contented with myself; but I can&rsquo;t get
away, that is absolutely prevented by the state of my purse and
my debts, which, I may say, are red like crimson.&nbsp; I
don&rsquo;t know how I am to clear my hands of them, nor when,
not before Christmas anyway.&nbsp; Yesterday I was twenty-five;
so please wish me many happy returns&mdash;directly.&nbsp; This
one was not <i>un</i>happy anyway.&nbsp; I have got back a good
deal into my old random, little-thought way of life, and do not
care whether I read, write, speak, or walk, so long as I do
something.&nbsp; I have a great delight in this wheel-skating; I
have made great advance in it of late, can do a good many amusing
things (I mean amusing in <i>my</i> sense&mdash;amusing to
do).&nbsp; You know, I lose all my forenoons at Court!&nbsp; So
it is, but the time passes; it is a great pleasure to sit and
hear cases argued or advised.&nbsp; This is quite
autobiographical, but I feel as if it was some time since we met,
and I can tell you, I am glad to meet you again.&nbsp; In every
way, you see, but that of work the world goes well with me.&nbsp;
My health is better than ever it was before; I get on without any
jar, nay, as if there never had been a jar, with my
parents.&nbsp; If it weren&rsquo;t about that work, I&rsquo;d be
happy.&nbsp; But the fact is, I don&rsquo;t think&mdash;the fact
is, I&rsquo;m going to trust in Providence about work.&nbsp; If I
could get one or two pieces I hate out of my way all would be
well, I think; but these obstacles disgust me, and as I know I
ought to do them first, I don&rsquo;t do anything.&nbsp; I must
finish this off, or I&rsquo;ll just lose another day.&nbsp;
I&rsquo;ll try to write again soon.&mdash;Ever your faithful
friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. de Mattos</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>January</i>
1876.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR KATHARINE</span>,&mdash;The
prisoner reserved his defence.&nbsp; He has been seedy, however;
principally sick <a name="page113"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
113</span>of the family evil, despondency; the sun is gone out
utterly; and the breath of the people of this city lies about as
a sort of damp, unwholesome fog, in which we go walking with
bowed hearts.&nbsp; If I understand what is a contrite spirit, I
have one; it is to feel that you are a small jar, or rather, as I
feel myself, a very large jar, of pottery work rather <i>mal
r&eacute;ussi</i>, and to make every allowance for the potter (I
beg pardon; Potter with a capital P.) on his ill-success, and
rather wish he would reduce you as soon as possible to
potsherds.&nbsp; However, there are many things to do yet before
we go</p>
<p class="poetry"><i>Grossir la p&acirc;te universelle</i><br />
<i>Faite des formes que Dieu fond</i>.</p>
<p>For instance, I have never been in a revolution yet.&nbsp; I
pray God I may be in one at the end, if I am to make a
mucker.&nbsp; The best way to make a mucker is to have your back
set against a wall and a few lead pellets whiffed into you in a
moment, while yet you are all in a heat and a fury of combat,
with drums sounding on all sides, and people crying, and a
general smash like the infernal orchestration at the end of the
<i>Huguenots</i>. . . .</p>
<p>Please pardon me for having been so long of writing, and show
your pardon by writing soon to me; it will be a kindness, for I
am sometimes very dull.&nbsp; Edinburgh is much changed for the
worse by the absence of Bob; and this damned weather weighs on me
like a curse.&nbsp; Yesterday, or the day before, there came so
black a rain squall that I was frightened&mdash;what a child
would call frightened, you know, for want of a better
word&mdash;although in reality it has nothing to do with
fright.&nbsp; I lit the gas and sat cowering in my chair until it
went away again.&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<p>O I am trying my hand at a novel just now; it may interest you
to know, I am bound to say I do not think it will be a
success.&nbsp; However, it&rsquo;s an amusement for the <a
name="page114"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 114</span>moment, and
work, work is your only ally against the &lsquo;bearded
people&rsquo; that squat upon their hams in the dark places of
life and embrace people horribly as they go by.&nbsp; God save us
from the bearded people! to think that the sun is still shining
in some happy places!</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>January</i>
1876.]</p>
<p>. . . <span class="smcap">Our</span> weather continues as it
was, bitterly cold, and raining often.&nbsp; There is not much
pleasure in life certainly as it stands at present.&nbsp; <i>Nous
n&rsquo;irons plus au boss</i>, <i>h&eacute;las</i>!</p>
<p>I meant to write some more last night, but my father was ill
and it put it out of my way.&nbsp; He is better this morning.</p>
<p>If I had written last night, I should have written a
lot.&nbsp; But this morning I am so dreadfully tired and stupid
that I can say nothing.&nbsp; I was down at Leith in the
afternoon.&nbsp; God bless me, what horrid women I saw; I never
knew what a plain-looking race it was before.&nbsp; I was sick at
heart with the looks of them.&nbsp; And the children, filthy and
ragged!&nbsp; And the smells!&nbsp; And the fat black mud!</p>
<p>My soul was full of disgust ere I got back.&nbsp; And yet the
ships were beautiful to see, as they are always; and on the pier
there was a clean cold wind that smelt a little of the sea,
though it came down the Firth, and the sunset had a certain
<i>&eacute;clat</i> and warmth.&nbsp; Perhaps if I could get more
work done, I should be in a better trim to enjoy filthy streets
and people and cold grim weather; but I don&rsquo;t much feel as
if it was what I would have chosen.&nbsp; I am tempted every day
of my life to go off on another walking tour.&nbsp; I like that
better than anything else that I know.&mdash;Ever your faithful
friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><a name="page115"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
115</span><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>February</i>
1876.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR
COLVIN</span>,&mdash;1<i>st</i>.&nbsp; I have sent
&lsquo;Fontainebleau&rsquo; long ago, long ago.&nbsp; And Leslie
Stephen is worse than tepid about it&mdash;liked &lsquo;some
parts&rsquo; of it &lsquo;very well,&rsquo; the son of
Belial.&nbsp; Moreover, he proposes to shorten it; and I, who
want <i>money</i>, and money soon, and not glory and the
illustration of the English language, I feel as if my poverty
were going to consent.</p>
<p>2<i>nd</i>.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m as fit as a fiddle after my
walk.&nbsp; I am four inches bigger about the waist than last
July!&nbsp; There, that&rsquo;s your prophecy did that.&nbsp; I
am on &lsquo;Charles of Orleans&rsquo; now, but I don&rsquo;t
know where to send him.&nbsp; Stephen obviously spews me out of
his mouth, and I spew him out of mine, so help me!&nbsp; A man
who doesn&rsquo;t like my &lsquo;Fontainebleau&rsquo;!&nbsp; His
head must be turned.</p>
<p>3<i>rd</i>.&nbsp; If ever you do come across my
&lsquo;Spring&rsquo; (I beg your pardon for referring to it
again, but I don&rsquo;t want you to forget) send it off at
once.</p>
<p>4<i>th</i>.&nbsp; I went to Ayr, Maybole, Girvan, Ballantrae,
Stranraer, Glenluce, and Wigton.&nbsp; I shall make an article of
it some day soon, &lsquo;A Winter&rsquo;s Walk in Carrick and
Galloway.&rsquo;&nbsp; I had a good time.&mdash;Yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Swanston Cottage</i>,
<i>Lothianburn</i>, <i>July</i> 1876.]</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Here</span> I am, here, and very well
too.&nbsp; I am glad you liked &lsquo;Walking Tours&rsquo;; I
like it, too; I think it&rsquo;s prose; <a
name="page116"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 116</span>and I own
with contrition that I have not always written prose.&nbsp;
However, I am &lsquo;endeavouring after new obedience&rsquo;
(Scot. Shorter Catechism).&nbsp; You don&rsquo;t say aught of
&lsquo;Forest Notes,&rsquo; which is kind.&nbsp; There is one, if
you will, that was too sweet to be wholesome.</p>
<p>I am at &lsquo;Charles d&rsquo;Orl&eacute;ans.&rsquo;&nbsp;
About fifteen <i>Cornhill</i> pages have already
coul&eacute;&rsquo;d from under my facile plume&mdash;no, I mean
eleven, fifteen of <span class="GutSmall">MS</span>.&mdash;and we
are not much more than half-way through, &lsquo;Charles&rsquo;
and I; but he&rsquo;s a pleasant companion.&nbsp; My health is
very well; I am in a fine exercisy state.&nbsp; Baynes is gone to
London; if you see him, inquire about my
&lsquo;Burns.&rsquo;&nbsp; They have sent me &pound;5, 5s, for
it, which has mollified me horrid.&nbsp; &pound;5, 5s. is a good
deal to pay for a read of it in <span
class="GutSmall">MS</span>.; I can&rsquo;t
complain.&mdash;Yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Swanston Cottage</i>,
<i>Lothianburn</i>, <i>July</i> 1876.]</p>
<p>. . . I <span class="smcap">have</span> the strangest
repugnance for writing; indeed, I have nearly got myself
persuaded into the notion that letters don&rsquo;t arrive, in
order to salve my conscience for never sending them off.&nbsp;
I&rsquo;m reading a great deal of fifteenth century: <i>Trial of
Joan of Arc</i>, <i>Paston Letters</i>, <i>Basin</i>, etc., also
<i>Boswell</i> daily by way of a Bible; I mean to read
<i>Boswell</i> now until the day I die.&nbsp; And now and again a
bit of <i>Pilgrim&rsquo;s Progress</i>.&nbsp; Is that all?&nbsp;
Yes, I think that&rsquo;s all.&nbsp; I have a thing in proof for
the <i>Cornhill</i> called <i>Virginibus Puerisque</i>.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Charles of Orleans&rsquo; is again laid aside, but in a
good state of furtherance this time.&nbsp; A paper called
&lsquo;A Defence of Idlers&rsquo; (which is really a defence of
R. L. S.) is in a good way.&nbsp; So, you see, I am busy in a
tumultuous, knotless sort of fashion; and as I say, I take lots
of exercise, and I&rsquo;m as brown a berry.</p>
<p><a name="page117"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 117</span>This
is the first letter I&rsquo;ve written for&mdash;O I don&rsquo;t
know how long.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p><i>July</i> 30<i>th</i>.&mdash;This is, I suppose, three weeks
after I began.&nbsp; Do, please, forgive me.</p>
<p>To the Highlands, first, to the Jenkins&rsquo;, then to
Antwerp; thence, by canoe with Simpson, to Paris and Grez (on the
Loing, and an old acquaintance of mine on the skirts of
Fontainebleau) to complete our cruise next spring (if we&rsquo;re
all alive and jolly) by Loing and Loire, Saone and Rhone to the
Mediterranean.&nbsp; It should make a jolly book of gossip, I
imagine.</p>
<p>God bless you.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;<i>Virginibus Puerisque</i> is in August
<i>Cornhill</i>.&nbsp; &lsquo;Charles of Orleans&rsquo; is
finished, and sent to Stephen; &lsquo;Idlers&rsquo; ditto, and
sent to Grove; but I&rsquo;ve no word of either.&nbsp; So
I&rsquo;ve not been idle.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Chauny</i>, <i>Aisne</i>
[<i>September</i> 1876].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENLEY</span>,&mdash;Here I am,
you see; and if you will take to a map, you will observe I am
already more than two doors from Antwerp, whence I started.&nbsp;
I have fought it through under the worst weather I ever saw in
France; I have been wet through nearly every day of travel since
the second (inclusive); besides this, I have had to fight against
pretty mouldy health; so that, on the whole, the essayist and
reviewer has shown, I think, some pluck.&nbsp; Four days ago I
was not a hundred miles from being miserably drowned, to the
immense regret of a large circle of friends and the permanent
impoverishment of British Essayism and Reviewery.&nbsp; My boat
culbutted me under a fallen <a name="page118"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 118</span>tree in a very rapid current; and I
was a good while before I got on to the outside of that fallen
tree; rather a better while than I cared about.&nbsp; When I got
up, I lay some time on my belly, panting, and exuded fluid.&nbsp;
All my symptoms <i>jusqu&rsquo; ici</i> are trifling.&nbsp; But
I&rsquo;ve a damned sore throat.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">17 <i>Heriot Row</i>,
<i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>May</i> 1877.</p>
<p>. . . A <span class="smcap">perfect</span> chorus of
repudiation is sounding in my ears; and although you say nothing,
I know you must be repudiating me, all the same.&nbsp; Write I
cannot&mdash;there&rsquo;s no good mincing matters, a letter
frightens me worse than the devil; and I am just as unfit for
correspondence as if I had never learned the three
R.&rsquo;s.</p>
<p>Let me give my news quickly before I relapse into my usual
idleness.&nbsp; I have a terror lest I should relapse before I
get this finished.&nbsp; Courage, R. L. S.!&nbsp; On Leslie
Stephen&rsquo;s advice, I gave up the idea of a book of
essays.&nbsp; He said he didn&rsquo;t imagine I was rich enough
for such an amusement; and moreover, whatever was worth
publication was worth republication.&nbsp; So the best of those I
had ready: &lsquo;An Apology for Idlers&rsquo; is in proof for
the <i>Cornhill</i>.&nbsp; I have &lsquo;Villon&rsquo; to do for
the same magazine, but God knows when I&rsquo;ll get it done, for
drums, trumpets&mdash;I&rsquo;m engaged upon&mdash;trumpets,
drums&mdash;a novel!&nbsp; &lsquo;<span class="smcap">The Hair
Trunk</span>; <span class="smcap">or</span>, <span
class="smcap">the Ideal Commonwealth</span>.&rsquo;&nbsp; It is a
most absurd story of a lot of young Cambridge fellows who are
going to found a new society, with no ideas on the subject, and
nothing but Bohemian tastes in the place of ideas; and who
are&mdash;well, I can&rsquo;t explain about the trunk&mdash;it
would take too long&mdash;but the trunk is the fun of
it&mdash;everybody <a name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
119</span>steals it; burglary, marine fight, life on desert
island on west coast of Scotland, sloops, etc.&nbsp; The first
scene where they make their grand schemes and get drunk is
supposed to be very funny, by Henley.&nbsp; I really saw him
laugh over it until he cried.</p>
<p>Please write to me, although I deserve it so little, and show
a Christian spirit.&mdash;Ever your faithful friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>August</i>
1877.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;I&rsquo;m
to be whipped away to-morrow to Penzance, where at the
post-office a letter will find me glad and grateful.&nbsp; I am
well, but somewhat tired out with overwork.&nbsp; I have only
been home a fortnight this morning, and I have already written to
the tune of forty-five <i>Cornhill</i> pages and upwards.&nbsp;
The most of it was only very laborious re-casting and
re-modelling, it is true; but it took it out of me famously, all
the same.</p>
<p><i>Temple Bar</i> appears to like my &lsquo;Villon,&rsquo; so
I may count on another market there in the future, I hope.&nbsp;
At least, I am going to put it to the proof at once, and send
another story, &lsquo;The Sire de Mal&eacute;troit&rsquo;s
Mousetrap&rsquo;: a true novel, in the old sense; all unities
preserved moreover, if that&rsquo;s anything, and I believe with
some little merits; not so <i>clever</i> perhaps as the last, but
sounder and more natural.</p>
<p>My &lsquo;Villon&rsquo; is out this month; I should so much
like to know what you think of it.&nbsp; Stephen has written to
me apropos of &lsquo;Idlers,&rsquo; that something more in that
vein would be agreeable to his views.&nbsp; From Stephen I count
that a devil of a lot.</p>
<p>I am honestly so tired this morning that I hope you will take
this for what it&rsquo;s worth and give me an answer in
peace.&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><a name="page120"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
120</span><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Penzance</i>, <i>August</i>
1877.]</p>
<p>. . . <span class="smcap">You</span> will do well to stick to
your burn, that is a delightful life you sketch, and a very
fountain of health.&nbsp; I wish I could live like that but,
alas! it is just as well I got my &lsquo;Idlers&rsquo; written
and done with, for I have quite lost all power of resting.&nbsp;
I have a goad in my flesh continually, pushing me to work, work,
work.&nbsp; I have an essay pretty well through for Stephen; a
story, &lsquo;The Sire de Mal&eacute;troit&rsquo;s
Mousetrap,&rsquo; with which I shall try <i>Temple Bar</i>;
another story, in the clouds, &lsquo;The Stepfather&rsquo;s
Story,&rsquo; most pathetic work of a high morality or
immorality, according to point of view; and lastly, also in the
clouds, or perhaps a little farther away, an essay on the
&lsquo;Two St. Michael&rsquo;s Mounts,&rsquo; historical and
picturesque; perhaps if it didn&rsquo;t come too long, I might
throw in the &lsquo;Bass Rock,&rsquo; and call it &lsquo;Three
Sea Fortalices,&rsquo; or something of that kind.&nbsp; You see
how work keeps bubbling in my mind.&nbsp; Then I shall do another
fifteenth century paper this autumn&mdash;La Sale and <i>Petit
Jehan de Saintr&eacute;</i>, which is a kind of fifteenth century
<i>Sandford and Merton</i>, ending in horrid immoral cynicism, as
if the author had got tired of being didactic, and just had a
good wallow in the mire to wind up with and indemnify himself for
so much restraint.</p>
<p>Cornwall is not much to my taste, being as bleak as the
bleakest parts of Scotland, and nothing like so pointed and
characteristic.&nbsp; It has a flavour of its own, though, which
I may try and catch, if I find the space, in the proposed
article.&nbsp; &lsquo;Will o&rsquo; the Mill&rsquo; I sent, red
hot, to Stephen in a fit of haste, and have not yet had an
answer.&nbsp; I am quite prepared for a refusal.&nbsp; But I
begin to have more hope in the story line, and that should
improve my income anyway.&nbsp; I am glad you liked
&lsquo;Villon&rsquo;; some of it was not as good as it ought to
be, but on the whole it seems pretty vivid, and the features <a
name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 121</span>strongly
marked.&nbsp; Vividness and not style is now my line; style is
all very well, but vividness is the real line of country; if a
thing is meant to be read, it seems just as well to try and make
it readable.&nbsp; I am such a dull person I cannot keep off my
own immortal works.&nbsp; Indeed, they are scarcely ever out of
my head.&nbsp; And yet I value them less and less every
day.&nbsp; But occupation is the great thing; so that a man
should have his life in his own pocket, and never be thrown out
of work by anything.&nbsp; I am glad to hear you are
better.&nbsp; I must stop&mdash;going to Land&rsquo;s
End.&mdash;Always your faithful friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to A. Patchett Martin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[1877.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR SIR</span>,&mdash;It would not be
very easy for me to give you any idea of the pleasure I found in
your present.&nbsp; People who write for the magazines (probably
from a guilty conscience) are apt to suppose their works
practically unpublished.&nbsp; It seems unlikely that any one
would take the trouble to read a little paper buried among so
many others; and reading it, read it with any attention or
pleasure.&nbsp; And so, I can assure you, your little book,
coming from so far, gave me all the pleasure and encouragement in
the world.</p>
<p>I suppose you know and remember Charles Lamb&rsquo;s essay on
distant correspondents?&nbsp; Well, I was somewhat of his way of
thinking about my mild productions.&nbsp; I did not indeed
imagine they were read, and (I suppose I may say) enjoyed right
round upon the other side of the <a name="page122"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 122</span>big Football we have the honour to
inhabit.&nbsp; And as your present was the first sign to the
contrary, I feel I have been very ungrateful in not writing
earlier to acknowledge the receipt.&nbsp; I dare say, however,
you hate writing letters as much as I can do myself (for if you
like my article, I may presume other points of sympathy between
us); and on this hypothesis you will be ready to forgive me the
delay.</p>
<p>I may mention with regard to the piece of verses called
&lsquo;Such is Life,&rsquo; that I am not the only one on this
side of the Football aforesaid to think it a good and bright
piece of work, and recognised a link of sympathy with the poets
who &lsquo;play in hostelries at euchre.&rsquo;&mdash;Believe me,
dear sir, yours truly,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to A. Patchett Martin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">17 <i>Heriot Row</i>,
<i>Edinburgh</i> [<i>December</i> 1877].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR SIR</span>,&mdash;I am afraid
you must already have condemned me for a very idle fellow
truly.&nbsp; Here it is more than two months since I received
your letter; I had no fewer than three journals to acknowledge;
and never a sign upon my part.&nbsp; If you have seen a
<i>Cornhill</i> paper of mine upon idling, you will be inclined
to set it all down to that.&nbsp; But you will not be doing me
justice.&nbsp; Indeed, I have had a summer so troubled that I
have had little leisure and still less inclination to write
letters.&nbsp; I was keeping the devil at bay with all my
disposable activities; and more than once I thought he had me by
the throat.&nbsp; The odd conditions of our acquaintance enable
me to say more to you than I would to a person who lived at my
elbow.&nbsp; And besides, I am too much pleased and flattered at
our correspondence not to go as far as I can to set myself right
in your eyes.</p>
<p>In this damnable confusion (I beg pardon) I have lost all my
possessions, or near about, and quite lost all my wits.&nbsp; I
wish I could lay my hands on the numbers of the <a
name="page123"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
123</span><i>Review</i>, for I know I wished to say something on
that head more particularly than I can from memory; but where
they have escaped to, only time or chance can show.&nbsp;
However, I can tell you so far, that I was very much pleased with
the article on Bret Harte; it seemed to me just, clear, and to
the point.&nbsp; I agreed pretty well with all you said about
George Eliot: a high, but, may we not add?&mdash;a rather dry
lady.&nbsp; Did you&mdash;I forget&mdash;did you have a kick at
the stern works of that melancholy puppy and humbug Daniel
Deronda himself?&mdash;the Prince of prigs; the literary
abomination of desolation in the way of manhood; a type which is
enough to make a man forswear the love of women, if that is how
it must be gained. . . . Hats off all the same, you understand: a
woman of genius.</p>
<p>Of your poems I have myself a kindness for &lsquo;Noll and
Nell,&rsquo; although I don&rsquo;t think you have made it as
good as you ought: verse five is surely not <i>quite
melodious</i>.&nbsp; I confess I like the Sonnet in the last
number of the <i>Review</i>&mdash;the Sonnet to England.</p>
<p>Please, if you have not, and I don&rsquo;t suppose you have,
already read it, institute a search in all Melbourne for one of
the rarest and certainly one of the best of
books&mdash;<i>Clarissa Harlowe</i>.&nbsp; For any man who takes
an interest in the problems of the two sexes, that book is a
perfect mine of documents.&nbsp; And it is written, sir, with the
pen of an angel.&nbsp; Miss Howe and Lovelace, words cannot tell
how good they are!&nbsp; And the scene where Clarissa beards her
family, with her fan going all the while; and some of the quarrel
scenes between her and Lovelace; and the scene where Colonel
Marden goes to Mr. Hall, with Lord M. trying to compose matters,
and the Colonel with his eternal &lsquo;finest woman in the
world,&rsquo; and the inimitable affirmation of
Mowbray&mdash;nothing, nothing could be better!&nbsp; You will
bless me when you read it for this recommendation; but, indeed, I
can do nothing but recommend Clarissa.&nbsp; I am like that
Frenchman of the <a name="page124"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
124</span>eighteenth century who discovered Habakkuk, and would
give no one peace about that respectable Hebrew.&nbsp; For my
part, I never was able to get over his eminently respectable
name; Isaiah is the boy, if you must have a prophet, no
less.&nbsp; About Clarissa, I meditate a choice work: <i>A
Dialogue on Man</i>, <i>Woman</i>, <i>and</i> &lsquo;<i>Clarissa
Harlowe</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp; It is to be so clever that no array of
terms can give you any idea; and very likely that particular
array in which I shall finally embody it, less than any
other.</p>
<p>Do you know, my dear sir, what I like best in your
letter?&nbsp; The egotism for which you thought necessary to
apologise.&nbsp; I am a rogue at egotism myself; and to be plain,
I have rarely or never liked any man who was not.&nbsp; The first
step to discovering the beauties of God&rsquo;s universe is
usually a (perhaps partial) apprehension of such of them as adorn
our own characters.&nbsp; When I see a man who does not think
pretty well of himself, I always suspect him of being in the
right.&nbsp; And besides, if he does not like himself, whom he
has seen, how is he ever to like one whom he never can see but in
dim and artificial presentments?</p>
<p>I cordially reciprocate your offer of a welcome; it shall be
at least a warm one.&nbsp; Are you not my first, my only,
admirer&mdash;a dear tie?&nbsp; Besides, you are a man of sense,
and you treat me as one by writing to me as you do, and that
gives me pleasure also.&nbsp; Please continue to let me see your
work.&nbsp; I have one or two things coming out in the
<i>Cornhill</i>: a story called &lsquo;The Sire de
Mal&eacute;troit&rsquo;s Door&rsquo; in <i>Temple Bar</i>; and a
series of articles on Edinburgh in the <i>Portfolio</i>; but I
don&rsquo;t know if these last fly all the way to
Melbourne.&mdash;Yours very truly,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><a name="page125"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 125</span><i>H&ocirc;tel des Etrangers</i>,
<i>Dieppe</i>, <i>January</i> 1, 1878.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;I am at
the <i>Inland Voyage</i> again: have finished another section,
and have only two more to execute.&nbsp; But one at least of
these will be very long&mdash;the longest in the book&mdash;being
a great digression on French artistic tramps.&nbsp; I only hope
Paul may take the thing; I want coin so badly, and besides it
would be something done&mdash;something put outside of me and off
my conscience; and I should not feel such a muff as I do, if once
I saw the thing in boards with a ticket on its back.&nbsp; I
think I shall frequent circulating libraries a good deal.&nbsp;
The Preface shall stand over, as you suggest, until the last, and
then, sir, we shall see.&nbsp; This to be read with a big
voice.</p>
<p>This is New Year&rsquo;s Day: let me, my dear Colvin, wish you
a very good year, free of all misunderstanding and bereavement,
and full of good weather and good work.&nbsp; You know best what
you have done for me, and so you will know best how heartily I
mean this.&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Paris</i>, <i>January or
February</i> 1878.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;Many
thanks for your letter.&nbsp; I was much interested by all the
Edinburgh gossip.&nbsp; Most likely I shall arrive in London next
week.&nbsp; I think you know all about the Crane sketch; but it
should be a river, not a canal, you know, and the look should be
&lsquo;cruel, lewd, and kindly,&rsquo; all at once.&nbsp; There
is more sense in that Greek myth of Pan than in any other that I
recollect except the luminous Hebrew one of the Fall: one of the
biggest things done.&nbsp; If people would remember that all
religions are no more than representations of life, they would
find them, as they are, the best representations, licking
Shakespeare.</p>
<p><a name="page126"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 126</span>What
an inconceivable cheese is Alfred de Musset!&nbsp; His comedies
are, to my view, the best work of France this century: a large
order.&nbsp; Did you ever read them?&nbsp; They are real, clear,
living work.&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas
Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Paris</i>, 44 <i>Bd.
Haussmann</i>, <i>Friday</i>, <i>February</i> 21, 1878.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR PEOPLE</span>,&mdash;Do you
know who is my favourite author just now?&nbsp; How are the
mighty fallen!&nbsp; Anthony Trollope.&nbsp; I batten on him; he
is so nearly wearying you, and yet he never does; or rather, he
never does, until he gets near the end, when he begins to wean
you from him, so that you&rsquo;re as pleased to be done with him
as you thought you would be sorry.&nbsp; I wonder if it&rsquo;s
old age?&nbsp; It is a little, I am sure.&nbsp; A young person
would get sickened by the dead level of meanness and
cowardliness; you require to be a little spoiled and cynical
before you can enjoy it.&nbsp; I have just finished the <i>Way of
the World</i>; there is only one person in it&mdash;no, there are
three&mdash;who are nice: the wild American woman, and two of the
dissipated young men, Dolly and Lord Nidderdale.&nbsp; All the
heroes and heroines are just ghastly.&nbsp; But what a triumph is
Lady Carbury!&nbsp; That is real, sound, strong, genuine work:
the man who could do that, if he had had courage, might have
written a fine book; he has preferred to write many readable
ones.&nbsp; I meant to write such a long, nice letter, but I
cannot hold the pen.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Hotel du Val de Gr&acirc;ce</i>,
<i>Rue St. Jacques</i>,<br />
<i>Paris</i>, <i>Sunday</i> [<i>June</i> 1878].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,&mdash;About
criticisms, I was more surprised at the tone of the critics than
I suppose any one else.&nbsp; And the effect it has produced in
me is one of <a name="page127"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
127</span>shame.&nbsp; If they liked that so much, I ought to
have given them something better, that&rsquo;s all.&nbsp; And I
shall try to do so.&nbsp; Still, it strikes me as odd; and I
don&rsquo;t understand the vogue.&nbsp; It should sell the
thing.&mdash;Ever your affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Monastier</i>, <i>September</i>
1878.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,&mdash;You must
not expect to hear much from me for the next two weeks; for I am
near starting.&nbsp; Donkey purchased&mdash;a love&mdash;price,
65 francs and a glass of brandy.&nbsp; My route is all pretty
well laid out; I shall go near no town till I get to Alais.&nbsp;
Remember, Poste Restante, Alais, Gard.&nbsp; Greyfriars will be
in October.&nbsp; You did not say whether you liked September;
you might tell me that at Alais.&nbsp; The other No.&rsquo;s of
Edinburgh are: Parliament Close, Villa Quarters (which perhaps
may not appear), Calton Hill, Winter and New Year, and to the
Pentland Hills.&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis a kind of book nobody would ever
care to read; but none of the young men could have done it better
than I have, which is always a consolation.&nbsp; I read
<i>Inland Voyage</i> the other day: what rubbish these reviewers
did talk!&nbsp; It is not badly written, thin, mildly cheery, and
strained.&nbsp; <i>Selon moi</i>.&nbsp; I mean to visit Hamerton
on my return journey; otherwise, I should come by sea from
Marseilles.&nbsp; I am very well known here now; indeed, quite a
feature of the place.&mdash;Your affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<p>The Engineer is the Conductor of Roads and Bridges; then I
have the Receiver of Registrations, the First Clerk of Excise,
and the Perceiver of the Impost.&nbsp; That is our dinner
party.&nbsp; I am a sort of hovering government official, as you
see.&nbsp; But away&mdash;away from these great companions!</p>
<h3><a name="page128"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
128</span><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Monastier</i>, <i>September</i>
1878.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR HENLEY</span>,&mdash;I hope to
leave Monastier this day (Saturday) week; thenceforward Poste
Restante, Alais, Gard, is my address.&nbsp; &lsquo;Travels with a
Donkey in the French Highlands.&rsquo;&nbsp; I am no good
to-day.&nbsp; I cannot work, nor even write letters.&nbsp; A
colossal breakfast yesterday at Puy has, I think, done for me for
ever; I certainly ate more than ever I ate before in my
life&mdash;a big slice of melon, some ham and jelly, <i>a
filet</i>, a helping of gudgeons, the breast and leg of a
partridge, some green peas, eight crayfish, some Mont d&rsquo;Or
cheese, a peach, and a handful of biscuits, macaroons, and
things.&nbsp; It sounds Gargantuan; it cost three francs a
head.&nbsp; So that it was inexpensive to the pocket, although I
fear it may prove extravagant to the fleshly tabernacle.&nbsp; I
can&rsquo;t think how I did it or why.&nbsp; It is a new form of
excess for me; but I think it pays less than any of them.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Charles Baxter</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Monastier</i>, <i>at
Morel&rsquo;s</i> [<i>September</i> 1878].<br />
Lud knows about date, <i>vide</i> postmark.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;Yours
(with enclosures) of the 16th to hand.&nbsp; All work done.&nbsp;
I go to Le Puy to-morrow to dispatch baggage, get cash, stand
lunch to engineer, who has been very jolly and useful to me, and
hope by five o&rsquo;clock on Saturday morning to be driving
Modestine towards the G&eacute;vaudan.&nbsp; Modestine is my
&acirc;nesse; a darling, mouse-colour, about the size of a
Newfoundland dog (bigger, between you and me), the colour of a
mouse, costing 65 francs and a glass of brandy.&nbsp; Glad you
sent on all the coin; was half afraid I might come to a stick in
the mountains, donkey and all, which would have been the
devil.&nbsp; Have finished <i>Arabian Nights</i> and Edinburgh
book, and am a free man.&nbsp; Next address, Poste Restante, <a
name="page129"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 129</span>Alais,
Gard.&nbsp; Give my servilities to the family.&nbsp; Health bad;
spirits, I think, looking up.&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>October</i> 1878.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,&mdash;I have
seen Hamerton; he was very kind, all his family seemed pleased to
see an <i>Inland Voyage</i>, and the book seemed to be quite a
household word with them.&nbsp; P. G. himself promised to help me
in my bargains with publishers, which, said he, and I doubt not
very truthfully, he could manage to much greater advantage than
I.&nbsp; He is also to read an <i>Inland Voyage</i> over again,
and send me his cuts and cuffs in private, after having liberally
administered his kisses <i>coram publico</i>.&nbsp; I liked him
very much.&nbsp; Of all the pleasant parts of my profession, I
think the spirit of other men of letters makes the
pleasantest.</p>
<p>Do you know, your sunset was very good?&nbsp; The
&lsquo;attack&rsquo; (to speak learnedly) was so plucky and
odd.&nbsp; I have thought of it repeatedly since.&nbsp; I have
just made a delightful dinner by myself in the Caf&eacute;
F&eacute;lix, where I am an old established beggar, and am just
smoking a cigar over my coffee.&nbsp; I came last night from
Autun, and I am muddled about my plans.&nbsp; The world is such a
dance!&mdash;Ever your affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><a name="page130"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 130</span>[<i>Trinity College</i>,
<i>Cambridge</i>, <i>Autumn</i> 1878.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENLEY</span>,&mdash;Here I am
living like a fighting-cock, and have not spoken to a real person
for about sixty hours.&nbsp; Those who wait on me are not
real.&nbsp; The man I know to be a myth, because I have seen him
acting so often in the Palais Royal.&nbsp; He plays the Duke in
<i>Tricoche et Cacolet</i>; I knew his nose at once.&nbsp; The
part he plays here is very dull for him, but conscientious.&nbsp;
As for the bedmaker, she&rsquo;s a dream, a kind of cheerful,
innocent nightmare; I never saw so poor an imitation of
humanity.&nbsp; I cannot work&mdash;<i>cannot</i>.&nbsp; Even the
<i>Guitar</i> is still undone; I can only write
ditch-water.&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis ghastly; but I am quite cheerful,
and that is more important.&nbsp; Do you think you could prepare
the printers for a possible breakdown this week?&nbsp; I shall
try all I know on Monday; but if I can get nothing better than I
got this morning, I prefer to drop a week.&nbsp; Telegraph to me
if you think it necessary.&nbsp; I shall not leave till Wednesday
at soonest.&nbsp; Shall write again.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[17 <i>Heriot Row</i>,
<i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>April</i> 16, 1879].<br />
<i>Pool of Siloam</i>, <i>by El Dorado</i>,<br />
<i>Delectable Mountains</i>, <i>Arcadia</i></p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR GOSSE</span>,&mdash;Herewith of
the dibbs&mdash;a homely fiver.&nbsp; How, and why, do you
continue to exist?&nbsp; I do so ill, but for a variety of
reasons.&nbsp; First, I wait an angel to come down and trouble
the waters; second, more angels; third&mdash;well, more
angels.&nbsp; The waters are sluggish; the angels&mdash;well, the
angels won&rsquo;t come, that&rsquo;s <a name="page131"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 131</span>about all.&nbsp; But I sit waiting
and waiting, and people bring me meals, which help to pass time
(I&rsquo;m sure it&rsquo;s very kind of them), and sometimes I
whistle to myself; and as there&rsquo;s a very pretty echo at my
pool of Siloam, the thing&rsquo;s agreeable to hear.&nbsp; The
sun continues to rise every day, to my growing wonder.&nbsp;
&lsquo;The moon by night thee shall not smite.&rsquo;&nbsp; And
the stars are all doing as well as can be expected.&nbsp; The air
of Arcady is very brisk and pure, and we command many enchanting
prospects in space and time.&nbsp; I do not yet know much about
my situation; for, to tell the truth, I only came here by the run
since I began to write this letter; I had to go back to date it;
and I am grateful to you for having been the occasion of this
little outing.&nbsp; What good travellers we are, if we had only
faith; no man need stay in Edinburgh but by unbelief; my
religious organ has been ailing for a while past, and I have lain
a great deal in Edinburgh, a sheer hulk in consequence.&nbsp; But
I got out my wings, and have taken a change of air.</p>
<p>I read your book with great interest, and ought long ago to
have told you so.&nbsp; An ordinary man would say that he had
been waiting till he could pay his debts. . . . The book is good
reading.&nbsp; Your personal notes of those you saw struck me as
perhaps most sharp and &lsquo;best held.&rsquo;&nbsp; See as many
people as you can, and make a book of them before you die.&nbsp;
That will be a living book, upon my word.&nbsp; You have the
touch required.&nbsp; I ask you to put hands to it in private
already.&nbsp; Think of what Carlyle&rsquo;s caricature of old
Coleridge is to us who never saw S. T. C.&nbsp; With that and
Kubla Khan, we have the man in the fact.&nbsp; Carlyle&rsquo;s
picture, of course, is not of the author of <i>Kubla</i>, but of
the author of that surprising <i>Friend</i> which has knocked the
breath out of two generations of hopeful youth.&nbsp; Your
portraits would be milder, sweeter, more true perhaps, and
perhaps not so truth-<i>telling</i>&mdash;if you will take my
meaning.</p>
<p>I have to thank you for an introduction to that
beautiful&mdash;<a name="page132"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
132</span>no, that&rsquo;s not the word&mdash;that jolly, with an
Arcadian jollity&mdash;thing of Vogelweide&rsquo;s.&nbsp; Also
for your preface.&nbsp; Some day I want to read a whole book in
the same picked dialect as that preface.&nbsp; I think it must be
one E. W. Gosse who must write it.&nbsp; He has got himself into
a fix with me by writing the preface; I look for a great deal,
and will not be easily pleased.</p>
<p>I never thought of it, but my new book, which should soon be
out, contains a visit to a murder scene, but not done as we
should like to see them, for, of course, I was running another
hare.</p>
<p>If you do not answer this in four pages, I shall stop the
enclosed fiver at the bank, a step which will lead to your
incarceration for life.&nbsp; As my visits to Arcady are somewhat
uncertain, you had better address 17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh, as
usual.&nbsp; I shall walk over for the note if I am not yet
home.&mdash;Believe me, very really yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p>I charge extra for a flourish when it is successful; this
isn&rsquo;t, so you have it gratis.&nbsp; Is there any news in
Babylon the Great?&nbsp; My fellow-creatures are electing school
boards here in the midst of the ages.&nbsp; It is very composed
of them.&nbsp; I can&rsquo;t think why they do it.&nbsp; Nor why
I have written a real letter.&nbsp; If you write a real letter
back, damme, I&rsquo;ll try to <i>correspond</i> with you.&nbsp;
A thing unknown in this age.&nbsp; It is a consequence of the
decay of faith; we cannot believe that the fellow will be at the
pains to read us.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">17 <i>Heriot Row</i>,
<i>Edinburgh</i> [<i>April</i> 1879].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENLEY</span>,&mdash;Heavens!
have I done the like?&nbsp; &lsquo;Clarify and strain,&rsquo;
indeed?&nbsp; &lsquo;Make it like Marvell,&rsquo; no <a
name="page133"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 133</span>less.&nbsp;
I&rsquo;ll tell you what&mdash;you may go to the devil;
that&rsquo;s what I think.&nbsp; &lsquo;Be eloquent&rsquo; is
another of your pregnant suggestions.&nbsp; I cannot sufficiently
thank you for that one.&nbsp; Portrait of a person about to be
eloquent at the request of a literary friend.&nbsp; You seem to
forget sir, that rhyme is rhyme, sir, and&mdash;go to the
devil.</p>
<p>I&rsquo;ll try to improve it, but I shan&rsquo;t be able
to&mdash;O go to the devil.</p>
<p>Seriously, you&rsquo;re a cool hand.&nbsp; And then you have
the brass to ask me <i>why</i> &lsquo;my steps went one by
one&rsquo;?&nbsp;&nbsp; Why?&nbsp; Powers of man! to rhyme with
sun, to be sure.&nbsp; Why else could it be?&nbsp; And you
yourself have been a poet!&nbsp; G-r-r-r-r-r!&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll
never be a poet any more.&nbsp; Men are so d&ndash;d ungrateful
and captious, I declare I could weep.</p>
<p class="poetry">O Henley, in my hours of ease<br />
You may say anything you please,<br />
But when I join the Muse&rsquo;s revel,<br />
Begad, I wish you at the devil!<br />
In vain my verse I plane and bevel,<br />
Like Banville&rsquo;s rhyming devotees;<br />
In vain by many an artful swivel<br />
Lug in my meaning by degrees;<br />
I&rsquo;m sure to hear my Henley cavil;<br />
And grovelling prostrate on my knees,<br />
Devote his body to the seas,<br />
His correspondence to the devil!</p>
<p>Impromptu poem.</p>
<p>I&rsquo;m going to Shandon Hydropathic <i>cum
parentibus</i>.&nbsp; Write here.&nbsp; I heard from Lang.&nbsp;
Ferrier prayeth to be remembered; he means to write, likes his
Tourgenieff greatly.&nbsp; Also likes my &lsquo;What was on the
Slate,&rsquo; which, under a new title, yet unfound, and with a
new and, on the whole, kindly <i>d&eacute;nouement</i>, is going
to shoot up and become a star. . . .</p>
<p>I see I must write some more to you about my <a
name="page134"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
134</span>Monastery.&nbsp; I am a weak brother in verse.&nbsp;
You ask me to re-write things that I have already managed just to
write with the skin of my teeth.&nbsp; If I don&rsquo;t re-write
them, it&rsquo;s because I don&rsquo;t see how to write them
better, not because I don&rsquo;t think they should be.&nbsp;
But, curiously enough, you condemn two of my favourite passages,
one of which is J. W. Ferrier&rsquo;s favourite of the
whole.&nbsp; Here I shall think it&rsquo;s you who are
wrong.&nbsp; You see, I did not try to make good verse, but to
say what I wanted as well as verse would let me.&nbsp; I
don&rsquo;t like the rhyme &lsquo;ear&rsquo; and
&lsquo;hear.&rsquo;&nbsp; But the couplet, &lsquo;My undissuaded
heart I hear Whisper courage in my ear,&rsquo; is exactly what I
want for the thought, and to me seems very energetic as speech,
if not as verse.&nbsp; Would &lsquo;daring&rsquo; be better than
&lsquo;courage&rsquo;?&nbsp; <i>Je me le demande</i>.&nbsp; No,
it would be ambiguous, as though I had used it licentiously for
&lsquo;daringly,&rsquo; and that would cloak the sense.</p>
<p>In short, your suggestions have broken the heart of the
scald.&nbsp; He doesn&rsquo;t agree with them all; and those he
does agree with, the spirit indeed is willing, but the d-d flesh
cannot, cannot, cannot, see its way to profit by.&nbsp; I think
I&rsquo;ll lay it by for nine years, like Horace.&nbsp; I think
the well of Castaly&rsquo;s run out.&nbsp; No more the Muses
round my pillow haunt.&nbsp; I am fallen once more to the mere
proser.&nbsp; God bless you.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Swanston</i>, <i>Lothianburn</i>,
<i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>July</i> 24, 1879.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR GOSSE</span>,&mdash;I have
greatly enjoyed your articles which seems to me handsome in tone,
and written like a fine old English gentleman.&nbsp; But is there
not a hitch in the sentence at foot of page 153?&nbsp; I get lost
in it.</p>
<p><a name="page135"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
135</span>Chapters <span class="GutSmall">VIII</span>. and <span
class="GutSmall">IX</span>. of Meredith&rsquo;s story are very
good, I think.&nbsp; But who wrote the review of my book? whoever
he was, he cannot write; he is humane, but a duffer; I could weep
when I think of him; for surely to be virtuous and incompetent is
a hard lot.&nbsp; I should prefer to be a bold pirate, the gay
sailor-boy of immorality, and a publisher at once.&nbsp; My mind
is extinct; my appetite is expiring; I have fallen altogether
into a hollow-eyed, yawning way of life, like the parties in
Burne Jones&rsquo;s pictures. . . . Talking of Burns.&nbsp; (Is
this not sad, Weg?&nbsp; I use the term of reproach not because I
am angry with you this time, but because I am angry with myself
and desire to give pain.)&nbsp; Talking, I say, of Robert Burns,
the inspired poet is a very gay subject for study.&nbsp; I made a
kind of chronological table of his various loves and lusts, and
have been comparatively speechless ever since.&nbsp; I am sorry
to say it, but there was something in him of the vulgar,
bagmanlike, professional seducer.&mdash;Oblige me by taking down
and reading, for the hundredth time I hope, his &lsquo;Twa
Dogs&rsquo; and his &lsquo;Address to the Unco Guid.&rsquo;&nbsp;
I am only a Scotchman, after all, you see; and when I have beaten
Burns, I am driven at once, by my parental feelings, to console
him with a sugar-plum.&nbsp; But hang me if I know anything I
like so well as the &lsquo;Twa Dogs.&rsquo;&nbsp; Even a common
Englishman may have a glimpse, as it were from Pisgah, of its
extraordinary merits.</p>
<p>&lsquo;<i>English</i>, <i>The</i>:&mdash;a dull people,
incapable of comprehending the Scottish tongue.&nbsp; Their
history is so intimately connected with that of Scotland, that we
must refer our readers to that heading.&nbsp; Their literature is
principally the work of venal
Scots.&rsquo;&mdash;Stevenson&rsquo;s <i>Handy
Cyclop&aelig;dia</i>.&nbsp; Glescow: Blaikie &amp; Bannock.</p>
<p>Remember me in suitable fashion to Mrs. Gosse, the offspring,
and the cat.&mdash;And believe me ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><a name="page136"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
136</span><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">17 <i>Heriot Row</i>,
<i>Edinburgh</i> [<i>July</i> 28, 1879].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;I am just
in the middle of your Rembrandt.&nbsp; The taste for Bummkopf and
his works is agreeably dissembled so far as I have gone; and the
reins have never for an instant been thrown upon the neck of that
wooden Pegasus; he only perks up a learned snout from a footnote
in the cellarage of a paragraph; just, in short, where he ought
to be, to inspire confidence in a wicked and adulterous
generation.&nbsp; But, mind you, Bummkopf is not human; he is
Dagon the fish god, and down he will come, sprawling on his belly
or his behind, with his hands broken from his helpless carcase,
and his head rolling off into a corner.&nbsp; Up will rise on the
other side, sane, pleasurable, human knowledge: a thing of beauty
and a joy, etc.</p>
<p>I&rsquo;m three parts through Burns; long, dry, unsympathetic,
but sound and, I think, in its dry way, interesting.&nbsp; Next I
shall finish the story, and then perhaps Thoreau.&nbsp; Meredith
has been staying with Morley, who is about, it is believed, to
write to me on a literary scheme.&nbsp; Is it Keats, hope
you?&nbsp; My heart leaps at the thought.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><a name="page137"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 137</span>17 <i>Heriot Row</i>,
<i>Edinburgh</i> [<i>July</i> 29, 1879].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR GOSSE</span>,&mdash;Yours was
delicious; you are a young person of wit; one of the last of
them; wit being quite out of date, and humour confined to the
Scotch Church and the <i>Spectator</i> in unconscious
survival.&nbsp; You will probably be glad to hear that I am up
again in the world; I have breathed again, and had a frolic on
the strength of it.&nbsp; The frolic was yesterday, Sawbath; the
scene, the Royal Hotel, Bathgate; I went there with a humorous
friend to lunch.&nbsp; The maid soon showed herself a lass of
character.&nbsp; She was looking out of window.&nbsp; On being
asked what she was after, &lsquo;I&rsquo;m lookin&rsquo; for my
lad,&rsquo; says she.&nbsp; &lsquo;Is that him?&rsquo;&nbsp;
&lsquo;Weel, I&rsquo;ve been lookin&rsquo; for him a&rsquo; my
life, and I&rsquo;ve never seen him yet,&rsquo; was the
response.&nbsp; I wrote her some verses in the vernacular; she
read them.&nbsp; &lsquo;They&rsquo;re no bad for a
beginner,&rsquo; said she.&nbsp; The landlord&rsquo;s daughter,
Miss Stewart, was present in oil colour; so I wrote her a
declaration in verse, and sent it by the handmaid.&nbsp; She
(Miss S.) was present on the stair to witness our departure, in a
warm, suffused condition.&nbsp; Damn it, Gosse, you needn&rsquo;t
suppose that you&rsquo;re the only poet in the world.</p>
<p>Your statement about your initials, it will be seen, I pass
over in contempt and silence.&nbsp; When once I have made up my
mind, let me tell you, sir, there lives no pock-pudding who can
change it.&nbsp; Your anger I defy.&nbsp; Your unmanly reference
to a well-known statesman I puff from me, sir, like so much
vapour.&nbsp; Weg is your name; Weg.&nbsp; W E G.</p>
<p>My enthusiasm has kind of dropped from me.&nbsp; I envy you
your wife, your home, your child&mdash;I was going to say your
cat.&nbsp; There would be cats in my home too if I could but get
it.&nbsp; I may seem to you &lsquo;the impersonation of
life,&rsquo; <a name="page138"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
138</span>but my life is the impersonation of waiting, and
that&rsquo;s a poor creature.&nbsp; God help us all, and the deil
be kind to the hindmost!&nbsp; Upon my word, we are a brave,
cheery crew, we human beings, and my admiration increases
daily&mdash;primarily for myself, but by a roundabout process for
the whole crowd; for I dare say they have all their poor little
secrets and anxieties.&nbsp; And here am I, for instance, writing
to you as if you were in the seventh heaven, and yet I know you
are in a sad anxiety yourself.&nbsp; I hope earnestly it will
soon be over, and a fine pink Gosse sprawling in a tub, and a
mother in the best of health and spirits, glad and tired, and
with another interest in life.&nbsp; Man, you are out of the
trouble when this is through.&nbsp; A first child is a rival, but
a second is only a rival to the first; and the husband stands his
ground and may keep married all his life&mdash;a consummation
heartily to be desired.&nbsp; Good-bye, Gosse.&nbsp; Write me a
witty letter with good news of the mistress.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h2><a name="page139"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
139</span>IV<br />
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT<br />
<span class="GutSmall">MONTEREY AND SAN FRANCISCO</span><br />
<span class="GutSmall">JULY 1879-JULY 1880</span></h2>
<h3><a name="page144"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
144</span><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>On board ss.</i>
&lsquo;<i>Devonia</i>,&rsquo; <i>an hour or two out of New
York</i><br />
[<i>August</i> 1879].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;I have
finished my story. <a name="citation144"></a><a
href="#footnote144" class="citation">[144]</a>&nbsp; The
handwriting is not good because of the ship&rsquo;s misconduct:
thirty-one pages in ten days at sea is not bad.</p>
<p>I shall write a general procuration about this story on
another bit of paper.&nbsp; I am not very well; bad food, bad
air, and hard work have brought me down.&nbsp; But the spirits
keep good.&nbsp; The voyage has been most interesting, and will
make, if not a series of <i>Pall Mall</i> articles, at least the
first part of a new book.&nbsp; The last weight on me has been
trying to keep notes for this purpose.&nbsp; Indeed, I have
worked like a horse, and am now as tired as a donkey.&nbsp; If I
should have to push on far by rail, I shall bring nothing but my
fine bones to port.</p>
<p>Good-bye to you all.&nbsp; I suppose it is now late afternoon
with you and all across the seas.&nbsp; What shall I find over
there?&nbsp; I dare not wonder.&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;I go on my way to-night, if I can; if not,
to-morrow: emigrant train ten to fourteen days&rsquo; journey;
warranted extreme discomfort.&nbsp; The only American institution
which has yet won my respect is the rain.&nbsp; One sees it is a
new country, they are so free with their water.&nbsp; I have been
steadily drenched for twenty-four hours; water-proof wet through;
immortal spirit fitfully blinking up in spite.&nbsp; Bought a
copy of my own work, and the man said &lsquo;by
Stevenson.&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Indeed,&rsquo; says
I.&mdash;&lsquo;Yes, sir,&rsquo; says he.&mdash;Scene closes.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>In the Emigrant Train from New
York to San Francisco</i>,<br />
<i>August</i> 1879.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;I am in the
cars between Pittsburgh and Chicago, just now bowling through
Ohio.&nbsp; I am <a name="page145"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
145</span>taking charge of a kid, whose mother is asleep, with
one eye, while I write you this with the other.&nbsp; I reached
N.Y. Sunday night; and by five o&rsquo;clock Monday was under way
for the West.&nbsp; It is now about ten on Wednesday morning, so
I have already been about forty hours in the cars.&nbsp; It is
impossible to lie down in them, which must end by being very
wearying.</p>
<p>I had no idea how easy it was to commit suicide.&nbsp; There
seems nothing left of me; I died a while ago; I do not know who
it is that is travelling.</p>
<p class="poetry">Of where or how, I nothing know;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And why, I do not care;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Enough if, even so,<br />
My travelling eyes, my travelling mind can go<br />
By flood and field and hill, by wood and meadow fair,<br />
Beside the Susquehannah and along the Delaware.</p>
<p class="poetry">I think, I hope, I dream no more<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The dreams of otherwhere,<br />
The cherished thoughts of yore;<br />
I have been changed from what I was before;<br />
And drunk too deep perchance the lotus of the air<br />
Beside the Susquehannah and along the Delaware.</p>
<p class="poetry">Unweary God me yet shall bring<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To lands of brighter air,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Where I, now half a king,<br />
Shall with enfranchised spirit loudlier sing,<br />
And wear a bolder front than that which now I wear<br />
Beside the Susquehannah and along the Delaware.</p>
<p><a name="page146"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 146</span>Exit
Muse, hurried by child&rsquo;s games. . . .</p>
<p>Have at you again, being now well through Indiana.&nbsp; In
America you eat better than anywhere else: fact.&nbsp; The food
is heavenly.</p>
<p>No man is any use until he has dared everything; I feel just
now as if I had, and so might become a man.&nbsp; &lsquo;If ye
have faith like a grain of mustard seed.&rsquo;&nbsp; That is so
true! just now I have faith as big as a cigar-case; I will not
say die, and do not fear man nor fortune.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Crossing Nebraska</i>
[<i>Saturday</i>, <i>August</i> 23, 1879].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENLEY</span>,&mdash;I am
sitting on the top of the cars with a mill party from Missouri
going west for his health.&nbsp; Desolate flat prairie upon all
hands.&nbsp; Here and there a herd of cattle, a yellow butterfly
or two; a patch of wild sunflowers; a wooden house or two; then a
wooden church alone in miles of waste; then a windmill to pump
water.&nbsp; When we stop, which we do often, for emigrants and
freight travel together, the kine first, the men after, the whole
plain is heard singing with cicadae.&nbsp; This is a pause, as
you may see from the writing.&nbsp; What happened to the old
pedestrian emigrants, what was the tedium suffered by the Indians
and trappers of our youth, the imagination trembles to
conceive.&nbsp; This is now Saturday, 23rd, and I have been
steadily travelling since I parted from you at St. Pancras.&nbsp;
It is a strange vicissitude from the Savile Club to this; I sleep
with a man from Pennsylvania who has been in the States Navy, and
mess with him and the Missouri bird already alluded to.&nbsp; We
have a tin wash-bowl among four.&nbsp; I wear nothing but a shirt
and a pair of trousers, and never button my shirt.&nbsp; When I
land for a meal, I pass my coat and feel dressed.&nbsp; This life
is to last till Friday, Saturday, or Sunday next.&nbsp; It is a
strange affair <a name="page147"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
147</span>to be an emigrant, as I hope you shall see in a future
work.&nbsp; I wonder if this will be legible; my present station
on the waggon roof, though airy compared to the cars, is both
dirty and insecure.&nbsp; I can see the track straight before and
straight behind me to either horizon.&nbsp; Peace of mind I enjoy
with extreme serenity; I am doing right; I know no one will think
so; and don&rsquo;t care.&nbsp; My body, however, is all to
whistles; I don&rsquo;t eat; but, man, I can sleep.&nbsp; The car
in front of mine is chock full of Chinese.</p>
<p><i>Monday</i>.&mdash;What it is to be ill in an emigrant train
let those declare who know.&nbsp; I slept none till late in the
morning, overcome with laudanum, of which I had luckily a little
bottle.&nbsp; All to-day I have eaten nothing, and only drunk two
cups of tea, for each of which, on the pretext that the one was
breakfast, and the other dinner, I was charged fifty cents.&nbsp;
Our journey is through ghostly deserts, sage brush and alkali,
and rocks, without form or colour, a sad corner of the
world.&nbsp; I confess I am not jolly, but mighty calm, in my
distresses.&nbsp; My illness is a subject of great mirth to some
of my fellow-travellers, and I smile rather sickly at their
jests.</p>
<p>We are going along Bitter Creek just now, a place infamous in
the history of emigration, a place I shall remember myself among
the blackest.&nbsp; I hope I may get this posted at Ogden,
Utah.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Coast Line Mountains</i>,
<i>California</i>, <i>September</i> 1879.]</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Here</span> is another curious start in my
life.&nbsp; I am living at an Angora goat-ranche, in the Coast
Line Mountains, eighteen miles from Monterey.&nbsp; I was camping
out, but got so sick that the two rancheros took me in and tended
me.&nbsp; One is an old bear-hunter, seventy-two years old, <a
name="page148"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 148</span>and a
captain from the Mexican war; the other a pilgrim, and one who
was out with the bear flag and under Fremont when California was
taken by the States.&nbsp; They are both true frontiersmen, and
most kind and pleasant.&nbsp; Captain Smith, the bear-hunter, is
my physician, and I obey him like an oracle.</p>
<p>The business of my life stands pretty nigh still.&nbsp; I work
at my notes of the voyage.&nbsp; It will not be very like a book
of mine; but perhaps none the less successful for that.&nbsp; I
will not deny that I feel lonely to-day; but I do not fear to go
on, for I am doing right.&nbsp; I have not yet had a word from
England, partly, I suppose, because I have not yet written for my
letters to New York; do not blame me for this neglect; if you
knew all I have been through, you would wonder I had done so much
as I have.&nbsp; I teach the ranche children reading in the
morning, for the mother is from home sick.&mdash;Ever your
affectionate friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Monterey</i>, <i>Ditto Co.</i>,
<i>California</i>, 21<i>st</i> <i>October</i> [1879].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;Although
you have absolutely disregarded my plaintive appeals for
correspondence, and written only once as against God knows how
many notes and notikins of mine&mdash;here goes again.&nbsp; I am
now all alone in Monterey, a real inhabitant, with a box of my
own at the P.O.&nbsp; I have splendid rooms at the
doctor&rsquo;s, where I get coffee in the morning (the doctor is
French), and I mess with another jolly old Frenchman, the
stranded fifty-eight-year-old wreck of a good-hearted,
dissipated, and once wealthy Nantais tradesman.&nbsp; My health
goes on better; as for work, the draft of my book was laid aside
at p. 68 or so; and I have now, by way of change, more than
seventy pages of a novel, a one-volume novel, alas! to be called
either <i>A Chapter in Experience </i><a name="page149"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 149</span><i>of Arizona Breckonridge</i> or
<i>A Vendetta in the West</i>, or a combination of the two.&nbsp;
The scene from Chapter <span class="GutSmall">IV</span>. to the
end lies in Monterey and the adjacent country; of course, with my
usual luck, the plot of the story is somewhat scandalous,
containing an illegitimate father for piece of resistance. . .
.&nbsp; Ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Monterey</i>, <i>California</i>,
<i>September</i> 1879.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;I received
your letter with delight; it was the first word that reached me
from the old country.&nbsp; I am in good health now; I have been
pretty seedy, for I was exhausted by the journey and anxiety
below even my point of keeping up; I am still a little weak, but
that is all; I begin to ingrease, <a name="citation149"></a><a
href="#footnote149" class="citation">[149]</a> it seems
already.&nbsp; My book is about half drafted: the <i>Amateur
Emigrant</i>, that is.&nbsp; Can you find a better name?&nbsp; I
believe it will be more popular than any of my others; the canvas
is so much more popular and larger too.&nbsp; Fancy, it is my
fourth.&nbsp; That voluminous writer.&nbsp; I was vexed to hear
about the last chapter of &lsquo;The Lie,&rsquo; and pleased to
hear about the rest; it would have been odd if it had no
birthmark, born where and how it was.&nbsp; It should by rights
have been called the <i>Devonia</i>, for that is the habit with
all children born in a steerage.</p>
<p>I write to you, hoping for more.&nbsp; Give me news of all who
concern me, near or far, or big or little.&nbsp; Here, sir, in
California you have a willing hearer.</p>
<p>Monterey is a place where there is no summer or winter, and
pines and sand and distant hills and a bay all filled with real
water from the Pacific.&nbsp; You will perceive that no expense
has been spared.&nbsp; I now live with a little French doctor; I
take one of my meals in a little French restaurant; for the other
two, I sponge.&nbsp; The population <a name="page150"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 150</span>of Monterey is about that of a
dissenting chapel on a wet Sunday in a strong church
neighbourhood.&nbsp; They are mostly Mexican and
Indian-mixed.&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Monterey</i>, <i>Monterey
Co.</i>, <i>California</i>, 8<i>th</i> <i>October</i> 1879.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR WEG</span>,&mdash;I know I am a
rogue and the son of a dog.&nbsp; Yet let me tell you, when I
came here I had a week&rsquo;s misery and a fortnight&rsquo;s
illness, and since then I have been more or less busy in being
content.&nbsp; This is a kind of excuse for my laziness.&nbsp; I
hope you will not excuse yourself.&nbsp; My plans are still very
uncertain, and it is not likely that anything will happen before
Christmas.&nbsp; In the meanwhile, I believe I shall live on here
&lsquo;between the sandhills and the sea,&rsquo; as I think Mr.
Swinburne hath it.&nbsp; I was pretty nearly slain; my spirit lay
down and kicked for three days; I was up at an Angora goat-ranche
in the Santa Lucia Mountains, nursed by an old frontiers-man, a
mighty hunter of bears, and I scarcely slept, or ate, or thought
for four days.&nbsp; Two nights I lay out under a tree in a sort
of stupor, doing nothing but fetch water for myself and horse,
light a fire and make coffee, and all night awake hearing the
goat-bells ringing and the tree-frogs singing when each new noise
was enough to set me mad.&nbsp; Then the bear-hunter came round,
pronounced me &lsquo;real sick,&rsquo; and ordered me up to the
ranche.</p>
<p>It was an odd, miserable piece of my life; and according to
all rule, it should have been my death; but after a while my
spirit got up again in a divine frenzy, and has since kicked and
spurred my vile body forward with great emphasis and success.</p>
<p>My new book, <i>The Amateur Emigrant</i>, is about half
drafted.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t know if it will be good, but I think
it ought to sell in spite of the deil and the publishers; for it
tells an odd enough experience, and one, I think, never yet told
before.&nbsp; Look for my &lsquo;Burns&rsquo; in the
<i>Cornhill</i>, and <a name="page151"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 151</span>for my &lsquo;Story of a Lie&rsquo;
in Paul&rsquo;s withered babe, the <i>New Quarterly</i>.&nbsp;
You may have seen the latter ere this reaches you: tell me if it
has any interest, like a good boy, and remember that it was
written at sea in great anxiety of mind.&nbsp; What is your
news?&nbsp; Send me your works, like an angel, <i>au fur et
&agrave; mesure</i> of their apparition, for I am naturally short
of literature, and I do not wish to rust.</p>
<p>I fear this can hardly be called a letter.&nbsp; To say truth,
I feel already a difficulty of approach; I do not know if I am
the same man I was in Europe, perhaps I can hardly claim
acquaintance with you.&nbsp; My head went round and looks another
way now; for when I found myself over here in a new land, and all
the past uprooted in the one tug, and I neither feeling glad nor
sorry, I got my last lesson about mankind; I mean my latest
lesson, for of course I do not know what surprises there are yet
in store for me.&nbsp; But that I could have so felt astonished
me beyond description.&nbsp; There is a wonderful callousness in
human nature which enables us to live.&nbsp; I had no feeling one
way or another, from New York to California, until, at Dutch
Flat, a mining camp in the Sierra, I heard a cock crowing with a
home voice; and then I fell to hope and regret both in the same
moment.</p>
<p>Is there a boy or a girl? and how is your wife?&nbsp; I
thought of you more than once, to put it mildly.</p>
<p>I live here comfortably enough; but I shall soon be left all
alone, perhaps till Christmas.&nbsp; Then you may hope for
correspondence&mdash;and may not I?&mdash;Your friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R L S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Monterey</i>, <i>California</i>,
<i>October</i> 1879.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENLEY</span>,&mdash;Herewith
the <i>Pavilion on the Links</i>, grand carpentry story in nine
chapters, and I should hesitate to say how many tableaux.&nbsp;
Where is it to go?&nbsp; God knows.&nbsp; It is the dibbs that
are wanted.&nbsp; It is not <a name="page152"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 152</span>bad, though I say it; carpentry, of
course, but not bad at that; and who else can carpenter in
England, now that Wilkie Collins is played out?&nbsp; It might be
broken for magazine purposes at the end of Chapter <span
class="GutSmall">IV</span>.&nbsp; I send it to you, as I dare say
Payn may help, if all else fails.&nbsp; Dibbs and speed are my
mottoes.</p>
<p>Do acknowledge the <i>Pavilion</i> by return.&nbsp; I shall be
so nervous till I hear, as of course I have no copy except of one
or two places where the vein would not run.&nbsp; God prosper it,
poor <i>Pavilion</i>!&nbsp; May it bring me money for myself and
my sick one, who may read it, I do not know how soon.</p>
<p>Love to your wife, Anthony and all.&nbsp; I shall write to
Colvin to-day or to-morrow.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Monterey</i>, <i>California</i>,
<i>October</i> 1879.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENLEY</span>,&mdash;Many
thanks for your good letter, which is the best way to forgive you
for your previous silence.&nbsp; I hope Colvin or somebody has
sent me the <i>Cornhill</i> and the <i>New Quarterly</i>, though
I am trying to get them in San Francisco.&nbsp; I think you might
have sent me (1) some of your articles in the P. M. G.; (2) a
paper with the announcement of second edition; and (3) the
announcement of the essays in <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>.&nbsp; This
to prick you in the future.&nbsp; Again, choose, in your head,
the best volume of Labiche there is, and post it to Jules
Simoneau, Monterey, Monterey Co., California: do this at once, as
he is my restaurant man, a most pleasant old boy with whom I
discuss the universe and play chess daily.&nbsp; He has been out
of France for thirty-five years, and never heard of
Labiche.&nbsp; I have eighty-three pages written of a story
called a <i>Vendetta in the West</i>, and about sixty pages of
the first draft of the <i>Amateur Emigrant</i>.&nbsp; They should
each cover from 130 to 150 pages when done.&nbsp; That is all my
literary news.&nbsp; Do keep me posted, won&rsquo;t you?&nbsp; <a
name="page153"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 153</span>Your letter
and Bob&rsquo;s made the fifth and sixth I have had from Europe
in three months.</p>
<p>At times I get terribly frightened about my work, which seems
to advance too slowly.&nbsp; I hope soon to have a greater
burthen to support, and must make money a great deal quicker than
I used.&nbsp; I may get nothing for the <i>Vendetta</i>; I may
only get some forty quid for the <i>Emigrant</i>; I cannot hope
to have them both done much before the end of November.</p>
<p>O, and look here, why did you not send me the <i>Spectator</i>
which slanged me?&nbsp; Rogues and rascals, is that all you are
worth?</p>
<p>Yesterday I set fire to the forest, for which, had I been
caught, I should have been hung out of hand to the nearest tree,
Judge Lynch being an active person hereaway.&nbsp; You should
have seen my retreat (which was entirely for strategical
purposes).&nbsp; I ran like hell.&nbsp; It was a fine
sight.&nbsp; At night I went out again to see it; it was a good
fire, though I say it that should not.&nbsp; I had a near escape
for my life with a revolver: I fired six charges, and the six
bullets all remained in the barrel, which was choked from end to
end, from muzzle to breach, with solid lead; it took a man three
hours to drill them out.&nbsp; Another shot, and I&rsquo;d have
gone to kingdom come.</p>
<p>This is a lovely place, which I am growing to love.&nbsp; The
Pacific licks all other oceans out of hand; there is no place but
the Pacific Coast to hear eternal roaring surf.&nbsp; When I get
to the top of the woods behind Monterey, I can hear the seas
breaking all round over ten or twelve miles of coast from near
Carmel on my left, out to Point Pinas in front, and away to the
right along the sands of Monterey to Castroville and the mouth of
the Salinas.&nbsp; I was wishing yesterday that the world could
get&mdash;no, what I mean was that you should be kept in suspense
like Mahomet&rsquo;s coffin until the world had made half a
revolution, then dropped here at the station as though you had
stepped from the cars; you would then comfortably enter <a
name="page154"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
154</span>Walter&rsquo;s waggon (the sun has just gone down, the
moon beginning to throw shadows, you hear the surf rolling, and
smell the sea and the pines).&nbsp; That shall deposit you at
Sanchez&rsquo;s saloon, where we take a drink; you are introduced
to Bronson, the local editor (&lsquo;I have no brain
music,&rsquo; he says; &lsquo;I&rsquo;m a mechanic, you
see,&rsquo; but he&rsquo;s a nice fellow); to Adolpho Sanchez,
who is delightful.&nbsp; Meantime I go to the P. O. for my mail;
thence we walk up Alvarado Street together, you now floundering
in the sand, now merrily stumping on the wooden side-walks; I
call at Hadsell&rsquo;s for my paper; at length behold us
installed in Simoneau&rsquo;s little white-washed back-room,
round a dirty tablecloth, with Fran&ccedil;ois the baker, perhaps
an Italian fisherman, perhaps Augustin Dutra, and Simoneau
himself.&nbsp; Simoneau, Fran&ccedil;ois, and I are the three
sure cards; the others mere waifs.&nbsp; Then home to my great
airy rooms with five windows opening on a balcony; I sleep on the
floor in my camp blankets; you instal yourself abed; in the
morning coffee with the little doctor and his little wife; we
hire a waggon and make a day of it; and by night, I should let
you up again into the air, to be returned to Mrs. Henley in the
forenoon following.&nbsp; By God, you would enjoy yourself.&nbsp;
So should I.&nbsp; I have tales enough to keep you going till
five in the morning, and then they would not be at an end.&nbsp;
I forget if you asked me any questions, and I sent your letter up
to the city to one who will like to read it.&nbsp; I expect other
letters now steadily.&nbsp; If I have to wait another two months,
I shall begin to be happy.&nbsp; Will you remember me most
affectionately to your wife?&nbsp; Shake hands with Anthony from
me; and God bless your mother.</p>
<p>God bless Stephen!&nbsp; Does he not know that I am a man, and
cannot live by bread alone, but must have guineas into the
bargain.&nbsp; Burns, I believe, in my own mind, is one of my
high-water marks; Meiklejohn flames me a letter about it, which
is so complimentary that I <a name="page155"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 155</span>must keep it or get it published in
the <i>Monterey Californian</i>.&nbsp; Some of these days I shall
send an exemplaire of that paper; it is huge.&mdash;Ever your
affectionate friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to P. G. Hamerton</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Monterey</i>, <i>California</i>
[<i>November</i> 1879].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MR. HAMERTON</span>,&mdash;Your
letter to my father was forwarded to me by mistake, and by
mistake I opened it.&nbsp; The letter to myself has not yet
reached me.&nbsp; This must explain my own and my father&rsquo;s
silence.&nbsp; I shall write by this or next post to the only
friends I have who, I think, would have an influence, as they are
both professors.&nbsp; I regret exceedingly that I am not in
Edinburgh, as I could perhaps have done more, and I need not tell
you that what I might do for you in the matter of the election is
neither from friendship nor gratitude, but because you are the
only man (I beg your pardon) worth a damn.&nbsp; I shall write to
a third friend, now I think of it, whose father will have great
influence.</p>
<p>I find here (of all places in the world) your <i>Essays on
Art</i>, which I have read with signal interest.&nbsp; I believe
I shall dig an essay of my own out of one of them, for it set me
thinking; if mine could only produce yet another in reply, we
could have the marrow out between us.</p>
<p>I hope, my dear sir, you will not think badly of me for my
long silence.&nbsp; My head has scarce been on my
shoulders.&nbsp; I had scarce recovered from a long fit of
useless ill-health than I was whirled over here double-quick time
and by cheapest conveyance.</p>
<p>I have been since pretty ill, but pick up, though still
somewhat of a mossy ruin.&nbsp; If you would view my countenance
aright, come&mdash;view it by the pale moonlight.&nbsp; But <a
name="page156"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 156</span>that is on
the mend.&nbsp; I believe I have now a distant claim to tan.</p>
<p>A letter will be more than welcome in this distant clime where
I have a box at the post-office&mdash;generally, I regret to say,
empty.&nbsp; Could your recommendation introduce me to an
American publisher?&nbsp; My next book I should really try to get
hold of here, as its interest is international, and the more I am
in this country the more I understand the weight of your
influence.&nbsp; It is pleasant to be thus most at home abroad,
above all, when the prophet is still not without honour in his
own land. . . .</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Monterey</i>, <i>California</i>,
15<i>th</i> <i>November</i> 1879.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR GOSSE</span>,&mdash;Your letter
was to me such a bright spot that I answer it right away to the
prejudice of other correspondents or -dants (don&rsquo;t know how
to spell it) who have prior claims. . . . It is the history of
our kindnesses that alone makes this world tolerable.&nbsp; If it
were not for that, for the effect of kind words, kind looks, kind
letters, multiplying, spreading, making one happy through another
and bringing forth benefits, some thirty, some fifty, some a
thousandfold, I should be tempted to think our life a practical
jest in the worst possible spirit.&nbsp; So your four pages have
confirmed my philosophy as well as consoled my heart in these ill
hours.</p>
<p>Yes, you are right; Monterey is a pleasant place; but I see I
can write no more to-night.&nbsp; I am tired and sad, and being
already in bed, have no more to do but turn out the
light.&mdash;Your affectionate friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L S.</p>
<p>I try it again by daylight.&nbsp; Once more in bed however;
for to-day it is <i>mucho frio</i>, as we Spaniards say; and I
had no other means of keeping warm for my work.&nbsp; I have done
a good spell, 9&frac12; foolscap pages; at least 8 of
<i>Cornhill</i>; ah, if I thought that I could get eight guineas
<a name="page157"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 157</span>for
it.&nbsp; My trouble is that I am all too ambitious just
now.&nbsp; A book whereof 70 out of 120 are scrolled.&nbsp; A
novel whereof 85 out of, say, 140 are pretty well nigh
done.&nbsp; A short story of 50 pp., which shall be finished
to-morrow, or I&rsquo;ll know the reason why.&nbsp; This may
bring in a lot of money: but I dread to think that it is all on
three chances.&nbsp; If the three were to fail, I am in a
bog.&nbsp; The novel is called <i>A Vendetta in the
West</i>.&nbsp; I see I am in a grasping, dismal humour, and
should, as we Americans put it, quit writing.&nbsp; In truth, I
am so haunted by anxieties that one or other is sure to come up
in all that I write.</p>
<p>I will send you herewith a Monterey paper where the works of
R. L. S. appear, nor only that, but all my life on studying the
advertisements will become clear.&nbsp; I lodge with Dr. Heintz;
take my meals with Simoneau; have been only two days ago shaved
by the tonsorial artist Michaels; drink daily at the Bohemia
saloon; get my daily paper from Hadsel&rsquo;s; was stood a drink
to-day by Albano Rodriguez; in short, there is scarce a person
advertised in that paper but I know him, and I may add scarce a
person in Monterey but is there advertised.&nbsp; The paper is
the marrow of the place.&nbsp; Its bones&mdash;pooh, I am tired
of writing so sillily.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Monterey</i>, <i>December</i>
1879.]</p>
<p><span class="smcap">To-day</span>, my dear Colvin, I send you
the first part of the <i>Amateur Emigrant</i>, 71 pp., by far the
longest and the best of the whole.&nbsp; It is not a monument of
eloquence; indeed, I have sought to be prosaic in view of the
nature of the subject; but I almost think it is interesting.</p>
<p>Whatever is done about any book publication, two things
remember: I must keep a royalty; and, second, I must have all my
books advertised, in the French manner, <a
name="page158"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 158</span>on the leaf
opposite the title.&nbsp; I know from my own experience how much
good this does an author with book <i>buyers</i>.</p>
<p>The entire A. E. will be a little longer than the two others,
but not very much.&nbsp; Here and there, I fancy, you will laugh
as you read it; but it seems to me rather a <i>clever</i> book
than anything else: the book of a man, that is, who has paid a
great deal of attention to contemporary life, and not through the
newspapers.</p>
<p>I have never seen my Burns! the darling of my heart!&nbsp; I
await your promised letter.&nbsp; Papers, magazines, articles by
friends; reviews of myself, all would be very welcome, I am
reporter for the <i>Monterey Californian</i>, at a salary of two
dollars a week!&nbsp; <i>Comment trouvez-vous
&ccedil;a</i>?&nbsp; I am also in a conspiracy with the American
editor, a French restaurant-man, and an Italian fisherman against
the Padre.&nbsp; The enclosed poster is my last literary
appearance.&nbsp; It was put up to the number of 200 exemplaires
at the witching hour; and they were almost all destroyed by eight
in the morning.&nbsp; But I think the nickname will stick.&nbsp;
Dos Reales; deux r&eacute;aux; two bits; twenty-five cents; about
a shilling; but in practice it is worth from ninepence to
threepence: thus two glasses of beer would cost two bits.&nbsp;
The Italian fisherman, an old Garibaldian, is a splendid
fellow.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Monterey</i>, <i>Monterey
Co.</i>, <i>California</i>, <i>Dec.</i> 8, 1879.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR WEG</span>,&mdash;I received
your book last night as I lay abed with a pleurisy, the result, I
fear, of overwork, gradual decline of appetite, etc.&nbsp; You
know what a wooden-hearted curmudgeon I am about contemporary
verse.&nbsp; I like none of it, except some of my own.&nbsp; (I
look back on that sentence with pleasure; it comes from an <a
name="page159"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 159</span>honest
heart.)&nbsp; Hence you will be kind enough to take this from me
in a kindly spirit; the piece &lsquo;To my daughter&rsquo; is
delicious.&nbsp; And yet even here I am going to pick
holes.&nbsp; I am a <i>beastly</i> curmudgeon.&nbsp; It is the
last verse.&nbsp; &lsquo;Newly budded&rsquo; is off the venue;
and haven&rsquo;t you gone ahead to make a poetry daybreak
instead of sticking to your muttons, and comparing with the
mysterious light of stars the plain, friendly, perspicuous, human
day?&nbsp; But this is to be a beast.&nbsp; The little poem is
eminently pleasant, human, and original.</p>
<p>I have read nearly the whole volume, and shall read it nearly
all over again; you have no rivals!</p>
<p>Bancroft&rsquo;s <i>History of the United States</i>, even in
a centenary edition, is essentially heavy fare; a little goes a
long way; I respect Bancroft, but I do not love him; he has
moments when he feels himself inspired to open up his
improvisations upon universal history and the designs of God; but
I flatter myself I am more nearly acquainted with the latter than
Mr. Bancroft.&nbsp; A man, in the words of my Plymouth Brother,
&lsquo;who knows the Lord,&rsquo; must needs, from time to time,
write less emphatically.&nbsp; It is a fetter dance to the music
of minute guns&mdash;not at sea, but in a region not a thousand
miles from the Sahara.&nbsp; Still, I am half-way through volume
three, and shall count myself unworthy of the name of an
Englishman if I do not see the back of volume six.&nbsp; The
countryman of Livingstone, Burton, Speke, Drake, Cook, etc.!</p>
<p>I have been sweated not only out of my pleuritic fever, but
out of all my eating cares, and the better part of my brains
(strange coincidence!), by aconite.&nbsp; I have that peculiar
and delicious sense of being born again in an expurgated edition
which belongs to convalescence.&nbsp; It will not be for long; I
hear the breakers roar; I shall be steering head first for
another rapid before many days; <i>nitor aquis</i>, said a
certain Eton boy, translating for his sins a part of the
<i>Inland Voyage</i> into Latin elegiacs; and <a
name="page160"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 160</span>from the
hour I saw it, or rather a friend of mine, the admirable Jenkin,
saw and recognised its absurd appropriateness, I took it for my
device in life.&nbsp; I am going for thirty now; and unless I can
snatch a little rest before long, I have, I may tell you in
confidence, no hope of seeing thirty-one.&nbsp; My health began
to break last winter, and has given me but fitful times since
then.&nbsp; This pleurisy, though but a slight affair in itself
was a huge disappointment to me, and marked an epoch.&nbsp; To
start a pleurisy about nothing, while leading a dull, regular
life in a mild climate, was not my habit in past days; and it is
six years, all but a few months, since I was obliged to spend
twenty-four hours in bed.&nbsp; I may be wrong, but if the niting
is to continue, I believe I must go.&nbsp; It is a pity in one
sense, for I believe the class of work I <i>might</i> yet give
out is better and more real and solid than people fancy.&nbsp;
But death is no bad friend; a few aches and gasps, and we are
done; like the truant child, I am beginning to grow weary and
timid in this big jostling city, and could run to my nurse, even
although she should have to whip me before putting me to bed.</p>
<p>Will you kiss your little daughter from me, and tell her that
her father has written a delightful poem about her?&nbsp;
Remember me, please, to Mrs. Gosse, to Middlemore, to whom some
of these days I will write, to &mdash;, to &mdash;, yes, to
&mdash;, and to &mdash;.&nbsp; I know you will gnash your teeth
at some of these; wicked, grim, catlike old poet.&nbsp; If I were
God, I would sort you&mdash;as we say in Scotland.&mdash;Your
sincere friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Too young to be our child&rsquo;: blooming good.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">608 <i>Bush Street</i>, <i>San
Francisco</i> [<i>December</i> 26, 1879].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;I am now
writing to you in a caf&eacute; waiting for some music to
begin.&nbsp; For four days I have spoken to no one but to my
landlady or landlord or to <a name="page161"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 161</span>restaurant waiters.&nbsp; This is
not a gay way to pass Christmas, is it? and I must own the guts
are a little knocked out of me.&nbsp; If I could work, I could
worry through better.&nbsp; But I have no style at command for
the moment, with the second part of the <i>Emigrant</i>, the last
of the novel, the essay on Thoreau, and God knows all, waiting
for me.&nbsp; But I trust something can be done with the first
part, or, by God, I&rsquo;ll starve here . . . . <a
name="citation161"></a><a href="#footnote161"
class="citation">[161]</a></p>
<p>O Colvin, you don&rsquo;t know how much good I have done
myself.&nbsp; I feared to think this out by myself.&nbsp; I have
made a base use of you, and it comes out so much better than I
had dreamed.&nbsp; But I have to stick to work now; and
here&rsquo;s December gone pretty near useless.&nbsp; But, Lord
love you, October and November saw a great harvest.&nbsp; It
might have affected the price of paper on the Pacific
coast.&nbsp; As for ink, they haven&rsquo;t any, not what I call
ink; only stuff to write cookery-books with, or the works of
Hayley, or the pallid perambulations of the&mdash;I can find
nobody to beat Hayley.&nbsp; I like good, knock-me-down
black-strap to write with; that makes a mark and done with
it.&mdash;By the way, I have tried to read the <i>Spectator</i>,
which they all say I imitate, and&mdash;it&rsquo;s very wrong of
me, I know&mdash;but I can&rsquo;t.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s all very
fine, you know, and all that, but it&rsquo;s vapid.&nbsp; They
have just played the overture to <i>Norma</i>, and I know
it&rsquo;s a good one, for I bitterly wanted the opera to go on;
I had just got thoroughly interested&mdash;and then no curtain to
rise.</p>
<p>I have written myself into a kind of spirits, bless your dear
heart, by your leave.&nbsp; But this is wild work for me, nearly
nine and me not back!&nbsp; What will Mrs. Carson think of
me!&nbsp; Quite a night-hawk, I do declare.&nbsp; You are the
worst correspondent in the world&mdash;no, not that, Henley is
that&mdash;well, I don&rsquo;t know, I leave the pair of you to
Him that made you&mdash;surely with small attention.&nbsp; But
here&rsquo;s my service, and I&rsquo;ll away home to my den O!
much the better for this crack, Professor Colvin.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><a name="page162"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
162</span><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">608 <i>Bush Street</i>, <i>San
Francisco</i> [<i>January</i> 10, 1880].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;This is a
circular letter to tell my estate fully.&nbsp; You have no right
to it, being the worst of correspondents; but I wish to efface
the impression of my last, so to you it goes.</p>
<p>Any time between eight and half-past nine in the morning, a
slender gentleman in an ulster, with a volume buttoned into the
breast of it, may be observed leaving No. 608 Bush and descending
Powell with an active step.&nbsp; The gentleman is R. L. S.; the
volume relates to Benjamin Franklin, on whom he meditates one of
his charming essays.&nbsp; He descends Powell, crosses Market,
and descends in Sixth on a branch of the original Pine Street
Coffee House, no less; I believe he would be capable of going to
the original itself, if he could only find it.&nbsp; In the
branch he seats himself at a table covered with waxcloth, and a
pampered menial, of High-Dutch extraction and, indeed, as yet
only partially extracted, lays before him a cup of coffee, a roll
and a pat of butter, all, to quote the deity, very good.&nbsp; A
while ago, and R. L. S. used to find the supply of butter
insufficient; but he has now learned the art to exactitude, and
butter and roll expire at the same moment.&nbsp; For this
refection he pays ten cents., or five pence sterling (&pound;0,
0s. 5d.).</p>
<p>Half an hour later, the inhabitants of Bush Street observe the
same slender gentleman armed, like George Washington, with his
little hatchet, splitting, kindling and breaking coal for his
fire.&nbsp; He does this quasi-publicly upon the window-sill; but
this is not to be attributed to any love of notoriety, though he
is indeed vain of his prowess with the hatchet (which he persists
in calling an axe), and daily surprised at the perpetuation of
his fingers.&nbsp; The reason is this: that the sill is a strong,
supporting beam, and that blows of the same emphasis in other
parts of his room might knock the <a name="page163"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 163</span>entire shanty into hell.&nbsp;
Thenceforth, for from three to four hours, he is engaged darkly
with an inkbottle.&nbsp; Yet he is not blacking his boots, for
the only pair that he possesses are innocent of lustre and wear
the natural hue of the material turned up with caked and
venerable slush.&nbsp; The youngest child of his landlady remarks
several times a day, as this strange occupant enters or quits the
house, &lsquo;Dere&rsquo;s de author.&rsquo;&nbsp; Can it be that
this bright-haired innocent has found the true clue to the
mystery?&nbsp; The being in question is, at least, poor enough to
belong to that honourable craft.</p>
<p>His next appearance is at the restaurant of one Donadieu, in
Bush Street, between Dupont and Kearney, where a copious meal,
half a bottle of wine, coffee and brandy may be procured for the
sum of four bits, <i>alias</i> fifty cents., &pound;0, 2s. 2d.
sterling.&nbsp; The wine is put down in a whole bottleful, and it
is strange and painful to observe the greed with which the
gentleman in question seeks to secure the last drop of his
allotted half, and the scrupulousness with which he seeks to
avoid taking the first drop of the other.&nbsp; This is partly
explained by the fact that if he were to go over the
mark&mdash;bang would go a tenpence.&nbsp; He is again armed with
a book, but his best friends will learn with pain that he seems
at this hour to have deserted the more serious studies of the
morning.&nbsp; When last observed, he was studying with apparent
zest the exploits of one Rocambole by the late Viscomte Ponson du
Terrail.&nbsp; This work, originally of prodigious dimensions, he
had cut into liths or thicknesses apparently for convenience of
carriage.</p>
<p>Then the being walks, where is not certain.&nbsp; But by about
half-past four, a light beams from the windows of 608 Bush, and
he may be observed sometimes engaged in correspondence, sometimes
once again plunged in the mysterious rites of the forenoon.&nbsp;
About six he returns to the Branch Original, where he once more
imbrues himself to the worth of fivepence in coffee and
roll.&nbsp; The <a name="page164"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
164</span>evening is devoted to writing and reading, and by
eleven or half-past darkness closes over this weird and truculent
existence.</p>
<p>As for coin, you see I don&rsquo;t spend much, only you and
Henley both seem to think my work rather bosh nowadays, and I do
want to make as much as I was making, that is &pound;200; if I
can do that, I can swim: last year, with my ill health I touched
only &pound;109, that would not do, I could not fight it through
on that; but on &pound;200, as I say, I am good for the world,
and can even in this quiet way save a little, and that I must
do.&nbsp; The worst is my health; it is suspected I had an ague
chill yesterday; I shall know by to-morrow, and you know if I am
to be laid down with ague the game is pretty well lost.&nbsp; But
I don&rsquo;t know; I managed to write a good deal down in
Monterey, when I was pretty sickly most of the time, and, by God,
I&rsquo;ll try, ague and all.&nbsp; I have to ask you frankly,
when you write, to give me any good news you can, and chat a
little, but <i>just in the meantime</i>, give me no bad.&nbsp; If
I could get <i>Thoreau</i>, <i>Emigrant</i> and <i>Vendetta</i>
all finished and out of my hand, I should feel like a man who had
made half a year&rsquo;s income in a half year; but until the two
last are <i>finished</i>, you see, they don&rsquo;t fairly
count.</p>
<p>I am afraid I bore you sadly with this perpetual talk about my
affairs; I will try and stow it; but you see, it touches me
nearly.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m the miser in earnest now: last night,
when I felt so ill, the supposed ague chill, it seemed strange
not to be able to afford a drink.&nbsp; I would have walked half
a mile, tired as I felt, for a brandy and soda.&mdash;Ever
yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Charles Baxter</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">608 <i>Bush Street</i>, <i>San
Francisco</i>, <i>Jan.</i> 26, &rsquo;80</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;I have to
drop from a 50 cent. to a 25 cent. dinner; to-day begins my
fall.&nbsp; That brings <a name="page165"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 165</span>down my outlay in food and drink to
45 cents., or 1s. 10&frac12;d. per day.&nbsp; How are the mighty
fallen!&nbsp; Luckily, this is such a cheap place for food; I
used to pay as much as that for my first breakfast in the Savile
in the grand old palmy days of yore.&nbsp; I regret nothing, and
do not even dislike these straits, though the flesh will rebel on
occasion.&nbsp; It is to-day bitter cold, after weeks of lovely
warm weather, and I am all in a chitter.&nbsp; I am about to
issue for my little shilling and halfpenny meal, taken in the
middle of the day, the poor man&rsquo;s hour; and I shall eat and
drink to your prosperity.&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">608 <i>Bush Street</i>, <i>San
Francisco</i>, <i>California</i> [<i>January</i> 1880].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;I received
this morning your long letter from Paris.&nbsp; Well, God&rsquo;s
will be done; if it&rsquo;s dull, it&rsquo;s dull; it was a fair
fight, and it&rsquo;s lost, and there&rsquo;s an end.&nbsp; But,
fortunately, dulness is not a fault the public hates; perhaps
they may like this vein of dulness.&nbsp; If they don&rsquo;t,
damn them, we&rsquo;ll try them with another.&nbsp; I sat down on
the back of your letter, and wrote twelve Cornhill pages this day
as ever was of that same despised <i>Emigrant</i>; so you see my
moral courage has not gone down with my intellect.&nbsp; Only,
frankly, Colvin, do you think it a good plan to be so eminently
descriptive, and even eloquent in dispraise?&nbsp; You rolled
such a lot of polysyllables over me that a better man than I
might have been disheartened.&mdash;However, I was not, as you
see, and am not.&nbsp; The <i>Emigrant</i> shall be finished and
leave <a name="page166"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 166</span>in
the course of next week.&nbsp; And then, I&rsquo;ll stick to
stories.&nbsp; I am not frightened.&nbsp; I know my mind is
changing; I have been telling you so for long; and I suppose I am
fumbling for the new vein.&nbsp; Well, I&rsquo;ll find it.</p>
<p>The <i>Vendetta</i> you will not much like, I dare say: and
that must be finished next; but I&rsquo;ll knock you with <i>The
Forest State</i>: <i>A Romance</i>.</p>
<p>I&rsquo;m vexed about my letters; I know it is painful to get
these unsatisfactory things; but at least I have written often
enough.&nbsp; And not one soul ever gives me any <i>news</i>,
about people or things; everybody writes me sermons; it&rsquo;s
good for me, but hardly the food necessary for a man who lives
all alone on forty-five cents. a day, and sometimes less, with
quantities of hard work and many heavy thoughts.&nbsp; If one of
you could write me a letter with a jest in it, a letter like what
is written to real people in this world&mdash;I am still flesh
and blood&mdash;I should enjoy it.&nbsp; Simpson did, the other
day, and it did me as much good as a bottle of wine.&nbsp; A
lonely man gets to feel like a pariah after awhile&mdash;or no,
not that, but like a saint and martyr, or a kind of macerated
clergyman with pebbles in his boots, a pillared Simeon, I&rsquo;m
damned if I know what, but, man alive, I want gossip.</p>
<p>My health is better, my spirits steadier, I am not the least
cast down.&nbsp; If the <i>Emigrant</i> was a failure, the
<i>Pavilion</i>, by your leave, was not: it was a story quite
adequately and rightly done, I contend; and when I find Stephen,
for whom certainly I did not mean it, taking it in, I am better
pleased with it than before.&nbsp; I know I shall do better work
than ever I have done before; but, mind you, it will not be like
it.&nbsp; My sympathies and interests are changed.&nbsp; There
shall be no more books of travel for me.&nbsp; I care for nothing
but the moral and the dramatic, not a jot for the picturesque or
the beautiful other than about people.&nbsp; It bored me
hellishly to write the <i>Emigrant</i>; well, it&rsquo;s going to
bore others to read it; that&rsquo;s only fair.</p>
<p><a name="page167"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 167</span>I
should also write to others; but indeed I am jack-tired, and must
go to bed to a French novel to compose myself for
slumber.&mdash;Ever your affectionate friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">608 <i>Bush Street</i>, <i>San
Francisco</i>, <i>Cal.</i>, <i>February</i> 1880.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENLEY</span>,&mdash;Before my
work or anything I sit down to answer your long and kind
letter.</p>
<p>I am well, cheerful, busy, hopeful; I cannot be knocked down;
I do not mind about the <i>Emigrant</i>.&nbsp; I never thought it
a masterpiece.&nbsp; It was written to sell, and I believe it
will sell; and if it does not, the next will.&nbsp; You need not
be uneasy about my work; I am only beginning to see my true
method.</p>
<p>(1) As to <i>Studies</i>.&nbsp; There are two more already
gone to Stephen. <i>Yoshida Torajiro</i>, which I think temperate
and adequate; and <i>Thoreau</i>, which will want a really
Balzacian effort over the proofs.&nbsp; But I want <i>Benjamin
Franklin and the Art of Virtue</i> to follow; and perhaps also
<i>William Penn</i>, but this last may be perhaps delayed for
another volume&mdash;I think not, though.&nbsp; The
<i>Studies</i> will be an intelligent volume, and in their latter
numbers more like what I mean to be my style, or I mean what my
style means to be, for I am passive.&nbsp; (2) The
<i>Essays</i>.&nbsp; Good news indeed.&nbsp; I think <i>Ordered
South</i> must be thrown in.&nbsp; It always swells the volume,
and it will never find a more appropriate place.&nbsp; It was May
1874, Macmillan, I believe.&nbsp; (3) <i>Plays</i>.&nbsp; I did
not understand you meant to try the draft.&nbsp; I shall make you
a full scenario as soon as the <i>Emigrant</i> is done.&nbsp; (4)
<i>Emigrant</i>.&nbsp; He shall be sent off next week.&nbsp; (5)
Stories.&nbsp; You need not be alarmed that I am going to imitate
Meredith.&nbsp; You know I was a Story-teller ingrain; did not
that reassure you?&nbsp; The <i>Vendetta</i>, which falls next to
be finished, is not entirely pleasant.&nbsp; But it has
points.&nbsp; <i>The Forest State</i> or <i>The </i><a
name="page168"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
168</span><i>Greenwood State</i>: <i>A Romance</i>, is another
pair of shoes.&nbsp; It is my old Semiramis, our half-seen Duke
and Duchess, which suddenly sprang into sunshine clearness as a
story the other day.&nbsp; The kind, happy
<i>d&eacute;nouement</i> is unfortunately absolutely undramatic,
which will be our only trouble in quarrying out the play.&nbsp; I
mean we shall quarry from it.&nbsp; <i>Characters</i>&mdash;Otto
Frederick John, hereditary Prince of Gr&uuml;nwald; Amelia
Seraphina, Princess; Conrad, Baron Gondremarck, Prime Minister;
Cancellarius Greisengesang; Killian Gottesacker, Steward of the
River Farm; Ottilie, his daughter; the Countess von Rosen.&nbsp;
Seven in all.&nbsp; A brave story, I swear; and a brave play too,
if we can find the trick to make the end.&nbsp; The play, I fear,
will have to end darkly, and that spoils the quality as I now see
it of a kind of crockery, eighteenth century,
high-life-below-stairs life, breaking up like ice in spring
before the nature and the certain modicum of manhood of my poor,
clever, feather-headed Prince, whom I love already.&nbsp; I see
Seraphina too.&nbsp; Gondremarck is not quite so clear.&nbsp; The
Countess von Rosen, I have; I&rsquo;ll never tell you who she is;
it&rsquo;s a secret; but I have known the countess; well, I will
tell you; it&rsquo;s my old Russian friend, Madame Z.&nbsp;
Certain scenes are, in conception, the best I have ever made,
except for <i>Hester Noble</i>.&nbsp; Those at the end, Von Rosen
and the Princess, the Prince and Princess, and the Princess and
Gondremarck, as I now see them from here, should be nuts, Henley,
nuts.&nbsp; It irks me not to go to them straight.&nbsp; But the
<i>Emigrant</i> stops the way; then a reassured scenario for
<i>Hester</i>; then the <i>Vendetta</i>; then two (or three)
Essays&mdash;Benjamin Franklin, Thoughts on Literature as an Art,
Dialogue on Character and Destiny between two Puppets, The Human
Compromise; and then, at length&mdash;come to me, my
Prince.&nbsp; O Lord, it&rsquo;s going to be courtly!&nbsp; And
there is not an ugly person nor an ugly scene in it.&nbsp; The
<i>Slate</i> both Fanny and I have damned utterly; it is too
morbid, ugly, and unkind; better starvation.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><a name="page169"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
169</span><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">608 <i>Bush Street</i>, <i>San
Francisco</i>, [<i>March</i> 1880].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;My
landlord and landlady&rsquo;s little four-year-old child is dying
in the house; and O, what he has suffered.&nbsp; It has really
affected my health.&nbsp; O never, never any family for me!&nbsp;
I am cured of that.</p>
<p>I have taken a long holiday&mdash;have not worked for three
days, and will not for a week; for I was really weary.&nbsp;
Excuse this scratch; for the child weighs on me, dear
Colvin.&nbsp; I did all I could to help; but all seems little, to
the point of crime, when one of these poor innocents lies in such
misery.&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>San Francisco</i>, <i>Cal.</i>,
<i>April</i> 16 [1880].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR GOSSE</span>,&mdash;You have
not answered my last; and I know you will repent when you hear
how near I have been to another world.&nbsp; For about six weeks
I have been in utter doubt; it was a toss-up for life or death
all that time; but I won the toss, sir, and Hades went off once
more discomfited.&nbsp; This is not the first time, nor will it
be the last, that I have a friendly game with that
gentleman.&nbsp; I know he will end by cleaning me out; but the
rogue is insidious, and the habit of that sort of gambling seems
to be a part of my nature; it was, I suspect, too much indulged
in youth; break your children of this tendency, my dear Gosse,
from the first.&nbsp; It is, when once formed, a habit more fatal
than opium&mdash;I speak, as St. Paul says, like a fool.&nbsp; I
have been very very sick; on the verge of a galloping
consumption, cold sweats, prostrating attacks of cough, sinking
fits in which I lost the power of speech, fever, and all the
ugliest circumstances of the disease; <a name="page170"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 170</span>and I have cause to bless God, my
wife that is to be, and one Dr. Bamford (a name the Muse repels),
that I have come out of all this, and got my feet once more upon
a little hilltop, with a fair prospect of life and some new
desire of living.&nbsp; Yet I did not wish to die, neither; only
I felt unable to go on farther with that rough horseplay of human
life: a man must be pretty well to take the business in good
part.&nbsp; Yet I felt all the time that I had done nothing to
entitle me to an honourable discharge; that I had taken up many
obligations and begun many friendships which I had no right to
put away from me; and that for me to die was to play the cur and
slinking sybarite, and desert the colours on the eve of the
decisive fight.&nbsp; Of course I have done no work for I do not
know how long; and here you can triumph.&nbsp; I have been
reduced to writing verses for amusement.&nbsp; A fact.&nbsp; The
whirligig of time brings in its revenges, after all.&nbsp; But
I&rsquo;ll have them buried with me, I think, for I have not the
heart to burn them while I live.&nbsp; Do write.&nbsp; I shall go
to the mountains as soon as the weather clears; on the way
thither, I marry myself; then I set up my family altar among the
pinewoods, 3000 feet, sir, from the disputatious sea.&mdash;I am,
dear Weg, most truly yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Dr. W. Bamford</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>San Francisco</i>, <i>April</i>
1880.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR SIR</span>,&mdash;Will you let
me offer you this little book?&nbsp; If I had anything better, it
should be yours.&nbsp; May you not dislike it, for it will be
your own handiwork if there are other fruits from the same
tree!&nbsp; But for your kindness and skill, this would have been
my last book, and now I am in hopes that it will be neither my
last nor my best.</p>
<p>You doctors have a serious responsibility.&nbsp; You recall a
man from the gates of death, you give him health and strength
once more to use or to abuse.&nbsp; I hope I shall feel <a
name="page171"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 171</span>your
responsibility added to my own, and seek in the future to make a
better profit of the life you have renewed me.&mdash;I am, my
dear sir, gratefully yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>San Francisco</i>, <i>April</i>
1880.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;You must
be sick indeed of my demand for books, for you have seemingly not
yet sent me one.&nbsp; Still, I live on promises: waiting for
Penn, for H. James&rsquo;s <i>Hawthorne</i>, for my <i>Burns</i>,
etc.; and now, to make matters worse, pending your
<i>Centuries</i>, etc., I do earnestly desire the best book about
mythology (if it be German, so much the worse; send a bunctionary
along with it, and pray for me).&nbsp; This is why.&nbsp; If I
recover, I feel called on to write a volume of gods and demi-gods
in exile: Pan, Jove, Cybele, Venus, Charon, etc.; and though I
should like to take them very free, I should like to know a
little about &rsquo;em to begin with.&nbsp; For two days, till
last night, I had no night sweats, and my cough is almost gone,
and I digest well; so all looks hopeful.&nbsp; However, I was
near the other side of Jordan.&nbsp; I send the proof of
<i>Thoreau</i> to you, so that you may correct and fill up the
quotation from Goethe.&nbsp; It is a pity I was ill, as, for
matter, I think I prefer that to any of my essays except Burns;
but the style, though quite manly, never attains any melody or
lenity.&nbsp; So much for consumption: I begin to appreciate what
the <i>Emigrant</i> must be.&nbsp; As soon as I have done the
last few pages of the <i>Emigrant</i> they shall go to you.&nbsp;
But when will that be?&nbsp; I know not quite yet&mdash;I have to
be so careful.&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>San Francisco</i>, <i>April</i>
1880.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;My dear
people telegraphed me in these words: &lsquo;Count on 250 pounds
annually.&rsquo;&nbsp; You <a name="page172"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 172</span>may imagine what a blessed business
this was.&nbsp; And so now recover the sheets of the
<i>Emigrant</i>, and post them registered to me.&nbsp; And now
please give me all your venom against it; say your worst, and
most incisively, for now it will be a help, and I&rsquo;ll make
it right or perish in the attempt.&nbsp; Now, do you understand
why I protested against your depressing eloquence on the
subject?&nbsp; When I <i>had</i> to go on any way, for dear life,
I thought it a kind of pity and not much good to discourage
me.&nbsp; Now all&rsquo;s changed.&nbsp; God only knows how much
courage and suffering is buried in that <span
class="GutSmall">MS</span>.&nbsp; The second part was written in
a circle of hell unknown to Dante&mdash;that of the penniless and
dying author.&nbsp; For dying I was, although now saved.&nbsp;
Another week, the doctor said, and I should have been past
salvation.&nbsp; I think I shall always think of it as my best
work.&nbsp; There is one page in Part <span
class="GutSmall">II</span>., about having got to shore, and sich,
which must have cost me altogether six hours of work as miserable
as ever I went through.&nbsp; I feel sick even to think of
it.&mdash;Ever your friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>San Francisco</i>, <i>May</i>
1880.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;I received
your letter and proof to-day, and was greatly delighted with the
last.</p>
<p>I am now out of danger; in but a short while (<i>i.e.</i> as
soon as the weather is settled), F. and I marry and go up to the
hills to look for a place; &lsquo;I to the hills will lift mine
eyes, from whence doth come mine aid&rsquo;: once the place
found, the furniture will follow.&nbsp; There, sir, in, I hope, a
ranche among the pine-trees and hard by a running brook, we are
to fish, hunt, sketch, study Spanish, French, Latin, Euclid, and
History; and, if possible, not quarrel.&nbsp; Far from man, sir,
in the virgin forest.&nbsp; Thence, as my strength returns, you
may expect works of genius.&nbsp; I always feel as if I must
write a work of genius some <a name="page173"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 173</span>time or other; and when is it more
likely to come off, than just after I have paid a visit to Styx
and go thence to the eternal mountains?&nbsp; Such a revolution
in a man&rsquo;s affairs, as I have somewhere written, would set
anybody singing.&nbsp; When we get installed, Lloyd and I are
going to print my poetical works; so all those who have been
poetically addressed shall receive copies of their
addresses.&nbsp; They are, I believe, pretty correct literary
exercises, or will be, with a few filings; but they are not
remarkable for white-hot vehemence of inspiration; tepid works!
respectable versifications of very proper and even original
sentiments: kind of Hayleyistic, I fear&mdash;but no, this is
morbid self-depreciation.&nbsp; The family is all very shaky in
health, but our motto is now &lsquo;Al Monte!&rsquo; in the words
of Don Lope, in the play the sister and I are just beating
through with two bad dictionaries and an insane grammar.</p>
<p>I to the hills.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to C. W. Stoddard</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>East Oakland</i>, <i>Cal.</i>,
<i>May</i> 1880.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR STODDARD</span>,&mdash;I am
guilty in thy sight and the sight of God.&nbsp; However, I swore
a great oath that you should see some of my manuscript at last;
and though I have long delayed to keep it, yet it was to
be.&nbsp; You re-read your story and were disgusted; that is the
cold fit following the hot.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t say you did wrong
to be disgusted, yet I am sure you did wrong to be disgusted
altogether.&nbsp; There was, you may depend upon it, some reason
for your previous vanity, as well as your present
mortification.&nbsp; I shall hear you, years from now, timidly
begin to retrim your feathers for a little self-laudation, <a
name="page174"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 174</span>and trot
out this misdespised novelette as not the worst of your
performances.&nbsp; I read the album extracts with sincere
interest; but I regret that you spared to give the paper more
development; and I conceive that you might do a great deal worse
than expand each of its paragraphs into an essay or sketch, the
excuse being in each case your personal intercourse; the bulk,
when that would not be sufficient, to be made up from their own
works and stories.&nbsp; Three at least&mdash;Menken, Yelverton,
and Keeler&mdash;could not fail of a vivid human interest.&nbsp;
Let me press upon you this plan; should any document be wanted
from Europe, let me offer my services to procure it.&nbsp; I am
persuaded that there is stuff in the idea.</p>
<p>Are you coming over again to see me some day soon?&nbsp; I
keep returning, and now hand over fist, from the realms of Hades:
I saw that gentleman between the eyes, and fear him less after
each visit.&nbsp; Only Charon, and his rough boatmanship, I
somewhat fear.</p>
<p>I have a desire to write some verses for your album; so, if
you will give me the entry among your gods, goddesses, and
godlets, there will be nothing wanting but the Muse.&nbsp; I
think of the verses like Mark Twain; sometimes I wish fulsomely
to belaud you; sometimes to insult your city and fellow-citizens;
sometimes to sit down quietly, with the slender reed, and troll a
few staves of Panic ecstasy&mdash;but fy! fy! as my ancestors
observed, the last is too easy for a man of my feet and
inches.</p>
<p>At least, Stoddard, you now see that, although so costive,
when I once begin I am a copious letter-writer.&nbsp; I thank
you, and <i>au revoir</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>San Francisco</i>, <i>May</i>
1880.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;It is a
long while since I have heard from you; nearly a month, I
believe; and I begin <a name="page175"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 175</span>to grow very uneasy.&nbsp; At first
I was tempted to suppose that I had been myself to blame in some
way; but now I have grown to fear lest some sickness or trouble
among those whom you love may not be the impediment.&nbsp; I
believe I shall soon hear; so I wait as best I can.&nbsp; I am,
beyond a doubt, greatly stronger, and yet still useless for any
work, and, I may say, for any pleasure.&nbsp; My affairs and the
bad weather still keep me here unmarried; but not, I earnestly
hope, for long.&nbsp; Whenever I get into the mountain, I trust I
shall rapidly pick up.&nbsp; Until I get away from these sea fogs
and my imprisonment in the house, I do not hope to do much more
than keep from active harm.&nbsp; My doctor took a desponding fit
about me, and scared Fanny into blue fits; but I have talked her
over again.&nbsp; It is the change I want, and the blessed sun,
and a gentle air in which I can sit out and see the trees and
running water: these mere defensive hygienics cannot advance one,
though they may prevent evil.&nbsp; I do nothing now, but try to
possess my soul in peace, and continue to possess my body on any
terms.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Calistoga</i>, <i>Napa
County</i>, <i>California</i>.</p>
<p>All which is a fortnight old and not much to the point
nowadays.&nbsp; Here we are, Fanny and I, and a certain hound, in
a lovely valley under Mount Saint Helena, looking around, or
rather wondering when we shall begin to look around, for a house
of our own.&nbsp; I have received the first sheets of the
<i>Amateur Emigrant</i>; not yet the second bunch, as
announced.&nbsp; It is a pretty heavy, emphatic piece of
pedantry; but I don&rsquo;t care; the public, I verily believe,
will like it.&nbsp; I have excised all you proposed and more on
my own movement.&nbsp; But I have not yet been able to rewrite
the two special pieces which, as you said, so badly wanted it; it
is hard work to rewrite passages in proof; and the easiest work
is still hard to me.&nbsp; But I am certainly recovering fast; a
married and convalescent being.</p>
<p><a name="page176"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
176</span>Received James&rsquo;s <i>Hawthorne</i>, on which I
meditate a blast, Miss Bird, Dixon&rsquo;s <i>Penn</i>, a
<i>wrong Cornhill</i> (like my luck) and <i>Coquelin</i>: for all
which, and especially the last, I tender my best thanks.&nbsp; I
have opened only James; it is very clever, very well written, and
out of sight the most inside-out thing in the world; I have dug
up the hatchet; a scalp shall flutter at my belt ere long.&nbsp;
I think my new book should be good; it will contain our
adventures for the summer, so far as these are worth narrating;
and I have already a few pages of diary which should make up
bright.&nbsp; I am going to repeat my old experiment, after
buckling-to a while to write more correctly, lie down and have a
wallow.&nbsp; Whether I shall get any of my novels done this
summer I do not know; I wish to finish the <i>Vendetta</i> first,
for it really could not come after <i>Prince Otto</i>.&nbsp;
Lewis Campbell has made some noble work in that Agamemnon; it
surprised me.&nbsp; We hope to get a house at Silverado, a
deserted mining-camp eight miles up the mountain, now solely
inhabited by a mighty hunter answering to the name of Rufe
Hansome, who slew last year a hundred and fifty deer.&nbsp; This
is the motto I propose for the new volume: &lsquo;<i>Vixerunt
nonnulli in agris</i>, <i>delectati re sua familiari</i>.&nbsp;
<i>His idem propositum fuit quod regibus</i>, <i>ut ne qua re
egerent</i>, <i>ne cui parerent</i>, <i>libertate uterentur</i>;
<i>cujus proprium est sic vivere ut velis</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp; I
always have a terror lest the wish should have been father to the
translation, when I come to quote; but that seems too plain
sailing.&nbsp; I should put <i>regibus</i> in capitals for the
pleasantry&rsquo;s sake.&nbsp; We are in the Coast Range, that
being so much cheaper to reach; the family, I hope, will soon
follow.&mdash;Love to all, ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h2><a name="page177"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 177</span>V<br
/>
ALPINE WINTERS<br />
AND HIGHLAND SUMMERS,<br />
<span class="GutSmall">AUGUST 1880&ndash;OCTOBER 1882</span></h2>
<h3><a name="page185"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
185</span><span class="smcap">to A. G. Dew-Smith</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Hotel Belvedere</i>,
<i>Davos</i>, <i>November</i> 1880.]</p>
<p class="poetry">Figure me to yourself, I pray&mdash;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; A man of my peculiar cut&mdash;<br />
Apart from dancing and deray, <a name="citation185"></a><a
href="#footnote185" class="citation">[185]</a><br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Into an Alpine valley shut;</p>
<p class="poetry">Shut in a kind of damned Hotel,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Discountenanced by God and man;<br />
The food?&mdash;Sir, you would do as well<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; To cram your belly full of bran.</p>
<p class="poetry">The company?&nbsp; Alas, the day<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; That I should dwell with such a crew,<br />
With devil anything to say,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Nor any one to say it to!</p>
<p class="poetry">The place?&nbsp; Although they call it
Platz,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; I will be bold and state my view;<br />
It&rsquo;s not a place at all&mdash;and that&rsquo;s<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; The bottom verity, my Dew.</p>
<p class="poetry">There are, as I will not deny,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Innumerable inns; a road;<br />
Several Alps indifferent high;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; The snow&rsquo;s inviolable abode;</p>
<p class="poetry">Eleven English parsons, all<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Entirely inoffensive; four<br />
True human beings&mdash;what I call<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Human&mdash;the deuce a cipher more;</p>
<p class="poetry">A climate of surprising worth;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Innumerable dogs that bark;<br />
Some air, some weather, and some earth;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; A native race&mdash;God save the mark!&mdash;</p>
<p class="poetry">A race that works, yet cannot work,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Yodels, but cannot yodel right,<br />
Such as, unhelp&rsquo;d, with rusty dirk,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; I vow that I could wholly smite.</p>
<p class="poetry">A river that from morn to night<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Down all the valley plays the fool;<br />
Not once she pauses in her flight,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Nor knows the comfort of a pool;</p>
<p class="poetry">But still keeps up, by straight or bend,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; The selfsame pace she hath begun&mdash;<br />
Still hurry, hurry, to the end&mdash;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Good God, is that the way to run?</p>
<p class="poetry">If I a river were, I hope<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; That I should better realise<br />
The opportunities and scope<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Of that romantic enterprise.</p>
<p class="poetry">I should not ape the merely strange,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; But aim besides at the divine;<br />
And continuity and change<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; I still should labour to combine.</p>
<p class="poetry">Here should I gallop down the race,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Here charge the sterling <a
name="citation186"></a><a href="#footnote186"
class="citation">[186]</a> like a bull;<br />
There, as a man might wipe his face,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Lie, pleased and panting, in a pool.</p>
<p class="poetry">But what, my Dew, in idle mood,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; What prate I, minding not my debt?<br />
What do I talk of bad or good?<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; The best is still a cigarette.</p>
<p class="poetry"><a name="page187"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
187</span>Me whether evil fate assault,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Or smiling providences crown&mdash;<br />
Whether on high the eternal vault<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Be blue, or crash with thunder down&mdash;</p>
<p class="poetry">I judge the best, whate&rsquo;er befall,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Is still to sit on one&rsquo;s behind,<br />
And, having duly moistened all,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Smoke with an unperturb&egrave;d mind.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Hotel Belvedere</i>],
<i>Davos</i>, <i>December</i> 12 [1880].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR FATHER</span>,&mdash;Here is
the scheme as well as I can foresee.&nbsp; I begin the book
immediately after the &rsquo;15, as then began the attempt to
suppress the Highlands.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">I. <span class="smcap">Thirty
Years&rsquo; Interval</span></p>
<p class="gutindent">(1) Rob Roy.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(2) The Independent Companies: the
Watches.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(3) Story of Lady Grange.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(4) The Military Roads, and Disarmament:
Wade and</p>
<p class="gutindent">(5) Burt.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">II. <span class="smcap">The Heroic
Age</span></p>
<p class="gutindent">(1) Duncan Forbes of Culloden.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(2) Flora Macdonald.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(3) The Forfeited Estates; including
Hereditary Jurisdictions; and the admirable conduct of the
tenants.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page188"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 188</span>III. <span class="smcap">Literature
Here Intervenes</span></p>
<p class="gutindent">(1) The Ossianic Controversy.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(2) Boswell and Johnson.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(3) Mrs. Grant of Laggan.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">IV. <span
class="smcap">Economy</span></p>
<p class="gutindent">(1) Highland Economics.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(2) The Reinstatement of the
Proprietors.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(3) The Evictions.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(4) Emigration.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(5) Present State.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">V. <span
class="smcap">Religion</span></p>
<p class="gutindent">(1) The Catholics, Episcopals, and Kirk, and
Soc. Prop. Christ. Knowledge.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(2) The Men.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(3) The Disruption.</p>
<p>All this, of course, will greatly change in form, scope, and
order; this is just a bird&rsquo;s-eye glance.&nbsp; Thank you
for <i>Burt</i>, which came, and for your Union notes.&nbsp; I
have read one-half (about 900 pages) of Wodrow&rsquo;s
<i>Correspondence</i>, with some improvement, but great
fatigue.&nbsp; The doctor thinks well of my recovery, which puts
me in good hope for the future.&nbsp; I should certainly be able
to make a fine history of this.</p>
<p>My Essays are going through the press, and should be out in
January or February.&mdash;Ever affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Hotel Belvedere</i>, <i>Davos
Platz</i> [<i>Dec.</i> 6, 1880].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR WEG</span>,&mdash;I have many
letters that I ought to write in preference to this; but a duty
to letters and to <a name="page189"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
189</span>you prevails over any private consideration.&nbsp; You
are going to collect odes; I could not wish a better man to do
so; but I tremble lest you should commit two sins of
omission.&nbsp; You will not, I am sure, be so far left to
yourself as to give us no more of Dryden than the hackneyed St.
Cecilia; I know you will give us some others of those surprising
masterpieces where there is more sustained eloquence and harmony
of English numbers than in all that has been written since; there
is a machine about a poetical young lady, and another about
either Charles or James, I know not which; and they are both
indescribably fine.&nbsp; (Is Marvell&rsquo;s Horatian Ode good
enough?&nbsp; I half think so.)&nbsp; But my great point is a
fear that you are one of those who are unjust to our old
Tennyson&rsquo;s Duke of Wellington.&nbsp; I have just been
talking it over with Symonds; and we agreed that whether for its
metrical effects, for its brief, plain, stirring words of
portraiture, as&mdash;he &lsquo;that never lost an English
gun,&rsquo; or&mdash;the soldier salute; or for the heroic
apostrophe to Nelson; that ode has never been surpassed in any
tongue or time.&nbsp; Grant me the Duke, O Weg!&nbsp; I suppose
you must not put in yours about the warship; you will have to
admit worse ones, however.&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Hotel Belvedere</i>],
<i>Davos</i>, <i>Dec.</i> 19, 1880.</p>
<p>This letter is a report of a long sederunt, also steterunt in
small committee at Davos Platz, Dec. 15, 1880.</p>
<p>Its results are unhesitatingly shot at your head.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR WEG</span>,&mdash;We both
insist on the Duke of Wellington.&nbsp; Really it cannot be left
out.&nbsp; Symonds said you would cover yourself with shame, and
I add, your friends with confusion, if you leave it out.&nbsp;
Really, you know it is the only thing you have, since Dryden,
where that irregular odic, odal, odous (?) verse is used with
mastery <a name="page190"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
190</span>and sense.&nbsp; And it&rsquo;s one of our few English
blood-boilers.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(2) Byron: if anything:
<i>Prometheus</i>.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(3) Shelley (1) <i>The world&rsquo;s great
age</i> from Hellas; we are both dead on.&nbsp; After that you
have, of course, <i>The West Wind</i> thing.&nbsp; But we think
(1) would maybe be enough; no more than two any way.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(4) Herrick.&nbsp; <i>Meddowes</i> and
<i>Come</i>, <i>my Corinna</i>.&nbsp; After that <i>Mr.
Wickes</i>: two any way.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(5) Leave out stanza 3rd of Congreve&rsquo;s
thing, like a dear; we can&rsquo;t stand the &lsquo;sigh&rsquo;
nor the &lsquo;peruke.&rsquo;</p>
<p class="gutindent">(6) Milton.&nbsp; <i>Time</i> and the
<i>Solemn Music</i>.&nbsp; We both agree we would rather go
without L&rsquo;Allegro and Il Penseroso than these; for the
reason that these are not so well known to the brutish herd.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(7) Is the <i>Royal George</i> an ode, or
only an elegy?&nbsp; It&rsquo;s so good.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(8) We leave Campbell to you.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(9) If you take anything from Clough, but we
don&rsquo;t either of us fancy you will, let it be <i>Come
back</i>.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(10) Quite right about Dryden.&nbsp; I had a
hankering after <i>Threnodia Augustalis</i>; but I find it long
and with very prosaic holes: though, O! what fine stuff between
whiles.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(11) Right with Collins.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(12) Right about Pope&rsquo;s Ode.&nbsp; But
what can you give?&nbsp; <i>The Dying Christian</i>? or one of
his inimitable courtesies?&nbsp; These last are fairly odes, by
the Horatian model, just as my dear <i>Meddowes</i> is an ode in
the name and for the sake of Bandusia.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(13) Whatever you do, you&rsquo;ll give us
the Greek Vase.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(14) Do you like Jonson&rsquo;s
&lsquo;loath&egrave;d stage&rsquo;?&nbsp; Verses 2, 3, and 4 are
so bad, also the last line.&nbsp; But there is a fine movement
and feeling in the rest.</p>
<p>We will have the Duke of Wellington by God.&nbsp; Pro Symonds
and Stevenson.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><a name="page191"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
191</span><span class="smcap">to Charles Warren
Stoddard</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Hotel Belvedere</i>, <i>Davos
Platz</i>, <i>Switzerland</i> [<i>December</i> 1880].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR CHARLES WARREN
STODDARD</span>,&mdash;Many thanks to you for the letter and the
photograph.&nbsp; Will you think it mean if I ask you to wait
till there appears a promised cheap edition?&nbsp; Possibly the
canny Scot does feel pleasure in the superior cheapness; but the
true reason is this, that I think to put a few words, by way of
notes, to each book in its new form, because that will be the
Standard Edition, without which no g.&rsquo;s l. <a
name="citation191"></a><a href="#footnote191"
class="citation">[191]</a> will be complete.&nbsp; The edition,
briefly, <i>sine qua non</i>.&nbsp; Before that, I shall hope to
send you my essays, which are in the printer&rsquo;s hands.&nbsp;
I look to get yours soon.&nbsp; I am sorry to hear that the
Custom House has proved fallible, like all other human houses and
customs.&nbsp; Life consists of that sort of business, and I fear
that there is a class of man, of which you offer no inapt type,
doomed to a kind of mild, general disappointment through
life.&nbsp; I do not believe that a man is the more unhappy for
that.&nbsp; Disappointment, except with one&rsquo;s self, is not
a very capital affair; and the sham beatitude, &lsquo;Blessed is
he that expecteth little,&rsquo; one of the truest, and in a
sense, the most Christlike things in literature.</p>
<p>Alongside of you, I have been all my days a red cannon ball of
dissipated effort; here I am by the heels in this Alpine valley,
with just so much of a prospect of future restoration as shall
make my present caged estate easily tolerable to me&mdash;shall
or should, I would not swear to the word before the trial&rsquo;s
done.&nbsp; I miss all my objects <a name="page192"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 192</span>in the meantime; and, thank God, I
have enough of my old, and maybe somewhat base philosophy, to
keep me on a good understanding with myself and Providence.</p>
<p>The mere extent of a man&rsquo;s travels has in it something
consolatory.&nbsp; That he should have left friends and enemies
in many different and distant quarters gives a sort of earthly
dignity to his existence.&nbsp; And I think the better of myself
for the belief that I have left some in California interested in
me and my successes.&nbsp; Let me assure you, you who have made
friends already among such various and distant races, that there
is a certain phthisical Scot who will always be pleased to hear
good news of you, and would be better pleased by nothing than to
learn that you had thrown off your present incubus, largely
consisting of letters I believe, and had sailed into some square
work by way of change.</p>
<p>And by way of change in itself, let me copy on the other pages
some broad Scotch I wrote for you when I was ill last spring in
Oakland.&nbsp; It is no muckle worth: but ye should na look a
gien horse in the moo&rsquo;.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas
Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>December</i> 21, 1880.&nbsp;
<i>Davos</i>.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR PEOPLE</span>,&mdash;I do not
understand these reproaches.&nbsp; The letters come between seven
and nine in the evening; and every one about the books was
answered that same night, and the answer left Davos by seven
o&rsquo;clock next morning.&nbsp; Perhaps the snow delayed then;
if so, &rsquo;tis a good hint to you not to be uneasy at apparent
silences.&nbsp; There is no hurry about my father&rsquo;s notes;
I <a name="page193"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 193</span>shall
not be writing anything till I get home again, I believe.&nbsp;
Only I want to be able to keep reading <i>ad hoc</i> all winter,
as it seems about all I shall be fit for.&nbsp; About John Brown,
I have been breaking my heart to finish a Scotch poem to
him.&nbsp; Some of it is not really bad, but the rest will not
come, and I mean to get it right before I do anything else.</p>
<p>The bazaar is over, &pound;160 gained, and everybody&rsquo;s
health lost: altogether, I never had a more uncomfortable time;
apply to Fanny for further details of the discomfort.</p>
<p>We have our Wogg in somewhat better trim now, and vastly
better spirits.&nbsp; The weather has been bad&mdash;for Davos,
but indeed it is a wonderful climate.&nbsp; It never feels cold;
yesterday, with a little, chill, small, northerly draught, for
the first time, it was pinching.&nbsp; Usually, it may freeze, or
snow, or do what it pleases, you feel it not, or hardly any.</p>
<p>Thanks for your notes; that fishery question will come in, as
you notice, in the Highland Book, as well as under the Union; it
is very important.&nbsp; I hear no word of Hugh Miller&rsquo;s
<i>Evictions</i>; I count on that.&nbsp; What you say about the
old and new Statistical is odd.&nbsp; It seems to me very much as
if I were gingerly embarking on a <i>History of Modern
Scotland</i>.&nbsp; Probably Tulloch will never carry it
out.&nbsp; And, you see, once I have studied and written these
two vols., <i>The Transformation of the Scottish</i>
<i>Highlands</i> and <i>Scotland and the Union</i>, I shall have
a good ground to go upon.&nbsp; The effect on my mind of what I
have read has been to awaken a livelier sympathy for the Irish;
although they never had the remarkable virtues, I fear they have
suffered many of the injustices, of the Scottish
Highlanders.&nbsp; Ruedi has seen me this morning; he says the
disease is at a standstill, and I am to profit by it to take more
exercise.&nbsp; Altogether, he seemed quite hopeful and
pleased.&mdash;I am your ever affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L S.</p>
<h3><a name="page194"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
194</span><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Hotel Belvedere</i>,
<i>Davos</i>, Christmas 1880.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;Thanks for
yours; I waited, as said I would.&nbsp; I now expect no answer
from you, regarding you as a mere dumb cock-shy, or a target, at
which we fire our arrows diligently all day long, with no
anticipation it will bring them back to us.&nbsp; We are both
sadly mortified you are not coming, but health comes first; alas,
that man should be so crazy.&nbsp; What fun we could have, if we
were all well, what work we could do, what a happy place we could
make it for each other!&nbsp; If I were able to do what I want;
but then I am not, and may leave that vein.</p>
<p>No.&nbsp; I do not think I shall require to know the Gaelic;
few things are written in that language, or ever were; if you
come to that, the number of those who could write, or even read
it, through almost all my period, must, by all accounts, have
been incredibly small.&nbsp; Of course, until the book is done, I
must live as much as possible in the Highlands, and that suits my
book as to health.&nbsp; It is a most interesting and sad story,
and from the &rsquo;45 it is all to be written for the first
time.&nbsp; This, of course, will cause me a far greater
difficulty about authorities; but I have already learned much,
and where to look for more.&nbsp; One pleasant feature is the
vast number of delightful writers I shall have to deal with:
Burt, Johnson, Boswell, Mrs. Grant of Laggan, Scott.&nbsp; There
will be interesting sections on the Ossianic controversy and the
growth of the taste for Highland scenery.&nbsp; I have to touch
upon Rob Roy, Flora Macdonald, the strange story of Lady Grange,
the beautiful story of the tenants on the Forfeited Estates, and
the odd, inhuman problem of the great evictions.&nbsp; The
religious conditions are wild, unknown, very surprising.&nbsp;
And three out of my five parts remain hitherto entirely
unwritten.&nbsp; Smack!&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><a name="page195"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
195</span><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas
Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: center"><i>Christmas Sermon</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Hotel Belvedere</i>,
<i>Davos</i>, <i>December</i> 26, 1880.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,&mdash;I was very
tired yesterday and could not write; tobogganed so furiously all
morning; we had a delightful day, crowned by an incredible
dinner&mdash;more courses than I have fingers on my hands.&nbsp;
Your letter arrived duly at night, and I thank you for it as I
should.&nbsp; You need not suppose I am at all insensible to my
father&rsquo;s extraordinary kindness about this book; he is a
brick; I vote for him freely.</p>
<p>. . . The assurance you speak of is what we all ought to have,
and might have, and should not consent to live without.&nbsp;
That people do not have it more than they do is, I believe,
because persons speak so much in large-drawn, theological
similitudes, and won&rsquo;t say out what they mean about life,
and man, and God, in fair and square human language.&nbsp; I
wonder if you or my father ever thought of the obscurities that
lie upon human duty from the negative form in which the Ten
Commandments are stated, or of how Christ was so continually
substituting affirmations.&nbsp; &lsquo;Thou shalt not&rsquo; is
but an example; &lsquo;Thou shalt&rsquo; is the law of God.&nbsp;
It was this that seems meant in the phrase that &lsquo;not one
jot nor tittle of the law should pass.&rsquo;&nbsp; But what led
me to the remark is this: A kind of black, angry look goes with
that statement of the law of negatives.&nbsp; &lsquo;To love
one&rsquo;s neighbour as oneself&rsquo; is certainly much harder,
but states life so much more actively, gladly, and kindly, that
you begin to see some pleasure in it; and till you can see
pleasure in these hard choices and bitter necessities, where is
there any Good News to men?&nbsp; It is much more important to do
right than not to do wrong; further, the one is possible, the
other has always been and will ever be impossible; and the
faithful <i>design to do right</i> is <a name="page196"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 196</span>accepted by God; that seems to me to
be the Gospel, and that was how Christ delivered us from the
Law.&nbsp; After people are told that, surely they might hear
more encouraging sermons.&nbsp; To blow the trumpet for good
would seem the Parson&rsquo;s business; and since it is not in
our own strength, but by faith and perseverance (no account made
of slips), that we are to run the race, I do not see where they
get the material for their gloomy discourses.&nbsp; Faith is not
to believe the Bible, but to believe in God; if you believe in
God (or, for it&rsquo;s the same thing, have that assurance you
speak about), where is there any more room for terror?&nbsp;
There are only three possible attitudes&mdash;Optimism, which has
gone to smash; Pessimism, which is on the rising hand, and very
popular with many clergymen who seem to think they are
Christians.&nbsp; And this Faith, which is the Gospel.&nbsp; Once
you hold the last, it is your business (1) to find out what is
right in any given case, and (2) to try to do it; if you fail in
the last, that is by commission, Christ tells you to hope; if you
fail in the first, that is by omission, his picture of the last
day gives you but a black lookout.&nbsp; The whole necessary
morality is kindness; and it should spring, of itself, from the
one fundamental doctrine, Faith.&nbsp; If you are sure that God,
in the long run, means kindness by you, you should be happy; and
if happy, surely you should be kind.</p>
<p>I beg your pardon for this long discourse; it is not all
right, of course, but I am sure there is something in it.&nbsp;
One thing I have not got clearly; that about the omission and the
commission; but there is truth somewhere about it, and I have no
time to clear it just now.&nbsp; Do you know, you have had about
a Cornhill page of sermon?&nbsp; It is, however, true.</p>
<p>Lloyd heard with dismay Fanny was not going to give me a
present; so F. and I had to go and buy things for ourselves, and
go through a representation of surprise when they were presented
next morning.&nbsp; It gave us <a name="page197"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 197</span>both quite a Santa Claus feeling on
Xmas Eve to see him so excited and hopeful; I enjoyed it
hugely.&mdash;Your affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Hotel Belvedere</i>,
<i>Davos</i>, <i>Spring</i> 1881.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>.&mdash;My health
is not just what it should be; I have lost weight, pulse,
respiration, etc., and gained nothing in the way of my old
bellows.&nbsp; But these last few days, with tonic, cod-liver
oil, better wine (there is some better now), and perpetual
beef-tea, I think I have progressed.&nbsp; To say truth, I have
been here a little over long.&nbsp; I was reckoning up, and since
I have known you, already quite a while, I have not, I believe,
remained so long in any one place as here in Davos.&nbsp; That
tells on my old gipsy nature; like a violin hung up, I begin to
lose what music there was in me; and with the music, I do not
know what besides, or do not know what to call it, but something
radically part of life, a rhythm, perhaps, in one&rsquo;s old and
so brutally over-ridden nerves, or perhaps a kind of variety of
blood that the heart has come to look for.</p>
<p>I purposely knocked myself off first.&nbsp; As to F. A. S., I
believe I am no sound authority; I alternate between a stiff
disregard and a kind of horror.&nbsp; In neither mood can a man
judge at all.&nbsp; I know the thing to be terribly perilous, I
fear it to be now altogether <a name="page198"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 198</span>hopeless.&nbsp; Luck has failed; the
weather has not been favourable; and in her true heart, the
mother hopes no more.&nbsp; But&mdash;well, I feel a great deal,
that I either cannot or will not say, as you well know.&nbsp; It
has helped to make me more conscious of the wolverine on my own
shoulders, and that also makes me a poor judge and poor
adviser.&nbsp; Perhaps, if we were all marched out in a row, and
a piece of platoon firing to the drums performed, it would be
well for us; although, I suppose&mdash;and yet I wonder!&mdash;so
ill for the poor mother and for the dear wife.&nbsp; But you can
see this makes me morbid.&nbsp; <i>Sufficit</i>;
<i>explicit</i>.</p>
<p>You are right about the Carlyle book; F. and I are in a world
not ours; but pardon me, as far as sending on goes, we take
another view: the first volume, <i>&agrave; la bonne</i>
<i>heure</i>! but not&mdash;never&mdash;the second.&nbsp; Two
hours of hysterics can be no good matter for a sick nurse, and
the strange, hard, old being in so lamentable and yet human a
desolation&mdash;crying out like a burnt child, and yet always
wisely and beautifully&mdash;how can that end, as a piece of
reading, even to the strong&mdash;but on the brink of the most
cruel kind of weeping?&nbsp; I observe the old man&rsquo;s style
is stronger on me than ever it was, and by rights, too, since I
have just laid down his most attaching book.&nbsp; God rest the
baith o&rsquo; them!&nbsp; But even if they do not meet again,
how we should all be strengthened to be kind, and not only in
act, in speech also, that so much more important part.&nbsp; See
what this apostle of silence most regrets, not speaking out his
heart.</p>
<p>I was struck as you were by the admirable, sudden, clear
sunshine upon Southey&mdash;even on his works.&nbsp; Symonds, to
whom I repeated it, remarked at once, a man who was thus
respected by both Carlyle and Landor must have had more in him
than we can trace.&nbsp; So I feel with true humility.</p>
<p>It was to save my brain that Symonds proposed reviewing.&nbsp;
He and, it appears, Leslie Stephen fear a little <a
name="page199"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 199</span>some
eclipse; I am not quite without sharing the fear.&nbsp; I know my
own languor as no one else does; it is a dead down-draught, a
heavy fardel.&nbsp; Yet if I could shake off the wolverine
aforesaid, and his fangs are lighter, though perhaps I feel them
more, I believe I could be myself again a while.&nbsp; I have not
written any letter for a great time; none saying what I feel,
since you were here, I fancy.&nbsp; Be duly obliged for it, and
take my most earnest thanks not only for the books but for your
letter.&nbsp; Your affectionate,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<p>The effect of reading this on Fanny shows me I must tell you I
am very happy, peaceful, and jolly, except for questions of work
and the states of other people.</p>
<p>Woggin sends his love.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Horatio F. Brown</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Davos</i>, 1881.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BROWN</span>.&mdash;Here it is,
with the mark of a San Francisco <i>bouquiniste</i>.&nbsp; And if
ever in all my &lsquo;human conduct&rsquo; I have done a better
thing to any fellow-creature than handing on to you this sweet,
dignified, and wholesome book, I know I shall hear of it on the
last day.&nbsp; To write a book like this were impossible; at
least one can hand it on&mdash;with a wrench&mdash;one to
another.&nbsp; My wife cries out and my own heart misgives me,
but still here it is.&nbsp; I could scarcely better prove
myself&mdash;Yours affectionately,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><a name="page200"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
200</span><span class="smcap">to Horatio F. Brown</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Davos</i>, 1881.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BROWN</span>.&mdash;I hope, if
you get thus far, you will know what an invaluable present I have
made you.&nbsp; Even the copy was dear to me, printed in the
colony that Penn established, and carried in my pocket all about
the San Francisco streets, read in street cars and ferry-boats,
when I was sick unto death, and found in all times and places a
peaceful and sweet companion.&nbsp; But I hope, when you shall
have reached this note, my gift will not have been in vain; for
while just now we are so busy and intelligent, there is not the
man living, no, nor recently dead, that could put, with so lovely
a spirit, so much honest, kind wisdom into words.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Horatio F. Brown</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Hotel Belvedere</i>,
<i>Davos</i>, <i>Spring</i> 1881.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BROWN</span>,&mdash;Nine years
I have conded them.</p>
<p class="poetry">Brave lads in olden musical centuries<br />
Sang, night by night, adorable choruses,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sat late by alehouse doors in
April<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Chaunting in joy as the moon was
rising:</p>
<p class="poetry">Moon-seen and merry, under the trellises,<br />
Flush-faced they played with old polysyllables;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Spring scents inspired, old wine
diluted;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Love and Apollo were there to
chorus.</p>
<p class="poetry">Now these, the songs, remain to eternity,<br />
Those, only those, the bountiful choristers<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Gone&mdash;those are gone, those
unremembered<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sleep and are silent in earth for
ever.</p>
<p class="poetry"><a name="page201"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
201</span>So man himself appears and evanishes,<br />
So smiles and goes; as wanderers halting at<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Some green-embowered house, play
their music,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Play and are gone on the windy
highway;</p>
<p class="poetry">Yet dwells the strain enshrined in the
memory<br />
Long after they departed eternally,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Forth-faring tow&rsquo;rd far
mountain summits,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Cities of men on the sounding
Ocean.</p>
<p class="poetry">Youth sang the song in years immemorial;<br />
Brave chanticleer, he sang and was beautiful;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Bird-haunted, green tree-tops in
springtime<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Heard and were pleased by the
voice of singing;</p>
<p class="poetry">Youth goes, and leaves behind him a
prodigy&mdash;<br />
Songs sent by thee afar from Venetian<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sea-grey lagunes, sea-paven
highways,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Dear to me here in my Alpine
exile.</p>
<p>Please, my dear Brown, forgive my horrid delay.&nbsp; Symonds
overworked and knocked up.&nbsp; I off my sleep; my wife gone to
Paris.&nbsp; Weather lovely.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p>Monte Generoso in May; here, I think, till the end of April;
write again, to prove you are forgiving.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas
Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Hotel du Pavillon Henry
IV.</i>,<br />
<i>St. Germain-en-Laye</i>, <i>Sunday</i>, <i>May</i> 1<i>st</i>,
1881.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR PEOPLE</span>,&mdash;A week in
Paris reduced me to the limpness and lack of appetite peculiar to
a kid glove, and gave Fanny a jumping sore throat.&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s my belief there is death in the kettle there; a
pestilence or the like.&nbsp; We came out here, pitched on the
<i>Star</i> and <i>Garter</i> (they call <a
name="page202"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 202</span>it
Somebody&rsquo;s pavilion), found the place a bed of lilacs and
nightingales (first time I ever heard one), and also of a bird
called the <i>piasseur</i>, cheerfulest of sylvan creatures, an
ideal comic opera in itself.&nbsp; &lsquo;Come along, what fun,
here&rsquo;s Pan in the next glade at picnic, and
this-yer&rsquo;s Arcadia, and it&rsquo;s awful fun, and
I&rsquo;ve had a glass, I will not deny, but not to see it on
me,&rsquo; that is his meaning as near as I can gather.&nbsp;
Well, the place (forest of beeches all new-fledged, grass like
velvet, fleets of hyacinth) pleased us and did us good.&nbsp; We
tried all ways to find a cheaper place, but could find nothing
safe; cold, damp, brick-floored rooms and sich; we could not
leave Paris till your seven days&rsquo; sight on draft expired;
we dared not go back to be miasmatised in these homes of
putridity; so here we are till Tuesday in the <i>Star and
Garter</i>.&nbsp; My throat is quite cured, appetite and strength
on the mend.&nbsp; Fanny seems also picking up.</p>
<p>If we are to come to Scotland, I <i>will</i> have fir-trees,
and I want a burn, the firs for my physical, the water for my
moral health.&mdash;Ever affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Pitlochry</i>, <i>Perthshire</i>,
<i>June</i> 6, 1881.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR WEG</span>,&mdash;Here I am in
my native land, being gently blown and hailed upon, and sitting
nearer and nearer to the fire.&nbsp; A cottage near a moor is
soon to receive our human forms; it is also near a burn to which
Professor Blackie (no less!) has written some verses in his hot
old age, and near a farm from whence we shall draw cream and
fatness.&nbsp; Should I be moved to join Blackie, <a
name="page203"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 203</span>I shall go
upon my knees and pray hard against temptation; although, since
the new Version, I do not know the proper form of words.&nbsp;
The swollen, childish, and pedantic vanity that moved the said
revisers to put &lsquo;bring&rsquo; for &lsquo;lead,&rsquo; is a
sort of literary fault that calls for an eternal hell; it may be
quite a small place, a star of the least magnitude, and shabbily
furnished; there shall &mdash;, &mdash;, the revisers of the
Bible and other absolutely loathsome literary lepers, dwell among
broken pens, bad, <i>groundy</i> ink and ruled blotting-paper
made in France&mdash;all eagerly burning to write, and all
inflicted with incurable aphasia.&nbsp; I should not have thought
upon that torture had I not suffered it in moderation myself, but
it is too horrid even for a hell; let&rsquo;s let &rsquo;em off
with an eternal toothache.</p>
<p>All this talk is partly to persuade you that I write to you
out of good feeling only, which is not the case.&nbsp; I am a
beggar: ask Dobson, Saintsbury, yourself, and any other of these
cheeses who know something of the eighteenth century, what became
of Jean Cavalier between his coming to England and his death in
1740.&nbsp; Is anything interesting known about him?&nbsp; Whom
did he marry?&nbsp; The happy French, smilingly following one
another in a long procession headed by the loud and empty
Napoleon Peyrat, say, Olympe Dunoyer, Voltaire&rsquo;s old
flame.&nbsp; Vacquerie even thinks that they were rivals, and is
very French and very literary and very silly in his
comments.&nbsp; Now I may almost say it consists with my
knowledge that all this has not a shadow to rest upon.&nbsp; It
is very odd and very annoying; I have splendid materials for
Cavalier till he comes to my own country; and there, though he
continues to advance in the service, he becomes entirely
invisible to me.&nbsp; Any information about him will be greatly
welcome: I may mention that I know as much as I desire about the
other prophets, Marion, Fage, Cavalier (de Sonne), my
Cavalier&rsquo;s cousin, the unhappy Lions, and the idiotic Mr.
Lacy; so if any erudite starts upon that track, you may choke him
off.&nbsp; If you can find <a name="page204"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 204</span>aught for me, or if you will but
try, count on my undying gratitude.&nbsp; Lang&rsquo;s
&lsquo;Library&rsquo; is very pleasant reading.</p>
<p>My book will reach you soon, for I write about it
to-day&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Kinnaird Cottage</i>,
<i>Pitlochry</i>, <i>Perthshire</i>, <i>June</i> 1881.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;<i>The
Black Man and Other Tales</i>.</p>
<p class="gutindent">The Black Man:</p>
<p class="gutindent"><span class="GutSmall">I</span>. Thrawn
Janet.</p>
<p class="gutindent"><span class="GutSmall">II</span>. The Devil
on Cramond Sands.</p>
<p class="gutindent">The Shadow on the Bed.</p>
<p class="gutindent">The Body Snatchers.</p>
<p class="gutindent">The Case Bottle.</p>
<p class="gutindent">The King&rsquo;s Horn.</p>
<p class="gutindent">The Actor&rsquo;s Wife.</p>
<p class="gutindent">The Wreck of the <i>Susanna</i>.</p>
<p>This is the new work on which I am engaged with Fanny; they
are all supernatural.&nbsp; &lsquo;Thrawn Janet&rsquo; is off to
Stephen, but as it is all in Scotch he cannot take it, I
know.&nbsp; It was <i>so good</i>, I could not help sending
it.&nbsp; My health improves.&nbsp; We have a lovely spot here: a
little green glen with a burn, a wonderful burn, gold and green
and snow-white, singing loud and low in different steps of its
career, now pouring over miniature crags, now fretting itself to
death in a maze of rocky stairs and pots; never was so sweet a
little river.&nbsp; Behind, great purple moorlands reaching to
Ben Vrackie.&nbsp; Hunger lives here, alone with larks and
sheep.&nbsp; Sweet spot, sweet spot.</p>
<p>Write me a word about Bob&rsquo;s professoriate and Landor,
and what you think of <i>The Black Man</i>.&nbsp; The <a
name="page205"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 205</span>tales are
all ghastly.&nbsp; &lsquo;Thrawn Janet&rsquo; frightened me to
death.&nbsp; There will maybe be another&mdash;&lsquo;The Dead
Man&rsquo;s A Letter.&rsquo;&nbsp; I believe I shall recover; and
I am, in this blessed hope, yours exuberantly,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Professor &AElig;neas
Mackay</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Kinnaird Cottage</i>,
<i>Pitlochry</i>, <i>Wednesday</i>, <i>June</i> 21, 1881.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MACKAY</span>,&mdash;What is
this I hear?&mdash;that you are retiring from your chair.&nbsp;
It is not, I hope, from ill-health?</p>
<p>But if you are retiring, may I ask if you have promised your
support to any successor?&nbsp; I have a great mind to try.&nbsp;
The summer session would suit me; the chair would suit
me&mdash;if only I would suit it; I certainly should work it
hard: that I can promise.&nbsp; I only wish it were a few years
from now, when I hope to have something more substantial to show
for myself.&nbsp; Up to the present time, all that I have
published, even bordering on history, has been in an occasional
form, and I fear this is much against me.</p>
<p>Please let me hear a word in answer, and believe me, yours
very sincerely,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Professor &AElig;neas
Mackay</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Kinnaird Cottage</i>,
<i>Pitlochry</i>, <i>Perthshire</i> [<i>June</i> 1881].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MACKAY</span>,&mdash;Thank you
very much for your kind letter, and still more for your good
opinion.&nbsp; You are not the only one who has regretted my
absence from your lectures; but you were to me, then, only a part
of a mangle through which I was being slowly and unwillingly
dragged&mdash;part of a course which I had not chosen&mdash;part,
in a word, of an organised boredom.</p>
<p>I am glad to have your reasons for giving up the chair; <a
name="page206"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 206</span>they are
partly pleasant, and partly honourable to you.&nbsp; And I think
one may say that every man who publicly declines a plurality of
offices, makes it perceptibly more difficult for the next man to
accept them.</p>
<p>Every one tells me that I come too late upon the field, every
one being pledged, which, seeing it is yet too early for any one
to come upon the field, I must regard as a polite evasion.&nbsp;
Yet all advise me to stand, as it might serve me against the next
vacancy.&nbsp; So stand I shall, unless things are changed.&nbsp;
As it is, with my health this summer class is a great attraction;
it is perhaps the only hope I may have of a permanent
income.&nbsp; I had supposed the needs of the chair might be met
by choosing every year some period of history in which questions
of Constitutional Law were involved; but this is to look too far
forward.</p>
<p>I understand (1<i>st</i>) that no overt steps can be taken
till your resignation is accepted; and (2<i>nd</i>) that in the
meantime I may, without offence, mention my design to stand.</p>
<p>If I am mistaken about these, please correct me, as I do not
wish to appear where I should not.</p>
<p>Again thanking you very heartily for your coals of fire I
remain yours very sincerely,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Kinnaird Cottage</i>,
<i>Pitlochry</i>, <i>June</i> 24, 1881.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR GOSSE</span>,&mdash;I wonder if
I misdirected my last to you.&nbsp; I begin to fear it.&nbsp; I
hope, however, this will go right.&nbsp; I am in act to do a mad
thing&mdash;to stand for the Edinburgh Chair of History; it is
elected for by the advocates, <i>quorum pars</i>; I am told that
I am too late this year; but advised on all hands to go on, as it
is likely soon to be once more vacant; and I shall have done
myself good for the next time.&nbsp; Now, if I got the <a
name="page207"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 207</span>thing
(which I cannot, it appears), I believe, in spite of all my
imperfections, I could be decently effectual.&nbsp; If you can
think so also, do put it in a testimonial.</p>
<p>Heavens!&nbsp; <i>Je me sauve</i>, I have something else to
say to you, but after that (which is not a joke) I shall keep it
for another shoot.&mdash;Yours testimonially,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p>I surely need not add, dear lad, that if you don&rsquo;t feel
like it, you will only have to pacify me by a long letter on
general subjects, when I shall hasten to respond in recompense
for my assault upon the postal highway.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Kinnaird Cottage</i>,
<i>Pitlochry</i> [<i>July</i> 1881].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR WEG</span>,&mdash;Many thanks
for the testimonial; many thanks for your blind, wondering
letter; many wishes, lastly, for your swift recovery.&nbsp;
Insomnia is the opposite pole from my complaint; which brings
with it a nervous lethargy, an unkind, unwholesome, and ungentle
somnolence, fruitful in heavy heads and heavy eyes at
morning.&nbsp; You cannot sleep; well, I can best explain my
state thus: I cannot wake.&nbsp; Sleep, like the lees of a
posset, lingers all day, lead-heavy, in my knees and
ankles.&nbsp; Weight on the shoulders, torpor on the brain.&nbsp;
And there is more than too much of that from an ungrateful hound
who is now enjoying his first decently competent and peaceful
weeks for close upon two years; happy in a big brown moor behind
him, and an incomparable burn by his side; happy, above all, in
some work&mdash;for at last I am at work with that appetite and
confidence that alone makes work supportable.</p>
<p>I told you I had something else to say.&nbsp; I am very
tedious&mdash;it is another request.&nbsp; In August and a good
part of September we shall be in Braemar, in a house with some
accommodation.&nbsp; Now Braemar is a place <a
name="page208"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 208</span>patronised
by the royalty of the Sister Kingdoms&mdash;Victoria and the
Cairngorms, sir, honouring that countryside by their conjunct
presence.&nbsp; This seems to me the spot for A Bard.&nbsp; Now
can you come to see us for a little while?&nbsp; I can promise
you, you must like my father, because you are a human being; you
ought to like Braemar, because of your avocation; and you ought
to like me, because I like you; and again, you must like my wife,
because she likes cats; and as for my mother&mdash;well, come and
see, what do you think? that is best.&nbsp; Mrs. Gosse, my wife
tells me, will have other fish to fry; and to be plain, I should
not like to ask her till I had seen the house.&nbsp; But a lone
man I know we shall be equal to.&nbsp; <i>Qu&rsquo;en dis
tu</i>?&nbsp; <i>Viens</i>.&mdash;Yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to P. G. Hamerton</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Kinnaird Cottage</i>,
<i>Pitlochry</i> [<i>July</i> 1881].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MR.
HAMMERTON</span>,&mdash;(There goes the second M.; it is a
certainty.)&nbsp; Thank you for your prompt and kind answer,
little as I deserved it, though I hope to show you I was less
undeserving than I seemed.&nbsp; But just might I delete two
words in your testimonial?&nbsp; The two words &lsquo;and
legal&rsquo; were unfortunately winged by chance against my
weakest spot, and would go far to damn me.</p>
<p>It was not my bliss that I was interested in when I was
married; it was a sort of marriage <i>in extremis</i>; and if I
am where I am, it is thanks to the care of that lady who married
me when I was a mere complication of cough and bones, much fitter
for an emblem of mortality than a bridegroom.</p>
<p>I had a fair experience of that kind of illness when all the
women (God bless them!) turn round upon the streets and look
after you with a look that is only too kind not to be
cruel.&nbsp; I have had nearly two years of more or less
prostration.&nbsp; I have done no work whatever since the <a
name="page209"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 209</span>February
before last until quite of late.&nbsp; To be precise, until the
beginning of last month, exactly two essays.&nbsp; All last
winter I was at Davos; and indeed I am home here just now against
the doctor&rsquo;s orders, and must soon be back again to that
unkindly haunt &lsquo;upon the mountains
visitant&rsquo;&mdash;there goes no angel there but the angel of
death. <a name="citation209"></a><a href="#footnote209"
class="citation">[209]</a>&nbsp; The deaths of last winter are
still sore spots to me. . . . So, you see, I am not very likely
to go on a &lsquo;wild expedition,&rsquo; cis-Stygian at
least.&nbsp; The truth is, I am scarce justified in standing for
the chair, though I hope you will not mention this; and yet my
health is one of my reasons, for the class is in summer.</p>
<p>I hope this statement of my case will make my long neglect
appear less unkind.&nbsp; It was certainly not because I ever
forgot you, or your unwonted kindness; and it was not because I
was in any sense rioting in pleasures.</p>
<p>I am glad to hear the catamaran is on her legs again; you have
my warmest wishes for a good cruise down the Sa&ocirc;ne; and yet
there comes some envy to that wish, for when shall I go
cruising?&nbsp; Here a sheer hulk, alas! lies R. L. S.&nbsp; But
I will continue to hope for a better time, canoes that will sail
better to the wind, and a river grander than the Sa&ocirc;ne.</p>
<p>I heard, by the way, in a letter of counsel from a
well-wisher, one reason of my town&rsquo;s absurdity about the
chair of Art: I fear it is characteristic of her manners.&nbsp;
It was because you did not call upon the electors!</p>
<p>Will you remember me to Mrs. Hamerton and your son?&mdash;And
believe me, etc., etc.,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Kinnaird Cottage</i>,
<i>Pitlochry</i>, [<i>July</i> 1881].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;I do
believe I am better, mind and body; I am tired just now, for I
have just been up <a name="page210"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
210</span>the burn with Wogg, daily growing better and
boo&rsquo;f&rsquo;ler; so do not judge my state by my style in
this.&nbsp; I am working steady, four Cornhill pages scrolled
every day, besides the correspondence about this chair, which is
heavy in itself.&nbsp; My first story, &lsquo;Thrawn
Janet,&rsquo; all in Scotch, is accepted by Stephen; my second,
&lsquo;The Body Snatchers,&rsquo; is laid aside in a justifiable
disgust, the tale being horrid; my third, &lsquo;The Merry
Men,&rsquo; I am more than half through, and think real well
of.&nbsp; It is a fantastic sonata about the sea and wrecks; and
I like it much above all my other attempts at story-telling; I
think it is strange; if ever I shall make a hit, I have the line
now, as I believe.</p>
<p>Fanny has finished one of hers, &lsquo;The Shadow on the
Bed,&rsquo; and is now hammering at a second, for which we have
&lsquo;no name&rsquo; as yet&mdash;not by Wilkie Collins.</p>
<p><i>Tales for Winter Nights</i>.&nbsp; Yes, that, I think, we
will call the lot of them when republished.</p>
<p>Why have you not sent me a testimonial?&nbsp; Everybody else
but you has responded, and Symonds, but I&rsquo;m afraid
he&rsquo;s ill.&nbsp; Do think, too, if anybody else would write
me a testimonial.&nbsp; I am told quantity goes far.&nbsp; I have
good ones from Rev. Professor Campbell, Professor Meiklejohn,
Leslie Stephen, Lang, Gosse, and a very shaky one from
Hamerton.</p>
<p>Grant is an elector, so can&rsquo;t, but has written me
kindly.&nbsp; From Tulloch I have not yet heard.&nbsp; Do help me
with suggestions.&nbsp; This old chair, with its &pound;250 and
its light work, would make me.</p>
<p>It looks as if we should take Cater&rsquo;s chalet <a
name="citation210"></a><a href="#footnote210"
class="citation">[210]</a> after all; but O! to go back to that
place, it seems cruel.&nbsp; I have not yet received the Landor;
but it may be at home, detained by my mother, who returns
to-morrow.</p>
<p>Believe me, dear Colvin, ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<p>Yours came; the class is in summer; many thanks for the
testimonial, it is bully; arrived along with it another <a
name="page211"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 211</span>from
Symonds, also bully; he is ill, but not lungs, thank
God&mdash;fever got in Italy.&nbsp; We <i>have</i> taken
Cater&rsquo;s chalet; so we are now the aristo.&rsquo;s of the
valley.&nbsp; There is no hope for me, but if there were, you
would hear sweetness and light streaming from my lips.</p>
<p>&lsquo;The Merry Men&rsquo;</p>
<table>
<tr>
<td><p style="text-align: right">Chap. <span
class="GutSmall">I</span>.</p>
</td>
<td><p>Eilean Aros.</p>
</td>
<td><p>Tip</p>
<p>Top</p>
<p>Tale.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
class="GutSmall">II</span>.</p>
</td>
<td><p>What the Wreck had brought to Aros.</p>
</td>
<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
class="GutSmall">III</span>.</p>
</td>
<td><p>Past and Present in Sandag Bay.</p>
</td>
<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
class="GutSmall">IV</span>.</p>
</td>
<td><p>The Gale.</p>
</td>
<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
class="GutSmall">V</span>.</p>
</td>
<td><p>A Man out of the Sea.</p>
</td>
<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Kinnaird Cottage</i>,
<i>Pitlochry</i>, <i>July</i> 1881.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENLEY</span>,&mdash;I hope,
then, to have a visit from you.&nbsp; If before August, here; if
later, at Braemar.&nbsp; Tupe!</p>
<p>And now, <i>mon bon</i>, I must babble about &lsquo;The Merry
Men,&rsquo; my favourite work.&nbsp; It is a fantastic sonata
about the sea and wrecks.&nbsp; Chapter <span
class="GutSmall">I</span>. &lsquo;Eilean Aros&rsquo;&mdash;the
island, the roost, the &lsquo;merry men,&rsquo; the three people
there living&mdash;sea superstitions.&nbsp; Chapter <span
class="GutSmall">II</span>. &lsquo;What the Wreck had brought to
Aros.&rsquo;&nbsp; Eh, boy? what had it?&nbsp; Silver and clocks
and brocades, and what a conscience, what a mad brain!&nbsp;
Chapter <span class="GutSmall">III</span>. &lsquo;Past and
Present in Sandag Bay&rsquo;&mdash;the new wreck and the
old&mdash;so old&mdash;the Armada treasure-ship, Santma
Trinid&mdash;the grave in the heather&mdash;strangers
there.&nbsp; Chapter <span class="GutSmall">IV</span>. &lsquo;The
Gale&rsquo;&mdash;the doomed ship&mdash;the storm&mdash;the
drunken madman on the head&mdash;cries in the night.&nbsp;
Chapter <span class="GutSmall">V</span>. &lsquo;A Man out of the
Sea.&rsquo;&nbsp; But I must not breathe to you my plot.&nbsp; It
is, I fancy, my first real shoot at a story; an odd thing, sir,
but, I believe, my own, though there is a little of Scott&rsquo;s
<i>Pirate</i> in it, as how should there not?&nbsp; He had the
root of romance in such places.&nbsp; Aros is Earraid, where I
lived <a name="page212"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
212</span>lang syne; the Ross of Grisapol is the Ross of Mull;
Ben Ryan, Ben More.&nbsp; I have written to the middle of Chapter
<span class="GutSmall">IV</span>.&nbsp; Like enough, when it is
finished I shall discard all chapterings; for the thing is
written straight through.&nbsp; It must, unhappily, be
re-written&mdash;too well written not to be.</p>
<p>The chair is only three months in summer; that is why I try
for it.&nbsp; If I get it, which I shall not, I should be
independent at once.&nbsp; Sweet thought.&nbsp; I liked your
Byron well; your Berlioz better.&nbsp; No one would remark these
cuts; even I, who was looking for it, knew it not at all to be a
<i>torso</i>.&nbsp; The paper strengthens me in my recommendation
to you to follow Colvin&rsquo;s hint.&nbsp; Give us an 1830; you
will do it well, and the subject smiles widely on the
world:&mdash;</p>
<p>1830: <i>A Chapter of Artistic History</i>, by William Ernest
Henley (or <i>of Social and Artistic History</i>, as the thing
might grow to you).&nbsp; Sir, you might be in the Athen&aelig;um
yet with that; and, believe me, you might and would be far
better, the author of a readable book.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<p>The following names have been invented for Wogg by his dear
papa:&mdash;</p>
<p>Grunty-pig (when he is scratched),</p>
<p>Rose-mouth (when he comes flying up with his rose-leaf tongue
depending), and</p>
<p>Hoofen-boots (when he has had his foots wet).</p>
<p>How would <i>Tales for Winter Nights</i> do?</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Pitlochry</i>, <i>if you
please</i>, [<i>August</i>] 1881.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR HENLEY</span>,&mdash;To answer a
point or two.&nbsp; First, the Spanish ship was sloop-rigged and
clumsy, because she <a name="page213"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 213</span>was fitted out by some private
adventurers, not over wealthy, and glad to take what they could
get.&nbsp; Is that not right?&nbsp; Tell me if you think
not.&nbsp; That, at least, was how I meant it.&nbsp; As for the
boat-cloaks, I am afraid they are, as you say, false imagination;
but I love the name, nature, and being of them so dearly, that I
feel as if I would almost rather ruin a story than omit the
reference.&nbsp; The proudest moments of my life have been passed
in the stern-sheets of a boat with that romantic garment over my
shoulders.&nbsp; This, without prejudice to one glorious day when
standing upon some water stairs at Lerwick I signalled with my
pocket-handkerchief for a boat to come ashore for me.&nbsp; I was
then aged fifteen or sixteen; conceive my glory.</p>
<p>Several of the phrases you object to are proper nautical, or
long-shore phrases, and therefore, I think, not out of place in
this long-shore story.&nbsp; As for the two members which you
thought at first so ill-united; I confess they seem perfectly so
to me.&nbsp; I have chosen to sacrifice a long-projected story of
adventure because the sentiment of that is identical with the
sentiment of &lsquo;My uncle.&rsquo;&nbsp; My uncle himself is
not the story as I see it, only the leading episode of that
story.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s really a story of wrecks, as they appear
to the dweller on the coast.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s a view of the
sea.&nbsp; Goodness knows when I shall be able to re-write; I
must first get over this copper-headed cold.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Pitlochry</i>, <i>August</i>
1881.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;This is
the first letter I have written this good while.&nbsp; I have had
a brutal cold, not <a name="page214"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
214</span>perhaps very wisely treated; lots of blood&mdash;for
me, I mean.&nbsp; I was so well, however, before, that I seem to
be sailing through with it splendidly.&nbsp; My appetite never
failed; indeed, as I got worse, it sharpened&mdash;a sort of
reparatory instinct.&nbsp; Now I feel in a fair way to get round
soon.</p>

<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
<p><i>Monday</i>, <i>August</i> (2<i>nd</i>, is it?).&mdash;We
set out for the Spital of Glenshee, and reach Braemar on
Tuesday.&nbsp; The Braemar address we cannot learn; it looks as
if &lsquo;Braemar&rsquo; were all that was necessary; if
particular, you can address 17 Heriot Row.&nbsp; We shall be
delighted to see you whenever, and as soon as ever, you can make
it possible.</p>
<p>. . . I hope heartily you will survive me, and do not doubt
it.&nbsp; There are seven or eight people it is no part of my
scheme in life to survive&mdash;yet if I could but heal me of my
bellowses, I could have a jolly life&mdash;have it, even now,
when I can work and stroll a little, as I have been doing till
this cold.&nbsp; I have so many things to make life sweet to me,
it seems a pity I cannot have that other one
thing&mdash;health.&nbsp; But though you will be angry to hear
it, I believe, for myself at least, what is is best.&nbsp; I
believed it all through my worst days, and I am not ashamed to
profess it now.</p>
<p>Landor has just turned up; but I had read him already.&nbsp; I
like him extremely; I wonder if the &lsquo;cuts&rsquo; were
perhaps not advantageous.&nbsp; It seems quite full enough; but
then you know I am a compressionist.</p>
<p>If I am to criticise, it is a little staid; but the classical
is apt to look so.&nbsp; It is in curious contrast to that
inexpressive, unplanned wilderness of Forster&rsquo;s; clear,
readable, precise, and sufficiently human.&nbsp; I see nothing
lost in it, though I could have wished, in my Scotch capacity, a
trifle clearer and fuller exposition of his moral attitude, which
is not quite clear &lsquo;from here.&rsquo;</p>
<p>He and his tyrannicide!&nbsp; I am in a mad fury about these
explosions.&nbsp; If that is the new world!&nbsp; Damn <a
name="page215"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
215</span>O&rsquo;Donovan Rossa; damn him behind and before,
above, below, and roundabout; damn, deracinate, and destroy him,
root and branch, self and company, world without end.&nbsp;
Amen.&nbsp; I write that for sport if you like, but I will pray
in earnest, O Lord, if you cannot convert, kindly delete him!</p>
<p>Stories naturally at&mdash;halt.&nbsp; Henley has seen one and
approves.&nbsp; I believe it to be good myself, even real
good.&nbsp; He has also seen and approved one of
Fanny&rsquo;s.&nbsp; It will snake a good volume.&nbsp; We have
now</p>
<p class="gutindent">Thrawn Janet (with Stephen), proof
to-day.</p>
<p class="gutindent">The Shadow on the Bed (Fanny&rsquo;s
copying).</p>
<p class="gutindent">The Merry Men (scrolled).</p>
<p class="gutindent">The Body Snatchers (scrolled).</p>
<p><i>In germis</i></p>
<p class="gutindent">The Travelling Companion.</p>
<p class="gutindent">The Torn Surplice (<i>not final
title</i>).</p>
<p>Yours ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Dr. Alexander Japp</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>The Cottage</i>, <i>Castleton of
Braemar</i>, <i>Sunday</i>, <i>August</i> 1881.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR SIR</span>,&mdash;I should long
ago have written to thank you for your kind and frank letter; but
in my state of health papers are apt to get mislaid, and your
letter has been vainly hunted for until this (Sunday)
morning.</p>
<p>I regret I shall not be able to see you in Edinburgh; one
visit to Edinburgh has already cost me too dear in that
invaluable particular health; but if it should be at all possible
for you to push on as far as Braemar, I believe you would find an
attentive listener, and I can offer you a bed, a drive, and
necessary food, etc.</p>
<p>If, however, you should not be able to come thus far, I <a
name="page216"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 216</span>can promise
you two things: First, I shall religiously revise what I have
written, and bring out more clearly the point of view from which
I regarded Thoreau; second, I shall in the Preface record your
objection.</p>
<p>The point of view (and I must ask you not to forget that any
such short paper is essentially only a <i>section through</i> a
man) was this: I desired to look at the man through his
books.&nbsp; Thus, for instance, when I mentioned his return to
the pencil-making, I did it only in passing (perhaps I was
wrong), because it seemed to me not an illustration of his
principles, but a brave departure from them.&nbsp; Thousands of
such there were I do not doubt; still, they might be hardly to my
purpose, though, as you say so, some of them would be.</p>
<p>Our difference as to pity I suspect was a logomachy of my
making.&nbsp; No pitiful acts on his part would surprise me; I
know he would be more pitiful in practice than most of the
whiners; but the spirit of that practice would still seem to be
unjustly described by the word pity.</p>
<p>When I try to be measured, I find myself usually suspected of
a sneaking unkindness for my subject; but you may be sure, sir, I
would give up most other things to be so good a man as
Thoreau.&nbsp; Even my knowledge of him leads me thus far.</p>
<p>Should you find yourself able to push on to Braemar&mdash;it
may even be on your way&mdash;believe me, your visit will be most
welcome.&nbsp; The weather is cruel, but the place is, as I dare
say you know, the very &lsquo;wale&rsquo; of Scotland&mdash;bar
Tummelside.&mdash;Yours very sincerely,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>The Cottage</i>, <i>Castleton of
Braemar</i>, <i>August</i> 1881.</p>
<p>. . . <span class="smcap">Well</span>, I have been pretty
mean, but I have not yet got over my cold so completely as to
have recovered much energy.&nbsp; It is really extraordinary that
I should have <a name="page217"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
217</span>recovered as well as I have in this blighting weather;
the wind pipes, the rain comes in squalls, great black clouds are
continually overhead, and it is as cold as March.&nbsp; The
country is delightful, more cannot be said; it is very beautiful,
a perfect joy when we get a blink of sun to see it in.&nbsp; The
Queen knows a thing or two, I perceive; she has picked out the
finest habitable spot in Britain.</p>
<p>I have done no work, and scarce written a letter for three
weeks, but I think I should soon begin again; my cough is now
very trifling.&nbsp; I eat well, and seem to have lost but I
little flesh in the meanwhile.&nbsp; I was <i>wonderfully</i>
well before I caught this horrid cold.&nbsp; I never thought I
should have been as well again; I really enjoyed life and work;
and, of course, I now have a good hope that this may return.</p>
<p>I suppose you heard of our ghost stories.&nbsp; They are
somewhat delayed by my cold and a bad attack of laziness,
embroidery, etc., under which Fanny had been some time
prostrate.&nbsp; It is horrid that we can get no better
weather.&nbsp; I did not get such good accounts of you as might
have been.&nbsp; You must imitate me.&nbsp; I am now one of the
most conscientious people at trying to get better you ever
saw.&nbsp; I have a white hat, it is much admired; also a plaid,
and a heavy stoop; so I take my walks abroad, witching the
world.</p>
<p>Last night I was beaten at chess, and am still grinding under
the blow.&mdash;Ever your faithful friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>The Cottage</i> (<i>late the late
Miss M&rsquo;Gregor&rsquo;s</i>),<br />
<i>Castleton of Braemar</i>, <i>August</i> 10, 1881.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR GOSSE</span>,&mdash;Come on the
24th, there is a dear fellow.&nbsp; Everybody else wants to come
later, and it will be a godsend for, sir&mdash;Yours
sincerely.</p>
<p><a name="page218"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 218</span>You
can stay as long as you behave decently, and are not sick of,
sir&mdash;Your obedient, humble servant.</p>
<p>We have family worship in the home of, sir&mdash;Yours
respectfully.</p>
<p>Braemar is a fine country, but nothing to (what you will also
see) the maps of, sir&mdash;Yours in the Lord.</p>
<p>A carriage and two spanking hacks draw up daily at the hour of
two before the house of, sir&mdash;Yours truly.</p>
<p>The rain rains and the winds do beat upon the cottage of the
late Miss Macgregor and of, sir&mdash;Yours affectionately.</p>
<p>It is to be trusted that the weather may improve ere you know
the halls of, sir&mdash;Yours emphatically.</p>
<p>All will be glad to welcome you, not excepting,
sir&mdash;Yours ever.</p>
<p>You will now have gathered the lamentable intellectual
collapse of, sir&mdash;Yours indeed.</p>
<p>And nothing remains for me but to sign myself,
sir&mdash;Yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p><i>N.B.</i>&mdash;Each of these clauses has to be read with
extreme glibness, coming down whack upon the
&lsquo;Sir.&rsquo;&nbsp; This is very important.&nbsp; The fine
stylistic inspiration will else be lost.</p>
<p>I commit the man who made, the man who sold, and the woman who
supplied me with my present excruciating gilt nib to that place
where the worm never dies.</p>
<p>The reference to a deceased Highland lady (tending as it does
to foster unavailing sorrow) may be with advantage omitted from
the address, which would therefore run&mdash;The Cottage,
Castleton of Braemar.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>The Cottage</i>, <i>Castleton of
Braemar</i>, <i>August</i> 19, 1881.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">If</span> you had an uncle who was a sea
captain and went to the North Pole, you had better bring his
outfit.&nbsp; <i>Verbum Sapientibus</i>.&nbsp; I look towards
you.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><a name="page219"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
219</span><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Braemar</i>], <i>August</i> 19,
1881.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR WEG</span>,&mdash;I have by an
extraordinary drollery of Fortune sent off to you by this
day&rsquo;s post a P. C. inviting you to appear in
sealskin.&nbsp; But this had reference to the weather, and not at
all, as you may have been led to fancy, to our rustic raiment of
an evening.</p>
<p>As to that question, I would deal, in so far as in me lies,
fairly with all men.&nbsp; We are not dressy people by nature;
but it sometimes occurs to us to entertain angels.&nbsp; In the
country, I believe, even angels may be decently welcomed in
tweed; I have faced many great personages, for my own part, in a
tasteful suit of sea-cloth with an end of carpet pending from my
gullet.&nbsp; Still, we do maybe twice a summer burst out in the
direction of blacks . . . and yet we do it seldom. . . . In
short, let your own heart decide, and the capacity of your
portmanteau.&nbsp; If you came in camel&rsquo;s hair, you would
still, although conspicuous, be welcome.</p>
<p>The sooner the better after Tuesday.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Braemar</i> [<i>August</i> 25,
1881].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENLEY</span>,&mdash;Of course
I am a rogue.&nbsp; Why, Lord, it&rsquo;s known, man; but you
should remember I have had a horrid cold.&nbsp; Now, I&rsquo;m
better, I think; and see here&mdash;nobody, not you, nor Lang,
nor the devil, will hurry me with our crawlers.&nbsp; They are
coming.&nbsp; Four of them are as good as done, and the rest will
come when ripe; but I am now on another lay for the moment,
purely owing to Lloyd, this one; but I believe there&rsquo;s more
coin in it <a name="page220"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
220</span>than in any amount of crawlers: now, see here,
&lsquo;The Sea Cook, or Treasure Island: A Story for
Boys.&rsquo;</p>
<p>If this don&rsquo;t fetch the kids, why, they have gone rotten
since my day.&nbsp; Will you be surprised to learn that it is
about Buccaneers, that it begins in the <i>Admiral Benbow</i>
public-house on Devon coast, that it&rsquo;s all about a map, and
a treasure, and a mutiny, and a derelict ship, and a current, and
a fine old Squire Trelawney (the real Tre, purged of literature
and sin, to suit the infant mind), and a doctor, and another
doctor, and a sea-cook with one leg, and a sea-song with the
chorus &lsquo;Yo-ho-ho-and a bottle of rum&rsquo; (at the third
Ho you heave at the capstan bars), which is a real
buccaneer&rsquo;s song, only known to the crew of the late
Captain Flint (died of rum at Key West, much regretted, friends
will please accept this intimation); and lastly, would you be
surprised to hear, in this connection, the name of
<i>Routledge</i>?&nbsp; That&rsquo;s the kind of man I am, blast
your eyes.&nbsp; Two chapters are written, and have been tried on
Lloyd with great success; the trouble is to work it off without
oaths.&nbsp; Buccaneers without oaths&mdash;bricks without
straw.&nbsp; But youth and the fond parient have to be
consulted.</p>
<p>And now look here&mdash;this is next day&mdash;and three
chapters are written and read.&nbsp; (Chapter <span
class="GutSmall">I</span>. The Old Sea-dog at the <i>Admiral
Benbow</i>.&nbsp; Chapter <span class="GutSmall">II</span>. Black
Dog appears and disappears.&nbsp; Chapter <span
class="GutSmall">III</span>. The Black Spot)&nbsp; All now heard
by Lloyd, F., and my father and mother, with high approval.&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s quite silly and horrid fun, and what I want is the
<i>best</i> book about the Buccaneers that can be had&mdash;the
latter B&rsquo;s above all, Blackbeard and sich, and get Nutt or
Bain to send it skimming by the fastest post.&nbsp; And now I
know you&rsquo;ll write to me, for &lsquo;The Sea
Cook&rsquo;s&rsquo; sake.</p>
<p>Your &lsquo;Admiral Guinea&rsquo; is curiously near my line,
but of course I&rsquo;m fooling; and your Admiral sounds like a
shublime gent.&nbsp; Stick to him like wax&mdash;he&rsquo;ll
do.&nbsp; My Trelawney is, as I indicate, several thousand
sea-miles off <a name="page221"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
221</span>the lie of the original or your Admiral Guinea; and
besides, I have no more about him yet but one mention of his
name, and I think it likely he may turn yet farther from the
model in the course of handling.&nbsp; A chapter a day I mean to
do; they are short; and perhaps in a month the &lsquo;Sea
Cook&rsquo; may to Routledge go, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of
rum!&nbsp; My Trelawney has a strong dash of Landor, as I see him
from here.&nbsp; No women in the story, Lloyd&rsquo;s orders; and
who so blithe to obey?&nbsp; It&rsquo;s awful fun boys&rsquo;
stories; you just indulge the pleasure of your heart,
that&rsquo;s all; no trouble, no strain.&nbsp; The only stiff
thing is to get it ended&mdash;that I don&rsquo;t see, but I look
to a volcano.&nbsp; O sweet, O generous, O human toils.&nbsp; You
would like my blind beggar in Chapter <span
class="GutSmall">III</span>. I believe; no writing, just drive
along as the words come and the pen will scratch!</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.<br />
Author of <i>Boys&rsquo; Stories</i>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Dr. Alexander Japp</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Braemar</i>, 1881.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR DR. JAPP</span>,&mdash;My
father has gone, but I think may take it upon me to ask you to
keep the book.&nbsp; Of all things you could do to endear
yourself to me, you have done the best, for my father and you
have taken a fancy to each other.</p>
<p>I do not know how to thank you for all your kind trouble in
the matter of &lsquo;The Sea-Cook,&rsquo; but I am not
unmindful.&nbsp; My health is still poorly, and I have added
intercostal rheumatism&mdash;a new attraction&mdash;which sewed
me up nearly double for two days, and still gives me a list to
starboard&mdash;let us be ever nautical!</p>
<p><a name="page222"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 222</span>I do
not think with the start I have there will be any difficulty in
letting Mr. Henderson go ahead whenever he likes.&nbsp; I will
write my story up to its legitimate conclusion; and then we shall
be in a position to judge whether a sequel would be desirable,
and I would then myself know better about its practicability from
the story-teller&rsquo;s point of view.&mdash;Yours ever very
sincerely,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Braemar</i>, <i>September</i>
1881.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENLEY</span>,&mdash;Thanks for
your last.&nbsp; The &pound;100 fell through, or dwindled at
least into somewhere about &pound;30.&nbsp; However, that
I&rsquo;ve taken as a mouthful, so you may look out for
&lsquo;The Sea Cook, or Treasure Island: A Tale of the
Buccaneers,&rsquo; in <i>Young Folks</i>.&nbsp; (The terms are
&pound;2, 10s. a page of 4500 words; that&rsquo;s not noble, is
it?&nbsp; But I have my copyright safe.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t get
illustrated&mdash;a blessing; that&rsquo;s the price I have to
pay for my copyright.)</p>
<p>I&rsquo;ll make this boys&rsquo; book business pay; but I have
to make a beginning.&nbsp; When I&rsquo;m done with <i>Young
Folks</i>, I&rsquo;ll try Routledge or some one.&nbsp; I feel
pretty sure the &lsquo;Sea Cook&rsquo; will do to reprint, and
bring something decent at that.</p>
<p>Japp is a good soul.&nbsp; The poet was very gay and
pleasant.&nbsp; He told me much: he is simply the most active
young man in England, and one of the most intelligent.&nbsp; <a
name="page223"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 223</span>&lsquo;He
shall o&rsquo;er Europe, shall o&rsquo;er earth extend.&rsquo; <a
name="citation223"></a><a href="#footnote223"
class="citation">[223]</a>&nbsp; He is now extending over
adjacent parts of Scotland.</p>
<p>I propose to follow up the &lsquo;Sea Cook&rsquo; at proper
intervals by &lsquo;Jerry Abershaw: A Tale of Putney Heath&rsquo;
(which or its site I must visit), &lsquo;The Leading Light: A
Tale of the Coast,&rsquo; &lsquo;The Squaw Men: or the Wild
West,&rsquo; and other instructive and entertaining work.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Jerry Abershaw&rsquo; should be good, eh?&nbsp; I love
writing boys&rsquo; books.&nbsp; This first is only an
experiment; wait till you see what I can make &rsquo;em with my
hand in.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll be the Harrison Ainsworth of the
future; and a chalk better by St. Christopher; or at least as
good.&nbsp; You&rsquo;ll see that even by the &lsquo;Sea
Cook.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Jerry Abershaw&mdash;O what a title!&nbsp; Jerry Abershaw: d-n
it, sir, it&rsquo;s a poem.&nbsp; The two most lovely words in
English; and what a sentiment!&nbsp; Hark you, how the hoofs
ring!&nbsp; Is this a blacksmith&rsquo;s?&nbsp; No, it&rsquo;s a
wayside inn.&nbsp; Jerry Abershaw.&nbsp; &lsquo;It was a clear,
frosty evening, not 100 miles from Putney,&rsquo; etc.&nbsp;
Jerry Abershaw.&nbsp; Jerry Abershaw.&nbsp; Jerry Abershaw.&nbsp;
The &lsquo;Sea Cook&rsquo; is now in its sixteenth chapter, and
bids for well up in the thirties.&nbsp; Each three chapters is
worth &pound;2, 10s.&nbsp; So we&rsquo;ve &pound;12, 10s.
already.</p>
<p>Don&rsquo;t read Marryat&rsquo;s&rsquo; <i>Pirate</i> anyhow;
it is written in sand with a salt-spoon: arid, feeble, vain,
tottering production.&nbsp; But then we&rsquo;re not always all
there.&nbsp; <i>He</i> was <i>all</i> somewhere else that
trip.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s <i>damnable</i>, Henley.&nbsp; I
don&rsquo;t go much on the &lsquo;Sea Cook&rsquo;; but, Lord,
it&rsquo;s a little fruitier than the <i>Pirate</i> by
Cap&rsquo;n. Marryat.</p>
<p>Since this was written &lsquo;The Cook&rsquo; is in his
nineteenth chapter.&nbsp; Yo-heave ho!</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><a name="page224"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 224</span>[<i>Chalet am Stein</i>,
<i>Davos</i>, <i>Autumn</i> 1881.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR FATHER</span>,&mdash;It
occurred to me last night in bed that I could write</p>
<p style="text-align: center" class="gutindent">The Murder of Red
Colin,</p>
<p style="text-align: center" class="gutindent">A Story of the
Forfeited Estates.</p>
<p>This I have all that is necessary for, with the following
exceptions:&mdash;</p>
<p><i>Trials of the Sons of Roy Rob with Anecdotes</i>:
Edinburgh, 1818, and</p>
<p>The second volume of <i>Blackwood&rsquo;s Magazine</i>.</p>
<p>You might also look in Arnot&rsquo;s <i>Criminal Trials</i> up
in my room, and see what observations he has on the case (Trial
of James Stewart in Appin for murder of Campbell of Glenure,
1752); if he has none, perhaps you could see&mdash;O yes, see if
Burton has it in his two vols. of trial stories.&nbsp; I hope he
hasn&rsquo;t; but care not; do it over again anyway.</p>
<p>The two named authorities I must see.&nbsp; With these, I
could soon pull off this article; and it shall be my first for
the electors.&mdash;Ever affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to P. G. Hamerton</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Ch&acirc;let am Stein</i>,
<i>Davos</i>, <i>Autumn</i> [1881].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MR. HAMERTON</span>,&mdash;My
conscience has long been smiting me, till it became nearly
chronic.&nbsp; My <a name="page225"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
225</span>excuses, however, are many and not pleasant.&nbsp;
Almost immediately after I last wrote to you, I had a hemorreage
(I can&rsquo;t spell it), was badly treated by a doctor in the
country, and have been a long while picking up&mdash;still, in
fact, have much to desire on that side.&nbsp; Next, as soon as I
got here, my wife took ill; she is, I fear, seriously so; and
this combination of two invalids very much depresses both.</p>
<p>I have a volume of republished essays coming out with Chatto
and Windus; I wish they would come, that my wife might have the
reviews to divert her.&nbsp; Otherwise my news is
<i>nil</i>.&nbsp; I am up here in a little chalet, on the borders
of a pinewood, overlooking a great part of the Davos Thal, a
beautiful scene at night, with the moon upon the snowy mountains,
and the lights warmly shining in the village.&nbsp; J. A. Symonds
is next door to me, just at the foot of my Hill Difficulty (this
you will please regard as the House Beautiful), and his society
is my great stand-by.</p>
<p>Did you see I had joined the band of the rejected?&nbsp;
&lsquo;Hardly one of us,&rsquo; said my <i>confr&egrave;res</i>
at the bar.</p>
<p>I was blamed by a common friend for asking you to give me a
testimonial; in the circumstances he thought it was
indelicate.&nbsp; Lest, by some calamity, you should ever have
felt the same way, I must say in two words how the matter
appeared to me.&nbsp; That silly story of the election altered in
no tittle the value of your testimony: so much for that.&nbsp; On
the other hand, it led me to take quite a particular pleasure in
asking you to give it; and so much for the other.&nbsp; I trust,
even if you cannot share it, you will understand my view.</p>
<p>I am in treaty with Bentley for a life of Hazlitt; I hope it
will not fall through, as I love the subject, and appear to have
found a publisher who loves it also.&nbsp; That, I think, makes
things more pleasant.&nbsp; You know I am a fervent Hazlittite; I
mean regarding him as <i>the</i> English writer who has had the
scantiest justice.&nbsp; Besides which, <a
name="page226"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 226</span>I am
anxious to write biography; really, if I understand myself in
quest of profit, I think it must be good to live with another man
from birth to death.&nbsp; You have tried it, and know.</p>
<p>How has the cruising gone?&nbsp; Pray remember me to Mrs.
Hamerton and your son, and believe me, yours very sincerely,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Charles Baxter</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Chalet am Stein</i>],
<i>Davos</i>, <i>December</i> 5, 1881.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;We have
been in miserable case here; my wife worse and worse; and now
sent away with Lloyd for sick nurse, I not being allowed to go
down.&nbsp; I do not know what is to become of us; and you may
imagine how rotten I have been feeling, and feel now, alone with
my weasel-dog and my German maid, on the top of a hill here,
heavy mist and thin snow all about me, and the devil to pay in
general.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t care so much for solitude as I used
to; results, I suppose, of marriage.</p>
<p>Pray write me something cheery.&nbsp; A little Edinburgh
gossip, in Heaven&rsquo;s name.&nbsp; Ah! what would I not give
to steal this evening with you through the big, echoing, college
archway, and away south under the street lamps, and away to dear
Brash&rsquo;s, now defunct!&nbsp; But the old time is dead also,
never, never to revive.&nbsp; It was a sad time too, but so gay
and so hopeful, and we had such sport with all our low spirits
and all our distresses, that it looks like a kind of lamplit
fairyland behind me.&nbsp; O for ten Edinburgh
minutes&mdash;sixpence between us, and the ever-glorious Lothian
Road, or dear mysterious Leith Walk!&nbsp; But here, a sheer
hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling; here in this strange place, whose
very strangeness would have been heaven to him then; and aspires,
yes, C. B., with tears, after the past.&nbsp; See what comes of
being left alone.&nbsp; Do you remember Brash? the sheet of glass
<a name="page227"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 227</span>that we
followed along George Street?&nbsp; Granton? the blight at Bonny
mainhead? the compass near the sign of the <i>Twinkling Eye</i>?
the night I lay on the pavement in misery?</p>
<p
class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I
swear it by the eternal sky<br />
Johnson&mdash;nor Thomson&mdash;ne&rsquo;er shall die!</p>
<p>Yet I fancy they are dead too; dead like Brash.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Chalet Buol</i>,
<i>Davos-Platz</i>, <i>December</i> 26, 1881.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,&mdash;Yesterday,
Sunday and Christmas, we finished this eventful journey by a
drive in an <i>open</i> sleigh&mdash;none others were to be
had&mdash;seven hours on end through whole forests of Christmas
trees.&nbsp; The cold was beyond belief.&nbsp; I have often
suffered less at a dentist&rsquo;s.&nbsp; It was a clear, sunny
day, but the sun even at noon falls, at this season, only here
and there into the Pr&auml;ttigau.&nbsp; I kept up as long as I
could in an imitation of a street singer:&mdash;</p>
<p>Away, ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses, etc.</p>
<p>At last Lloyd remarked, a blue mouth speaking from a
corpse-coloured face, &lsquo;You seem to be the only one with any
courage left?&rsquo;&nbsp; And, do you know, with that word my
courage disappeared, and I made the rest of the stage in the same
dumb wretchedness as the others.&nbsp; My only terror was lest
Fanny should ask for brandy, or laudanum, or something.&nbsp; So
awful was the idea of putting my hands out, that I half thought I
would refuse.</p>
<p>Well, none of us are a penny the worse, Lloyd&rsquo;s cold
better; I, with a twinge of the rheumatic; and Fanny better than
her ordinary.</p>
<p><a name="page228"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
228</span>General conclusion between Lloyd and me as to the
journey: A prolonged visit to the dentist&rsquo;s, complicated
with the fear of death.</p>
<p>Never, O never, do you get me there again.&mdash;Ever
affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Alison Cunningham</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Chalet am Stein</i>,
<i>Davos-Platz</i>, <i>February</i> 1882.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CUMMY</span>,&mdash;My wife and
I are very much vexed to hear you are still unwell.&nbsp; We are
both keeping far better; she especially seems quite to have taken
a turn&mdash;<i>the</i> turn, we shall hope.&nbsp; Please let us
know how you get on, and what has been the matter with you;
Braemar I believe&mdash;the vile hole.&nbsp; You know what a lazy
rascal I am, so you won&rsquo;t be surprised at a short letter, I
know; indeed, you will be much more surprised at my having had
the decency to write at all.&nbsp; We have got rid of our young,
pretty, and incompetent maid; and now we have a fine, canny,
twinkling, shrewd, auld-farrant peasant body, who gives us good
food and keeps us in good spirits.&nbsp; If we could only
understand what she says!&nbsp; But she speaks Davos language,
which is to German what Aberdeen-awa&rsquo; is to English, so it
comes heavy.&nbsp; God bless you, my dear Cummy; and so says
Fanny forbye.&mdash;Ever your affectionate,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Charles Baxter</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Chalet am Stein</i>,
<i>Davos</i>], 22<i>nd</i> <i>February</i> &rsquo;82.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;Your most
welcome letter has raised clouds of sulphur from my horizon. . .
.</p>
<p>I am glad you have gone back to your music.&nbsp; Life is a
poor thing, I am more and more convinced, without an art, that
always waits for us and is always new.&nbsp; Art and marriage are
two very good stand-by&rsquo;s.</p>
<p><a name="page229"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 229</span>In an
article which will appear sometime in the <i>Cornhill</i>,
&lsquo;Talk and Talkers,&rsquo; and where I have full-lengthened
the conversation of Bob, Henley, Jenkin, Simpson, Symonds, and
Gosse, I have at the end one single word about yourself.&nbsp; It
may amuse you to see it.</p>
<p>We are coming to Scotland after all, so we shall meet, which
pleases me, and I do believe I am strong enough to stand it this
time.&nbsp; My knee is still quite lame.</p>
<p>My wife is better again. . . . But we take it by turns; it is
the dog that is ill now.&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Chalet am Stein</i>,
<i>Davos-Platz</i>, <i>February</i> 1882.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENLEY</span>,&mdash;Here comes
the letter as promised last night.&nbsp; And first two requests:
Pray send the enclosed to c/o Blackmore&rsquo;s publisher,
&rsquo;tis from Fanny; second, pray send us Routledge&rsquo;s
shilling book, Edward Mayhew&rsquo;s <i>Dogs</i>, by return if it
can be managed.</p>
<p>Our dog is very ill again, poor fellow, looks very ill too,
only sleeps at night because of morphine; and we do not know what
ails him, only fear it to be canker of the ear.&nbsp; He makes a
bad, black spot in our life, poor, selfish, silly, little tangle;
and my wife is wretched.&nbsp; Otherwise she is better, steadily
and slowly moving up through all her relapses.&nbsp; My knee
never gets the least better; it hurts to-night, which it has not
done for long.&nbsp; I do not suppose my doctor knows any least
thing about it.&nbsp; He says it is a nerve that I struck, but I
assure you he does not know.</p>
<p>I have just finished a paper, &lsquo;A Gossip on
Romance,&rsquo; <a name="page230"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
230</span>in which I have tried to do, very popularly, about
one-half of the matter you wanted me to try.&nbsp; In a way, I
have found an answer to the question.&nbsp; But the subject was
hardly fit for so chatty a paper, and it is all loose ends.&nbsp;
If ever I do my book on the Art of Literature, I shall gather
them together and be clear.</p>
<p>To-morrow, having once finished off the touches still due on
this, I shall tackle <i>San Francisco</i> for you.&nbsp; Then the
tide of work will fairly bury me, lost to view and hope.&nbsp;
You have no idea what it costs me to wring out my work now.&nbsp;
I have certainly been a fortnight over this Romance, sometimes
five hours a day; and yet it is about my usual length&mdash;eight
pages or so, and would be a d-d sight the better for another
curry.&nbsp; But I do not think I can honestly re-write it all;
so I call it done, and shall only straighten words in a revision
currently.</p>
<p>I had meant to go on for a great while, and say all manner of
entertaining things.&nbsp; But all&rsquo;s gone.&nbsp; I am now
an idiot.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Chalet am Stein</i>,
<i>Davos</i>, <i>March</i> 1882.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENLEY</span>,&mdash;. . . Last
night we had a dinner-party, consisting of the John Addington,
curry, onions (lovely onions), and beefsteak.&nbsp; So unusual is
any excitement, that F. and I feel this morning as if we had been
to a coronation.&nbsp; However I must, I suppose, write.</p>
<p>I was sorry about your female contributor squabble.&nbsp;
&rsquo;Tis very comic, but really unpleasant.&nbsp; But what care
I?&nbsp; <a name="page231"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
231</span>Now that I illustrate my own books, I can always offer
you a situation in our house&mdash;S. L. Osbourne and Co.&nbsp;
As an author gets a halfpenny a copy of verses, and an artist a
penny a cut, perhaps a proof-reader might get several pounds a
year.</p>
<p>O that Coronation!&nbsp; What a shouting crowd there
was!&nbsp; I obviously got a firework in each eye.&nbsp; The king
looked very magnificent, to be sure; and that great hall where we
feasted on seven hundred delicate foods, and drank fifty royal
wines&mdash;<i>quel coup d&rsquo;&oelig;il</i>! but was it not
over-done, even for a coronation&mdash;almost a vulgar
luxury?&nbsp; And eleven is certainly too late to begin
dinner.&nbsp; (It was really 6.30 instead of 5.30.)</p>
<p>Your list of books that Cassells have refused in these weeks
is not quite complete; they also refused:&mdash;</p>
<p>1. Six undiscovered Tragedies, one romantic Comedy, a fragment
of Journal extending over six years, and an unfinished
Autobiography reaching up to the first performance of King
John.&nbsp; By William Shakespeare.</p>
<p>2. The journals and Private Correspondence of David, King of
Israel.</p>
<p>3. Poetical Works of Arthur, Iron Dook of Wellington,
including a Monody on Napoleon.</p>
<p>4. Eight books of an unfinished novel, <i>Solomon
Crabb</i>.&nbsp; By Henry Fielding.</p>
<p>5. Stevenson&rsquo;s Moral Emblems.</p>
<p>You also neglected to mention, as <i>per contra</i>, that they
had during the same time accepted and triumphantly published
Brown&rsquo;s <i>Handbook to Cricket</i>, Jones&rsquo;s
<i>First</i> <i>French Reader</i>, and Robinson&rsquo;s
<i>Picturesque Cheshire</i>, uniform with the same author&rsquo;s
<i>Stately Homes of Salop</i>.</p>
<p>O if that list could come true!&nbsp; How we would tear at
Solomon Crabb!&nbsp; O what a bully, bully, bully business.&nbsp;
Which would you read first&mdash;Shakespeare&rsquo;s
autobiography, or his journals?&nbsp; What sport the monody on
Napoleon would be&mdash;what wooden verse, what stucco
ornament!&nbsp; I should read both the autobiography and <a
name="page232"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 232</span>the
journals before I looked at one of the plays, beyond the names of
them, which shows that Saintsbury was right, and I do care more
for life than for poetry.&nbsp; No&mdash;I take it back.&nbsp; Do
you know one of the tragedies&mdash;a Bible tragedy
too&mdash;<i>David</i>&mdash;was written in his third
period&mdash;much about the same time as Lear?&nbsp; The comedy,
<i>April Rain</i>, is also a late work.&nbsp; <i>Beckett</i> is a
fine ranting piece, like <i>Richard II.</i>, but very fine for
the stage.&nbsp; Irving is to play it this autumn when I&rsquo;m
in town; the part rather suits him&mdash;but who is to play
Henry&mdash;a tremendous creation, sir.&nbsp; Betterton in his
private journal seems to have seen this piece; and he says
distinctly that Henry is the best part in any play.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Though,&rsquo; he adds, &lsquo;how it be with the ancient
plays I know not.&nbsp; But in this I have ever feared to do ill,
and indeed will not be persuaded to that
undertaking.&rsquo;&nbsp; So says Betterton.&nbsp; <i>Rufus</i>
is not so good; I am not pleased with <i>Rufus</i>; plainly a
<i>rifaccimento</i> of some inferior work; but there are some
damned fine lines.&nbsp; As for the purely satiric ill-minded
<i>Abelard and Heloise</i>, another <i>Troilus</i>, <i>quoi</i>!
it is not pleasant, truly, but what strength, what verve, what
knowledge of life, and the Canon!&nbsp; What a finished,
humorous, rich picture is the Canon!&nbsp; Ah, there was nobody
like Shakespeare.&nbsp; But what I like is the David and Absalom
business.&nbsp; Absalom is so well felt&mdash;you love him as
David did; David&rsquo;s speech is one roll of royal music from
the first act to the fifth.</p>
<p>I am enjoying <i>Solomon Crabb</i> extremely; Solomon&rsquo;s
capital adventure with the two highwaymen and Squire Trecothick
and Parson Vance; it is as good, I think, as anything in Joseph
Andrews.&nbsp; I have just come to the part where the highwayman
with the black patch over his eye has tricked poor Solomon into
his place, and the squire and the parson are hearing the
evidence.&nbsp; Parson Vance is splendid.&nbsp; How good, too, is
old Mrs. Crabb and the coastguardsman in the third chapter, or
her delightful quarrel with the sexton of Seaham; Lord Conybeare
<a name="page233"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 233</span>is
surely a little overdone; but I don&rsquo;t know either;
he&rsquo;s such damned fine sport.&nbsp; Do you like Sally
Barnes?&nbsp; I&rsquo;m in love with her.&nbsp; Constable Muddon
is as good as Dogberry and Verges put together; when he takes
Solomon to the cage, and the highwayman gives him Solomon&rsquo;s
own guinea for his pains, and kisses Mrs. Muddon, and just then
up drives Lord Conybeare, and instead of helping Solomon, calls
him all the rascals in Christendom&mdash;O Henry Fielding, Henry
Fielding!&nbsp; Yet perhaps the scenes at Seaham are the
best.&nbsp; But I&rsquo;m bewildered among all these
excellences.</p>
<p class="poetry">Stay, cried a voice that made the welkin
crack&mdash;<br />
This here&rsquo;s a dream, return and study <span
class="smcap">Black</span>!</p>
<p>&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Alexander Ireland</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Chalet am Stein</i>,
<i>Davos</i>, <i>March</i> 1882.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR SIR</span>,&mdash;This
formidable paper need not alarm you; it argues nothing beyond
penury of other sorts, and is not at all likely to lead me into a
long letter.&nbsp; If I were at all grateful it would, for yours
has just passed for me a considerable part of a stormy
evening.&nbsp; And speaking of gratitude, let me at once and with
becoming eagerness accept your kind invitation to Bowdon.&nbsp; I
shall hope, if we can agree as to dates when I am nearer hand, to
come to you sometime in the month of May.&nbsp; I was pleased to
hear you were a Scot; I feel more at home with my compatriots
always; perhaps the more we are away, the stronger we feel that
bond.</p>
<p>You ask about Davos; I have discoursed about it <a
name="page234"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 234</span>already,
rather sillily I think, in the <i>Pall Mall</i>, and I mean to
say no more, but the ways of the Muse are dubious and obscure,
and who knows?&nbsp; I may be wiled again.&nbsp; As a place of
residence, beyond a splendid climate, it has to my eyes but one
advantage&mdash;the neighbourhood of J. A. Symonds&mdash;I dare
say you know his work, but the man is far more interesting.&nbsp;
It has done me, in my two winters&rsquo; Alpine exile, much good;
so much, that I hope to leave it now for ever, but would not be
understood to boast.&nbsp; In my present unpardonably crazy
state, any cold might send me skipping, either back to Davos, or
further off.&nbsp; Let us hope not.&nbsp; It is dear; a little
dreary; very far from many things that both my taste and my needs
prompt me to seek; and altogether not the place that I should
choose of my free will.</p>
<p>I am chilled by your description of the man in question,
though I had almost argued so much from his cold and undigested
volume.&nbsp; If the republication does not interfere with my
publisher, it will not interfere with me; but there, of course,
comes the hitch.&nbsp; I do not know Mr. Bentley, and I fear all
publishers like the devil from legend and experience both.&nbsp;
However, when I come to town, we shall, I hope, meet and
understand each other as well as author and publisher ever
do.&nbsp; I liked his letters; they seemed hearty, kind, and
personal.&nbsp; Still&mdash;I am notedly suspicious of the
trade&mdash;your news of this republication alarms me.</p>
<p>The best of the present French novelists seems to me,
incomparably, Daudet.&nbsp; <i>Les Rois en Exil</i> comes very
near being a masterpiece.&nbsp; For Zola I have no toleration,
though the curious, eminently bourgeois, and eminently French
creature has power of a kind.&nbsp; But I would he were
deleted.&nbsp; I would not give a chapter of old Dumas (meaning
himself, not his collaborators) for the whole boiling of the
Zolas.&nbsp; Romance with the smallpox&mdash;as the great one:
diseased anyway and blackhearted and fundamentally at enmity with
joy.</p>
<p><a name="page235"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 235</span>I
trust that Mrs. Ireland does not object to smoking; and if you
are a teetotaller, I beg you to mention it before I come&mdash;I
have all the vices; some of the virtues also, let us
hope&mdash;that, at least, of being a Scotchman, and yours very
sincerely,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;My father was in the old High School the
last year, and walked in the procession to the new.&nbsp; I blush
to own I am an Academy boy; it seems modern, and smacks not of
the soil.</p>
<p><i>P.P.S.</i>&mdash;I enclose a good joke&mdash;at least, I
think so&mdash;my first efforts at wood engraving printed by my
stepson, a boy of thirteen.&nbsp; I will put in also one of my
later attempts.&nbsp; I have been nine days at the
art&mdash;observe my progress.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span>.</h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Davos</i>, <i>March</i> 23,
1882.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR WEG</span>,&mdash;And I had
just written the best note to Mrs. Gosse that was in my
power.&nbsp; Most blameable.</p>
<p>I now send (for Mrs. Gosse).</p>
<p style="text-align: center">BLACK CANYON.</p>
<p>Also an advertisement of my new appearance as poet (bard,
rather) and hartis on wood.&nbsp; The cut represents the Hero and
the Eagle, and is emblematic of Cortez first viewing the Pacific
Ocean, which (according to the bard Keats) it took place in
Darien.&nbsp; The cut is much admired for the sentiment of
discovery, the manly proportions of the voyager, and the fine
impression of tropical scenes and the untrodden <span
class="GutSmall">WASTE</span>, so aptly rendered by the
hartis.</p>
<p>I would send you the book; but I declare I&rsquo;m
ruined.&nbsp; <a name="page236"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
236</span>I got a penny a cut and a halfpenny a set of verses
from the flint-hearted publisher, and only one specimen copy, as
I&rsquo;m a sinner.&nbsp; &mdash; was apostolic alongside of
Osbourne.</p>
<p>I hope you will be able to decipher this, written at steam
speed with a breaking pen, the hotfast postman at my heels.&nbsp;
No excuse, says you.&nbsp; None, sir, says I, and touches my
&rsquo;at most civil (extraordinary evolution of pen, now quite
doomed&mdash;to resume&mdash;)&nbsp; I have not put pen to the
Bloody Murder yet.&nbsp; But it is early on my list; and when
once I get to it, three weeks should see the last
bloodstain&mdash;maybe a fortnight.&nbsp; For I am beginning to
combine an extraordinary laborious slowness while at work, with
the most surprisingly quick results in the way of finished
manuscripts.&nbsp; How goes Gray?&nbsp; Colvin is to do
Keats.&nbsp; My wife is still not well.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Dr. Alexander Japp</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Chalet am Stein</i>,
<i>Davos</i>, <i>March</i> 1882.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR DR. JAPP</span>,&mdash;You must
think me a forgetful rogue, as indeed I am; for I have but now
told my publisher to send you a copy of the <i>Familiar
Studies</i>.&nbsp; However, I own I have delayed this letter till
I could send you the enclosed.&nbsp; Remembering the nights at
Braemar when we visited the Picture Gallery, I hoped they might
amuse you.&nbsp; You see, we do some publishing hereaway.&nbsp; I
shall hope to see you in town in May.&mdash;Always yours
faithfully,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Dr. Alexander Japp</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Ch&acirc;let Buol</i>,
<i>Davos</i>, <i>April</i> 1, 1882.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR DR. JAPP</span>,&mdash;A good
day to date this letter, which is in fact a confession of
incapacity.&nbsp; During my <a name="page237"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 237</span>wife&rsquo;s illness I somewhat lost
my head, and entirely lost a great quire of corrected
proofs.&nbsp; This is one of the results; I hope there are none
more serious.&nbsp; I was never so sick of any volume as I was of
that; was continually receiving fresh proofs with fresh
infinitesimal difficulties.&nbsp; I was ill&mdash;I did really
fear my wife was worse than ill.&nbsp; Well, it&rsquo;s out now;
and though I have observed several carelessnesses myself, and now
here&rsquo;s another of your finding&mdash;of which, indeed, I
ought to be ashamed&mdash;it will only justify the sweeping
humility of the Preface.</p>
<p>Symonds was actually dining with us when your letter came, and
I communicated your remarks. . . . He is a far better and more
interesting thing than any of his books.</p>
<p>The Elephant was my wife&rsquo;s; so she is proportionately
elate you should have picked it out for praise&mdash;from a
collection, let me add, so replete with the highest qualities of
art.</p>
<p>My wicked carcase, as John Knox calls it, holds together
wonderfully.&nbsp; In addition to many other things, and a volume
of travel, I find I have written, since December, 90
<i>Cornhill</i> pages of magazine work&mdash;essays and stories:
40,000 words, and I am none the worse&mdash;I am the
better.&nbsp; I begin to hope I may, if not outlive this
wolverine upon my shoulders, at least carry him bravely like
Symonds and Alexander Pope.&nbsp; I begin to take a pride in that
hope.</p>
<p>I shall be much interested to see your criticisms; you might
perhaps send them to me.&nbsp; I believe you know that is not
dangerous; one folly I have not&mdash;I am not touchy under
criticism.</p>
<p>Lloyd and my wife both beg to be remembered; and Lloyd sends
as a present a work of his own.&nbsp; I hope you feel flattered;
for this is <i>simply the first time he has ever given one
away</i>.&nbsp; I have to buy my own works, I can tell
you.&mdash;Yours very sincerely,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><a name="page238"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
238</span><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Chalet am Stein</i>,
<i>Davos</i>, <i>April</i> 1882.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENLEY</span>,&mdash;I hope and
hope for a long letter&mdash;soon I hope to be superseded by long
talks&mdash;and it comes not.&nbsp; I remember I have never
formally thanked you for that hundred quid, nor in general for
the introduction to Chatto and Windus, and continue to bury you
in copy as if you were my private secretary.&nbsp; Well, I am not
unconscious of it all; but I think least said is often best,
generally best; gratitude is a tedious sentiment, it&rsquo;s not
ductile, not dramatic.</p>
<p>If Chatto should take both, <i>cui dedicare</i>?&nbsp; I am
running out of dedikees; if I do, the whole fun of writing is
stranded.&nbsp; <i>Treasure Island</i>, if it comes out, and I
mean it shall, of course goes to Lloyd.&nbsp; Lemme see, I have
now dedicated to</p>
<p class="gutindent">W. E. H. [William Ernest Henley].</p>
<p class="gutindent">S. C. [Sidney Colvin].</p>
<p class="gutindent">T. S. [Thomas Stevenson].</p>
<p class="gutindent">Simp. [Sir Walter Simpson].</p>
<p>There remain: C. B., the Williamses&mdash;you know they were
the parties who stuck up for us about our marriage, and Mrs. W.
was my guardian angel, and our Best Man and Bridesmaid rolled in
one, and the only third of the wedding party&mdash;my
sister-in-law, who is booked for <i>Prince Otto</i>&mdash;Jenkin
I suppose sometime&mdash;George Meredith, the only man of genius
of my acquaintance, and then I believe I&rsquo;ll have to take to
the dead, the immortal memory business.</p>
<p>Talking of Meredith, I have just re-read for the third and
fourth time <i>The Egoist</i>.&nbsp; When I shall have read it
the sixth or seventh, I begin to see I shall know about it.&nbsp;
<a name="page239"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 239</span>You will
be astonished when you come to re-read it; I had no idea of the
matter&mdash;human, red matter he has contrived to plug and pack
into that strange and admirable book.&nbsp; Willoughby is, of
course, a pure discovery; a complete set of nerves, not
heretofore examined, and yet running all over the human
body&mdash;a suit of nerves.&nbsp; Clara is the best girl ever I
saw anywhere.&nbsp; Vernon is almost as good.&nbsp; The manner
and the faults of the book greatly justify themselves on further
study.&nbsp; Only Dr. Middleton does not hang together; and
Ladies Busshe and Culmer <i>sont des
monstruosit&eacute;s</i>.&nbsp; Vernon&rsquo;s conduct makes a
wonderful odd contrast with Daniel Deronda&rsquo;s.&nbsp; I see
more and more that Meredith is built for immortality.</p>
<p>Talking of which, Heywood, as a small immortal, an immortalet,
claims some attention.&nbsp; <i>The Woman killed with
Kindness</i> is one of the most striking novels&mdash;not plays,
though it&rsquo;s more of a play than anything else of
his&mdash;I ever read.&nbsp; He had such a sweet, sound soul, the
old boy.&nbsp; The death of the two pirates in <i>Fortune by Sea
and</i> <i>Land</i> is a document.&nbsp; He had obviously been
present, and heard Purser and Clinton take death by the beard
with similar braggadocios.&nbsp; Purser and Clinton, names of
pirates; Scarlet and Bobbington, names of highwaymen.&nbsp; He
had the touch of names, I think.&nbsp; No man I ever knew had
such a sense, such a tact, for English nomenclature: Rainsforth,
Lacy, Audley, Forrest, Acton, Spencer, Frankford&mdash;so his
names run.</p>
<p>Byron not only wrote <i>Don Juan</i>; he called Joan of Arc
&lsquo;a fanatical strumpet.&rsquo;&nbsp; These are his
words.&nbsp; I think the double shame, first to a great poet,
second to an English noble, passes words.</p>
<p>Here is a strange gossip.&mdash;I am yours loquaciously,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<p>My lungs are said to be in a splendid state.&nbsp; A cruel
examination, an exa<i>nim</i>ation I may call it, had this brave
result.&nbsp; <i>Ta&iuml;aut</i>!&nbsp; Hillo!&nbsp; Hey!&nbsp;
Stand by!&nbsp; Avast!&nbsp; Hurrah!</p>
<h3><a name="page240"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
240</span><span class="smcap">to Mrs. T. Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Chalet am Stein</i>,
<i>Davos</i>, <i>April</i> 9, 1882.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,&mdash;Herewith
please find belated birthday present.&nbsp; Fanny has
another.</p>
<table>
<tr>
<td><p>Cockshot = Jenkin.</p>
</td>
<td><p>But</p>
<p>pray</p>
<p>regard</p>
<p>these</p>
<p>as</p>
<p>secrets.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>Jack = Bob.</p>
</td>
<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>Burly = Henley.</p>
</td>
<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>Athelred = Simpson.</p>
</td>
<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>Opalstein = Symonds.</p>
</td>
<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>Purcel = Gosse.</p>
</td>
<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>My dear mother, how can I keep up with your breathless
changes?&nbsp;&nbsp; Innerleithen, Cramond, Bridge of Allan,
Dunblane, Selkirk.&nbsp; I lean to Cramond, but I shall be
pleased anywhere, any respite from Davos; never mind, it has been
a good, though a dear lesson.&nbsp; Now, with my improved health,
if I can pass the summer, I believe I shall be able no more to
exceed, no more to draw on you.&nbsp; It is time I sufficed for
myself indeed.&nbsp; And I believe I can.</p>
<p>I am still far from satisfied about Fanny; she is certainly
better, but it is by fits a good deal, and the symptoms continue,
which should not be.&nbsp; I had her persuaded to leave without
me this very day (Saturday 8th), but the disclosure of my
mismanagement broke up that plan; she would not leave me lest I
should mismanage more.&nbsp; I think this an unfair revenge; but
I have been so bothered that I cannot struggle.&nbsp; All Davos
has been drinking our wine.&nbsp; During the month of March,
three litres a day were drunk&mdash;O it is too
sickening&mdash;and that is only a specimen.&nbsp; It is enough
to make any one a misanthrope, but the right thing is to hate the
donkey that was duped&mdash;which I devoutly do.</p>
<p>I have this winter finished <i>Treasure Island</i>, written
the preface to the <i>Studies</i>, a small book about the
<i>Inland </i><a name="page241"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
241</span><i>Voyage</i> size, <i>The Silverado Squatters</i>, and
over and above that upwards of ninety (90) <i>Cornhill</i> pages
of magazine work.&nbsp; No man can say I have been
idle.&mdash;Your affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Edinburgh</i>] <i>Sunday</i>
[<i>June</i> 1882].</p>
<p>. . . <span class="smcap">Note</span> turned up, but no gray
opuscule, which, however, will probably turn up to-morrow in time
to go out with me to Stobo Manse, Peeblesshire, where, if you can
make it out, you will be a good soul to pay a visit.&nbsp; I
shall write again about the opuscule; and about Stobo, which I
have not seen since I was thirteen, though my memory speaks
delightfully of it.</p>
<p>I have been very tired and seedy, or I should have written
before, <i>inter alia</i>, to tell you that I had visited my
murder place and found <i>living traditions</i> not yet in any
printed book; most startling.&nbsp; I also got photographs taken,
but the negatives have not yet turned up.&nbsp; I lie on the sofa
to write this, whence the pencil; having slept yesterdays&mdash;1
+ 4 + 7&frac12; = 12&frac12; hours and being (9 <span
class="GutSmall">A.M.</span>) very anxious to sleep again.&nbsp;
The arms of Porpus, quoi!&nbsp; A poppy gules, etc.</p>
<p>From Stobo you can conquer Peebles and Selkirk, or to give
them their old decent names, Tweeddale and Ettrick.&nbsp; Think
of having been called Tweeddale, and being called <span
class="smcap">Peebles</span>!&nbsp; Did I ever tell you my skit
on my own travel books?&nbsp; We understand that Mr. Stevenson
has in the press another volume of unconventional <a
name="page242"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 242</span>travels:
<i>Personal Adventures in Peeblesshire</i>.&nbsp; <i>Je la trouve
m&eacute;chante</i>.&mdash;Yours affectionately,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<p>&mdash;Did I say I had seen a verse on two of the
Buccaneers?&nbsp; I did, and <i>&ccedil;a-y-est</i>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Stobo Manse</i>,
<i>Peeblesshire</i> [<i>July</i> 1882].</p>
<p class="poetry">I would shoot you, but I have no bow:<br />
The place is not called Stobs, but Stobo.<br />
As Gallic Kids complain of &lsquo;Bobo,&rsquo;<br />
I mourn for your mistake of Stobo.</p>
<p>First, we shall be gone in September.&nbsp; But if you think
of coming in August, my mother will hunt for you with
pleasure.&nbsp; We should all be overjoyed&mdash;though Stobo it
could not be, as it is but a kirk and manse, but possibly
somewhere within reach.&nbsp; Let us know.</p>
<p>Second, I have read your Gray with care.&nbsp; A more
difficult subject I can scarce fancy; it is crushing; yet I think
you have managed to shadow forth a man, and a good man too; and
honestly, I doubt if I could have done the same.&nbsp; This may
seem egoistic; but you are not such a fool as to think so.&nbsp;
It is the natural expression of real praise.&nbsp; The book as a
whole is readable; your subject peeps every here and there out of
the crannies like a shy violet&mdash;he could do no
more&mdash;and his aroma hangs there.</p>
<p>I write to catch a minion of the post.&nbsp; Hence
brevity.&nbsp; Answer about the house.&mdash;Yours
affectionately,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><a name="page243"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 243</span>[<i>Stobo Manse</i>, <i>July</i>
1882.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR HENLEY</span>, . . . I am not
worth an old damn.&nbsp; I am also crushed by bad news of
Symonds; his good lung going; I cannot help reading it as a
personal hint; God help us all!&nbsp; Really I am not very fit
for work; but I try, try, and nothing comes of it.</p>
<p>I believe we shall have to leave this place; it is low, damp,
and <i>mauchy</i>; the rain it raineth every day; and the glass
goes tol-de-rol-de riddle.</p>
<p>Yet it&rsquo;s a bonny bit; I wish I could live in it, but
doubt.&nbsp; I wish I was well away somewhere else.&nbsp; I feel
like flight some days; honour bright.</p>
<p>Pirbright Smith is well.&nbsp; Old Mr. Pegfurth Bannatyne is
here staying at a country inn.&nbsp; His whole baggage is a pair
of socks and a book in a fishing-basket; and he borrows even a
rod from the landlord.&nbsp; He walked here over the hills from
Sanquhar, &lsquo;singin&rsquo;, he says, &lsquo;like a
mavis.&rsquo;&nbsp; I naturally asked him about Hazlitt.&nbsp;
&lsquo;He wouldnae take his drink,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;a
queer, queer fellow.&rsquo;&nbsp; But did not seem further
communicative.&nbsp; He says he has become
&lsquo;releegious,&rsquo; but still swears like a trooper.&nbsp;
I asked him if he had no headquarters.&nbsp; &lsquo;No
likely,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; He says he is writing his memoirs,
which will be interesting.&nbsp; He once met Borrow; they boxed;
&lsquo;and Geordie,&rsquo; says the old man chuckling,
&lsquo;gave me the damnedest hiding.&rsquo;&nbsp; Of Wordsworth
he remarked, &lsquo;He wasnae sound in the faith, sir, and a
milk-blooded, blue-spectacled bitch forbye.&nbsp; But his
po&rsquo;mes are grand&mdash;there&rsquo;s no denying
that.&rsquo;&nbsp; I asked him what his book was.&nbsp; &lsquo;I
havenae mind,&rsquo; said he&mdash;that was his only book!&nbsp;
On <a name="page244"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
244</span>turning it out, I found it was one of my own, and on
showing it to him, he remembered it at once.&nbsp; &lsquo;O
aye,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;I mind now.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s pretty
bad; ye&rsquo;ll have to do better than that, chieldy,&rsquo; and
chuckled, chuckled.&nbsp; He is a strange old figure, to be
sure.&nbsp; He cannot endure Pirbright Smith&mdash;&lsquo;a mere
&aelig;sth<i>a</i>tic,&rsquo; he said.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Pooh!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Fishin&rsquo; and
releegion&mdash;these are my aysthatics,&rsquo; he wound up.</p>
<p>I thought this would interest you, so scribbled it down.&nbsp;
I still hope to get more out of him about Hazlitt, though he
utterly pooh-poohed the idea of writing H.&rsquo;s life.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Ma life now,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;there&rsquo;s been
queer things in <i>it</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp; He is seventy-nine! but
may well last to a hundred!&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L S.</p>
<h2><a name="page245"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
245</span>VI<br />
MARSEILLES AND HY&Egrave;RES,<br />
<span class="GutSmall">OCTOBER 1882-AUGUST 1884</span></h2>
<h3><a name="page251"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
251</span><span class="smcap">to the Editor of the</span>
&lsquo;<span class="smcap">New York Tribune</span>&rsquo;</h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Terminus Hotel</i>,
<i>Marseilles</i>, <i>October</i> 16, 1882.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">SIR</span>,&mdash;It has come to my
ears that you have lent the authority of your columns to an
error.</p>
<p>More than half in pleasantry&mdash;and I now think the
pleasantry ill-judged&mdash;I complained in a note to my <i>New
Arabian Nights</i> that some one, who shall remain nameless for
me, had borrowed the idea of a story from one of mine.&nbsp; As
if I had not borrowed the ideas of the half of my own!&nbsp; As
if any one who had written a story ill had a right to complain of
any other who should have written it better!&nbsp; I am indeed
thoroughly ashamed of the note, and of the principle which it
implies.</p>
<p>But it is no mere abstract penitence which leads me to beg a
corner of your paper&mdash;it is the desire to defend the honour
of a man of letters equally known in America and England, of a
man who could afford to lend to me and yet be none the poorer;
and who, if he would so far condescend, has my free permission to
borrow from me all that he can find worth borrowing.</p>
<p><a name="page252"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
252</span>Indeed, sir, I am doubly surprised at your
correspondent&rsquo;s error.&nbsp; That James Payn should have
borrowed from me is already a strange conception.&nbsp; The
author of <i>Lost Sir Massingberd</i> and <i>By Proxy</i> may be
trusted to invent his own stories.&nbsp; The author of <i>A Grape
from a Thorn</i> knows enough, in his own right, of the humorous
and pathetic sides of human nature.</p>
<p>But what is far more monstrous&mdash;what argues total
ignorance of the man in question&mdash;is the idea that James
Payn could ever have transgressed the limits of professional
propriety.&nbsp; I may tell his thousands of readers on your side
of the Atlantic that there breathes no man of letters more
inspired by kindness and generosity to his brethren of the
profession, and, to put an end to any possibility of error, I may
be allowed to add that I often have recourse, and that I had
recourse once more but a few weeks ago, to the valuable practical
help which he makes it his pleasure to extend to younger men.</p>
<p>I send a duplicate of this letter to a London weekly; for the
mistake, first set forth in your columns, has already reached
England, and my wanderings have made me perhaps last of the
persons interested to hear a word of it.&mdash;I am, etc.,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to R. A. M. Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Terminus Hotel</i>,
<i>Marseille</i>, <i>Saturday</i> (<i>October</i> 1882).</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BOB</span>,&mdash;We have found
a house!&mdash;at Saint Marcel, Banlieue de Marseille.&nbsp; In a
lovely valley between hills part wooded, part white cliffs; a
house of a dining-room, of a fine salon&mdash;one side lined with
a long divan&mdash;three good bedrooms (two of them with
dressing-rooms), three small rooms (chambers of <i>bonne</i> and
sich), a large kitchen, a lumber room, many cupboards, a back
court, a large, large olive yard, cultivated by a resident
<i>paysan</i>, a well, <a name="page253"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 253</span>a berceau, a good deal of rockery, a
little pine shrubbery, a railway station in front, two lines of
omnibus to Marseille.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">&pound;48 per annum.</p>
<p>It is called Campagne Defli! query Campagne Debug?&nbsp; The
Campagne Demosquito goes on here nightly, and is very
deadly.&nbsp; Ere we can get installed, we shall be beggared to
the door, I see.</p>
<p>I vote for separations; F.&rsquo;s arrival here, after our
separation, was better fun to me than being married was by
far.&nbsp; A separation completed is a most valuable property;
worth piles.&mdash;Ever your affectionate cousin,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Terminus Hotel</i>,
<i>Marseille</i>, <i>le</i> 17<i>th</i> <i>October</i> 1882.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR FATHER</span>,&mdash;.&nbsp; We
grow, every time we see it, more delighted with our house.&nbsp;
It is five miles out of Marseilles, in a lovely spot, among
lovely wooded and cliffy hills&mdash;most mountainous in
line&mdash;far lovelier, to my eyes, than any Alps.&nbsp; To-day
we have been out inventorying; and though a mistral blew, it was
delightful in an open cab, and our house with the windows open
was heavenly, soft, dry, sunny, southern.&nbsp; I fear there are
fleas&mdash;it is called Campagne Defli&mdash;and I look forward
to tons of insecticide being employed.</p>
<p>I have had to write a letter to the <i>New York Tribune</i>
and the <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>.&nbsp; Payn was accused of stealing
my stories!&nbsp; I think I have put things handsomely for
him.</p>
<p>Just got a servant! ! !&mdash;Ever affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p>Our servant is a Muckle Hash of a Weedy!</p>
<h3><a name="page254"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
254</span><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas
Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Campagne Defli</i>, <i>St.
Marcel</i>,<br />
<i>Banlieue de Marseille</i>, <i>November</i> 13, 1882.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,&mdash;Your
delightful letters duly arrived this morning.&nbsp; They were the
only good feature of the day, which was not a success.&nbsp;
Fanny was in bed&mdash;she begged I would not split upon her, she
felt so guilty; but as I believe she is better this evening, and
has a good chance to be right again in a day or two, I will
disregard her orders.&nbsp; I do not go back, but do not go
forward&mdash;or not much.&nbsp; It is, in one way,
miserable&mdash;for I can do no work; a very little wood-cutting,
the newspapers, and a note about every two days to write,
completely exhausts my surplus energy; even Patience I have to
cultivate with parsimony.&nbsp; I see, if I could only get to
work, that we could live here with comfort, almost with
luxury.&nbsp; Even as it is, we should be able to get through a
considerable time of idleness.&nbsp; I like the place immensely,
though I have seen so little of it&mdash;I have only been once
outside the gate since I was here!&nbsp; It puts me in mind of a
summer at Prestonpans and a sickly child you once told me of.</p>
<p>Thirty-two years now finished!&nbsp; My twenty-ninth was in
San Francisco, I remember&mdash;rather a bleak birthday.&nbsp;
The twenty-eighth was not much better; but the rest have been
usually pleasant days in pleasant circumstances.</p>
<p>Love to you and to my father and to Cummy.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">From me and Fanny and Wogg.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Charles Baxter</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><a name="page255"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 255</span><i>Grand Hotel</i>, <i>Nice</i>,
12<i>th</i> <i>January</i> &rsquo;83.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;Thanks for
your good letter.&nbsp; It is true, man, God&rsquo;s tr&uuml;th,
what ye say about the body Stevison.&nbsp; The deil himsel,
it&rsquo;s my belief, couldnae get the soul harled oot o&rsquo;
the creature&rsquo;s wame, or he had seen the hinder end o&rsquo;
they proofs.&nbsp; Ye crack o&rsquo; M&aelig;cenas, he&rsquo;s
naebody by you!&nbsp; He gied the lad Horace a rax forrit by all
accounts; but he never gied him proofs like yon.&nbsp; Horace may
hae been a better hand at the clink than Stevison&mdash;mind,
I&rsquo;m no sayin&rsquo; &lsquo;t&mdash;but onyway he was never
sae weel prentit.&nbsp; Damned, but it&rsquo;s bonny!&nbsp; Hoo
mony pages will there be, think ye?&nbsp; Stevison maun hae sent
ye the feck o&rsquo; twenty sangs&mdash;fifteen I&rsquo;se
warrant.&nbsp; Weel, that&rsquo;ll can make thretty pages, gin ye
were to prent on ae side only, whilk wad be perhaps what a man
o&rsquo; your <i>great</i> idees would be ettlin&rsquo; at, man
Johnson.&nbsp; Then there wad be the Pre-face, an&rsquo; prose ye
ken prents oot langer than po&rsquo;try at the hinder end, for ye
hae to say things in&rsquo;t.&nbsp; An&rsquo; then there&rsquo;ll
be a title-page and a dedication and an index wi&rsquo; the first
lines like, and the deil an&rsquo; a&rsquo;.&nbsp; Man,
it&rsquo;ll be grand.&nbsp; Nae copies to be given to the
Liberys.</p>
<p>I am alane myself, in Nice, they ca&rsquo;t, but damned, I
think they micht as well ca&rsquo;t Nesty.&nbsp; The Pile-on,
&lsquo;s they ca&rsquo;t, &lsquo;s aboot as big as the river Tay
at Perth; and it&rsquo;s rainin&rsquo; maist like Greenock.&nbsp;
Dod, I&rsquo;ve seen &lsquo;s had mair o&rsquo; what they
ca&rsquo; the I-talian at Muttonhole.&nbsp; I-talian!&nbsp; I
haenae seen the sun for eicht and forty hours.&nbsp;
Thomson&rsquo;s better, I believe.&nbsp; But the body&rsquo;s
fair attenyated.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s <a name="page256"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 256</span>doon to seeven stane eleeven,
an&rsquo; he sooks awa&rsquo; at cod liver ile, till it&rsquo;s a
fair disgrace.&nbsp; Ye see he tak&rsquo;s it on a drap brandy;
and it&rsquo;s my belief, it&rsquo;s just an excuse for a
dram.&nbsp; He an&rsquo; Stevison gang aboot their lane, maistly;
they&rsquo;re company to either, like, an&rsquo; whiles
they&rsquo;ll speak o&rsquo;Johnson.&nbsp; But <i>he&rsquo;s</i>
far awa&rsquo;, losh me!&nbsp; Stevison&rsquo;s last book&rsquo;s
in a third edeetion; an&rsquo; it&rsquo;s bein&rsquo; translated
(like the psaulms o&rsquo; David, nae less) into French; and an
eediot they ca&rsquo; Asher&mdash;a kind o&rsquo; rival of
Tauchnitz&mdash;is bringin&rsquo; him oot in a paper book for the
Frenchies and the German folk in twa volumes.&nbsp; Sae
he&rsquo;s in luck, ye see.&mdash;Yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Thomson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Alison Cunningham</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Nice</i>, <i>February</i>
1883.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CUMMY</span>,&mdash;You must
think, and quite justly, that I am one of the meanest rogues in
creation.&nbsp; But though I do not write (which is a thing I
hate), it by no means follows that people are out of my
mind.&nbsp; It is natural that I should always think more or less
about you, and still more natural that I should think of you when
I went back to Nice.&nbsp; But the real reason why you have been
more in my mind than usual is because of some little verses that
I have been writing, and that I mean to make a book of; and the
real reason of this letter (although I ought to have written to
you anyway) is that I have just seen that the book in question
must be dedicated to</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">Alison
Cunningham</span>,</p>
<p>the only person who will really understand it.&nbsp; I
don&rsquo;t know when it may be ready, for it has to be
illustrated, but I hope in the meantime you may like the idea of
what is to be; and when the time comes, I shall try to make the
dedication as pretty as I can make it.&nbsp; Of course, this is
only a flourish, like taking off one&rsquo;s hat; but still, <a
name="page257"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 257</span>a person
who has taken the trouble to write things does not dedicate them
to any one without meaning it; and you must just try to take this
dedication in place of a great many things that I might have
said, and that I ought to have done, to prove that I am not
altogether unconscious of the great debt of gratitude I owe
you.&nbsp; This little book, which is all about my childhood,
should indeed go to no other person but you, who did so much to
make that childhood happy.</p>
<p>Do you know, we came very near sending for you this
winter.&nbsp; If we had not had news that you were ill too, I
almost believe we should have done so, we were so much in
trouble.</p>
<p>I am now very well; but my wife has had a very, very bad
spell, through overwork and anxiety, when I was
<i>lost</i>!&nbsp; I suppose you heard of that.&nbsp; She sends
you her love, and hopes you will write to her, though she no more
than I deserves it.&nbsp; She would add a word herself, but she
is too played out.&mdash;I am, ever your old boy,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Nice</i>, <i>March</i>
1883.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LAD</span>,&mdash;This is to
announce to you the <span class="GutSmall">MS</span>. of Nursery
Verses, now numbering <span class="GutSmall">XLVIII</span>.
pieces or 599 verses, which, of course, one might augment <i>ad
infinitum</i>.</p>
<p>But here is my notion to make all clear.</p>
<p>I do not want a big ugly quarto; my soul sickens at the look
of a quarto.&nbsp; I want a refined octavo, not large&mdash;not
<i>larger</i> than the <i>Donkey Book</i>, at any price.</p>
<p>I think the full page might hold four verses of four <a
name="page258"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 258</span>lines, that
is to say, counting their blanks at two, of twenty-two lines in
height.&nbsp; The first page of each number would only hold two
verses or ten lines, the title being low down.&nbsp; At this
rate, we should have seventy-eight or eighty pages of
letterpress.</p>
<p>The designs should not be in the text, but facing the poem; so
that if the artist liked, he might give two pages of design to
every poem that turned the leaf, <i>i.e.</i> longer than eight
lines, <i>i.e.</i> to twenty-eight out of the forty-six.&nbsp; I
should say he would not use this privilege (?) above five times,
and some he might scorn to illustrate at all, so we may say fifty
drawings.&nbsp; I shall come to the drawings next.</p>
<p>But now you see my book of the thickness, since the drawings
count two pages, of 180 pages; and since the paper will perhaps
be thicker, of near two hundred by bulk.&nbsp; It is bound in a
quiet green with the words in thin gilt.&nbsp; Its shape is a
slender, tall octavo.&nbsp; And it sells for the
publisher&rsquo;s fancy, and it will be a darling to look at; in
short, it would be like one of the original Heine books in type
and spacing.</p>
<p>Now for the pictures.&nbsp; I take another sheet and begin to
jot notes for them when my imagination serves: I will run through
the book, writing when I have an idea.&nbsp; There, I have jotted
enough to give the artist a notion.&nbsp; Of course, I
don&rsquo;t do more than contribute ideas, but I will be happy to
help in any and every way.&nbsp; I may as well add another idea;
when the artist finds nothing much to illustrate, a good drawing
of any <i>object</i> mentioned in the text, were it only a loaf
of bread or a candlestick, is a most delightful thing to a young
child.&nbsp; I remember this keenly.</p>
<p>Of course, if the artist insists on a larger form, I must I
suppose, bow my head.&nbsp; But my idea I am convinced is the
best, and would make the book truly, not fashionably pretty.</p>
<p>I forgot to mention that I shall have a dedication; I <a
name="page259"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 259</span>am going to
dedicate &rsquo;em to Cummy; it will please her, and lighten a
little my burthen of ingratitude.&nbsp; A low affair is the Muse
business.</p>
<p>I will add no more to this lest you should want to communicate
with the artist; try another sheet.&nbsp; I wonder how many
I&rsquo;ll keep wandering to.</p>
<p>O I forgot.&nbsp; As for the title, I think &lsquo;Nursery
Verses&rsquo; the best.&nbsp; Poetry is not the strong point of
the text, and I shrink from any title that might seem to claim
that quality; otherwise we might have &lsquo;Nursery Muses&rsquo;
or &lsquo;New Songs of Innocence&rsquo; (but that were a
blasphemy), or &lsquo;Rimes of Innocence&rsquo;: the last not
bad, or&mdash;an idea&mdash;&lsquo;The Jews&rsquo; Harp,&rsquo;
or&mdash;now I have it&mdash;&lsquo;The Penny Whistle.&rsquo;</p>
<p style="text-align: center">THE PENNY WHISTLE:<br />
NURSERY VERSES<br />
BY<br />
<span class="smcap">Robert Louis Stevenson</span>.<br />
ILLUSTRATED BY &mdash; &mdash; &mdash;</p>
<p>And here we have an excellent frontispiece, of a party playing
on a P. W. to a little ring of dancing children.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">THE PENNY WHISTLE<br />
is the name for me.</p>
<p>Fool! this is all wrong, here is the true name:&mdash;</p>
<p style="text-align: center">PENNY WHISTLES<br />
FOR SMALL WHISTLERS.</p>
<p>The second title is queried, it is perhaps better, as simply
<span class="GutSmall">PENNY WHISTLES</span>.</p>
<p class="poetry">Nor you, O Penny Whistler, grudge<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; That I your instrument debase:<br />
By worse performers still we judge,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; And give that fife a second place!</p>
<p><a name="page260"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
260</span>Crossed penny whistles on the cover, or else a sheaf of
&rsquo;em.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">SUGGESTIONS.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">IV</span>. The procession&mdash;the
child running behind it.&nbsp; The procession tailing off through
the gates of a cloudy city.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">IX</span>. <i>Foreign
Lands</i>.&mdash;This will, I think, want two plates&mdash;the
child climbing, his first glimpse over the garden wall, with what
he sees&mdash;the tree shooting higher and higher like the
beanstalk, and the view widening.&nbsp; The river slipping
in.&nbsp; The road arriving in Fairyland.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">X</span>. <i>Windy
Nights</i>.&mdash;The child in bed listening&mdash;the horseman
galloping.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">XII</span>. The child helplessly
watching his ship&mdash;then he gets smaller, and the doll
joyfully comes alive&mdash;the pair landing on the
island&mdash;the ship&rsquo;s deck with the doll steering and the
child firing the penny canon.&nbsp; Query two plates?&nbsp; The
doll should never come properly alive.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">XV</span>. Building of the
ship&mdash;storing her&mdash;Navigation&mdash;Tom&rsquo;s
accident, the other child paying no attention.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">XXXI</span>. <i>The Wind</i>.&mdash;I
sent you my notion of already.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">XXXVII</span>. <i>Foreign
Children</i>.&mdash;The foreign types dancing in a jing-a-ring,
with the English child pushing in the middle.&nbsp; The foreign
children looking at and showing each other marvels.&nbsp; The
English child at the leeside of a roast of beef.&nbsp; The
English child sitting thinking with his picture-books all round
him, and the jing-a-ring of the foreign children in miniature
dancing over the picture-books.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">XXXIX</span>.&nbsp; Dear artist, can
you do me that?</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">XLII</span>. The child being started
off&mdash;the bed sailing, curtains and all, upon the
sea&mdash;the child waking and finding himself at home; the
corner of toilette might be worked in to look like the pier.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">XLVII</span>. The lighted part of the
room, to be carefully distinguished from my child&rsquo;s dark
hunting grounds.&nbsp; A shaded lamp.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><a name="page261"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
261</span><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas
Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Hotel des Iles d&rsquo;Or</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res</i>, <i>Var</i>, <i>March</i> 2, [1883].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,&mdash;It must be
at least a fortnight since we have had a scratch of a pen from
you; and if it had not been for Cummy&rsquo;s letter, I should
have feared you were worse again: as it is, I hope we shall hear
from you to-day or to-morrow at latest.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><i>Health</i>.</p>
<p>Our news is good: Fanny never got so bad as we feared, and we
hope now that this attack may pass off in threatenings.&nbsp; I
am greatly better, have gained flesh, strength, spirits; eat
well, walk a good deal, and do some work without fatigue.&nbsp; I
am off the sick list.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><i>Lodging</i>.</p>
<p>We have found a house up the hill, close to the town, an
excellent place though very, very little.&nbsp; If I can get the
landlord to agree to let us take it by the month just now, and
let our month&rsquo;s rent count for the year in case we take it
on, you may expect to hear we are again installed, and to receive
a letter dated thus:&mdash;</p>
<blockquote><p>La Solitude,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Hy&egrave;res-les-Palmiers,<br />

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
Var.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If the man won&rsquo;t agree to that, of course I must just
give it up, as the house would be dear enough anyway at 2000
f.&nbsp; However, I hope we may get it, as it is healthy,
cheerful, and close to shops, and society, and
civilisation.&nbsp; The garden, which is above, is lovely, and
will be cool in summer.&nbsp; There are two rooms below with a
kitchen, and four rooms above, all told.&mdash;Ever your
affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><a name="page262"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
262</span><span class="smcap">to Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Hotel des Iles d&rsquo;Or</i>,
<i>but my address will be Chalet la Solitude</i>,<br />
<i>Hy&egrave;res-le-Palmiers</i>, <i>Var</i>, <i>France</i>,
<i>March</i> 17, 1883.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR SIR</span>,&mdash;Your undated
favour from Eastbourne came to hand in course of post, and I now
hasten to acknowledge its receipt.&nbsp; We must ask you in
future, for the convenience of our business arrangements, to
struggle with and tread below your feet this most unsatisfactory
and uncommercial habit.&nbsp; Our Mr. Cassandra is better; our
Mr. Wogg expresses himself dissatisfied with our new place of
business; when left alone in the front shop, he bawled like a
parrot; it is supposed the offices are haunted.</p>
<p>To turn to the matter of your letter, your remarks on <i>Great
Expectations</i> are very good.&nbsp; We have both re-read it
this winter, and I, in a manner, twice.&nbsp; The object being a
play; the play, in its rough outline, I now see: and it is
extraordinary how much of Dickens had to be discarded as unhuman,
impossible, and ineffective: all that really remains is the loan
of a file (but from a grown-up young man who knows what he was
doing, and to a convict who, although he does not know it is his
father&mdash;the father knows it is his son), and the fact of the
convict-father&rsquo;s return and disclosure of himself to the
son whom he has made rich.&nbsp; Everything else has been thrown
aside; and the position has had to be explained by a prologue
which is pretty strong.&nbsp; I have great hopes of this piece,
which is very amiable and, in places, very strong indeed: but it
was curious how Dickens had to be rolled away; he had made his
story turn on such improbabilities, such fantastic trifles, not
on a good human basis, such as I recognised.&nbsp; You are right
about the casts, they were a capital idea; a good description of
them at first, and then <a name="page263"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 263</span>afterwards, say second, for the
lawyer to have illustrated points out of the history of the
originals, dusting the particular bust&mdash;that was all the
development the thing would bear.&nbsp; Dickens killed
them.&nbsp; The only really well <i>executed</i> scenes are the
riverside ones; the escape in particular is excellent; and I may
add, the capture of the two convicts at the beginning.&nbsp; Miss
Havisham is, probably, the worst thing in human fiction.&nbsp;
But Wemmick I like; and I like Trabb&rsquo;s boy; and Mr. Wopsle
as Hamlet is splendid.</p>
<p>The weather here is greatly improved, and I hope in three days
to be in the chalet.&nbsp; That is, if I get some money to float
me there.</p>
<p>I hope you are all right again, and will keep better.&nbsp;
The month of March is past its mid career; it must soon begin to
turn toward the lamb; here it has already begun to do so; and I
hope milder weather will pick you up.&nbsp; Wogg has eaten a
forpet of rice and milk, his beard is streaming, his eyes
wild.&nbsp; I am besieged by demands of work from America.</p>
<p>The &pound;50 has just arrived; many thanks; I am now at
ease.&mdash;Ever your affectionate son, <i>pro</i> Cassandra,
Wogg and Co.,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Sitwell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Chalet la Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res</i>, [<i>April</i> 1883].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR FRIEND</span>,&mdash;I am one
of the lowest of the&mdash;but that&rsquo;s understood.&nbsp; I
received the copy, <a name="citation263"></a><a
href="#footnote263" class="citation">[263]</a> excellently
written, with I think only one slip from first to last.&nbsp; I
have struck out two, and added five or six; so they now number
forty-five; when they are fifty, they shall out on the
world.&nbsp; I have not written a letter for a cruel time; I have
been, and am, so busy, drafting a long story (for me, I mean),
about a hundred <i>Cornhill</i> pages, or say about as long as
the Donkey book: <i>Prince Otto</i> it is called, and is, <a
name="page264"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 264</span>at the
present hour, a sore burthen but a hopeful.&nbsp; If I had him
all drafted, I should whistle and sing.&nbsp; But no: then
I&rsquo;ll have to rewrite him; and then there will be the
publishers, alas!&nbsp; But some time or other, I shall whistle
and sing, I make no doubt.</p>
<p>I am going to make a fortune, it has not yet begun, for I am
not yet clear of debt; but as soon as I can, I begin upon the
fortune.&nbsp; I shall begin it with a halfpenny, and it shall
end with horses and yachts and all the fun of the fair.&nbsp;
This is the first real grey hair in my character: rapacity has
begun to show, the greed of the protuberant guttler.&nbsp; Well,
doubtless, when the hour strikes, we must all guttle and
protube.&nbsp; But it comes hard on one who was always so
willow-slender and as careless as the daisies.</p>
<p>Truly I am in excellent spirits.&nbsp; I have crushed through
a financial crisis; Fanny is much better; I am in excellent
health, and work from four to five hours a day&mdash;from one to
two above my average, that is; and we all dwell together and make
fortunes in the loveliest house you ever saw, with a garden like
a fairy story, and a view like a classical landscape.</p>
<p>Little?&nbsp; Well, it is not large.&nbsp; And when you come
to see us, you will probably have to bed at the hotel, which is
hard by.&nbsp; But it is Eden, madam, Eden and Beulah and the
Delectable Mountains and Eldorado and the Hesperidean Isles and
Bimini.</p>
<p>We both look forward, my dear friend, with the greatest
eagerness to have you here.&nbsp; It seems it is not to be this
season; but I appoint you with an appointment for next
season.&nbsp; You cannot see us else: remember that.&nbsp; Till
my health has grown solid like an oak-tree, till my fortune
begins really to spread its boughs like the same monarch of the
woods (and the acorn, ay de mi! is not yet planted), I expect to
be a prisoner among the palms.</p>
<p>Yes, it is like old times to be writing you from the Riviera,
and after all that has come and gone who can <a
name="page265"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 265</span>predict
anything?&nbsp; How fortune tumbles men about!&nbsp; Yet I have
not found that they change their friends, thank God.</p>
<p>Both of our loves to your sister and yourself.&nbsp; As for
me, if I am here and happy, I know to whom I owe it; I know who
made my way for me in life, if that were all, and I remain, with
love, your faithful friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Chalet la Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res</i>, [<i>April</i> 1883].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR GOSSE</span>,&mdash;I am very
guilty; I should have written to you long ago; and now, though it
must be done, I am so stupid that I can only boldly
recapitulate.&nbsp; A phrase of three members is the outside of
my syntax.</p>
<p>First, I liked the <i>Rover</i> better than any of your other
verse.&nbsp; I believe you are right, and can make stories in
verse.&nbsp; The last two stanzas and one or two in the
beginning&mdash;but the two last above all&mdash;I thought
excellent.&nbsp; I suggest a pursuit of the vein.&nbsp; If you
want a good story to treat, get the <i>Memoirs of the Chevalier
Johnstone</i>, and do his passage of the Tay; it would be
excellent: the dinner in the field, the woman he has to follow,
the dragoons, the timid boatmen, the brave lasses.&nbsp; It would
go like a charm; look at it, and you will say you owe me one.</p>
<p>Second, Gilder asking me for fiction, I suddenly took a great
resolve, and have packed off to him my new work, <i>The Silverado
Squatters</i>.&nbsp; I do not for a moment suppose he will take
it; but pray say all the good words you can for it.&nbsp; I
should be awfully glad to get it taken.&nbsp; But if it does not
mean dibbs at once, I shall be ruined for life.&nbsp; Pray write
soon and beg Gilder your prettiest for a poor gentleman in
pecuniary sloughs.</p>
<p>Fourth, next time I am supposed to be at death&rsquo;s door,
<a name="page266"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 266</span>write to
me like a Christian, and let not your correspondence attend on
business.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;I see I have led you to conceive the
<i>Squatters</i> are fiction.&nbsp; They are not, alas!</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas
Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Chalet Solitude</i>, <i>May</i>
5, [1883].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAREST PEOPLE</span>,&mdash;I have
had a great piece of news.&nbsp; There has been offered for
<i>Treasure Island</i>&mdash;how much do you suppose?&nbsp; I
believe it would be an excellent jest to keep the answer till my
next letter.&nbsp; For two cents I would do so.&nbsp; Shall
I?&nbsp; Anyway, I&rsquo;ll turn the page first.&nbsp;
No&mdash;well&mdash;A hundred pounds, all alive, O!&nbsp; A
hundred jingling, tingling, golden, minted quid.&nbsp; Is not
this wonderful?&nbsp; Add that I have now finished, in draft, the
fifteenth chapter of my novel, and have only five before me, and
you will see what cause of gratitude I have.</p>
<p>The weather, to look at the per contra sheet, continues
vomitable; and Fanny is quite out of sorts.&nbsp; But, really,
with such cause of gladness, I have not the heart to be
dispirited by anything.&nbsp; My child&rsquo;s verse book is
finished, dedication and all, and out of my hands&mdash;you may
tell Cummy; <i>Silverado</i> is done, too, and cast upon the
waters; and this novel so near completion, it does look as if I
should support myself without trouble in the future.&nbsp; If I
have only health, I can, I thank God.&nbsp; It is dreadful to be
a great, big man, and not be able to buy bread.</p>
<p>O that this may last!</p>
<p>I have to-day paid my rent for the half year, till the middle
of September, and got my lease: why they have been so long, I
know not.</p>
<p>I wish you all sorts of good things.</p>
<p>When is our marriage day?&mdash;Your loving and ecstatic
son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Treesure
Eilaan</span>,</p>
<p>It has been for me a Treasure Island verily.</p>
<h3><a name="page267"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
267</span><span class="smcap">to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas
Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res</i>, <i>May</i> 8, 1883.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR PEOPLE</span>,&mdash;I was
disgusted to hear my father was not so well.&nbsp; I have a most
troubled existence of work and business.&nbsp; But the work goes
well, which is the great affair.&nbsp; I meant to have written a
most delightful letter; too tired, however, and must stop.&nbsp;
Perhaps I&rsquo;ll find time to add to it ere post.</p>
<p>I have returned refreshed from eating, but have little time,
as Lloyd will go soon with the letters on his way to his tutor,
Louis Robert (!!!!), with whom he learns Latin in French, and
French, I suppose, in Latin, which seems to me a capital
education.&nbsp; He, Lloyd, is a great bicycler already, and has
been long distances; he is most new-fangled over his instrument,
and does not willingly converse on other subjects.</p>
<p>Our lovely garden is a prey to snails; I have gathered about a
bushel, which, not having the heart to slay, I steal forth withal
and deposit near my neighbour&rsquo;s garden wall.&nbsp; As a
case of casuistry, this presents many points of interest.&nbsp; I
loathe the snails, but from loathing to actual butchery,
trucidation of multitudes, there is still a step that I hesitate
to take.&nbsp; What, then, to do with them?&nbsp; My
neighbour&rsquo;s vineyard, pardy!&nbsp; It is a rich, villa,
pleasure-garden of course; if it were a peasant&rsquo;s patch,
the snails, I suppose, would have to perish.</p>
<p>The weather these last three days has been much better, though
it is still windy and unkind.&nbsp; I keep splendidly well, and
am cruelly busy, with mighty little time even for a walk.&nbsp;
And to write at all, under such pressure, must be held to lean to
virtue&rsquo;s side.</p>
<p>My financial prospects are shining.&nbsp; O if the health will
hold, I should easily support myself.&mdash;Your ever
affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><a name="page268"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
268</span><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res-les-Palmiers</i>, <i>Var</i>,<br />
[<i>May</i> 20, 1883].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR GOSSE</span>,&mdash;I enclose
the receipt and the corrections.&nbsp; As for your letter and
Gilder&rsquo;s, I must take an hour or so to think; the matter
much importing&mdash;to me.&nbsp; The &pound;40 was a heavenly
thing.</p>
<p>I send the <span class="GutSmall">MS</span>. by Henley,
because he acts for me in all matters, and had the thing, like
all my other books, in his detention.&nbsp; He is my unpaid
agent&mdash;an admirable arrangement for me, and one that has
rather more than doubled my income on the spot.</p>
<p>If I have been long silent, think how long you were so and
blush, sir, blush.</p>
<p>I was rendered unwell by the arrival of your cheque, and, like
Pepys, &lsquo;my hand still shakes to write of it.&rsquo;&nbsp;
To this grateful emotion, and not to D.T., please attribute the
raggedness of my hand.</p>
<p>This year I should be able to live and keep my family on my
own earnings, and that in spite of eight months and more of
perfect idleness at the end of last and beginning of this.&nbsp;
It is a sweet thought.</p>
<p>This spot, our garden and our view, are sub-celestial.&nbsp; I
sing daily with my Bunyan, that great bard,</p>
<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">&lsquo;I dwell already
the next door to Heaven!&rsquo;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If you could see my roses, and my aloes, and my fig-marigolds,
and my olives, and my view over a plain, and my view of certain
mountains as graceful as Apollo, as severe as Zeus, you would not
think the phrase exaggerated.</p>
<p>It is blowing to-day a <i>hot</i> mistral, which is the devil
or a near connection of his.</p>
<p>This to catch the post.&mdash;Yours affectionately,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><a name="page269"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
269</span><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res-les-Palmiers</i>, <i>Var</i>, <i>France</i>,<br
/>
<i>May</i> 21, 1883.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR GOSSE</span>,&mdash;The night
giveth advice, generally bad advice; but I have taken it.&nbsp;
And I have written direct to Gilder to tell him to keep the book
<a name="citation269"></a><a href="#footnote269"
class="citation">[269]</a> back and go on with it in November at
his leisure.&nbsp; I do not know if this will come in time; if it
doesn&rsquo;t, of course things will go on in the way
proposed.&nbsp; The &pound;40, or, as I prefer to put it, the
1000 francs, has been such a piercing sun-ray as my whole grey
life is gilt withal.&nbsp; On the back of it I can endure.&nbsp;
If these good days of <i>Longman</i> and the <i>Century</i> only
last, it will be a very green world, this that we dwell in and
that philosophers miscall.&nbsp; I have no taste for that
philosophy; give me large sums paid on the receipt of the <span
class="GutSmall">MS</span>. and copyright reserved, and what do I
care about the non-b&euml;ent?&nbsp; Only I know it can&rsquo;t
last.&nbsp; The devil always has an imp or two in every house,
and my imps are getting lively.&nbsp; The good lady, the dear,
kind lady, the sweet, excellent lady, Nemesis, whom alone I
adore, has fixed her wooden eye upon me.&nbsp; I fall prone;
spare me, Mother Nemesis!&nbsp; But catch her!</p>
<p>I must now go to bed; for I have had a whoreson influenza
cold, and have to lie down all day, and get up only to meals and
the delights, June delights, of business correspondence.</p>
<p>You said nothing about my subject for a poem.&nbsp;
Don&rsquo;t you like it?&nbsp; My own fishy eye has been fixed on
it for prose, but I believe it could be thrown out finely in
verse, and hence I resign and pass the hand.&nbsp; Twig the
compliment?&mdash;Yours affectionately</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><a name="page270"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
270</span><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Hy&egrave;res</i>, <i>May</i>
1883.]</p>
<p>. . . <span class="smcap">The</span> influenza has busted me a
good deal; I have no spring, and am headachy.&nbsp; So, as my
good Red Lion Counter begged me for another Butcher&rsquo;s
Boy&mdash;I turned me to&mdash;what thinkest &rsquo;ou?&mdash;to
Tushery, by the mass!&nbsp; Ay, friend, a whole tale of
tushery.&nbsp; And every tusher tushes me so free, that may I be
tushed if the whole thing is worth a tush.&nbsp; <i>The Black
Arrow</i>: <i>A Tale of Tunstall Forest</i> is his name: tush! a
poor thing!</p>
<p>Will <i>Treasure Island</i> proofs be coming soon, think
you?</p>
<p>I will now make a confession.&nbsp; It was the sight of your
maimed strength and masterfulness that begot John Silver in
<i>Treasure Island</i>.&nbsp; Of course, he is not in any other
quality or feature the least like you; but the idea of the maimed
man, ruling and dreaded by the sound, was entirely taken from
you.</p>
<p>Otto is, as you say, not a thing to extend my public on.&nbsp;
It is queer and a little, little bit free; and some of the
parties are immoral; and the whole thing is not a romance, nor
yet a comedy; nor yet a romantic comedy; but a kind of
preparation of some of the elements of all three in a glass
jar.&nbsp; I think it is not without merit, but I am not always
on the level of my argument, and some parts are false, and much
of the rest is thin; it is more a triumph for myself than
anything else; for I see, beyond it, better stuff.&nbsp; I have
nine chapters ready, or almost ready, for press.&nbsp; My feeling
would be to get it placed anywhere for as much as could be got
for it, and rather in the shadow, till one saw the look of it in
print.&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Pretty
Sick</span>.</p>
<h3><a name="page271"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
271</span><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res-les-Palmiers</i>, <i>May</i> 1883.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LAD</span>,&mdash;The books
came some time since, but I have not had the pluck to answer: a
shower of small troubles having fallen in, or troubles that may
be very large.</p>
<p>I have had to incur a huge vague debt for cleaning sewers; our
house was (of course) riddled with hidden cesspools, but that was
infallible.&nbsp; I have the fever, and feel the duty to work
very heavy on me at times; yet go it must.&nbsp; I have had to
leave <i>Fontainebleau</i>, when three hours would finish it, and
go full-tilt at tushery for a while.&nbsp; But it will come
soon.</p>
<p>I think I can give you a good article on Hokusai; but that is
for afterwards; <i>Fontainebleau</i> is first in hand</p>
<p>By the way, my view is to give the <i>Penny Whistles</i> to
Crane or Greenaway.&nbsp; But Crane, I think, is likeliest; he is
a fellow who, at least, always does his best.</p>
<p>Shall I ever have money enough to write a play?&nbsp; O dire
necessity!</p>
<p>A word in your ear: I don&rsquo;t like trying to support
myself.&nbsp; I hate the strain and the anxiety; and when
unexpected expenses are foisted on me, I feel the world is
playing with false dice.&mdash;Now I must Tush, adieu,</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">An
Aching</span>, <span class="smcap">Fevered</span>, <span
class="smcap">Penny-Journalist</span>.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">A lytle Jape of <span
class="GutSmall">TUSHERIE</span>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">By A. Tusher.</p>
<p class="poetry">The pleasant river gushes<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Among the meadows green;<br />
At home the author tushes;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; For him it flows unseen.</p>
<p class="poetry">The Birds among the B&ucirc;shes<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; May wanton on the spray;<br />
But vain for him who tushes<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; The brightness of the day!</p>
<p class="poetry"><a name="page272"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
272</span>The frog among the rushes<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Sits singing in the blue.<br />
By&rsquo;r la&rsquo;kin! but these tushes<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Are wearisome to do!</p>
<p class="poetry">The task entirely crushes<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; The spirit of the bard:<br />
God pity him who tushes&mdash;<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; His task is very hard.</p>
<p class="poetry">The filthy gutter slushes,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; The clouds are full of rain,<br />
But doomed is he who tushes<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; To tush and tush again.</p>
<p class="poetry">At morn with his hair-br<i>u</i>shes,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Still, &lsquo;tush&rsquo; he says, and weeps;<br />
At night again he tushes,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; And tushes till he sleeps.</p>
<p class="poetry">And when at length he pushes<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; Beyond the river dark&mdash;<br />
&lsquo;Las, to the man who tushes,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; &lsquo;Tush&rsquo; shall be God&rsquo;s remark!</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Chalet La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res</i>, <i>May</i> 1883.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR HENLEY</span>,&mdash;You may be
surprised to hear that I am now a great writer of verses; that
is, however, so.&nbsp; I have the mania now like my betters, and
faith, if I live till I am forty, I shall have a book of rhymes
like Pollock, Gosse, or whom you please.&nbsp; Really, I have
begun to learn some of the rudiments of that trade, and have
written three or four pretty enough pieces of octosyllabic
nonsense, semi-serious, semi-smiling.&nbsp; A kind of prose
Herrick, divested of the gift of verse, and you behold the
Bard.&nbsp; But I like it.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><a name="page273"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
273</span><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Hy&egrave;res</i> [<i>June</i>
1883].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR LAD</span>,&mdash;I was delighted
to hear the good news about &mdash;.&nbsp; Bravo, he goes uphill
fast.&nbsp; Let him beware of vanity, and he will go higher; let
him be still discontented, and let him (if it might be) see the
merits and not the faults of his rivals, and he may swarm at last
to the top-gallant.&nbsp; There is no other way.&nbsp; Admiration
is the only road to excellence; and the critical spirit kills,
but envy and injustice are putrefaction on its feet.</p>
<p>Thus far the moralist.&nbsp; The eager author now begs to know
whether you may have got the other Whistles, and whether a fresh
proof is to be taken; also whether in that case the dedication
should not be printed therewith; <i>B</i>ulk <i>D</i>elights
<i>P</i>ublishers (original aphorism; to be said sixteen times in
succession as a test of sobriety).</p>
<p>Your wild and ravening commands were received; but cannot be
obeyed.&nbsp; And anyway, I do assure you I am getting better
every day; and if the weather would but turn, I should soon be
observed to walk in hornpipes.&nbsp; Truly I am on the
mend.&nbsp; I am still very careful.&nbsp; I have the new
dictionary; a joy, a thing of beauty, and&mdash;bulk.&nbsp; I
shall be raked i&rsquo; the mools before it&rsquo;s finished;
that is the only pity; but meanwhile I sing.</p>
<p>I beg to inform you that I, Robert Louis Stevenson, author of
<i>Brashiana</i> and other works, am merely beginning to commence
to prepare to make a first start at trying to understand my
profession.&nbsp; O the height and depth of novelty and worth in
any art! and O that I am privileged to swim and shoulder through
such oceans!&nbsp; Could one get out of sight of land&mdash;all
in the blue?&nbsp; Alas not, being anchored here in flesh, and
the bonds of logic being still about us.</p>
<p><a name="page274"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 274</span>But
what a great space and a great air there is in these small
shallows where alone we venture! and how new each sight, squall,
calm, or sunrise!&nbsp; An art is a fine fortune, a palace in a
park, a band of music, health, and physical beauty; all but
love&mdash;to any worthy practiser.&nbsp; I sleep upon my art for
a pillow; I waken in my art; I am unready for death, because I
hate to leave it.&nbsp; I love my wife, I do not know how much,
nor can, nor shall, unless I lost her; but while I can conceive
my being widowed, I refuse the offering of life without my
art.&nbsp; I <i>am</i> not but in my art; it is me; I am the body
of it merely.</p>
<p>And yet I produce nothing, am the author of <i>Brashiana</i>
and other works: tiddy-iddity&mdash;as if the works one wrote
were anything but &lsquo;prentice&rsquo;s experiments.&nbsp; Dear
reader, I deceive you with husks, the real works and all the
pleasure are still mine and incommunicable.&nbsp; After this
break in my work, beginning to return to it, as from light sleep,
I wax exclamatory, as you see.</p>
<p class="gutindent">Sursum Corda:</p>
<p class="gutindent">Heave ahead:</p>
<p class="gutindent">Here&rsquo;s luck.</p>
<p class="gutindent">Art and Blue Heaven,</p>
<p class="gutindent">April and God&rsquo;s Larks.</p>
<p class="gutindent">Green reeds and the sky-scattering
river.</p>
<p class="gutindent">A stately music.</p>
<p class="gutindent">Enter God!</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<p>Ay, but you know, until a man can write that &lsquo;Enter
God,&rsquo; he has made no art!&nbsp; None!&nbsp; Come, let us
take counsel together and make some!</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res</i> [<i>Summer</i> 1883].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR LAD</span>,&mdash;Glad you like
<i>Fontainebleau</i>.&nbsp; I am going to be the means, under
heaven, of a&euml;rating or liberating <a
name="page275"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 275</span>your
pages.&nbsp; The idea that because a thing is a picture-book all
the writing should be on the wrong tack is <i>triste</i> but
widespread.&nbsp; Thus Hokusai will be really a gossip on
convention, or in great part.&nbsp; And the Skelt will be as like
a Charles Lamb as I can get it.&nbsp; The writer should write,
and not illustrate pictures: else it&rsquo;s bosh. . . .</p>
<p>Your remarks about the ugly are my eye.&nbsp; Ugliness is only
the prose of horror.&nbsp; It is when you are not able to write
<i>Macbeth</i> that you write <i>Th&eacute;r&egrave;se
Raquin</i>.&nbsp; Fashions are external: the essence of art only
varies in so far as fashion widens the field of its application;
art is a mill whose thirlage, in different ages, widens and
contracts; but, in any case and under any fashion, the great man
produces beauty, terror, and mirth, and the little man produces
cleverness (personalities, psychology) instead of beauty,
ugliness instead of terror, and jokes instead of mirth.&nbsp; As
it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be ever, world without
end.&nbsp; Amen!</p>
<p>And even as you read, you say, &lsquo;Of course, <i>quelle
renga&icirc;ne</i>!&rsquo;</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Alison Cunningham</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res</i> [<i>Summer</i> 1883].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CUMMY</span>,&mdash;Yes, I own
I am a real bad correspondent, and am as bad as can be in most
directions.</p>
<p>I have been adding some more poems to your book.&nbsp; I wish
they would look sharp about it; but, you see, they are trying to
find a good artist to make the illustrations, without which no
child would give a kick for it.&nbsp; It will be quite a fine
work, I hope.&nbsp; The dedication is a poem too, and has been
quite a long while written, but I do not mean you to see it till
you get the book; keep the jelly <a name="page276"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 276</span>for the last, you know, as you would
often recommend in former days, so now you can take your own
medicine.</p>
<p>I am very sorry to hear you have been so poorly; I have been
very well; it used to be quite the other way, used it not?&nbsp;
Do you remember making the whistle at Mount Chessie?&nbsp; I do
not think it <i>was</i> my knife; I believe it was yours; but
rhyme is a very great monarch, and goes before honesty, in these
affairs at least.&nbsp; Do you remember, at Warriston, one autumn
Sunday, when the beech nuts were on the ground, seeing heaven
open?&nbsp; I would like to make a rhyme of that, but cannot.</p>
<p>Is it not strange to think of all the changes: Bob, Cramond,
Delhi, Minnie, and Henrietta, all married, and fathers and
mothers, and your humble servant just the one point better
off?&nbsp; And such a little while ago all children
together!&nbsp; The time goes swift and wonderfully even; and if
we are no worse than we are, we should be grateful to the power
that guides us.&nbsp; For more than a generation I have now been
to the fore in this rough world, and been most tenderly helped,
and done cruelly wrong, and yet escaped; and here I am still, the
worse for wear, but with some fight in me still, and not
unthankful&mdash;no, surely not unthankful, or I were then the
worst of human beings!</p>
<p>My little dog is a very much better child in every way, both
more loving and more amiable; but he is not fond of strangers,
and is, like most of his kind, a great, specious humbug.</p>
<p>Fanny has been ill, but is much better again; she now goes
donkey rides with an old woman, who compliments her on her
French.&nbsp; That old woman&mdash;seventy odd&mdash;is in a
parlous spiritual state.</p>
<p>Pretty soon, in the new sixpenny illustrated magazine,
Wogg&rsquo;s picture is to appear: this is a great honour!&nbsp;
And the poor soul whose vanity would just explode if he could
understand it, will never be a bit the wiser!&mdash;With much
love, in which Fanny joins, believe me, your affectionate
boy,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><a name="page277"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
277</span><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res</i>, <i>Summer</i> 1883.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR LAD</span>,&mdash;Snatches in
return for yours; for this little once, I&rsquo;m well to
windward of you.</p>
<p>Seventeen chapters of <i>Otto</i> are now drafted, and finding
I was working through my voice and getting screechy, I have
turned back again to rewrite the earlier part.&nbsp; It has, I do
believe, some merit: of what order, of course, I am the last to
know; and, triumph of triumphs, my wife&mdash;my wife who hates
and loathes and slates my women&mdash;admits a great part of my
Countess to be on the spot.</p>
<p>Yes, I could borrow, but it is the joy of being before the
public, for once.&nbsp; Really, &pound;100 is a sight more than
<i>Treasure Island</i> is worth.</p>
<p>The reason of my <i>d&egrave;che</i>?&nbsp; Well, if you begin
one house, have to desert it, begin another, and are eight months
without doing any work, you will be in a <i>d&egrave;che</i>
too.&nbsp; I am not in a <i>d&egrave;che</i>, however;
<i>distinguo</i>&mdash;I would fain distinguish; I am rather a
swell, but <i>not solvent</i>.&nbsp; At a touch the edifice,
<i>&aelig;dificium</i>, might collapse.&nbsp; If my creditors
began to babble around me, I would sink with a slow strain of
music into the crimson west.&nbsp; The difficulty in my elegant
villa is to find oil, <i>oleum</i>, for the dam axles.&nbsp; But
I&rsquo;ve paid my rent until September; and beyond the chemist,
the grocer, the baker, the doctor, the gardener, Lloyd&rsquo;s
teacher, and the great thief creditor Death, I can snap my
fingers at all men.&nbsp; Why will people spring bills on
you?&nbsp; I try to make &rsquo;em charge me at the moment; they
won&rsquo;t, the money goes, the debt remains.&mdash;The Required
Play is in the <i>Merry Men</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">Q. E. F.</p>
<p>I thus render honour to your <i>flair</i>; it came on me of a
clap; I do not see it yet beyond a kind of sunset glory.&nbsp;
But it&rsquo;s there: passion, romance, the picturesque,
involved: startling, simple, horrid: a sea-pink in
sea-froth!&nbsp; <a name="page278"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
278</span><i>S&rsquo;agit de la d&eacute;senterrer</i>.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Help!&rsquo; cries a buried masterpiece.</p>
<p>Once I see my way to the year&rsquo;s end, clear, I turn to
plays; till then I grind at letters; finish <i>Otto</i>; write,
say, a couple of my <i>Traveller&rsquo;s Tales</i>; and then, if
all my ships come home, I will attack the drama in earnest.&nbsp;
I cannot mix the skeins.&nbsp; Thus, though I&rsquo;m morally
sure there is a play in <i>Otto</i>, I dare not look for it: I
shoot straight at the story.</p>
<p>As a story, a comedy, I think <i>Otto</i> very well
constructed; the echoes are very good, all the sentiments change
round, and the points of view are continually, and, I think (if
you please), happily contrasted.&nbsp; None of it is exactly
funny, but some of it is smiling.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res</i> [<i>Summer</i> 1883].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR GOSSE</span>,&mdash;I have now
leisurely read your volume; pretty soon, by the way, you will
receive one of mine.</p>
<p>It is a pleasant, instructive, and scholarly volume.&nbsp; The
three best being, quite out of sight&mdash;Crashaw, Otway, and
Etherege.&nbsp; They are excellent; I hesitate between them; but
perhaps Crashaw is the most brilliant</p>
<p>Your Webster is not my Webster; nor your Herrick my
Herrick.&nbsp; On these matters we must fire a gun to leeward,
show our colours, and go by.&nbsp; Argument is impossible.&nbsp;
They are two of my favourite authors: Herrick above all: I
suppose they are two of yours.&nbsp; Well, Janus-like, they do
behold us two with diverse countenances, few features are common
to these different avatars; and we can but agree to differ, but
still with gratitude to our entertainers, like two guests at the
same dinner, one <a name="page279"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
279</span>of whom takes clear and one white soup.&nbsp; By my way
of thinking, neither of us need be wrong.</p>
<p>The other papers are all interesting, adequate, clear, and
with a pleasant spice of the romantic.&nbsp; It is a book you may
be well pleased to have so finished, and will do you much
good.&nbsp; The Crashaw is capital: capital; I like the taste of
it.&nbsp; Preface clean and dignified.&nbsp; The handling
throughout workmanlike, with some four or five touches of
preciosity, which I regret.</p>
<p>With my thanks for information, entertainment, and a
pleasurable envy here and there.&mdash;Yours affectionately,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res-les-Palmiers</i>,<br />
<i>Var</i>, <i>September</i> 19, 1883.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR BOY</span>,&mdash;Our letters
vigorously cross: you will ere this have received a note to
Coggie: God knows what was in it.</p>
<p>It is strange, a little before the first word you sent
me&mdash;so late&mdash;kindly late, I know and feel&mdash;I was
thinking in my bed, when I knew you I had six friends&mdash;Bob I
had by nature; then came the good James Walter&mdash;with all his
failings&mdash;the <i>gentleman</i> of the lot, alas to sink so
low, alas to do so little, but now, thank God, in his quiet rest;
next I found Baxter&mdash;well do I remember telling Walter I had
unearthed &lsquo;a W.S. that I thought would do&rsquo;&mdash;it
was in the Academy Lane, and he questioned me <a
name="page280"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 280</span>as to the
Signet&rsquo;s qualifications; fourth came Simpson; somewhere
about the same time, I began to get intimate with Jenkin; last
came Colvin.&nbsp; Then, one black winter afternoon, long Leslie
Stephen, in his velvet jacket, met me in the <i>Spec.</i> by
appointment, took me over to the infirmary, and in the crackling,
blighting gaslight showed me that old head whose excellent
representation I see before me in the photograph.&nbsp; Now when
a man has six friends, to introduce a seventh is usually
hopeless.&nbsp; Yet when you were presented, you took to them and
they to you upon the nail.&nbsp; You must have been a fine
fellow; but what a singular fortune I must have had in my six
friends that you should take to all.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t know if
it is good Latin, most probably not: but this is enscrolled
before my eye for Walter: <i>Tandem e nubibus in apricum
properat</i>.&nbsp; Rest, I suppose, I know, was all that
remained; but O to look back, to remember all the mirth, all the
kindness, all the humorous limitations and loved defects of that
character; to think that he was young with me, sharing that
weather-beaten, Fergussonian youth, looking forward through the
clouds to the sunburst; and now clean gone from my path,
silent&mdash;well, well.&nbsp; This has been a strange
awakening.&nbsp; Last night, when I was alone in the house, with
the window open on the lovely still night, I could have sworn he
was in the room with me; I could show you the spot; and, what was
very curious, I heard his rich laughter, a thing I had not called
to mind for I know not how long.</p>
<p>I see his coral waistcoat studs that he wore the first time he
dined in my house; I see his attitude, leaning back a little,
already with something of a portly air, and laughing
internally.&nbsp; How I admired him!&nbsp; And now in the West
Kirk.</p>
<p>I am trying to write out this haunting bodily sense of
absence; besides, what else should I write of?</p>
<p>Yes, looking back, I think of him as one who was good, though
sometimes clouded.&nbsp; He was the only gentle one <a
name="page281"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 281</span>of all my
friends, save perhaps the other Walter.&nbsp; And he was
certainly the only modest man among the lot.&nbsp; He never gave
himself away; he kept back his secret; there was always a gentle
problem behind all.&nbsp; Dear, dear, what a wreck; and yet how
pleasant is the retrospect!&nbsp; God doeth all things well,
though by what strange, solemn, and murderous contrivances!</p>
<p>It is strange: he was the only man I ever loved who did not
habitually interrupt.&nbsp; The fact draws my own portrait.&nbsp;
And it is one of the many reasons why I count myself honoured by
his friendship.&nbsp; A man like you <i>had</i> to like me; you
could not help yourself; but Ferrier was above me, we were not
equals; his true self humoured and smiled paternally upon my
failings, even as I humoured and sorrowed over his.</p>
<p>Well, first his mother, then himself, they are gone: &lsquo;in
their resting graves.&rsquo;</p>
<p>When I come to think of it, I do not know what I said to his
sister, and I fear to try again.&nbsp; Could you send her
this?&nbsp; There is too much both about yourself and me in it;
but that, if you do not mind, is but a mark of sincerity.&nbsp;
It would let her know how entirely, in the mind of (I suppose)
his oldest friend, the good, true Ferrier obliterates the memory
of the other, who was only his &lsquo;lunatic brother.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Judge of this for me, and do as you please; anyway, I will try
to write to her again; my last was some kind of scrawl that I
could not see for crying.&nbsp; This came upon me, remember, with
terrible suddenness; I was surprised by this death; and it is
fifteen or sixteen years since first I saw the handsome face in
the <i>Spec</i>.&nbsp; I made sure, besides, to have died
first.&nbsp; Love to you, your wife, and her sisters.</p>
<p>&mdash;Ever yours, dear boy,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<p>I never knew any man so superior to himself as poor James
Walter.&nbsp; The best of him only came as a vision, like Corsica
from the Corniche.&nbsp; He never gave his <a
name="page282"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 282</span>measure
either morally or intellectually.&nbsp; The curse was on
him.&nbsp; Even his friends did not know him but by fits.&nbsp; I
have passed hours with him when he was so wise, good, and sweet,
that I never knew the like of it in any other.&nbsp; And for a
beautiful good humour he had no match.&nbsp; I remember breaking
in upon him once with a whole red-hot story (in my worst manner),
pouring words upon him by the hour about some truck not worth an
egg that had befallen me; and suddenly, some half hour after,
finding that the sweet fellow had some concern of his own of
infinitely greater import, that he was patiently and smilingly
waiting to consult me on.&nbsp; It sounds nothing; but the
courtesy and the unselfishness were perfect.&nbsp; It makes me
rage to think how few knew him, and how many had the chance to
sneer at their better.</p>
<p>Well, he was not wasted, that we know; though if anything
looked liker irony than this fitting of a man out with these rich
qualities and faculties to be wrecked and aborted from the very
stocks, I do not know the name of it.&nbsp; Yet we see that he
has left an influence; the memory of his patient courtesy has
often checked me in rudeness; has it not you?</p>
<p>You can form no idea of how handsome Walter was.&nbsp; At
twenty he was splendid to see; then, too, he had the sense of
power in him, and great hopes; he looked forward, ever jesting of
course, but he looked to see himself where he had the right to
expect.&nbsp; He believed in himself profoundly; but <i>he never
disbelieved in others</i>.&nbsp; To the roughest Highland student
he always had his fine, kind, open dignity of manner; and a good
word behind his back.</p>
<p>The last time that I saw him before leaving for
America&mdash;it was a sad blow to both of us.&nbsp; When he
heard I was leaving, and that might be the last time we might
meet&mdash;it almost was so&mdash;he was terribly upset, and came
round at once.&nbsp; We sat late, in Baxter&rsquo;s empty house,
where I <a name="page283"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
283</span>was sleeping.&nbsp; My dear friend Walter Ferrier: O if
I had only written to him more! if only one of us in these last
days had been well!&nbsp; But I ever cherished the honour of his
friendship, and now when he is gone, I know what I have lost
still better.&nbsp; We live on, meaning to meet; but when the
hope is gone, the, pang comes.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res-les-Palmiers</i>,<br />
26<i>th</i> <i>September</i> 1883.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR GOSSE</span>,&mdash;It appears
a bolt from Transatlantica is necessary to produce four lines
from you.&nbsp; It is not flattering; but as I was always a bad
correspondent, &rsquo;tis a vice to which I am lenient.&nbsp; I
give you to know, however, that I have already twice (this makes
three times) sent you what I please to call a letter, and
received from you in return a subterfuge&mdash;or nothing. . .
.</p>
<p>My present purpose, however, which must not be postponed, is
to ask you to telegraph to the Americans.</p>
<p>After a summer of good health of a very radiant order,
toothache and the death of a very old friend, which came upon me
like a thunderclap, have rather shelved my powers.&nbsp; I stare
upon the paper, not write.&nbsp; I wish I could write like your
Sculptors; yet I am well aware that I should not try in that
direction.&nbsp; A certain warmth (tepid enough) and a certain
dash of the picturesque are my poor essential qualities; and if I
went fooling after the too classical, I might lose even
these.&nbsp; But I envied you that page.</p>
<p>I am, of course, deep in schemes; I was so ever.&nbsp;
Execution alone somewhat halts.&nbsp; How much do you make per
annum, I wonder?&nbsp; This year, for the first time, I shall
pass &pound;300; I may even get halfway to the next
milestone.&nbsp; This seems but a faint remuneration; and the
devil of it is, that I manage, with sickness, and moves, <a
name="page284"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 284</span>and
education, and the like, to keep steadily in front of my
income.&nbsp; However, I console myself with this, that if I were
anything else under God&rsquo;s Heaven, and had the same crank
health, I should make an even zero.&nbsp; If I had, with my
present knowledge, twelve months of my old health, I would,
could, and should do something neat.&nbsp; As it is, I have to
tinker at my things in little sittings; and the rent, or the
butcher, or something, is always calling me off to rattle up a
pot-boiler.&nbsp; And then comes a back-set of my health, and I
have to twiddle my fingers and play patience.</p>
<p>Well, I do not complain, but I do envy strong health where it
is squandered.&nbsp; Treasure your strength, and may you never
learn by experience the profound <i>ennui</i> and irritation of
the shelved artist.&nbsp; For then, what is life?&nbsp; All that
one has done to make one&rsquo;s life effective then doubles the
itch of inefficiency.</p>
<p>I trust also you may be long without finding out the devil
that there is in a bereavement.&nbsp; After love it is the one
great surprise that life preserves for us.&nbsp; Now I
don&rsquo;t think I can be astonished any more.&mdash;Yours
affectionately,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res-les-Palmiers</i>, <i>Var</i> [<i>October</i>
1883].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">COLVIN</span>, <span
class="GutSmall">COLVIN</span>, <span
class="GutSmall">COLVIN</span>,&mdash;Yours received; also
interesting copy of <i>P. Whistles</i>.&nbsp; &lsquo;In the
multitude of <a name="page285"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
285</span>councillors the Bible declares there is wisdom,&rsquo;
said my great-uncle, &lsquo;but I have always found in them
distraction.&rsquo;&nbsp; It is extraordinary how tastes vary:
these proofs have been handed about, it appears, and I have had
several letters; and&mdash;distraction. &lsquo;&AElig;sop: the
Miller and the Ass.&rsquo;&nbsp; Notes on details:&mdash;</p>
<p>1.&nbsp; I love the occasional trochaic line; and so did many
excellent writers before me.</p>
<p>2.&nbsp; If you don&rsquo;t like &lsquo;A Good Boy,&rsquo; I
do.</p>
<p>3.&nbsp; In &lsquo;Escape at Bedtime,&rsquo; I found two
suggestions.&nbsp; &lsquo;Shove&rsquo; for &lsquo;above&rsquo; is
a correction of the press; it was so written.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Twinkled&rsquo; is just the error; to the child the stars
appear to be there; any word that suggests illusion is a
horror.</p>
<p>4.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t care; I take a different view of the
vocative.</p>
<p>5.&nbsp; Bewildering and childering are good enough for
me.&nbsp; These are rhymes, jingles; I don&rsquo;t go for
eternity and the three unities.</p>
<p>I will delete some of those condemned, but not all.&nbsp; I
don&rsquo;t care for the name Penny Whistles; I sent a sheaf to
Henley when I sent &rsquo;em.&nbsp; But I&rsquo;ve forgot the
others.&nbsp; I would just as soon call &rsquo;em &lsquo;Rimes
for Children&rsquo; as anything else.&nbsp; I am not proud nor
particular.</p>
<p>Your remarks on the <i>Black Arrow</i> are to the point.&nbsp;
I am pleased you liked Crookback; he is a fellow whose hellish
energy has always fired my attention.&nbsp; I wish Shakespeare
had written the play after he had learned some of the rudiments
of literature and art rather than before.&nbsp; Some day, I will
re-tickle the Sable Missile, and shoot it, <i>moyennant
finances</i>, once more into the air; I can lighten it of much,
and devote some more attention to Dick o&rsquo; Gloucester.&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s great sport to write tushery.</p>
<p>By this I reckon you will have heard of my proposed
excursiolorum to the Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece, and
kindred sites.&nbsp; If the excursiolorum goes on, that is, <a
name="page286"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 286</span>if
<i>moyennant finances</i> comes off, I shall write to beg you to
collect introductiolorums for me.</p>
<p>Distinguo: 1. <i>Silverado</i> was not written in America, but
in Switzerland&rsquo;s icy mountains.&nbsp; 2. What you read is
the bleeding and disembowelled remains of what I wrote.&nbsp; 3.
The good stuff is all to come&mdash;so I think.&nbsp; &lsquo;The
Sea Fogs,&rsquo; &lsquo;The Hunter&rsquo;s Family,&rsquo;
&lsquo;Toils and Pleasures&rsquo;&mdash;<i>belles
pages</i>.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Ramnugger</span>.</p>
<p>O!&mdash;Seeley is too clever to live, and the book a
gem.&nbsp; But why has he read too much Arnold?&nbsp; Why will he
avoid&mdash;obviously avoid&mdash;fine writing up to which he has
led?&nbsp; This is a winking, curled-and-oiled, ultra-cultured,
Oxford-don sort of an affectation that infuriates my honest
soul.&nbsp; &lsquo;You see&rsquo;&mdash;they say&mdash;&lsquo;how
unbombastic <i>we</i> are; we come right up to eloquence, and,
when it&rsquo;s hanging on the pen, dammy, we scorn
it!&rsquo;&nbsp; It is literary Deronda-ism.&nbsp; If you
don&rsquo;t want the woman, the image, or the phrase, mortify
your vanity and avoid the appearance of wanting them.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. H. Low</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res</i>, <i>October</i> [1883].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LOW</span>,&mdash;. . . Some
day or other, in Cassell&rsquo;s <i>Magazine of Art</i>, you will
see a paper which will interest you, and where your name
appears.&nbsp; It is called &lsquo;Fontainebleau: Village
Communities of Artists,&rsquo; and the signature of R. L.
Stevenson will be found annexed.</p>
<p>Please tell the editor of <i>Manhattan</i> the following
secrets for me: 1<i>st</i>, That I am a beast; 2<i>nd</i>, that I
owe him a letter; 3<i>rd</i>, that I have lost his, and cannot
recall either his name or address; 4<i>th</i>, that I am very
deep in engagements, which my absurd health makes it hard for me
<a name="page287"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 287</span>to
overtake; but 5<i>th</i>, that I will bear him in mind;
6<i>th</i> and last, that I am a brute.</p>
<p>My address is still the same, and I live in a most sweet
corner of the universe, sea and fine hills before me, and a rich
variegated plain; and at my back a craggy hill, loaded with vast
feudal ruins.&nbsp; I am very quiet; a person passing by my door
half startles me; but I enjoy the most aromatic airs, and at
night the most wonderful view into a moonlit garden.&nbsp; By day
this garden fades into nothing, overpowered by its surroundings
and the luminous distance; but at night and when the moon is out,
that garden, the arbour, the flight of stairs that mount the
artificial hillock, the plumed blue gum-trees that hang
trembling, become the very skirts of Paradise.&nbsp; Angels I
know frequent it; and it thrills all night with the flutes of
silence.&nbsp; Damn that garden;&mdash;and by day it is gone.</p>
<p>Continue to testify boldly against realism.&nbsp; Down with
Dagon, the fish god!&nbsp; All art swings down towards imitation,
in these days, fatally.&nbsp; But the man who loves art with
wisdom sees the joke; it is the lustful that tremble and respect
her ladyship; but the honest and romantic lovers of the Muse can
see a joke and sit down to laugh with Apollo.</p>
<p>The prospect of your return to Europe is very agreeable; and I
was pleased by what you said about your parents.&nbsp; One of my
oldest friends died recently, and this has given me new thoughts
of death.&nbsp; Up to now I had rather thought of him as a mere
personal enemy of my own; but now that I see him hunting after my
friends, he looks altogether darker.&nbsp; My own father is not
well; and Henley, of whom you must have heard me speak, is in a
questionable state of health.&nbsp; These things are very solemn,
and take some of the colour out of life.&nbsp; It is a great
thing, after all, to be a man of reasonable honour and
kindness.&nbsp; Do you remember once consulting me in Paris
whether you had not better sacrifice honesty <a
name="page288"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 288</span>to art; and
how, after much confabulation, we agreed that your art would
suffer if you did?&nbsp; We decided better than we knew.&nbsp; In
this strange welter where we live, all hangs together by a
million filaments; and to do reasonably well by others, is the
first prerequisite of art.&nbsp; Art is a virtue; and if I were
the man I should be, my art would rise in the proportion of my
life.</p>
<p>If you were privileged to give some happiness to your parents,
I know your art will gain by it.&nbsp; <i>By God</i>, <i>it
will</i>!&nbsp; <i>Sic subscribitur</i>,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to R. A. M. Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res-les-Palmiers</i> [<i>October</i> 1883].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BOB</span>,&mdash;Yes, I got
both your letters at Lyons, but have been since then decading in
several steps Toothache; fever; Ferrier&rsquo;s death;
lung.&nbsp; Now it is decided I am to leave to-morrow, penniless,
for Nice to see Dr. Williams.</p>
<p>I was much struck by your last.&nbsp; I have written a
breathless note on Realism for Henley; a fifth part of the
subject, hurriedly touched, which will show you how my thoughts
are driving.&nbsp; You are now at last beginning to think upon
the problems of executive, plastic art, for you are now for the
first time attacking them.&nbsp; Hitherto you have spoken and
thought of two things&mdash;technique and the <i>ars artium</i>,
or common background of all arts.&nbsp; Studio work is the real
touch.&nbsp; That is the genial error of the present French
teaching.&nbsp; Realism I regard as a mere question of
method.&nbsp; The &lsquo;brown foreground,&rsquo; &lsquo;old
mastery,&rsquo; and the like, ranking with villanelles, as
technical sports and pastimes.&nbsp; Real art, whether ideal or
realistic, addresses precisely the same feeling, and seeks the
same qualities&mdash;significance or charm.&nbsp; And the
same&mdash;very same&mdash;inspiration is only methodically
differentiated according as the artist is an arrant realist or an
arrant <a name="page289"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
289</span>idealist.&nbsp; Each, by his own method, seeks to save
and perpetuate the same significance or charm; the one by
suppressing, the other by forcing, detail.&nbsp; All other
idealism is the brown foreground over again, and hence only art
in the sense of a game, like cup and ball.&nbsp; All other
realism is not art at all&mdash;but not at all.&nbsp; It is,
then, an insincere and showy handicraft.</p>
<p>Were you to re-read some Balzac, as I have been doing, it
would greatly help to clear your eyes.&nbsp; He was a man who
never found his method.&nbsp; An inarticulate Shakespeare,
smothered under forcible-feeble detail.&nbsp; It is astounding to
the riper mind how bad he is, how feeble, how untrue, how
tedious; and, of course, when he surrendered to his temperament,
how good and powerful.&nbsp; And yet never plain nor clear.&nbsp;
He could not consent to be dull, and thus became so.&nbsp; He
would leave nothing undeveloped, and thus drowned out of sight of
land amid the multitude of crying and incongruous details.&nbsp;
There is but one art&mdash;to omit!&nbsp; O if I knew how to
omit, I would ask no other knowledge.&nbsp; A man who knew how to
omit would make an <i>Iliad</i> of a daily paper.</p>
<p>Your definition of seeing is quite right.&nbsp; It is the
first part of omission to be partly blind.&nbsp; Artistic sight
is judicious blindness.&nbsp; Sam Bough <a
name="citation289"></a><a href="#footnote289"
class="citation">[289]</a> must have been a jolly blind old
boy.&nbsp; He would turn a corner, look for one-half or quarter
minute, and then say, &lsquo;This&rsquo;ll do, lad.&rsquo;&nbsp;
Down he sat, there and then, with whole artistic plan, scheme of
colour, and the like, and begin by laying a foundation of
powerful and seemingly incongruous colour on the block.&nbsp; He
saw, not the scene, but the water-colour sketch.&nbsp; Every
artist by sixty should so behold nature.&nbsp; Where does he
learn that?&nbsp; In the studio, I swear.&nbsp; He goes to nature
for facts, relations, values&mdash;material; as a man, before
writing a historical novel, reads up memoirs.&nbsp; But it is not
by reading memoirs that he has learned the <a
name="page290"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 290</span>selective
criterion.&nbsp; He has learned that in the practice of his art;
and he will never learn it well, but when disengaged from the
ardent struggle of immediate representation, of realistic and
<i>ex facto</i> art.&nbsp; He learns it in the crystallisation of
day-dreams; in changing, not in copying, fact; in the pursuit of
the ideal, not in the study of nature.&nbsp; These temples of art
are, as you say, inaccessible to the realistic climber.&nbsp; It
is not by looking at the sea that you get</p>
<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">&lsquo;The
multitudinous seas incarnadine,&rsquo;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>nor by looking at Mont Blanc that you find</p>
<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">&lsquo;And visited all
night by troops of stars.&rsquo;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A kind of ardour of the blood is the mother of all this; and
according as this ardour is swayed by knowledge and seconded by
craft, the art expression flows clear, and significance and
charm, like a moon rising, are born above the barren juggle of
mere symbols.</p>
<p>The painter must study more from nature than the man of
words.&nbsp; But why?&nbsp; Because literature deals with
men&rsquo;s business and passions which, in the game of life, we
are irresistibly obliged to study; but painting with relations of
light, and colour, and significances, and form, which, from the
immemorial habit of the race, we pass over with an unregardful
eye.&nbsp; Hence this crouching upon camp-stools, and these
crusts. <a name="citation290"></a><a href="#footnote290"
class="citation">[290]</a>&nbsp; But neither one nor other is a
part of art, only preliminary studies.</p>
<p>I want you to help me to get people to understand that realism
is a method, and only methodic in its consequences; when the
realist is an artist, that is, and supposing the idealist with
whom you compare him to be anything but a <i>farceur</i> and a
<i>dilettante</i>.&nbsp; The two schools of working do, and
should, lead to the choice of different subjects.&nbsp; But that
is a consequence, not a <a name="page291"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 291</span>cause.&nbsp; See my chaotic note,
which will appear, I fancy, in November in Henley&rsquo;s
sheet.</p>
<p>Poor Ferrier, it bust me horrid.&nbsp; He was, after you, the
oldest of my friends.</p>
<p>I am now very tired, and will go to bed having prelected
freely.&nbsp; Fanny will finish.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res-les-Palmiers</i>, <i>Var</i>, 12<i>th</i>
<i>October</i> 1883.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR FATHER</span>,&mdash;I have
just lunched; the day is exquisite, the air comes though the open
window rich with odour, and I am by no means spiritually
minded.&nbsp; Your letter, however, was very much valued, and has
been read oftener than once.&nbsp; What you say about yourself I
was glad to hear; a little decent resignation is not only
becoming a Christian, but is likely to be excellent for the
health of a Stevenson.&nbsp; To fret and fume is undignified,
suicidally foolish, and theologically unpardonable; we are here
not to make, but to tread predestined, pathways; we are the foam
of a wave, and to preserve a proper equanimity is not merely the
first part of submission to God, but the chief of possible
kindnesses to those about us.&nbsp; I am lecturing myself, but
you also.&nbsp; To do our best is one part, but to wash our hands
smilingly of the consequence is the next part, of any sensible
virtue.</p>
<p>I have come, for the moment, to a pause in my moral works; for
I have many irons in the fire, and I wish to finish something to
bring coin before I can afford to go on with what I think
doubtfully to be a duty.&nbsp; It is a most difficult work; a
touch of the parson will drive off those I hope to influence; a
touch of overstrained laxity, besides disgusting, like a grimace,
may do harm.&nbsp; Nothing that I have ever seen yet speaks
directly and efficaciously to <a name="page292"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 292</span>young men; and I do hope I may find
the art and wisdom to fill up a gap.&nbsp; The great point, as I
see it, is to ask as little as possible, and meet, if it may be,
every view or absence of view; and it should be, must be,
easy.&nbsp; Honesty is the one desideratum; but think how hard a
one to meet.&nbsp; I think all the time of Ferrier and myself;
these are the pair that I address.&nbsp; Poor Ferrier, so much a
better man than I, and such a temporal wreck.&nbsp; But the thing
of which we must divest our minds is to look partially upon
others; all is to be viewed; and the creature judged, as he must
be by his Creator, not dissected through a prism of morals, but
in the unrefracted ray.&nbsp; So seen, and in relation to the
almost omnipotent surroundings, who is to distinguish between F.
and such a man as Dr. Candlish, or between such a man as David
Hume and such an one as Robert Burns?&nbsp; To compare my poor
and good Walter with myself is to make me startle; he, upon all
grounds above the merely expedient, was the nobler being.&nbsp;
Yet wrecked utterly ere the full age of manhood; and the last
skirmishes so well fought, so humanly useless, so pathetically
brave, only the leaps of an expiring lamp.&nbsp; All this is a
very pointed instance.&nbsp; It shuts the mouth.&nbsp; I have
learned more, in some ways, from him than from any other soul I
ever met; and he, strange to think, was the best gentleman, in
all kinder senses, that I ever knew.&mdash;Ever your affectionate
son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. H. Low</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Chalet la Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res</i>, <i>Oct.</i> 23, 1883.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR
LOW</span>,&mdash;<i>C&rsquo;est d&rsquo;un bon camarade</i>; and
I am much obliged to you for your two letters and the
inclosure.&nbsp; Times are a lityle changed with all of us since
the ever <a name="page293"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
293</span>memorable days of Lavenue: hallowed be his name!
hallowed his old Fleury!&mdash;of which you did not see&mdash;I
think&mdash;as I did&mdash;the glorious apotheosis: advanced on a
Tuesday to three francs, on the Thursday to six, and on Friday
swept off, holus bolus, for the proprietor&rsquo;s private
consumption.&nbsp; Well, we had the start of that
proprietor.&nbsp; Many a good bottle came our way, and was, I
think, worthily made welcome.</p>
<p>I am pleased that Mr. Gilder should like my literature; and I
ask you particularly to thank Mr. Bunner (have I the name right?)
for his notice, which was of that friendly, headlong sort that
really pleases an author like what the French call a
&lsquo;shake-hands.&rsquo;&nbsp; It pleased me the more coming
from the States, where I have met not much recognition, save from
the buccaneers, and above all from pirates who misspell my
name.&nbsp; I saw my book advertised in a number of the
<i>Critic</i> as the work of one R. L. Stephenson; and, I own, I
boiled.&nbsp; It is so easy to know the name of the man whose
book you have stolen; for there it is, at full length, on the
title-page of your booty.&nbsp; But no, damn him, not he!&nbsp;
He calls me Stephenson.&nbsp; These woes I only refer to by the
way, as they set a higher value on the <i>Century</i> notice.</p>
<p>I am now a person with an established ill-health&mdash;a
wife&mdash;a dog possessed with an evil, a Gadarene
spirit&mdash;a chalet on a hill, looking out over the
Mediterranean&mdash;a certain reputation&mdash;and very obscure
finances.&nbsp; Otherwise, very much the same, I guess; and were
a bottle of Fleury a thing to be obtained, capable of developing
theories along with a fit spirit even as of yore.&nbsp; Yet I now
draw near to the Middle Ages; nearly three years ago, that fatal
Thirty struck; and yet the great work is not yet done&mdash;not
yet even conceived.&nbsp; But so, as one goes on, the wood seems
to thicken, the footpath to narrow, and the House Beautiful on
the hill&rsquo;s summit to draw further and further away.&nbsp;
We learn, indeed, to use our means; but only to learn, along with
it, the paralysing knowledge that these means <a
name="page294"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 294</span>are only
applicable to two or three poor commonplace motives.&nbsp; Eight
years ago, if I could have slung ink as I can now, I should have
thought myself well on the road after Shakespeare; and
now&mdash;I find I have only got a pair of walking-shoes and not
yet begun to travel.&nbsp; And art is still away there on the
mountain summit.&nbsp; But I need not continue; for, of course,
this is your story just as much as it is mine; and, strange to
think, it was Shakespeare&rsquo;s too, and Beethoven&rsquo;s, and
Phidias&rsquo;s.&nbsp; It is a blessed thing that, in this forest
of art, we can pursue our wood-lice and sparrows, <i>and not
catch them</i>, with almost the same fervour of exhilaration as
that with which Sophocles hunted and brought down the
Mastodon.</p>
<p>Tell me something of your work, and your wife.&mdash;My dear
fellow, I am yours ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p>My wife begs to be remembered to both of you; I cannot say as
much for my dog, who has never seen you, but he would like, on
general principles, to bite you.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Hy&egrave;res</i>,
<i>November</i> 1883.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LAD</span>,&mdash;. . .&nbsp;
Of course, my seamanship is jimmy: did I not beseech you I know
not how often to find me an ancient mariner&mdash;and you, whose
own wife&rsquo;s own brother is one of the ancientest, did
nothing for me?&nbsp; As for my seamen, did Runciman ever know
eighteenth century buccaneers?&nbsp; No?&nbsp; Well, no more did
I.&nbsp; But I have known and sailed with seamen too, and lived
and eaten with them; and I made my put-up shot in no great
ignorance, but as a put-up thing has to be made, <i>i.e.</i> to
be coherent and picturesque, and damn the expense.&nbsp; Are they
fairly lively on the wires?&nbsp; Then, favour me with <a
name="page295"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 295</span>your
tongues.&nbsp; Are they wooden, and dim, and no sport?&nbsp; Then
it is I that am silent, otherwise not.&nbsp; The work, strange as
it may sound in the ear, is not a work of realism.&nbsp; The next
thing I shall hear is that the etiquette is wrong in Otto&rsquo;s
Court!&nbsp; With a warrant, and I mean it to be so, and the
whole matter never cost me half a thought.&nbsp; I make these
paper people to please myself, and Skelt, and God Almighty, and
with no ulterior purpose.&nbsp; Yet am I mortal myself; for, as I
remind you, I begged for a supervising mariner.&nbsp; However, my
heart is in the right place.&nbsp; I have been to sea, but I
never crossed the threshold of a court; and the courts shall be
the way I want &rsquo;em.</p>
<p>I&rsquo;m glad to think I owe you the review that pleased me
best of all the reviews I ever had; the one I liked best before
that was &mdash;&rsquo;s on the <i>Arabians</i>.&nbsp; These two
are the flowers of the collection, according to me.&nbsp; To live
reading such reviews and die eating ortolans&mdash;sich is my
aspiration.</p>
<p>Whenever you come you will be equally welcome.&nbsp; I am
trying to finish <i>Otto</i> ere you shall arrive, so as to take
and be able to enjoy a well-earned&mdash;O yes, a
well-earned&mdash;holiday.&nbsp; Longman fetched by Otto: is it a
spoon or a spoilt horn?&nbsp; Momentous, if the latter; if the
former, a spoon to dip much praise and pudding, and to give, I do
think, much pleasure.&nbsp; The last part, now in hand, much
smiles upon me.&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res</i>, [<i>November</i> 1883].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,&mdash;You must
not blame me too much for my silence; I am over head and ears in
work, and do not know what to do first.&nbsp; I have been hard at
<i>Otto</i>, hard at <i>Silverado</i> proofs, which I have worked
over again to a tremendous extent; cutting, adding, rewriting,
until some of the worst chapters of the original are now, to my
mind, <a name="page296"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 296</span>as
good as any.&nbsp; I was the more bound to make it good, as I had
such liberal terms; it&rsquo;s not for want of trying if I have
failed.</p>
<p>I got your letter on my birthday; indeed, that was how I found
it out about three in the afternoon, when postie comes.&nbsp;
Thank you for all you said.&nbsp; As for my wife, that was the
best investment ever made by man; but &lsquo;in our branch of the
family&rsquo; we seem to marry well.&nbsp; I, considering my
piles of work, am wonderfully well; I have not been so busy for I
know not how long.&nbsp; I hope you will send me the money I
asked however, as I am not only penniless, but shall remain so in
all human probability for some considerable time.&nbsp; I have
got in the mass of my expectations; and the &pound;100 which is
to float us on the new year can not come due till
<i>Silverado</i> is all ready; I am delaying it myself for the
moment; then will follow the binders and the travellers and an
infinity of other nuisances; and only at the last, the
jingling-tingling.</p>
<p>Do you know that <i>Treasure Island</i> has appeared?&nbsp; In
the November number of Henley&rsquo;s Magazine, a capital number
anyway, there is a funny publisher&rsquo;s puff of it for your
book; also a bad article by me.&nbsp; Lang dotes on <i>Treasure
Island</i>: &lsquo;Except <i>Tom Sawyer</i> and the
<i>Odyssey</i>,&rsquo; he writes, &lsquo;I never liked any
romance so much.&rsquo;&nbsp; I will inclose the letter
though.&nbsp; The Bogue is angelic, although very dirty.&nbsp; It
has rained&mdash;at last!&nbsp; It was jolly cold when the rain
came.</p>
<p>I was overjoyed to hear such good news of my father.&nbsp; Let
him go on at that!&nbsp; Ever your affectionate,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res-les-Palmiers</i>, <i>Var</i>, [<i>November</i>
1883].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;I have
been bad, but as you were worse, I feel no shame.&nbsp; I raise a
blooming countenance, not the evidence of a self-righteous
spirit.</p>
<p><a name="page297"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 297</span>I
continue my uphill fight with the twin spirits of bankruptcy and
indigestion.&nbsp; Duns rage about my portal, at least to
fancy&rsquo;s ear.</p>
<p>I suppose you heard of Ferrier&rsquo;s death: my oldest
friend, except Bob.&nbsp; It has much upset me.&nbsp; I did not
fancy how much.&nbsp; I am strangely concerned about it.</p>
<p>My house is the loveliest spot in the universe; the moonlight
nights we have are incredible; love, poetry and music, and the
Arabian Nights, inhabit just my corner of the world&mdash;nest
there like mavises.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">Here lies<br />
The carcase<br />
of<br />
Robert Louis Stevenson,<br />
An active, austere, and not inelegant<br />
writer,<br />
who,<br />
at the termination of a long career,<br />
wealthy, wise, benevolent, and honoured by<br />
the attention of two hemispheres,<br />
yet owned it to have been his crowning favour<br />
<span class="GutSmall">TO INHABIT</span><br />
<span class="GutSmall">LA SOLITUDE</span>.</p>
<p>(With the consent of the intelligent edility of Hy&egrave;res,
he has been interred, below this frugal stone, in the garden
which he honoured for so long with his poetic presence.)</p>
<p>I must write more solemn letters.&nbsp; Adieu.&nbsp;
Write.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Milne</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res</i>, [<i>November</i> 1883].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR
HENRIETTA</span>,&mdash;Certainly; who else would they be?&nbsp;
More by token, on that particular occasion, <a
name="page298"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 298</span>you were
sailing under the title of Princess Royal; I, after a furious
contest, under that of Prince Alfred; and Willie, still a little
sulky, as the Prince of Wales.&nbsp; We were all in a buck basket
about half-way between the swing and the gate; and I can still
see the Pirate Squadron heave in sight upon the weather bow.</p>
<p>I wrote a piece besides on Giant Bunker; but I was not happily
inspired, and it is condemned.&nbsp; Perhaps I&rsquo;ll try
again; he was a horrid fellow, Giant Bunker! and some of my
happiest hours were passed in pursuit of him.&nbsp; You were a
capital fellow to play: how few there were who could!&nbsp; None
better than yourself.&nbsp; I shall never forget some of the days
at Bridge of Allan; they were one golden dream.&nbsp; See
&lsquo;A Good Boy&rsquo; in the <i>Penny Whistles</i>, much of
the sentiment of which is taken direct from one evening at B. of
A. when we had had a great play with the little Glasgow
girl.&nbsp; Hallowed be that fat book of fairy tales!&nbsp; Do
you remember acting the Fair One with Golden Locks?&nbsp; What a
romantic drama!&nbsp; Generally speaking, whenever I think of
play, it is pretty certain that you will come into my head.&nbsp;
I wrote a paper called &lsquo;Child&rsquo;s Play&rsquo; once,
where, I believe, you or Willie would recognise things. . . .</p>
<p>Surely Willie is just the man to marry; and if his wife
wasn&rsquo;t a happy woman, I think I could tell her who was to
blame.&nbsp; Is there no word of it?&nbsp; Well, these things are
beyond arrangement; and the wind bloweth where it
listeth&mdash;which, I observe, is generally towards the west in
Scotland.&nbsp; Here it prefers a south-easterly course, and is
called the Mistral&mdash;usually with an adjective in
front.&nbsp; But if you will remember my yesterday&rsquo;s
toothache and this morning&rsquo;s crick, you will be in a
position to choose an adjective for yourself.&nbsp; Not that the
wind is unhealthy; only when it comes strong, it is both very
high and very cold, which makes it the d-v-l.&nbsp; But as I am
writing to a lady, I had better avoid this topic; winds requiring
a great scope of language.</p>
<p><a name="page299"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
299</span>Please remember me to all at home; give Ramsay a
pennyworth of acidulated drops for his good taste.&mdash;And
believe me, your affectionate cousin,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Miss Ferrier</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res</i>, <i>Var</i>, <i>November</i> 22, 1883.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MISS FERRIER</span>,&mdash;Many
thanks for the photograph.&nbsp; It is&mdash;well, it is like
most photographs.&nbsp; The sun is an artist of too much renown;
and, at any rate, we who knew Walter &lsquo;in the brave days of
old&rsquo; will be difficult to please.</p>
<p>I was inexpressibly touched to get a letter from some lawyers
as to some money.&nbsp; I have never had any account with my
friends; some have gained and some lost; and I should feel there
was something dishonest in a partial liquidation even if I could
recollect the facts, <i>which I cannot</i>.&nbsp; But the fact of
his having put aside this memorandum touched me greatly.</p>
<p>The mystery of his life is great.&nbsp; Our chemist in this
place, who had been at Malvern, recognised the picture.&nbsp; You
may remember Walter had a romantic affection for all pharmacies?
and the bottles in the window were for him a poem?&nbsp; He said
once that he knew no pleasure like driving through a lamplit
city, waiting for the chemists to go by.</p>
<p>All these things return now.</p>
<p>He had a pretty full translation of Schiller&rsquo;s
<i>&AElig;sthetic Letters</i>, which we read together, as well as
the second part of <i>Faust</i>, in Gladstone Terrace, he helping
me with the German.&nbsp; There is no keepsake I should more
value than the <span class="GutSmall">MS</span>. of that
translation.&nbsp; They were the best days I ever had with him,
little dreaming all would so soon be over.&nbsp; It needs a blow
like this to convict a man of mortality and its burthen.&nbsp; I
always thought I should go by myself; not to survive.&nbsp; But
now I feel as if the earth <a name="page300"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 300</span>were undermined, and all my friends
have lost one thickness of reality since that one passed.&nbsp;
Those are happy who can take it otherwise; with that I found
things all beginning to dislimn.&nbsp; Here we have no abiding
city, and one felt as though he had&mdash;and O too much
acted.</p>
<p>But if you tell me, he did not feel my silence.&nbsp; However,
he must have done so; and my guilt is irreparable now.&nbsp; I
thank God at least heartily that he did not resent it.</p>
<p>Please remember me to Sir Alexander and Lady Grant, to whose
care I will address this.&nbsp; When next I am in Edinburgh I
will take flowers, alas! to the West Kirk.&nbsp; Many a long hour
we passed in graveyards, the man who has gone and I&mdash;or
rather not that man&mdash;but the beautiful, genial, witty youth
who so betrayed him.&mdash;Dear Miss Ferrier, I am yours most
sincerely,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. H. Low</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res</i>, <i>Var</i>, 13<i>th</i> <i>December</i>
1883.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LOW</span>,&mdash;. . . I was
much pleased with what you send about my work.&nbsp; Ill-health
is a great handicapper in the race.&nbsp; I have never at command
that press of spirits that are necessary to strike out a thing
red-hot.&nbsp; <i>Silverado</i> is an example of stuff worried
and pawed about, God knows how often, in poor health, and you can
see for yourself the result: good pages, an imperfect fusion, a
certain languor of the whole.&nbsp; Not, in short, art.&nbsp; I
have told Roberts to send you a copy of the book when it appears,
where there are some fair passages that will be new to you.&nbsp;
My brief romance, <i>Prince Otto</i>&mdash;far my most difficult
adventure up to now&mdash;is near an end.&nbsp; I have still one
chapter to write <i>de fond en comble</i>, and three or four to
strengthen or recast.&nbsp; The rest is done.&nbsp; I do not know
if I have made a spoon, or only spoiled a horn; <a
name="page301"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 301</span>but I am
tempted to hope the first.&nbsp; If the present bargain hold, it
will not see the light of day for some thirteen months.&nbsp;
Then I shall be glad to know how it strikes you.&nbsp; There is a
good deal of stuff in it, both dramatic and, I think, poetic; and
the story is not like these purposeless fables of to-day, but is,
at least, intended to stand <i>firm</i> upon a base of
philosophy&mdash;or morals&mdash;as you please.&nbsp; It has been
long gestated, and is wrought with care.&nbsp; <i>Enfin</i>,
<i>nous verrons</i>.&nbsp; My labours have this year for the
first time been rewarded with upwards of &pound;350; that of
itself, so base we are! encourages me; and the better tenor of my
health yet more.&mdash;Remember me to Mrs. Low, and believe me,
yours most sincerely,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>, <i>December</i>
20, 1883.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR FATHER</span>,&mdash;I do not
know which of us is to blame; I suspect it is you this
time.&nbsp; The last accounts of you were pretty good, I was
pleased to see; I am, on the whole, very well&mdash;suffering a
little still from my fever and liver complications, but
better.</p>
<p>I have just finished re-reading a book, which I counsel you
above all things <i>not</i> to read, as it has made me very ill,
and would make you worse&mdash;Lockhart&rsquo;s
<i>Scott</i>.&nbsp; It is worth reading, as all things are from
time to time that keep us nose to nose with fact; though I think
such reading may be abused, and that a great deal of life is
better spent in reading of a light and yet chivalrous
strain.&nbsp; Thus, no Waverley novel approaches in power,
blackness, bitterness, and moral elevation to the diary and
Lockhart&rsquo;s narrative of the end; and yet the Waverley
novels are better reading for every day than the Life.&nbsp; You
may take a tonic daily, but not phlebotomy.</p>
<p>The great double danger of taking life too easily, and taking
it too hard, how difficult it is to balance that!&nbsp; But <a
name="page302"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 302</span>we are all
too little inclined to faith; we are all, in our serious moments,
too much inclined to forget that all are sinners, and fall justly
by their faults, and therefore that we have no more to do with
that than with the thunder-cloud; only to trust, and do our best,
and wear as smiling a face as may be for others and
ourselves.&nbsp; But there is no royal road among this
complicated business.&nbsp; Hegel the German got the best word of
all philosophy with his antinomies: the contrary of everything is
its postulate.&nbsp; That is, of course, grossly expressed, but
gives a hint of the idea, which contains a great deal of the
mysteries of religion, and a vast amount of the practical wisdom
of life.&nbsp; For your part, there is no doubt as to your
duty&mdash;to take things easy and be as happy as you can, for
your sake, and my mother&rsquo;s, and that of many besides.&nbsp;
Excuse this sermon.&mdash;Ever your loving son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas
Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>, <i>December</i>
25, 1883.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR FATHER AND
MOTHER</span>,&mdash;This it is supposed will reach you about
Christmas, and I believe I should include Lloyd in the
greeting.&nbsp; But I want to lecture my father; he is not
grateful enough; he is like Fanny; his resignation is not the
&lsquo;true blue.&rsquo;&nbsp; A man who has gained a stone;
whose son is better, and, after so many fears to the contrary, I
dare to say, a credit to him; whose business is arranged; whose
marriage is a picture&mdash;what I should call resignation in
such a case as his would be to &lsquo;take down his fiddle and
play as lood as ever he could.&rsquo;&nbsp; That and nought
else.&nbsp; And now, you dear old pious ingrate, on this
Christmas morning, think what your mercies have been; and do not
walk too far before your breakfast&mdash;as far as to the top of
India Street, then to the top of Dundas Street, and then to your
ain stair heid; and do not forget that even as <i>laborare</i>,
so <i>joculari</i>, <i>est orare</i>; and to be happy the first
step to being pious.</p>
<p><a name="page303"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 303</span>I
have as good as finished my novel, and a hard job it has
been&mdash;but now practically over, <i>laus deo</i>!&nbsp; My
financial prospects better than ever before; my excellent wife a
touch dolorous, like Mr. Tommy; my Bogue quite converted, and
myself in good spirits.&nbsp; O, send Curry Powder per
Baxter.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res</i>], <i>last Sunday of</i> &rsquo;83.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,&mdash;I give my
father up.&nbsp; I give him a parable: that the Waverley novels
are better reading for every day than the tragic Life.&nbsp; And
he takes it backside foremost, and shakes his head, and is
gloomier than ever.&nbsp; Tell him that I give him up.&nbsp; I
don&rsquo;t want no such a parent.&nbsp; This is not the man for
my money.&nbsp; I do not call that by the name of religion which
fills a man with bile.&nbsp; I write him a whole letter, bidding
him beware of extremes, and telling him that his gloom is
gallows-worthy; and I get back an answer&mdash;Perish the thought
of it.</p>
<p>Here am I on the threshold of another year, when, according to
all human foresight, I should long ago have been resolved into my
elements; here am I, who you were persuaded was born to disgrace
you&mdash;and, I will do you the justice to add, on no such
insufficient grounds&mdash;no very burning discredit when all is
done; here am I married, and the marriage recognised to be a
blessing of the first order, A1 at Lloyd&rsquo;s.&nbsp; There is
he, at his not first youth, able to take more exercise than I at
thirty-three, and gaining a stone&rsquo;s weight, a thing of
which I am incapable.&nbsp; There are you; has the man no
gratitude?&nbsp; There is Smeoroch <a name="citation303"></a><a
href="#footnote303" class="citation">[303]</a>: is he
blind?&nbsp; Tell him from me that all this is</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">NOT THE TRUE
BLUE</span>!</p>
<p><a name="page304"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 304</span>I
will think more of his prayers when I see in him a spirit of
<i>praise</i>.&nbsp; Piety is a more childlike and happy attitude
than he admits.&nbsp; Martha, Martha, do you hear the knocking at
the door?&nbsp; But Mary was happy.&nbsp; Even the Shorter
Catechism, not the merriest epitome of religion, and a work
exactly as pious although not quite so true as the multiplication
table&mdash;even that dry-as-dust epitome begins with a heroic
note.&nbsp; What is man&rsquo;s chief end?&nbsp; Let him study
that; and ask himself if to refuse to enjoy God&rsquo;s kindest
gifts is in the spirit indicated.&nbsp; Up, Dullard!&nbsp; It is
better service to enjoy a novel than to mump.</p>
<p>I have been most unjust to the Shorter Catechism, I
perceive.&nbsp; I wish to say that I keenly admire its merits as
a performance; and that all that was in my mind was its
peculiarly unreligious and unmoral texture; from which defect it
can never, of course, exercise the least influence on the minds
of children.&nbsp; But they learn fine style and some austere
thinking unconsciously.&mdash;Ever your loving son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas
Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res-les-Palmiers</i>, <i>Var</i>, <i>January</i> 1
(1884).</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR PEOPLE</span>,&mdash;A Good New
Year to you.&nbsp; The year closes, leaving me with &pound;50 in
the bank, owing no man nothing, &pound;100 more due to me in a
week or so, and &pound;150 more in the course of the month; and I
can look back on a total receipt of &pound;465, 0s. 6d. for the
last twelve months!</p>
<p>And yet I am not happy!</p>
<p>Yet I beg!&nbsp; Here is my beggary:&mdash;</p>
<p class="gutindent">1. Sellar&rsquo;s Trial.</p>
<p class="gutindent">2. George Borrow&rsquo;s Book about
Wales.</p>
<p class="gutindent">3. My Grandfather&rsquo;s Trip to
Holland.</p>
<p class="gutindent">4. And (but this is, I fear, impossible) the
Bell Rock Book.</p>
<p><a name="page305"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 305</span>When
I think of how last year began, after four months of sickness and
idleness, all my plans gone to water, myself starting alone, a
kind of spectre, for Nice&mdash;should I not be grateful?&nbsp;
Come, let us sing unto the Lord!</p>
<p>Nor should I forget the expected visit, but I will not believe
in that till it befall; I am no cultivator of disappointments,
&rsquo;tis a herb that does not grow in my garden; but I get some
good crops both of remorse and gratitude.&nbsp; The last I can
recommend to all gardeners; it grows best in shiny weather, but
once well grown, is very hardy; it does not require much labour;
only that the husbandman should smoke his pipe about the
flower-plots and admire God&rsquo;s pleasant wonders.&nbsp;
Winter green (otherwise known as Resignation, or the &lsquo;false
gratitude plant&rsquo;) springs in much the same soil; is little
hardier, if at all; and requires to be so dug about and dunged,
that there is little margin left for profit.&nbsp; The variety
known as the Black Winter green (H. V. Stevensoniana) is rather
for ornament than profit.</p>
<p>&lsquo;John, do you see that bed of
resignation?&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;It&rsquo;s doin&rsquo; bravely,
sir.&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;John, I will not have it in my garden;
it flatters not the eye and comforts not the stomach; root it
out.&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Sir, I ha&rsquo;e seen o&rsquo; them
that rase as high as nettles; gran&rsquo;
plants!&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;What then?&nbsp; Were they as tall as
alps, if still unsavoury and bleak, what matters it?&nbsp; Out
with it, then; and in its place put Laughter and a Good Conceit
(that capital home evergreen), and a bush of Flowering
Piety&mdash;but see it be the flowering sort&mdash;the other
species is no ornament to any gentleman&rsquo;s Back
Garden.&rsquo;</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Jno</span>.
<span class="smcap">Bunyan</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><a name="page306"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 306</span><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res-les-Palmiers</i>, <i>Var</i>, 9<i>th</i>
<i>March</i> 1884.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR S. C.</span>,&mdash;You will
already have received a not very sane note from me; so your
patience was rewarded&mdash;may I say, your patient
silence?&nbsp; However, now comes a letter, which on receipt, I
thus acknowledge.</p>
<p>I have already expressed myself as to the political
aspect.&nbsp; About Grahame, I feel happier; it does seem to have
been really a good, neat, honest piece of work.&nbsp; We do not
seem to be so badly off for commanders: Wolseley and Roberts, and
this pile of Woods, Stewarts, Alisons, Grahames, and the
like.&nbsp; Had we but <span class="GutSmall">ONE</span>
statesman on any side of the house!</p>
<p>Two chapters of <i>Otto</i> do remain: one to rewrite, one to
create; and I am not yet able to tackle them.&nbsp; For me it is
my chief o&rsquo; works; hence probably not so for others, since
it only means that I have here attacked the greatest
difficulties.&nbsp; But some chapters towards the end: three in
particular&mdash;I do think come off.&nbsp; I find them stirring,
dramatic, and not unpoetical.&nbsp; We shall see, however; as
like as not, the effort will be more obvious than the
success.&nbsp; For, of course, I strung myself hard to carry it
out.&nbsp; The next will come easier, and possibly be more
popular.&nbsp; I believe in the covering of much paper, each time
with a definite and not too difficult artistic purpose; and then,
from time to time, drawing oneself up and trying, in a superior
effort, to combine the facilities thus acquired or
improved.&nbsp; Thus one progresses.&nbsp; But, mind, it is very
likely that the big effort, instead of being the masterpiece, may
be the blotted copy, the gymnastic exercise.&nbsp; This no man
can tell; only the brutal and licentious public, snouting in
Mudie&rsquo;s wash-trough, can return a dubious answer.</p>
<p>I am to-day, thanks to a pure heaven and a beneficent,
loud-talking, antiseptic mistral, on the high places as to <a
name="page307"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 307</span>health and
spirits.&nbsp; Money holds out wonderfully.&nbsp; Fanny has gone
for a drive to certain meadows which are now one sheet of
jonquils: sea-bound meadows, the thought of which may freshen you
in Bloomsbury.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ye have been fresh and fair, Ye have
been filled with flowers&rsquo;&mdash;I fear I misquote.&nbsp;
Why do people babble?&nbsp; Surely Herrick, in his true vein, is
superior to Martial himself, though Martial is a very pretty
poet.</p>
<p>Did you ever read St. Augustine?&nbsp; The first chapters of
the <i>Confessions</i> are marked by a commanding genius.&nbsp;
Shakespearian in depth.&nbsp; I was struck dumb, but, alas! when
you begin to wander into controversy, the poet drops out.&nbsp;
His description of infancy is most seizing.&nbsp; And how is
this: &lsquo;Sed majorum nugae negotia vocantur; puerorum autem
talia cum sint puniuntur a majoribus.&rsquo;&nbsp; Which is quite
after the heart of R. L. S.&nbsp; See also his splendid passage
about the &lsquo;luminosus limes amicitiae&rsquo; and the
&lsquo;nebulae de limosa concupiscentia carnis&rsquo;; going on
&lsquo;<i>Utrumque</i> in confuso aestuabat et rapiebat
imbecillam aetatem per abrupta cupiditatum.&rsquo;&nbsp; That
&lsquo;Utrumque&rsquo; is a real contribution to life&rsquo;s
science.&nbsp; Lust <i>alone</i> is but a pigmy; but it never, or
rarely, attacks us single-handed.</p>
<p>Do you ever read (to go miles off, indeed) the incredible
Barbey d&rsquo;Aurevilly?&nbsp; A psychological Poe&mdash;to be
for a moment Henley.&nbsp; I own with pleasure I prefer him with
all his folly, rot, sentiment, and mixed metaphors, to the whole
modern school in France.&nbsp; It makes me laugh when it&rsquo;s
nonsense; and when he gets an effect (though it&rsquo;s still
nonsense and mere Po&euml;ry, not poesy) it wakens me.&nbsp;
<i>Ce qui ne meurt pas</i> nearly killed me with laughing, and
left me&mdash;well, it left me very nearly admiring the old
ass.&nbsp; At least, it&rsquo;s the kind of thing one feels one
couldn&rsquo;t do.&nbsp; The dreadful moonlight, when they all
three sit silent in the room&mdash;by George, sir, it&rsquo;s
imagined&mdash;and the brief scene between the husband and wife
is all there.&nbsp; <i>Quant au fond</i>, the whole thing, of
course, is a fever <a name="page308"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
308</span>dream, and worthy of eternal laughter.&nbsp; Had the
young man broken stones, and the two women been hard-working
honest prostitutes, there had been an end of the whole immoral
and baseless business: you could at least have respected them in
that case.</p>
<p>I also read <i>Petronius Arbiter</i>, which is a rum work, not
so immoral as most modern works, but singularly silly.&nbsp; I
tackled some Tacitus too.&nbsp; I got them with a dreadful French
crib on the same page with the text, which helps me along and
drives me mad.&nbsp; The French do not even try to
translate.&nbsp; They try to be much more classical than the
classics, with astounding results of barrenness and tedium.&nbsp;
Tacitus, I fear, was too solid for me.&nbsp; I liked the war
part; but the dreary intriguing at Rome was too much.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mr. Dick</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res</i>, <i>Var</i>, 12<i>th</i> <i>March</i>
1884.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MR. DICK</span>,&mdash;I have
been a great while owing you a letter; but I am not without
excuses, as you have heard.&nbsp; I overworked to get a piece of
work finished before I had my holiday, thinking to enjoy it more;
and instead of that, the machinery near hand came sundry in my
hands! like Murdie&rsquo;s uniform.&nbsp; However, I am now, I
think, in a fair way of recovery; I think I was made, what there
is of me, of whipcord and thorn-switches; surely I am
tough!&nbsp; But I fancy I shall not overdrive again, or not so
long.&nbsp; It is my theory that work is highly beneficial, but
that it should, if possible, and certainly for such partially
broken-down instruments as the thing I call my body, be taken in
batches, with a clear break and breathing space between.&nbsp; I
always do vary my work, laying one thing aside to take up
another, not <a name="page309"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
309</span>merely because I believe it rests the brain, but
because I have found it most beneficial to the result.&nbsp;
Reading, Bacon says, makes a full man, but what makes me full on
any subject is to banish it for a time from all my
thoughts.&nbsp; However, what I now propose is, out of every
quarter, to work two months&rsquo; and rest the third.&nbsp; I
believe I shall get more done, as I generally manage, on my
present scheme, to have four months&rsquo; impotent illness and
two of imperfect health&mdash;one before, one after, I break
down.&nbsp; This, at least, is not an economical division of the
year.</p>
<p>I re-read the other day that heartbreaking book, the <i>Life
of Scott</i>.&nbsp; One should read such works now and then, but
O, not often.&nbsp; As I live, I feel more and more that
literature should be cheerful and brave-spirited, even if it
cannot be made beautiful and pious and heroic.&nbsp; We wish it
to be a green place; the <i>Waverley Novels</i> are better to
re-read than the over-true life, fine as dear Sir Walter
was.&nbsp; The Bible, in most parts, is a cheerful book; it is
our little piping theologies, tracts, and sermons that are dull
and dowie; and even the Shorter Catechism, which is scarcely a
work of consolation, opens with the best and shortest and
completest sermon ever written&mdash;upon Man&rsquo;s chief
end.&mdash;Believe me, my dear Mr. Dick, very sincerely
yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;You see I have changed my hand.&nbsp; I was
threatened apparently with scrivener&rsquo;s cramp, and at any
rate had got to write so small, that the revisal of my <span
class="GutSmall">MS</span>. tried my eyes, hence my signature
alone remains upon the old model; for it appears that if I
changed that, I should be cut off from my
&lsquo;vivers.&rsquo;</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><a name="page310"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
310</span><span class="smcap">to Cosmo Monkhouse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res-les-Palmiers</i>, <i>Var</i>, <i>March</i> 16,
1884.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MONKHOUSE</span>,&mdash;You see
with what promptitude I plunge into correspondence; but the truth
is, I am condemned to a complete inaction, stagnate dismally, and
love a letter.&nbsp; Yours, which would have been welcome at any
time, was thus doubly precious.</p>
<p>Dover sounds somewhat shiveringly in my ears.&nbsp; You should
see the weather <i>I</i> have&mdash;cloudless, clear as crystal,
with just a punkah-draft of the most aromatic air, all pine and
gum tree.&nbsp; You would be ashamed of Dover; you would scruple
to refer, sir, to a spot so paltry.&nbsp; To be idle at Dover is
a strange pretension; pray, how do you warm yourself?&nbsp; If I
were there I should grind knives or write blank verse,
or&mdash;&nbsp; But at least you do not bathe?&nbsp; It is idle
to deny it: I have&mdash;I may say I nourish&mdash;a growing
jealousy of the robust, large-legged, healthy Britain-dwellers,
patient of grog, scorners of the timid umbrella, innocuously
breathing fog: all which I once was, and I am ashamed to say
liked it.&nbsp; How ignorant is youth! grossly rolling among
unselected pleasures; and how nobler, purer, sweeter, and
lighter, to sip the choice tonic, to recline in the luxurious
invalid chair, and to tread, well-shawled, the little round of
the constitutional.&nbsp; Seriously, do you like to repose?&nbsp;
Ye gods, I hate it.&nbsp; I never rest with any acceptation; I do
not know what people mean who say they like sleep and that damned
bedtime which, since long ere I was breeched, has rung a knell to
all my day&rsquo;s doings and beings.&nbsp; And when a man,
seemingly sane, tells me he has &lsquo;fallen in love with
stagnation,&rsquo; I can only say to him, &lsquo;You will never
be a Pirate!&rsquo;&nbsp; This may not cause any regret to Mrs.
Monkhouse; but in your own soul it will <a
name="page311"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 311</span>clang
hollow&mdash;think of it!&nbsp; Never!&nbsp; After all
boyhood&rsquo;s aspirations and youth&rsquo;s immoral day-dreams,
you are condemned to sit down, grossly draw in your chair to the
fat board, and be a beastly Burgess till you die.&nbsp; Can it
be?&nbsp; Is there not some escape, some furlough from the Moral
Law, some holiday jaunt contrivable into a Better Land?&nbsp;
Shall we never shed blood?&nbsp; This prospect is too grey.</p>
<p class="poetry">&lsquo;Here lies a man who never did<br />
Anything but what he was bid;<br />
Who lived his life in paltry ease,<br />
And died of commonplace disease.&rsquo;</p>
<p>To confess plainly, I had intended to spend my life (or any
leisure I might have from Piracy upon the high seas) as the
leader of a great horde of irregular cavalry, devastating whole
valleys.&nbsp; I can still, looking back, see myself in many
favourite attitudes; signalling for a boat from my pirate ship
with a pocket-handkerchief, I at the jetty end, and one or two of
my bold blades keeping the crowd at bay; or else turning in the
saddle to look back at my whole command (some five thousand
strong) following me at the hand-gallop up the road out of the
burning valley: this last by moonlight.</p>
<p><i>Et point du tout</i>.&nbsp; I am a poor scribe, and have
scarce broken a commandment to mention, and have recently dined
upon cold veal!&nbsp; As for you (who probably had some
ambitions), I hear of you living at Dover, in lodgings, like the
beasts of the field.&nbsp; But in heaven, when we get there, we
shall have a good time, and see some real carnage.&nbsp; For
heaven is&mdash;must be&mdash;that great Kingdom of Antinomia,
which Lamb saw dimly adumbrated in the <i>Country Wife</i>, where
the worm which never dies (the conscience) peacefully expires,
and the sinner lies down beside the Ten Commandments.&nbsp; Till
then, here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling, with neither
health nor vice for anything more spirited than procrastination,
<a name="page312"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 312</span>which I
may well call the Consolation Stakes of Wickedness; and by whose
diligent practice, without the least amusement to ourselves, we
can rob the orphan and bring down grey hairs with sorrow to the
dust.</p>
<p>This astonishing gush of nonsense I now hasten to close,
envelope, and expedite to Shakespeare&rsquo;s Cliff.&nbsp;
Remember me to Shakespeare, and believe me, yours very
sincerely,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res-les-Palmiers</i>, <i>Var</i>, <i>March</i> 17,
1884.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR GOSSE</span>,&mdash;Your
office&mdash;office is profanely said&mdash;your bower upon the
leads is divine.&nbsp; Have you, like Pepys, &lsquo;the right to
fiddle&rsquo; there?&nbsp; I see you mount the companion,
barbiton in hand, and, fluttered about by city sparrows, pour
forth your spirit in a voluntary.&nbsp; Now when the spring
begins, you must lay in your flowers: how do you say about a
potted hawthorn?&nbsp; Would it bloom?&nbsp; Wallflower is a
choice pot-herb; lily-of-the-valley, too, and carnation, and
Indian cress trailed about the window, is not only beautiful by
colour, but the leaves are good to eat.&nbsp; I recommend thyme
and rosemary for the aroma, which should not be left upon one
side; they are good quiet growths.</p>
<p>On one of your tables keep a great map spread out; a chart is
still better&mdash;it takes one further&mdash;the havens with
their little anchors, the rocks, banks, and soundings, are
adorably marine; and such furniture will suit your ship-shape
habitation.&nbsp; I wish I could see those cabins; they smile
upon me with the most intimate charm.&nbsp; From your leads, do
you behold St. Paul&rsquo;s?&nbsp; I always like to see the
Foolscap; it is London <i>per se</i> and no spot from <a
name="page313"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 313</span>which it is
visible is without romance.&nbsp; Then it is good company for the
man of letters, whose veritable nursing Pater-Noster is so near
at hand.</p>
<p>I am all at a standstill; as idle as a painted ship, but not
so pretty.&nbsp; My romance, which has so nearly butchered me in
the writing, not even finished; though so near, thank God, that a
few days of tolerable strength will see the roof upon that
structure.&nbsp; I have worked very hard at it, and so do not
expect any great public favour.&nbsp; <i>In moments of
effort</i>, <i>one learns to do the easy things that people
like</i>.&nbsp; There is the golden maxim; thus one should strain
and then play, strain again and play again.&nbsp; The strain is
for us, it educates; the play is for the reader, and
pleases.&nbsp; Do you not feel so?&nbsp; We are ever threatened
by two contrary faults: both deadly.&nbsp; To sink into what my
forefathers would have called &lsquo;rank conformity,&rsquo; and
to pour forth cheap replicas, upon the one hand; upon the other,
and still more insidiously present, to forget that art is a
diversion and a decoration, that no triumph or effort is of
value, nor anything worth reaching except charm.&mdash;Yours
affectionately,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Miss Ferrier</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res-les-Palmiers</i>, <i>Var</i>, [<i>March</i> 22,
1884].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MISS FERRIER</span>,&mdash;Are
you really going to fall us?&nbsp; This seems a dreadful
thing.&nbsp; My poor wife, who is not well off for friends on
this bare coast, has been promising herself, and I have been
promising her, a rare acquisition.&nbsp; And now Miss Burn has
failed, and you utter a very doubtful note.&nbsp; You do not know
how delightful this place is, nor how anxious we are for a
visit.&nbsp; Look at the names: &lsquo;The
Solitude&rsquo;&mdash;is that romantic?&nbsp; The
palm-trees?&mdash;how is that for the gorgeous East?&nbsp;
&lsquo;Var&rsquo;? the name of a river&mdash;&lsquo;the quiet
waters by&rsquo;!&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis true, they are in another
department, <a name="page314"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
314</span>and consist of stones and a biennial spate; but what a
music, what a plash of brooks, for the imagination!&nbsp; We have
hills; we have skies; the roses are putting forth, as yet
sparsely; the meadows by the sea are one sheet of jonquils; the
birds sing as in an English May&mdash;for, considering we are in
France and serve up our song-birds, I am ashamed to say, on a
little field of toast and with a sprig of thyme (my own receipt)
in their most innocent and now unvocal bellies&mdash;considering
all this, we have a wonderfully fair wood-music round this
Solitude of ours.&nbsp; What can I say more?&mdash;All this
awaits you.&nbsp; <i>Kennst du das Land</i>, in short.&mdash;Your
sincere friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. H. Low</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res-les-Palmiers</i>, <i>Var</i>, [<i>April</i>
1884].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LOW</span>,&mdash;The blind man
in these sprawled lines sends greeting.&nbsp; I have been ill, as
perhaps the papers told you.&nbsp; The news&mdash;&lsquo;great
news&mdash;glorious news&mdash;sec-ond
ed-ition!&rsquo;&mdash;went the round in England.</p>
<p>Anyway, I now thank you for your pictures, which, particularly
the Arcadian one, we all (Bob included, he was here sick-nursing
me) much liked.</p>
<p>Herewith are a set of verses which I thought pretty enough to
send to press.&nbsp; Then I thought of the <i>Manhattan</i>,
towards whom I have guilty and compunctious feelings.&nbsp; Last,
I had the best thought of all&mdash;to send them to you in case
you might think them suitable for illustration.&nbsp; It seemed
to me quite in your vein.&nbsp; If so, good; if not, hand them on
to <i>Manhattan</i>, <i>Century</i>, or <i>Lippincott</i>, at
your pleasure, as all three desire my work or pretend to.&nbsp;
But I trust the lines will not go unattended.&nbsp; <a
name="page315"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 315</span>Some
riverside will haunt you; and O! be tender to my bathing
girls.&nbsp; The lines are copied in my wife&rsquo;s hand, as I
cannot see to write otherwise than with the pen of Cormoran,
Gargantua, or Nimrod.&nbsp; Love to your wife.&mdash;Yours
ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<p>Copied it myself.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>, <i>April</i> 19,
1884.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR FATHER</span>,&mdash;Yesterday
I very powerfully stated the <i>Heresis Stevensoniana</i>, or the
complete body of divinity of the family theologian, to Miss
Ferrier.&nbsp; She was much impressed; so was I.&nbsp; You are a
great heresiarch; and I know no better.&nbsp; Whaur the devil did
ye get thon about the soap?&nbsp; Is it altogether your
own?&nbsp; I never heard it elsewhere; and yet I suspect it must
have been held at some time or other, and if you were to look up
you would probably find yourself condemned by some Council.</p>
<p>I am glad to hear you are so well.&nbsp; The hear is
excellent.&nbsp; The <i>Cornhills</i> came; I made Miss Ferrier
read us &lsquo;Thrawn Janet,&rsquo; and was quite bowled over by
my own works.&nbsp; The &lsquo;Merry Men&rsquo; I mean to make
much longer, with a whole new denouement, not yet quite clear to
me.&nbsp; &lsquo;The Story of a Lie,&rsquo; I must rewrite
entirely also, as it is too weak and ragged, yet is worth saving
for the Admiral.&nbsp; Did I ever tell you that the Admiral was
recognised in America?</p>
<p>When they are all on their legs this will make an excellent
collection.</p>
<p>Has Davie never read <i>Guy Mannering</i>, <i>Rob Roy</i>, or
<i>The Antiquary</i>?&nbsp; All of which are worth three
<i>Waverleys</i>.&nbsp; I think <i>Kenilworth</i> better than
<i>Waverley</i>; <i>Nigel</i>, too; and <i>Quentin Durward</i>
about as good.&nbsp; But it shows a true piece of insight to
prefer <i>Waverley</i>, for it <i>is</i> different; and <a
name="page316"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 316</span>though not
quite coherent, better worked in parts than almost any other:
surely more carefully.&nbsp; It is undeniable that the love of
the slap-dash and the shoddy grew upon Scott with success.&nbsp;
Perhaps it does on many of us, which may be the granite on which
D.&rsquo;s opinion stands.&nbsp; However, I hold it, in Patrick
Walker&rsquo;s phrase, for an &lsquo;old, condemned, damnable
error.&rsquo;&nbsp; Dr. Simson was condemned by P. W. as being
&lsquo;a bagful of&rsquo; such.&nbsp; One of Patrick&rsquo;s
amenities!</p>
<p>Another ground there may be to D.&rsquo;s opinion; those who
avoid (or seek to avoid) Scott&rsquo;s facility are apt to be
continually straining and torturing their style to get in more of
life.&nbsp; And to many the extra significance does not redeem
the strain.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Doctor
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Cosmo Monkhouse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>La Solitude</i>,
<i>Hy&egrave;res</i>, [<i>April</i> 24, 1884].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MONKHOUSE</span>,&mdash;If you are
in love with repose, here is your occasion: change with me.&nbsp;
I am too blind to read, hence no reading; I am too weak to walk,
hence no walking; I am not allowed to speak, hence no talking;
but the great simplification has yet to be named; for, if this
goes on, I shall soon have nothing to eat&mdash;and hence, O
Hallelujah! hence no eating.&nbsp; The offer is a fair one: I
have not sold myself to the devil, for I could never find
him.&nbsp; I am married, but so are you.&nbsp; I sometimes write
verses, but so do you.&nbsp; Come!&nbsp; <i>Hic quies</i>!&nbsp;
As for the commandments, I have broken them so small that they
are the dust of my chambers; you walk upon them, triturate and
toothless; and with the Golosh of Philosophy, they shall not bite
your heel.&nbsp; True, the tenement is falling.&nbsp; Ay, friend,
but yours also.&nbsp; Take a larger view; what is a year or two?
dust in the balance!&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis done, behold you Cosmo
Stevenson, and me R. L. Monkhouse; you at Hy&egrave;res, I in
London; you rejoicing in the <a name="page317"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 317</span>clammiest repose, me proceeding to
tear your tabernacle into rags, as I have already so admirably
torn my own.</p>
<p>My place to which I now introduce you&mdash;it is
yours&mdash;is like a London house, high and very narrow; upon
the lungs I will not linger; the heart is large enough for a
ballroom; the belly greedy and inefficient; the brain stocked
with the most damnable explosives, like a dynamiter&rsquo;s
den.&nbsp; The whole place is well furnished, though not in a
very pure taste; Corinthian much of it; showy and not strong.</p>
<p>About your place I shall try to find my way alone, an
interesting exploration.&nbsp; Imagine me, as I go to bed,
falling over a blood-stained remorse; opening that cupboard in
the cerebellum and being welcomed by the spirit of your murdered
uncle.&nbsp; I should probably not like your remorses; I wonder
if you will like mine; I have a spirited assortment; they whistle
in my ear o&rsquo; nights like a north-easter.&nbsp; I trust
yours don&rsquo;t dine with the family; mine are better mannered;
you will hear nought of them till, 2 <span
class="GutSmall">A.M.</span>, except one, to be sure, that I have
made a pet of, but he is small; I keep him in buttons, so as to
avoid commentaries; you will like him much&mdash;if you like what
is genuine.</p>
<p>Must we likewise change religions?&nbsp; Mine is a good
article, with a trick of stopping; cathedral bell note;
ornamental dial; supported by Venus and the Graces; quite a
summer-parlour piety.&nbsp; Of yours, since your last, I fear
there is little to be said.</p>
<p>There is one article I wish to take away with me: my
spirits.&nbsp; They suit me.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t want yours; I
like my own; I have had them a long while in bottle.&nbsp; It is
my only reservation.&mdash;Yours (as you decide),</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Monkhouse</span>.</p>
<h3><a name="page318"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
318</span><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Hy&egrave;res</i>, <i>May</i>
1884.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR BOY</span>,&mdash;<i>Old
Mortality</i> <a name="citation318"></a><a href="#footnote318"
class="citation">[318]</a> is out, and I am glad to say Coggie
likes it.&nbsp; We like her immensely.</p>
<p>I keep better, but no great shakes yet; cannot
work&mdash;cannot: that is flat, not even verses: as for prose,
that more active place is shut on me long since.</p>
<p>My view of life is essentially the comic; and the romantically
comic.&nbsp; <i>As you Like It</i> is to me the most bird-haunted
spot in letters; <i>Tempest</i> and <i>Twelfth Night</i>
follow.&nbsp; These are what I mean by poetry and nature.&nbsp; I
make an effort of my mind to be quite one with Moli&egrave;re,
except upon the stage, where his inimitable <i>jeux de
sc&egrave;ne</i> beggar belief; but you will observe they are
stage-plays&mdash;things <i>ad hoc</i>; not great Olympian
debauches of the heart and fancy; hence more perfect, and not so
great.&nbsp; Then I come, after great wanderings, to Carmosine
and to Fantasio; to one part of La Derni&egrave;re Aldini (which,
by the by, we might dramatise in a week), to the notes that
Meredith has found, Evan and the postillion, Evan and Rose, Harry
in Germany.&nbsp; And to me these things are the good; beauty,
touched with sex and laughter; beauty with God&rsquo;s earth for
the background.&nbsp; Tragedy does not seem to me to come off;
and when it does, it does so by the heroic illusion; the
anti-masque has been omitted; laughter, which attends on all our
steps in life, and sits by the deathbed, and certainly redacts
the epitaph, laughter has been lost from these great-hearted
lies.&nbsp; But the comedy which keeps the beauty and touches the
terrors of our life (laughter and tragedy-in-a-good-humour having
kissed), that is the last word of moved representation; embracing
the greatest number of elements of fate and character; and
telling its story, not with the one eye of pity, but with the two
of pity and mirth.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><a name="page319"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
319</span><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>From my Bed</i>, <i>May</i> 29,
1884.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR GOSSE</span>,&mdash;The news of
the Professorate found me in the article of&mdash;well, of heads
or tails; I am still in bed, and a very poor person.&nbsp; You
must thus excuse my damned delay; but, I assure you, I was
delighted.&nbsp; You will believe me the more, if I confess to
you that my first sentiment was envy; yes, sir, on my
blood-boltered couch I envied the professor.&nbsp; However, it
was not of long duration; the double thought that you deserved
and that you would thoroughly enjoy your success fell like balsam
on my wounds.&nbsp; How came it that you never communicated my
rejection of Gilder&rsquo;s offer for the Rhone?&nbsp; But it
matters not.&nbsp; Such earthly vanities are over for the
present.&nbsp; This has been a fine well-conducted illness.&nbsp;
A month in bed; a month of silence; a fortnight of not stirring
my right hand; a month of not moving without being lifted.&nbsp;
Come!&nbsp; <i>&Ccedil;a y est</i>: devilish like being
dead.&mdash;Yours, dear Professor, academically,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<p>I am soon to be moved to Royat; an invalid valet goes with
me!&nbsp; I got him cheap&mdash;second-hand.</p>
<p>In turning over my late friend Ferrier&rsquo;s commonplace
book, I find three poems from <i>Viol and Flute</i> copied out in
his hand: &lsquo;When Flower-time,&rsquo; &lsquo;Love in
Winter,&rsquo; and &lsquo;Mistrust.&rsquo;&nbsp; They are capital
too.&nbsp; But I thought the fact would interest you.&nbsp; He
was no poetist either; so it means the more.&nbsp; &lsquo;Love in
W.!&rsquo; I like the best.</p>
<h3><a name="page320"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
320</span><span class="smcap">to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas
Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Hotel Chabassi&egrave;re</i>,
<i>Royat</i>, [<i>July</i> 1884].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR PEOPLE</span>,&mdash;The
weather has been demoniac; I have had a skiff of cold, and was
finally obliged to take to bed entirely; to-day, however, it has
cleared, the sun shines, and I begin to</p>
<p style="text-align: right">(<i>Several days after</i>.)</p>
<p>I have been out once, but now am back in bed.&nbsp; I am
better, and keep better, but the weather is a mere
injustice.&nbsp; The imitation of Edinburgh is, at times,
deceptive; there is a note among the chimney pots that suggests
Howe Street; though I think the shrillest spot in Christendom was
not upon the Howe Street side, but in front, just under the Miss
Graemes&rsquo; big chimney stack.&nbsp; It had a fine alto
character&mdash;a sort of bleat that used to divide the marrow in
my joints&mdash;say in the wee, slack hours.&nbsp; That music is
now lost to us by rebuilding; another air that I remember, not
regret, was the solo of the gas-burner in the little front room;
a knickering, flighty, fleering, and yet spectral cackle.&nbsp; I
mind it above all on winter afternoons, late, when the window was
blue and spotted with rare rain-drops, and, looking out, the cold
evening was seen blue all over, with the lamps of Queen&rsquo;s
and Frederick&rsquo;s Street dotting it with yellow, and flaring
east-ward in the squalls.&nbsp; Heavens, how unhappy I have been
in such circumstances&mdash;I, who have now positively forgotten
the colour of unhappiness; who am full like a fed ox, and dull
like a fresh turf, and have no more spiritual life, for good or
evil, than a French bagman.</p>
<p>We are at Chabassi&egrave;re&rsquo;s, for of course it was
nonsense to go up the hill when we could not walk.</p>
<p>The child&rsquo;s poems in a far extended form are likely soon
to be heard of&mdash;which Cummy I dare say will be glad to
know.&nbsp; They will make a book of about one hundred
pages.&mdash;Ever your affectionate,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><a name="page321"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
321</span><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Royat</i>, <i>July</i>
1884.]</p>
<p>. . . <span class="smcap">Here</span> is a quaint thing, I
have read <i>Robinson</i>, <i>Colonel Jack</i>, <i>Moll
Flanders</i>, <i>Memoirs of a Cavalier</i>, <i>History of the
Plague</i>, <i>History of the Great Storm</i>, <i>Scotch Church
and Union</i>.&nbsp; And there my knowledge of Defoe
ends&mdash;except a book, the name of which I forget, about
Peterborough in Spain, which Defoe obviously did not write, and
could not have written if he wanted.&nbsp; To which of these does
B. J. refer?&nbsp; I guess it must be the history of the Scottish
Church.&nbsp; I jest; for, of course, I <i>know</i> it must be a
book I have never read, and which this makes me keen to
read&mdash;I mean <i>Captain Singleton</i>.&nbsp; Can it be got
and sent to me?&nbsp; If <i>Treasure Island</i> is at all like
it, it will be delightful.&nbsp; I was just the other day
wondering at my folly in not remembering it, when I was writing
<i>T. I.</i>, as a mine for pirate tips.&nbsp; <i>T. I.</i> came
out of Kingsley&rsquo;s <i>At Last</i>, where I got the Dead
Man&rsquo;s Chest&mdash;and that was the seed&mdash;and out of
the great Captain Johnson&rsquo;s <i>History of Notorious</i>
<i>Pirates</i>.&nbsp; The scenery is Californian in part, and in
part <i>chic.</i></p>
<p>I was downstairs to-day!&nbsp; So now I am a made
man&mdash;till the next time.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p>If it was <i>Captain Singleton</i>, send it to me, won&rsquo;t
you?</p>
<p><i>Later</i>.&mdash;My life dwindles into a kind of valley of
the shadow picnic.&nbsp; I cannot read; so much of the time (as
to-day) I must not speak above my breath, that to play patience,
or to see my wife play it, is become the be-all and the end-all
of my dim career.&nbsp; To add to my gaiety, I may write letters,
but there are few to answer.&nbsp; <a name="page322"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 322</span>Patience and Poesy are thus my rod
and staff; with these I not unpleasantly support my days.</p>
<p>I am very dim, dumb, dowie, and damnable.&nbsp; I hate to be
silenced; and if to talk by signs is my forte (as I contend), to
understand them cannot be my wife&rsquo;s.&nbsp; Do not think me
unhappy; I have not been so for years; but I am blurred, inhabit
the debatable frontier of sleep, and have but dim designs upon
activity.&nbsp; All is at a standstill; books closed, paper put
aside, the voice, the eternal voice of R. L. S., well
silenced.&nbsp; Hence this plaint reaches you with no very great
meaning, no very great purpose, and written part in slumber by a
heavy, dull, somnolent, superannuated son of a bedpost.</p>
<h2><a name="page323"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
323</span>VII<br />
LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH,<br />
<span class="GutSmall">SEPTEMBER 1884&ndash;DECEMBER
1885</span></h2>
<h3><a name="page328"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
328</span><span class="smcap">to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas
Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Wensleydale</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>Sunday</i>, 28<i>th</i> <i>September</i>
1884.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR PEOPLE</span>,&mdash;I keep
better, and am to-day downstairs for the first time.&nbsp; I find
the lockers entirely empty; not a cent to the front.&nbsp; Will
you pray send us some?&nbsp; It blows an equinoctial gale, and
has blown for nearly a week.&nbsp; Nimbus Britannicus; piping
wind, lashing rain; the sea is a fine colour, and wind-bound
ships lie at anchor under the Old Harry rocks, to make one glad
to be ashore.</p>
<p>The Henleys are gone, and two plays practically done.&nbsp; I
hope they may produce some of the ready.&mdash;I am, ever
affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Wensleydale</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>October</i> 1884?]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR BOY</span>,&mdash;I trust this
finds you well; it leaves me so-so.&nbsp; The weather is so cold
that I must stick to bed, which is rotten and tedious, but
can&rsquo;t be helped.</p>
<p>I find in the blotting book the enclosed, which I wrote to you
the eve of my blood.&nbsp; Is it not strange?&nbsp; That night,
when I naturally thought I was coopered, the thought of it was
much in my mind; I thought it had gone; and I thought what a
strange prophecy I had made in jest, and how it was indeed like
to be the end of many letters.&nbsp; But I have written a good
few since, and the spell is broken.&nbsp; I am just as pleased,
for I earnestly desire to live.&nbsp; This pleasant middle age
into whose port we are steering is quite to my fancy.&nbsp; I
would cast anchor here, and go ashore for twenty years, and see
the manners of the place.&nbsp; Youth was a great time, but
somewhat fussy.&nbsp; Now in middle age (bar lucre) <a
name="page329"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 329</span>all seems
mighty placid.&nbsp; It likes me; I spy a little bright
caf&eacute; in one corner of the port, in front of which I now
propose we should sit down.&nbsp; There is just enough of the
bustle of the harbour and no more; and the ships are close in,
regarding us with stern-windows&mdash;the ships that bring deals
from Norway and parrots from the Indies.&nbsp; Let us sit down
here for twenty years, with a packet of tobacco and a drink, and
talk of art and women.&nbsp; By-and-by, the whole city will sink,
and the ships too, and the table, and we also; but we shall have
sat for twenty years and had a fine talk; and by that time, who
knows? exhausted the subject.</p>
<p>I send you a book which (or I am mistook) will please you; it
pleased me.&nbsp; But I do desire a book of adventure&mdash;a
romance&mdash;and no man will get or write me one.&nbsp; Dumas I
have read and re-read too often; Scott, too, and I am
short.&nbsp; I want to hear swords clash.&nbsp; I want a book to
begin in a good way; a book, I guess, like <i>Treasure
Island</i>, alas! which I have never read, and cannot though I
live to ninety.&nbsp; I would God that some one else had written
it!&nbsp; By all that I can learn, it is the very book for my
complaint.&nbsp; I like the way I hear it opens; and they tell me
John Silver is good fun.&nbsp; And to me it is, and must ever be,
a dream unrealised, a book unwritten.&nbsp; O my sighings after
romance, or even Skeltery, and O! the weary age which will
produce me neither!</p>
<p style="text-align: center" class="gutindent">CHAPTER I</p>
<p class="gutindent">The night was damp and cloudy, the ways
foul.&nbsp; The single horseman, cloaked and booted, who pursued
his way across Willesden Common, had not met a traveller, when
the sound of wheels&mdash;</p>
<p style="text-align: center" class="gutindent">CHAPTER I</p>
<p class="gutindent">&lsquo;Yes, sir,&rsquo; said the old pilot,
&lsquo;she must have dropped into the bay a little afore
dawn.&nbsp; A queer craft she looks.&rsquo;</p>
<p class="gutindent"><a name="page330"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 330</span>&lsquo;She shows no colours,&rsquo;
returned the young gentleman musingly.</p>
<p class="gutindent">&lsquo;They&rsquo;re a-lowering of a
quarter-boat, Mr. Mark,&rsquo; resumed the old salt.&nbsp;
&lsquo;We shall soon know more of her.&rsquo;</p>
<p class="gutindent">&lsquo;Ay,&rsquo; replied the young
gentleman called Mark, &lsquo;and here, Mr. Seadrift, comes your
sweet daughter Nancy tripping down the cliff.&rsquo;</p>
<p class="gutindent">&lsquo;God bless her kind heart, sir,&rsquo;
ejaculated old Seadrift.</p>
<p style="text-align: center" class="gutindent">CHAPTER I</p>
<p class="gutindent">The notary, Jean Rossignol, had been
summoned to the top of a great house in the Isle St. Louis to
make a will; and now, his duties finished, wrapped in a warm
roquelaure and with a lantern swinging from one hand, he issued
from the mansion on his homeward way.&nbsp; Little did he think
what strange adventures were to befall him!&mdash;</p>
<p>That is how stories should begin.&nbsp; And I am offered <span
class="GutSmall">HUSKS</span> instead.</p>
<table>
<tr>
<td><p style="text-align: center">What should be:</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: center">What is:</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>The Filibuster&rsquo;s Cache.</p>
</td>
<td><p>Aunt Anne&rsquo;s Tea Cosy.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>Jerry Abershaw.</p>
</td>
<td><p>Mrs. Brierly&rsquo;s Niece.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>Blood Money: A Tale.</p>
</td>
<td><p>Society: A Novel</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to the Rev. Professor Lewis
Campbell</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Wensleydale</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>November</i> 1884.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CAMPBELL</span>,&mdash;The
books came duly to hand.&nbsp; My wife has occupied the
translation <a name="citation330"></a><a href="#footnote330"
class="citation">[330]</a> ever since, nor have I yet been able
to dislodge her.&nbsp; As for the primer, I have read it with a
very strange result: that I find no fault.&nbsp; If you knew how,
dogmatic and pugnacious, I stand warden on the literary art, you
would the more appreciate your success and my&mdash;well, I will
own it&mdash;disappointment.&nbsp; For I love to put people right
(or <a name="page331"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
331</span>wrong) about the arts.&nbsp; But what you say of
Tragedy and of Sophocles very amply satisfies me; it is well felt
and well said; a little less technically than it is my weakness
to desire to see it put, but clear and adequate.&nbsp; You are
very right to express your admiration for the resource displayed
in &OElig;dipus King; it is a miracle.&nbsp; Would it not have
been well to mention Voltaire&rsquo;s interesting onslaught, a
thing which gives the best lesson of the difference of neighbour
arts?&mdash;since all his criticisms, which had been fatal to a
narrative, do not amount among them to exhibit one flaw in this
masterpiece of drama.&nbsp; For the drama, it is perfect; though
such a fable in a romance might make the reader crack his sides,
so imperfect, so ethereally slight is the verisimilitude required
of these conventional, rigid, and egg-dancing arts.</p>
<p>I was sorry to see no more of you; but shall conclude by
hoping for better luck next time.&nbsp; My wife begs to be
remembered to both of you.&mdash;Yours sincerely,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Andrew Chatto</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Wensleydale</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>October</i> 3, 1884.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MR. CHATTO</span>,&mdash;I have an
offer of &pound;25 for <i>Otto</i> from America.&nbsp; I do not
know if you mean to have the American rights; from the nature of
the contract, I think not; but if you understood that you were to
sell the sheets, I will either hand over the bargain to you, or
finish it myself and hand you over the money if you are pleased
with the amount.&nbsp; You see, I leave this quite in your
hands.&nbsp; To parody an old Scotch story of servant and master:
if you don&rsquo;t know that you have a good author, I know that
I have a good publisher.&nbsp; Your fair, open, and handsome
dealings are a good point in my life, and do more for my crazy
health than has yet been done by any doctor.&mdash;Very truly
yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><a name="page332"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
332</span><span class="smcap">to W. H. Low</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Bonallie Towers</i>, <i>Branksome
Park</i>, <i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>Hants</i>,<br />
<i>England</i>, <i>First week in November</i>, <i>I guess</i>,
1884.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LOW</span>,&mdash;Now, look
here, the above is my address for three months, I hope; continue,
on your part, if you please, to write to Edinburgh, which is
safe; but if Mrs. Low thinks of coming to England, she might take
a run down from London (four hours from Waterloo, main line) and
stay a day or two with us among the pines.&nbsp; If not, I hope
it will be only a pleasure deferred till you can join her.</p>
<p>My Children&rsquo;s Verses will be published here in a volume
called <i>A Child&rsquo;s Garden</i>.&nbsp; The sheets are in
hand; I will see if I cannot send you the lot, so that you might
have a bit of a start.&nbsp; In that case I would do nothing to
publish in the States, and you might try an illustrated edition
there; which, if the book went fairly over here, might, when
ready, be imported.&nbsp; But of this more fully ere long.&nbsp;
You will see some verses of mine in the last <i>Magazine of
Art</i>, with pictures by a young lady; rather pretty, I
think.&nbsp; If we find a market for <i>Phasellulus loquitur</i>,
we can try another.&nbsp; I hope it isn&rsquo;t necessary to put
the verse into that rustic printing.&nbsp; I am Philistine enough
to prefer clean printer&rsquo;s type; indeed, I can form no idea
of the verses thus transcribed by the incult and tottering hand
of the draughtsman, nor gather any impression beyond one of
weariness to the eyes.&nbsp; Yet the other day, in the
<i>Century</i>, I saw it imputed as a crime to Vedder that he had
not thus travestied Omar Khayy&agrave;m.&nbsp; We live in a rum
age of music without airs, stories without incident, pictures
without beauty, American wood <a name="page333"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 333</span>engravings that should have been
etchings, and dry-point etchings that ought to have been
mezzo-tints.&nbsp; I think of giving &rsquo;em literature without
words; and I believe if you were to try invisible illustration,
it would enjoy a considerable vogue.&nbsp; So long as an artist
is on his head, is painting with a flute, or writes with an
etcher&rsquo;s needle, or conducts the orchestra with a meat-axe,
all is well; and plaudits shower along with roses.&nbsp; But any
plain man who tries to follow the obtrusive canons of his art, is
but a commonplace figure.&nbsp; To hell with him is the motto, or
at least not that; for he will have his reward, but he will never
be thought a person of parts.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>January</i> 3, 1885.</p>
<p>And here has this been lying near two months.&nbsp; I have
failed to get together a preliminary copy of the Child&rsquo;s
Verses for you, in spite of doughty efforts; but yesterday I sent
you the first sheet of the definitive edition, and shall continue
to send the others as they come.&nbsp; If you can, and care to,
work them&mdash;why so, well.&nbsp; If not, I send you
fodder.&nbsp; But the time presses; for though I will delay a
little over the proofs, and though&mdash;it is even possible they
may delay the English issue until Easter, it will certainly not
be later.&nbsp; Therefore perpend, and do not get caught
out.&nbsp; Of course, if you can do pictures, it will be a great
pleasure to me to see our names joined; and more than that, a
great advantage, as I daresay you may be able to make a bargain
for some share a little less spectral than the common for the
poor author.&nbsp; But this is all as you shall choose; I give
you <i>carte blanche</i> to do or not to do.&mdash;Yours most
sincerely,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p>O, Sargent has been and painted my portrait; a very nice
fellow he is, and is supposed to have done well; it is a poetical
but very chicken-boned figure-head, as thus represented.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.&nbsp; Go on.</p>
<p><a name="page334"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
334</span><i>P.P.S.</i>&mdash;Your picture came; and let me thank
you for it very much.&nbsp; I am so hunted I had near
forgotten.&nbsp; I find it very graceful; and I mean to have it
framed.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Bonallie Towers</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>November</i> 1884.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR FATHER</span>,&mdash;I have no
hesitation in recommending you to let your name go up; please
yourself about an address; though I think, if we could meet, we
could arrange something suitable.&nbsp; What you propose would be
well enough in a way, but so modest as to suggest a whine.&nbsp;
From that point of view it would be better to change a little;
but this, whether we meet or not, we must discuss.&nbsp; Tait,
Chrystal, the Royal Society, and I, all think you amply deserve
this honour and far more; it is not the True Blue to call this
serious compliment a &lsquo;trial&rsquo;; you should be glad of
this recognition.&nbsp; As for resigning, that is easy enough if
found necessary; but to refuse would be husky and
unsatisfactory.&nbsp; <i>Sic subs.</i></p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<p>My cold is still very heavy; but I carry it well.&nbsp; Fanny
is very very much out of sorts, principally through perpetual
misery with me.&nbsp; I fear I have been a little in the dumps,
which, <i>as you know</i>, <i>sir</i>, is a very great sin.&nbsp;
I must try to be more cheerful; but my cough is so severe that I
have sometimes most exhausting nights and very peevish
wakenings.&nbsp; However, this shall be remedied, and last night
I was distinctly better than the night before.&nbsp; There is, my
dear Mr. Stevenson (so I moralise blandly as we sit together on
the devil&rsquo;s garden-wall), no more <a
name="page335"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 335</span>abominable
sin than this gloom, this plaguey peevishness; why (say I) what
matters it if we be a little uncomfortable&mdash;that is no
reason for mangling our unhappy wives.&nbsp; And then I turn and
<i>girn</i> on the unfortunate Cassandra.&mdash;Your fellow
culprit,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Wensleydale</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>November</i> 1884.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR HENLEY</span>,&mdash;We are all to
pieces in health, and heavily handicapped with Arabs.&nbsp; I
have a dreadful cough, whose attacks leave me <i>&aelig;tat.</i>
90.&nbsp; I never let up on the Arabs, all the same, and rarely
get less than eight pages out of hand, though hardly able to come
downstairs for twittering knees.</p>
<p>I shall put in &mdash;&rsquo;s letter.&nbsp; He says so little
of his circumstances that I am in an impossibility to give him
advice more specific than a copybook.&nbsp; Give him my love,
however, and tell him it is the mark of the parochial gentleman
who has never travelled to find all wrong in a foreign
land.&nbsp; Let him hold on, and he will find one country as good
as another; and in the meanwhile let him resist the fatal British
tendency to communicate his dissatisfaction with a country to its
inhabitants.&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis a good idea, but it somehow fails
to please.&nbsp; In a fortnight, if I can keep my spirit in the
box at all, I should be nearly through this Arabian desert; so
can tackle something fresh.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><a name="page336"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
336</span><span class="smcap">to Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Bonallie Towers</i>, <i>Branksome
Park</i>, <i>Bournemouth</i><br />
(<i>The three B&rsquo;s</i>) [<i>November</i> 5, 1884].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR FATHER</span>,&mdash;Allow me
to say, in a strictly Pickwickian sense, that you are a silly
fellow.&nbsp; I am pained indeed, but how should I be
offended?&nbsp; I think you exaggerate; I cannot forget that you
had the same impression of the <i>Deacon</i>; and yet, when you
saw it played, were less revolted than you looked for; and I will
still hope that the <i>Admiral</i> also is not so bad as you
suppose.&nbsp; There is one point, however, where I differ from
you very frankly.&nbsp; Religion is in the world; I do not think
you are the man to deny the importance of its r&ocirc;le; and I
have long decided not to leave it on one side in art.&nbsp; The
opposition of the Admiral and Mr. Pew is not, to my eyes, either
horrible or irreverent; but it may be, and it probably is, very
ill done: what then?&nbsp; This is a failure; better luck next
time; more power to the elbow, more discretion, more wisdom in
the design, and the old defeat becomes the scene of the new
victory.&nbsp; Concern yourself about no failure; they do not
cost lives, as in engineering; they are the <i>pierres
perdues</i> of successes.&nbsp; Fame is (truly) a vapour; do not
think of it; if the writer means well and tries hard, no failure
will injure him, whether with God or man.</p>
<p>I wish I could hear a brighter account of yourself; but I am
inclined to acquit the <i>Admiral</i> of having a share in the
responsibility.&nbsp; My very heavy cold is, I hope, drawing off;
and the change to this charming house in the forest will, I hope,
complete my re-establishment.&mdash;With love to all, believe me,
your ever affectionate,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><a name="page337"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
337</span><span class="smcap">to Charles Baxter</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Bonallie Towers</i>, <i>Branksome
Park</i>, <i>Bournemouth</i>,<br />
<i>November</i> 11, [1884].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;I am in
my new house, thus proudly styled, as you perceive; but the
deevil a tower ava&rsquo; can be perceived (except out of
window); this is not as it should be; one might have hoped, at
least, a turret.&nbsp; We are all vilely unwell.&nbsp; I put in
the dark watches imitating a donkey with some success, but little
pleasure; and in the afternoon I indulge in a smart fever,
accompanied by aches and shivers.&nbsp; There is thus little
monotony to be deplored.&nbsp; I at least am a <i>regular</i>
invalid; I would scorn to bray in the afternoon; I would
indignantly refuse the proposal to fever in the night.&nbsp; What
is bred in the bone will come out, sir, in the flesh; and the
same spirit that prompted me to date my letter regulates the hour
and character of my attacks.&mdash;I am, sir, yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Thomson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Charles Baxter</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Postmark</i>, <i>Bournemouth</i>,
13<i>th</i> <i>November</i> 1884.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR
THOMSON</span>,&mdash;It&rsquo;s a maist remarkable fac&rsquo;,
but nae sh&uuml;ner had I written yon braggin&rsquo;,
blawin&rsquo; letter aboot ma business habits, when bang! that
very day, ma hoast <a name="citation337"></a><a
href="#footnote337" class="citation">[337]</a> begude in the
aifternune.&nbsp; It is really remaurkable; it&rsquo;s
providenshle, I believe.&nbsp; The ink wasnae fair dry, the words
werenae weel ooten ma mouth, when bang, I got the lee.&nbsp; The
mair ye think o&rsquo;t, Thomson, the less ye&rsquo;ll like the
looks o&rsquo;t.&nbsp; Proavidence (I&rsquo;m no&rsquo;
sayin&rsquo;) is all verra weel <i>in its place</i>; but if
Proavidence has nae mainners, wha&rsquo;s to learn&rsquo;t?&nbsp;
Proavidence is a fine thing, but hoo would you like Proavidence
to keep your till for ye?&nbsp; The richt <a
name="page338"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 338</span>place for
Proavidence is in the kirk; it has naething to do wi&rsquo;
private correspondence between twa gentlemen, nor freendly
cracks, nor a wee bit word of sculduddery <a
name="citation338"></a><a href="#footnote338"
class="citation">[338]</a> ahint the door, nor, in shoart,
wi&rsquo; ony <i>hole-and-corner wark</i>, what I would
call.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m pairfec&rsquo;ly willin&rsquo; to meet in
wi&rsquo; Proavidence, I&rsquo;ll be prood to meet in wi&rsquo;
him, when my time&rsquo;s come and I cannae dae nae better; but
if he&rsquo;s to come skinking aboot my stair-fit, damned, I
micht as weel be deid for a&rsquo; the comfort I&rsquo;ll can get
in life.&nbsp; Cannae he no be made to understand that it&rsquo;s
beneath him?&nbsp; Gosh, if I was in his business, I wouldnae
steir my heid for a plain, auld ex-elder that, tak him the way he
taks himsel,&rsquo; &lsquo;s just aboot as honest as he can weel
afford, an&rsquo; but for a wheen auld scandals, near forgotten
noo, is a pairfec&rsquo;ly respectable and thoroughly decent
man.&nbsp; Or if I fashed wi&rsquo; him ava&rsquo;, it wad be
kind o&rsquo; handsome like; a pun&rsquo;-note under his stair
door, or a bottle o&rsquo; auld, blended malt to his bit
marnin&rsquo;, as a teshtymonial like yon ye ken sae weel aboot,
but mair successfu&rsquo;.</p>
<p>Dear Thomson, have I ony money?&nbsp; If I have, <i>send
it</i>, for the loard&rsquo;s sake.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Johnson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Miss Ferrier</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Bonallie Towers</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>November</i> 12, 1884.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COGGIE</span>,&mdash;Many
thanks for the two photos which now decorate my room.&nbsp; I was
particularly glad to have the Bell Rock.&nbsp; I wonder if you
saw me plunge, lance in rest, into a controversy
thereanent?&nbsp; It was a very one-sided affair.&nbsp; I slept
upon the field of battle, paraded, sang Te Deum, and came home
after a review rather than a campaign.</p>
<p>Please tell Campbell I got his letter.&nbsp; The Wild Woman of
the West has been much amiss and complaining sorely.&nbsp; I hope
nothing more serious is wrong with <a name="page339"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 339</span>her than just my ill-health, and
consequent anxiety and labour; but the deuce of it is, that the
cause continues.&nbsp; I am about knocked out of time now: a
miserable, snuffling, shivering, fever-stricken,
nightmare-ridden, knee-jottering, hoast-hoast-hoasting shadow and
remains of man.&nbsp; But we&rsquo;ll no gie ower jist yet a
bittie.&nbsp; We&rsquo;ve seen waur; and dod, mem, it&rsquo;s my
belief that we&rsquo;ll see better.&nbsp; I dinna ken &lsquo;at
I&rsquo;ve muckle mair to say to ye, or, indeed, onything; but
jist here&rsquo;s guid-fallowship, guid health, and the wale
o&rsquo; guid fortune to your bonny sel&rsquo;; and my respecs to
the Perfessor and his wife, and the Prinshiple, an&rsquo; the
Bell Rock, an&rsquo; ony ither public chara&rsquo;ters that
I&rsquo;m acquaunt wi&rsquo;.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Bonallie Towers</i>, <i>Branksome
Park</i>, <i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>Nov.</i> 15, 1884.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR GOSSE</span>,&mdash;This Mr.
Morley <a name="citation339"></a><a href="#footnote339"
class="citation">[339]</a> of yours is a most desperate
fellow.&nbsp; He has sent me (for my opinion) the most truculent
advertisement I ever saw, in which the white hairs of Gladstone
are dragged round Troy behind my chariot wheels.&nbsp; What can I
say?&nbsp; I say nothing to <a name="page340"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 340</span>him; and to you, I content myself
with remarking that he seems a desperate fellow.</p>
<p>All luck to you on your American adventure; may you find
health, wealth, and entertainment!&nbsp; If you see, as you
likely will, Frank R. Stockton, pray greet him from me in words
to this effect:&mdash;</p>
<p class="poetry">My Stockton if I failed to like,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; It were a sheer depravity,<br />
For I went down with the <i>Thomas Hyke</i><br />
&nbsp;&nbsp; And up with the <i>Negative Gravity</i>!</p>
<p>I adore these tales.</p>
<p>I hear flourishing accounts of your success at Cambridge, so
you leave with a good omen.&nbsp; Remember me to <i>green
corn</i> if it is in season; if not, you had better hang yourself
on a sour apple tree, for your voyage has been lost.&mdash;Yours
affectionately,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Austin Dobson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Bonallie Towers</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i> [<i>December</i> 1884?].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR DOBSON</span>,&mdash;Set down my
delay to your own fault; I wished to acknowledge such a gift from
you in some of my inapt and slovenly rhymes; but you should have
sent me your pen and not your desk.&nbsp; The verses stand up to
the axles in a miry cross-road, whence the coursers of the sun
shall never draw them; hence I am constrained to this
uncourtliness, that I must appear before one of the kings of that
country of rhyme without my singing robes.&nbsp; For less than
this, if we may trust the book of Esther, favourites have tasted
death; but I conceive the kingdom of the Muses mildlier mannered;
and in particular that county which you administer and which I
seem to see as a half-suburban land; a land of holly-hocks and
country houses; a land where at night, in thorny and sequestered
bypaths, you will meet masqueraders going to a ball in their
sedans, and the rector steering homeward by the light of his
lantern; a land of <a name="page341"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
341</span>the windmill, and the west wind, and the flowering
hawthorn with a little scented letter in the hollow of its trunk,
and the kites flying over all in the season of kites, and the far
away blue spires of a cathedral city.</p>
<p>Will you forgive me, then, for my delay and accept my thanks
not only for your present, but for the letter which followed it,
and which perhaps I more particularly value, and believe me to
be, with much admiration, yours very truly,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Henry James</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Bonallie Towers</i>, <i>Branksome
Park</i>, <i>Bournemouth</i>,<br />
<i>December</i> 8, 1884.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENRY JAMES</span>,&mdash;This
is a very brave hearing from more points than one.&nbsp; The
first point is that there is a hope of a sequel.&nbsp; For this I
laboured.&nbsp; Seriously, from the dearth of information and
thoughtful interest in the art of literature, those who try to
practise it with any deliberate purpose run the risk of finding
no fit audience.&nbsp; People suppose it is &lsquo;the
stuff&rsquo; that interests them; they think, for instance, that
the prodigious fine thoughts and sentiments in Shakespeare
impress by their own weight, not understanding that the
unpolished diamond is but a stone.&nbsp; They think that striking
situations, or good dialogue, are got by studying life; they will
not rise to understand that they are prepared by deliberate
artifice and set off by painful suppressions.&nbsp; Now, I want
the whole thing well ventilated, for my own education and the
public&rsquo;s; and I beg you to look as quick as you can, to
follow me up with every circumstance of defeat where we differ,
and (to prevent the flouting of <a name="page342"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 342</span>the laity) to emphasise the points
where we agree.&nbsp; I trust your paper will show me the way to
a rejoinder; and that rejoinder I shall hope to make with so much
art as to woo or drive you from your threatened silence.&nbsp; I
would not ask better than to pass my life in beating out this
quarter of corn with such a seconder as yourself.</p>
<p>Point the second&mdash;I am rejoiced indeed to hear you speak
so kindly of my work; rejoiced and surprised.&nbsp; I seem to
myself a very rude, left-handed countryman; not fit to be read,
far less complimented, by a man so accomplished, so adroit, so
craftsmanlike as you.&nbsp; You will happily never have cause to
understand the despair with which a writer like myself considers
(say) the park scene in Lady Barberina.&nbsp; Every touch
surprises me by its intangible precision; and the effect when
done, as light as syllabub, as distinct as a picture, fills me
with envy.&nbsp; Each man among us prefers his own aim, and I
prefer mine; but when we come to speak of performance, I
recognise myself, compared with you, to be a lout and slouch of
the first water.</p>
<p>Where we differ, both as to the design of stories and the
delineation of character, I begin to lament.&nbsp; Of course, I
am not so dull as to ask you to desert your walk; but could you
not, in one novel, to oblige a sincere admirer, and to enrich his
shelves with a beloved volume, could you not, and might you not,
cast your characters in a mould a little more abstract and
academic (dear Mrs. Pennyman had already, among your other work,
a taste of what I mean), and pitch the incidents, I do not say in
any stronger, but in a slightly more emphatic key&mdash;as it
were an episode from one of the old (so-called) novels of
adventure?&nbsp; I fear you will not; and I suppose I must
sighingly admit you to be right.&nbsp; And yet, when I see, as it
were, a book of Tom Jones handled with your exquisite precision
and shot through with those side-lights of reflection in which
you excel, I relinquish the dear vision with regret.&nbsp; Think
upon it.</p>
<p><a name="page343"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 343</span>As
you know, I belong to that besotted class of man, the invalid:
this puts me to a stand in the way of visits.&nbsp; But it is
possible that some day you may feel that a day near the sea and
among pinewoods would be a pleasant change from town.&nbsp; If
so, please let us know; and my wife and I will be delighted to
put you up, and give you what we can to eat and drink (I have a
fair bottle of claret).&mdash;On the back of which, believe me,
yours sincerely,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;I reopen this to say that I have re-read my
paper, and cannot think I have at all succeeded in being either
veracious or polite.&nbsp; I knew, of course, that I took your
paper merely as a pin to hang my own remarks upon; but, alas!
what a thing is any paper!&nbsp; What fine remarks can you not
hang on mine!&nbsp; How I have sinned against proportion, and
with every effort to the contrary, against the merest rudiments
of courtesy to you!&nbsp; You are indeed a very acute reader to
have divined the real attitude of my mind; and I can only
conclude, not without closed eyes and shrinking shoulders, in the
well-worn words</p>
<p style="text-align: right">Lay on, Macduff!</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas
Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Bonallie Towers</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>December</i> 9, 1884.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR PEOPLE</span>,&mdash;The
dreadful tragedy of the <i>Pall Mall</i> has come to a happy but
ludicrous ending: I am to keep the money, the tale writ for them
is to be buried certain fathoms deep, and they are to flash out
before the world with our old friend of Kinnaird, &lsquo;The Body
Snatcher.&rsquo;&nbsp; When you come, please to bring&mdash;</p>
<p class="gutindent">(1) My <i>Montaigne</i>, or, at least, the
two last volumes.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(2) My <i>Milton</i> in the three vols. in
green.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(3) The <i>Shakespeare</i> that Babington
sent me for a wedding-gift.</p>
<p class="gutindent">(4) Hazlitt&rsquo;s <i>Table Talk and Plain
Speaker</i>.</p>
<p><a name="page344"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 344</span>If
you care to get a box of books from Douglas and Foulis, let them
be <i>solid</i>.&nbsp; <i>Croker Papers</i>, <i>Correspondence of
Napoleon</i>, <i>History of Henry IV.</i>, Lang&rsquo;s <i>Folk
Lore</i>, would be my desires.</p>
<p>I had a charming letter from Henry James about my
<i>Longman</i> paper.&nbsp; I did not understand queries about
the verses; the pictures to the Seagull I thought charming; those
to the second have left me with a pain in my poor belly and a
swimming in the head.</p>
<p>About money, I am afloat and no more, and I warn you, unless I
have great luck, I shall have to fall upon you at the New Year
like a hundredweight of bricks.&nbsp; Doctor, rent, chemist, are
all threatening; sickness has bitterly delayed my work; and
unless, as I say, I have the mischief&rsquo;s luck, I shall
completely break down.&nbsp; <i>Verbum sapientibus</i>.&nbsp; I
do not live cheaply, and I question if I ever shall; but if only
I had a halfpenny worth of health, I could now easily
suffice.&nbsp; The last breakdown of my head is what makes this
bankruptcy probable.</p>
<p>Fanny is still out of sorts; Bogue better; self fair, but a
stranger to the blessings of sleep.&mdash;Ever affectionate
son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Bonallie Towers</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, [<i>December</i> 1884].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR LAD</span>,&mdash;I have made up
my mind about the P. M. G., and send you a copy, which please
keep or return.&nbsp; As for not giving a reduction, what are
we?&nbsp; Are we artists or city men?&nbsp; Why do we sneer at
stock-brokers?&nbsp; O nary; I will not take the &pound;40.&nbsp;
I took that as a fair price for my best work; I was not able to
produce my best; and I will be damned if I steal with my eyes
open.&nbsp; <i>Sufficit</i>.&nbsp; This is my lookout.&nbsp; As
for the paper being rich, certainly it is; but I am
honourable.&nbsp; It is no more above me in money than the poor
slaveys <a name="page345"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
345</span>and cads from whom I look for honesty are below
me.&nbsp; Am I Pepys, that because I can find the countenance of
&lsquo;some of our ablest merchants,&rsquo; that
because&mdash;and&mdash;pour forth languid twaddle and get paid
for it, I, too, should &lsquo;cheerfully continue to
steal&rsquo;?&nbsp; I am not Pepys.&nbsp; I do not live much to
God and honour; but I will not wilfully turn my back on
both.&nbsp; I am, like all the rest of us, falling ever lower
from the bright ideas I began with, falling into greed, into
idleness, into middle-aged and slippered fireside cowardice; but
is it you, my bold blade, that I hear crying this sordid and rank
twaddle in my ear?&nbsp; Preaching the dankest Grundyism and
upholding the rank customs of our trade&mdash;you, who are so
cruel hard upon the customs of the publishers?&nbsp; O man, look
at the Beam in our own Eyes; and whatever else you do, do not
plead Satan&rsquo;s cause, or plead it for all; either embrace
the bad, or respect the good when you see a poor devil trying for
it.&nbsp; If this is the honesty of authors&mdash;to take what
you can get and console yourself because publishers are
rich&mdash;take my name from the rolls of that association.&nbsp;
&rsquo;Tis a caucus of weaker thieves, jealous of the
stronger.&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">The
Roaring</span> R. L. S.</p>
<p>You will see from the enclosed that I have stuck to what I
think my dues pretty tightly in spite of this flourish: these are
my words for a poor ten-pound note!</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Bonallie Towers</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, [<i>Winter</i>, 1884].</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LAD</span>,&mdash;Here was I in
bed; not writing, not hearing, and finding myself gently and
agreeably ill used; and behold I learn you are bad
yourself.&nbsp; Get your wife to send us a word how you
are.&nbsp; I am better decidedly.&nbsp; Bogue got his Christmas
card, and behaved well for three days after.&nbsp; It may
interest the cynical to learn that I started my last
h&aelig;morrhage by too sedulous attentions to my dear
Bogue.&nbsp; The stick was broken; and that night <a
name="page346"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 346</span>Bogue, who
was attracted by the extraordinary aching of his bones, and is
always inclined to a serious view of his own ailments, announced
with his customary pomp that he was dying.&nbsp; In this case,
however, it was not the dog that died.&nbsp; (He had tried to
bite his mother&rsquo;s ankles.)&nbsp; I have written a long and
peculiarly solemn paper on the technical elements of style.&nbsp;
It is path-breaking and epoch-making; but I do not think the
public will be readily convoked to its perusal.&nbsp; Did I tell
you that S. C. had risen to the paper on James?&nbsp; At
last!&nbsp; O but I was pleased; he&rsquo;s (like Johnnie) been
lang, lang o&rsquo; comin&rsquo;, but here he is.&nbsp; He will
not object to my future man&oelig;uvres in the same field, as he
has to my former.&nbsp; All the family are here; my father better
than I have seen him these two years; my mother the same as
ever.&nbsp; I do trust you are better, and I am yours ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to H. A. Jones</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Bonallie Towers</i>, <i>Branksome
Park</i>,<br />
<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>Dec.</i> 30, 1884.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR SIR</span>,&mdash;I am so
accustomed to hear nonsense spoken about all the arts, and the
drama in particular, that I cannot refrain from saying
&lsquo;Thank you,&rsquo; for your paper.&nbsp; In my answer to
Mr. James, in the December <i>Longman</i>, you may see that I
have merely touched, I think in a parenthesis, on the drama; but
I believe enough was said to indicate our agreement in
essentials.</p>
<p>Wishing you power and health to further enunciate and to act
upon these principles, believe me, dear sir, yours truly,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Bonallie Towers</i>, <i>Branksome
Park</i>, <i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>Jan.</i> 4, 1885.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR S. C.</span>,&mdash;I am on my
feet again, and getting on my boots to do the <i>Iron
Duke</i>.&nbsp; Conceive my glee: I <a name="page347"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 347</span>have refused the &pound;100, and am
to get some sort of royalty, not yet decided, instead.&nbsp;
&rsquo;Tis for Longman&rsquo;s <i>English Worthies</i>, edited by
A. Lang.&nbsp; Aw haw, haw!</p>
<p>Now, look here, could you get me a loan of the Despatches, or
is that a dream?&nbsp; I should have to mark passages I fear, and
certainly note pages on the fly.&nbsp; If you think it a dream,
will Bain get me a second-hand copy, or who would?&nbsp; The
sooner, and cheaper, I can get it the better.&nbsp; If there is
anything in your weird library that bears on either the man or
the period, put it in a mortar and fire it here instanter; I
shall catch.&nbsp; I shall want, of course, an infinity of books:
among which, any lives there may be; a life of the Marquis
Marmont (the Mar&eacute;chal), <i>Marmont&rsquo;s Memoirs</i>,
<i>Grevill&egrave;&rsquo;s Memoirs</i>, <i>Peel&rsquo;s
Memoirs</i>, <i>Napier</i>, that blind man&rsquo;s history of
England you once lent me, Hamley&rsquo;s <i>Waterloo</i>; can you
get me any of these?&nbsp; Thiers, idle Thiers also.&nbsp; Can
you help a man getting into his boots for such a huge
campaign?&nbsp; How are you?&nbsp; A Good New Year to you.&nbsp;
I mean to have a good one, but on whose funds I cannot fancy: not
mine leastways, as I am a mere derelict and drift beam-on to
bankruptcy.</p>
<p>For God&rsquo;s sake, remember the man who set out for to
conquer Arthur Wellesley, with a broken bellows and an empty
pocket.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Bonallie Towers</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>,] 14<i>th</i> <i>January</i> 1885.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR FATHER</span>,&mdash;I am glad
you like the changes.&nbsp; I own I was pleased with my
hand&rsquo;s darg; you may observe, I have corrected several
errors which (you may tell Mr. Dick) he had allowed to pass his
eagle eye; I <a name="page348"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
348</span>wish there may be none in mine; at least, the order is
better.&nbsp; The second title, &lsquo;Some new Engineering
Questions involved in the M. S. C. Scheme of last Session of
P.&rsquo;, likes me the best.&nbsp; I think it a very good paper;
and I am vain enough to think I have materially helped to polish
the diamond.&nbsp; I ended by feeling quite proud of the paper,
as if it had been mine; the next time you have as good a one, I
will overhaul it for the wages of feeling as clever as I did when
I had managed to understand and helped to set it clear.&nbsp; I
wonder if I anywhere misapprehended you?&nbsp; I rather think not
at the last; at the first shot I know I missed a point or
two.&nbsp; Some of what may appear to you to be wanton changes, a
little study will show to be necessary.</p>
<p>Yes, Carlyle was ashamed of himself as few men have been; and
let all carpers look at what he did.&nbsp; He prepared all these
papers for publication with his own hand; all his wife&rsquo;s
complaints, all the evidence of his own misconduct: who else
would have done so much?&nbsp; Is repentance, which God accepts,
to have no avail with men? nor even with the dead?&nbsp; I have
heard too much against the thrawn, discomfortable dog: dead he
is, and we may be glad of it; but he was a better man than most
of us, no less patently than he was a worse.&nbsp; To fill the
world with whining is against all my views: I do not like
impiety.&nbsp; But&mdash;but&mdash;there are two sides to all
things, and the old scalded baby had his noble side.&mdash;Ever
affectionate son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Bonallie Towers</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>January</i> 1885.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR S. C.</span>,&mdash;I have
addressed a letter to the G. O. M., <i>&agrave; propos</i> of
Wellington; and I became aware, you will be interested to hear,
of an overwhelming respect for the old gentleman.&nbsp; I can
<i>blaguer</i> his failures; but when you actually address him,
and bring the two statures and <a name="page349"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 349</span>records to confrontation, dismay is
the result.&nbsp; By mere continuance of years, he must impose;
the man who helped to rule England before I was conceived,
strikes me with a new sense of greatness and antiquity, when I
must actually beard him with the cold forms of
correspondence.&nbsp; I shied at the necessity of calling him
plain &lsquo;Sir&rsquo;!&nbsp; Had he been &lsquo;My lord,&rsquo;
I had been happier; no, I am no equalitarian.&nbsp; Honour to
whom honour is due; and if to none, why, then, honour to the
old!</p>
<p>These, O Slade Professor, are my unvarnished sentiments: I was
a little surprised to find them so extreme, and therefore I
communicate the fact.</p>
<p>Belabour thy brains, as to whom it would be well to
question.&nbsp; I have a small space; I wish to make a popular
book, nowhere obscure, nowhere, if it can be helped,
unhuman.&nbsp; It seems to me the most hopeful plan to tell the
tale, so far as may be, by anecdote.&nbsp; He did not die till so
recently, there must be hundreds who remember him, and thousands
who have still ungarnered stories.&nbsp; Dear man, to the
breach!&nbsp; Up, soldier of the iron dook, up, Slades, and at
&rsquo;em! (which, conclusively, he did not say: the at
&rsquo;em-ic theory is to be dismissed).&nbsp; You know piles of
fellows who must reek with matter; help! help!&mdash;Yours
ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Bonallie Towers</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>February</i> 1885.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;You are
indeed a backward correspondent, and much may be said against
you.&nbsp; But in this <a name="page350"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 350</span>weather, and O dear! in this
political scene of degradation, much must be forgiven.&nbsp; I
fear England is dead of Burgessry, and only walks about
galvanised.&nbsp; I do not love to think of my countrymen these
days; nor to remember myself.&nbsp; Why was I silent?&nbsp; I
feel I have no right to blame any one; but I won&rsquo;t write to
the G. O. M.&nbsp; I do really not see my way to any form of
signature, unless &lsquo;your fellow criminal in the eyes of
God,&rsquo; which might disquiet the proprieties.</p>
<p>About your book, I have always said: go on.&nbsp; The drawing
of character is a different thing from publishing the details of
a private career.&nbsp; No one objects to the first, or should
object, if his name be not put upon it; at the other, I draw the
line.&nbsp; In a preface, if you chose, you might distinguish; it
is, besides, a thing for which you are eminently well equipped,
and which you would do with taste and incision.&nbsp; I long to
see the book.&nbsp; People like themselves (to explain a little
more); no one likes his life, which is a misbegotten issue, and a
tale of failure.&nbsp; To see these failures either touched upon,
or <i>coasted</i>, to get the idea of a spying eye and blabbing
tongue about the house, is to lose all privacy in life.&nbsp; To
see that thing, which we do love, our character, set forth, is
ever gratifying.&nbsp; See how my <i>Talk and Talkers</i> went;
every one liked his own portrait, and shrieked about other
people&rsquo;s; so it will be with yours.&nbsp; If you are the
least true to the essential, the sitter will be pleased; very
likely not his friends, and that from <i>various motives</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<p>When will your holiday be?&nbsp; I sent your letter to my
wife, and forget.&nbsp; Keep us in mind, and I hope we shall he
able to receive you.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to J. A. Symonds</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>February</i>
1885.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR SYMONDS</span>,&mdash;Yes, we
have both been very neglectful.&nbsp; I had horrid luck, catching
two thundering <a name="page351"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
351</span>influenzas in August and November.&nbsp; I recovered
from the last with difficulty, but have come through this
blustering winter with some general success; in the house, up and
down.&nbsp; My wife, however, has been painfully upset by my
health.&nbsp; Last year, of course, was cruelly trying to her
nerves; Nice and Hy&egrave;res are bad experiences; and though
she is not ill, the doctor tells me that prolonged anxiety may do
her a real mischief.</p>
<p>I feel a little old and fagged, and chary of speech, and not
very sure of spirit in my work; but considering what a year I
have passed, and how I have twice sat on Charon&rsquo;s pierhead,
I am surprising.</p>
<p>My father has presented us with a very pretty home in this
place, into which we hope to move by May.&nbsp; My
<i>Child&rsquo;s Verses</i> come out next week.&nbsp; <i>Otto</i>
begins to appear in April; <i>More New Arabian Nights</i> as soon
as possible.&nbsp; Moreover, I am neck deep in Wellington; also a
story on the stocks, <i>Great North Road</i>.&nbsp; O, I am busy!
Lloyd is at college in Edinburgh.&nbsp; That is, I think, all
that can be said by way of news.</p>
<p>Have you read <i>Huckleberry Finn</i>?&nbsp; It contains many
excellent things; above all, the whole story of a healthy
boy&rsquo;s dealings with his conscience, incredibly well
done.</p>
<p>My own conscience is badly seared; a want of piety; yet I pray
for it, tacitly, every day; believing it, after courage, the only
gift worth having; and its want, in a man of any claims to
honour, quite unpardonable.&nbsp; The tone of your letter seemed
to me very sound.&nbsp; In these dark days of public dishonour, I
do not know that one can do better than carry our private trials
piously.&nbsp; What a picture is this of a nation!&nbsp; No man
that I can see, on any side or party, seems to have the least
sense of our ineffable shame: the desertion of the
garrisons.&nbsp; I tell my little parable that Germany took
England, and then there was an Indian Mutiny, and Bismarck said:
&lsquo;Quite right: let Delhi and Calcutta and Bombay fall; and
let the women and children be treated Sepoy fashion,&rsquo; and
<a name="page352"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 352</span>people
say, &lsquo;O, but that is very different!&rsquo;&nbsp; And then
I wish I were dead.&nbsp; Millais (I hear) was painting Gladstone
when the news came of Gordon&rsquo;s death; Millais was much
affected, and Gladstone said, &lsquo;Why?&nbsp; <i>It is the
man&rsquo;s own temerity</i>!&rsquo;&nbsp; Voil&agrave; le
Bourgeois! le voil&agrave; nu!&nbsp; But why should I blame
Gladstone, when I too am a Bourgeois? when I have held my
peace?&nbsp; Why did I hold my peace?&nbsp; Because I am a
sceptic: <i>i.e.</i> a Bourgeois.&nbsp; We believe in nothing,
Symonds; you don&rsquo;t, and I don&rsquo;t; and these are two
reasons, out of a handful of millions, why England stands before
the world dripping with blood and daubed with dishonour.&nbsp; I
will first try to take the beam out of my own eye, trusting that
even private effort somehow betters and braces the general
atmosphere.&nbsp; See, for example, if England has shown (I put
it hypothetically) one spark of manly sensibility, they have been
shamed into it by the spectacle of Gordon.&nbsp; Police-Officer
Cole is the only man that I see to admire.&nbsp; I dedicate my
<i>New Arabs</i> to him and Cox, in default of other great public
characters.&mdash;Yours ever most affectionately,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Bonallie Towers</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>March</i> 12, 1885.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR GOSSE</span>,&mdash;I was
indeed much exercised how I could be worked into Gray; and lo!
when I saw it, the passage seemed to have been written with a
single eye to elucidate the&mdash;worst?&mdash;well, not a very
good poem of Gray&rsquo;s.&nbsp; Your little life is excellent,
clean, neat, efficient.&nbsp; I have read many of your notes,
too, with pleasure.&nbsp; Your connection with Gray was a happy
circumstance; it was a suitable conjunction.</p>
<p><a name="page353"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 353</span>I did
not answer your letter from the States, for what was I to
say?&nbsp; I liked getting it and reading it; I was rather
flattered that you wrote it to me; and then I&rsquo;ll tell you
what I did&mdash;I put it in the fire.&nbsp; Why?&nbsp; Well,
just because it was very natural and expansive; and thinks I to
myself, if I die one of these fine nights, this is just the
letter that Gosse would not wish to go into the hands of third
parties.&nbsp; Was I well inspired?&nbsp; And I did not answer it
because you were in your high places, sailing with supreme
dominion, and seeing life in a particular glory; and I was
peddling in a corner, confined to the house, overwhelmed with
necessary work, which I was not always doing well, and, in the
very mild form in which the disease approaches me, touched with a
sort of bustling cynicism.&nbsp; Why throw cold water?&nbsp; How
ape your agreeable frame of mind?&nbsp; In short, I held my
tongue.</p>
<p>I have now published on 101 small pages <i>The Complete Proof
of Mr. R. L. Stevenson&rsquo;s Incapacity to Write Verse</i>, in
a series of graduated examples with table of contents.&nbsp; I
think I shall issue a companion volume of exercises:
&lsquo;Analyse this poem.&nbsp; Collect and comminate the ugly
words.&nbsp; Distinguish and condemn the <i>chevilles</i>.&nbsp;
State Mr. Stevenson&rsquo;s faults of taste in regard to the
measure.&nbsp; What reasons can you gather from this example for
your belief that Mr. S. is unable to write any other
measure?&rsquo;</p>
<p>They look ghastly in the cold light of print; but there is
something nice in the little ragged regiment for all; the
blackguards seem to me to smile, to have a kind of childish
treble note that sounds in my ears freshly; not song, if you
will, but a child&rsquo;s voice.</p>
<p>I was glad you enjoyed your visit to the States.&nbsp; Most
Englishmen go there with a confirmed design of patronage, as they
go to France for that matter; and patronage will not pay.&nbsp;
Besides, in this year of&mdash;grace, said I?&mdash;of disgrace,
who should creep so low as an Englishman?&nbsp; &lsquo;It is not
to be thought of that the flood&rsquo;&mdash;ah, <a
name="page354"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 354</span>Wordsworth,
you would change your note were you alive to-day!</p>
<p>I am now a beastly householder, but have not yet entered on my
domain.&nbsp; When I do, the social revolution will probably cast
me back upon my dung heap.&nbsp; There is a person called Hyndman
whose eye is on me; his step is beHynd me as I go.&nbsp; I shall
call my house Skerryvore when I get it: <span
class="GutSmall">SKERRYVORE</span>: <i>c&rsquo;est bon pour la
po&eacute;shie</i>.&nbsp; I will conclude with my favourite
sentiment: &lsquo;The world is too much with me.&rsquo;</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>,<br />
<i>The Hermit of Skerryvore</i>.</p>
<p>Author of &lsquo;John Vane Tempest: a Romance,&rsquo;
&lsquo;Herbert and Henrietta: or the Nemesis of Sentiment,&rsquo;
&lsquo;The Life and Adventures of Colonel Bludyer
Fortescue,&rsquo; &lsquo;Happy Homes and Hairy Faces,&rsquo;
&lsquo;A Pound of Feathers and a Pound of Lead,&rsquo; part
author of &lsquo;Minn&rsquo;s Complete Capricious Correspondent:
a Manual of Natty, Natural, and Knowing Letters,&rsquo; and
editor of the &lsquo;Poetical Remains of Samuel Burt Crabbe,
known as the melodious Bottle-Holder.&rsquo;</p>
<p style="text-align: center">Uniform with the above:</p>
<p>&lsquo;The Life and Remains of the Reverend Jacob Degray
Squah,&rsquo; author of &lsquo;Heave-yo for the New
Jerusalem.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;A Box of Candles; or the Patent
Spiritual Safety Match,&rsquo; and &lsquo;A Day with the Heavenly
Harriers.&rsquo;</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. H. Low</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Bonallie Towers</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>March</i> 13, 1885.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LOW</span>,&mdash;Your success
has been immense.&nbsp; I wish your letter had come two days ago:
<i>Otto</i>, alas! has been disposed of a good while ago; but it
was only <a name="page355"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
355</span>day before yesterday that I settled the new volume of
Arabs.&nbsp; However, for the future, you and the sons of the
deified Scribner are the men for me.&nbsp; Really they have
behaved most handsomely.&nbsp; I cannot lay my hand on the
papers, or I would tell you exactly how it compares with my
English bargain; but it compares well.&nbsp; Ah, if we had that
copyright, I do believe it would go far to make me solvent,
ill-health and all.</p>
<p>I wrote you a letter to the Rembrandt, in which I stated my
views about the dedication in a very brief form.&nbsp; It will
give me sincere pleasure, and will make the second dedication I
have received, the other being from John Addington Symonds.&nbsp;
It is a compliment I value much; I don&rsquo;t know any that I
should prefer.</p>
<p>I am glad to hear you have windows to do; that is a fine
business, I think; but, alas! the glass is so bad nowadays;
realism invading even that, as well as the huge inferiority of
our technical resource corrupting every tint.&nbsp; Still,
anything that keeps a man to decoration is, in this age, good for
the artist&rsquo;s spirit.</p>
<p>By the way, have you seen James and me on the novel?&nbsp;
James, I think in the August or September&mdash;R. L. S. in the
December <i>Longman</i>.&nbsp; I own I think the <i>&eacute;cole
b&ecirc;te</i>, of which I am the champion, has the whip hand of
the argument; but as James is to make a rejoinder, I must not
boast.&nbsp; Anyway the controversy is amusing to see.&nbsp; I
was terribly tied down to space, which has made the end congested
and dull.&nbsp; I shall see if I can afford to send you the April
<i>Contemporary</i>&mdash;but I dare say you see it
anyway&mdash;as it will contain a paper of mine on style, a sort
of continuation of old arguments on art in which you have wagged
a most effective tongue.&nbsp; It is a sort of start upon my
Treatise on the Art of Literature: a small, arid book that shall
some day appear.</p>
<p>With every good wish from me and mine (should I not say
&lsquo;she and hers&rsquo;?) to you and yours, believe me yours
ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><a name="page356"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
356</span><span class="smcap">to P. G. Hamerton</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>March</i> 16,
1885.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HAMERTON</span>,&mdash;Various
things have been reminding me of my misconduct: First,
Swan&rsquo;s application for your address; second, a sight of the
sheets of your <i>Landscape</i> book; and last, your note to
Swan, which he was so kind as to forward.&nbsp; I trust you will
never suppose me to be guilty of anything more serious than an
idleness, partially excusable.&nbsp; My ill-health makes my rate
of life heavier than I can well meet, and yet stops me from
earning more.&nbsp; My conscience, sometimes perhaps too easily
stifled, but still (for my time of life and the public manners of
the age) fairly well alive, forces me to perpetual and almost
endless transcriptions.&nbsp; On the back of all this, my
correspondence hangs like a thundercloud; and just when I think I
am getting through my troubles, crack, down goes my health, I
have a long, costly sickness, and begin the world again.&nbsp; It
is fortunate for me I have a father, or I should long ago have
died; but the opportunity of the aid makes the necessity none the
more welcome.&nbsp; My father has presented me with a beautiful
house here&mdash;or so I believe, for I have not yet seen it,
being a cage bird but for nocturnal sorties in the garden.&nbsp;
I hope we shall soon move into it, and I tell myself that some
day perhaps we may have the pleasure of seeing you as our
guest.&nbsp; I trust at least that you will take me as I am, a
thoroughly bad correspondent, and a man, a hater, indeed, of
rudeness in others, but too often rude in all unconsciousness
himself; and that you will never cease to believe the sincere
sympathy and admiration that I feel for you and for your
work.</p>
<p>About the <i>Landscape</i>, which I had a glimpse of while <a
name="page357"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 357</span>a friend of
mine was preparing a review, I was greatly interested, and could
write and wrangle for a year on every page; one passage
particularly delighted me, the part about
Ulysses&mdash;jolly.&nbsp; Then, you know, that is just what I
fear I have come to think landscape ought to be in literature; so
there we should be at odds.&nbsp; Or perhaps not so much as I
suppose, as Montaigne says it is a pot with two handles, and I
own I am wedded to the technical handle, which (I likewise own
and freely) you do well to keep for a mistress.&nbsp; I should
much like to talk with you about some other points; it is only in
talk that one gets to understand.&nbsp; Your delightful
Wordsworth trap I have tried on two hardened Wordsworthians, not
that I am not one myself.&nbsp; By covering up the context, and
asking them to guess what the passage was, both (and both are
very clever people, one a writer, one a painter) pronounced it a
guide-book.&nbsp; &lsquo;Do you think it an unusually good
guide-book?&rsquo; I asked, and both said, &lsquo;No, not at
all!&rsquo;&nbsp; Their grimace was a picture when I showed the
original.</p>
<p>I trust your health and that of Mrs. Hamerton keep better;
your last account was a poor one.&nbsp; I was unable to make out
the visit I had hoped, as (I do not know if you heard of it) I
had a very violent and dangerous h&aelig;morrhage last
spring.&nbsp; I am almost glad to have seen death so close with
all my wits about me, and not in the customary lassitude and
disenchantment of disease.&nbsp; Even thus clearly beheld I find
him not so terrible as we suppose.&nbsp; But, indeed, with the
passing of years, the decay of strength, the loss of all my old
active and pleasant habits, there grows more and more upon me
that belief in the kindness of this scheme of things, and the
goodness of our veiled God, which is an excellent and pacifying
compensation.&nbsp; I trust, if your health continues to trouble
you, you may find some of the same belief.&nbsp; But perhaps my
fine discovery is a piece of art, and belongs to a character
cowardly, intolerant of certain feelings, and apt to
self-deception.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t think so, however; <a
name="page358"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 358</span>and when I
feel what a weak and fallible vessel I was thrust into this
hurly-burly, and with what marvellous kindness the wind has been
tempered to my frailties, I think I should be a strange kind of
ass to feel anything but gratitude.</p>
<p>I do not know why I should inflict this talk upon you; but
when I summon the rebellous pen, he must go his own way; I am no
Michael Scott, to rule the fiend of correspondence.&nbsp; Most
days he will none of me; and when he comes, it is to rape me
where he will.&mdash;Yours very sincerely,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to William Archer</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>March</i> 29,
1885.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MR. ARCHER</span>,&mdash;Yes, I
have heard of you and read some of your work; but I am bound in
particular to thank you for the notice of my verses.&nbsp;
&lsquo;There,&rsquo; I said, throwing it over to the friend who
was staying with me, &lsquo;it&rsquo;s worth writing a book to
draw an article like that.&rsquo;&nbsp; Had you been as hard upon
me as you were amiable, I try to tell myself I should have been
no blinder to the merits of your notice.&nbsp; For I saw there,
to admire and to be very grateful for, a most sober, agile pen;
an enviable touch; the marks of a reader, such as one imagines
for one&rsquo;s self in dreams, thoughtful, critical, and kind;
and to put the top on this memorial column, a greater readiness
to describe the author criticised than to display the talents of
his censor.</p>
<p>I am a man <i>blas&eacute;</i> to injudicious praise (though I
hope some of it may be judicious too), but I have to thank you
for <span class="GutSmall">THE BEST CRITICISM I EVER HAD</span>;
and am therefore, <a name="page359"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
359</span>dear Mr. Archer, the most grateful critickee now
extant.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;I congratulate you on living in the corner
of all London that I like best.&nbsp; <i>&Agrave; propos</i>, you
are very right about my voluntary aversion from the painful sides
of life.&nbsp; My childhood was in reality a very mixed
experience, full of fever, nightmare, insomnia, painful days and
interminable nights; and I can speak with less authority of
gardens than of that other &lsquo;land of
counterpane.&rsquo;&nbsp; But to what end should we renew these
sorrows?&nbsp; The sufferings of life may be handled by the very
greatest in their hours of insight; it is of its pleasures that
our common poems should be formed; these are the experiences that
we should seek to recall or to provoke; and I say with Thoreau,
&lsquo;What right have I to complain, who have not ceased to
wonder?&rsquo; and, to add a rider of my own, who have no remedy
to offer.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Skerryvore</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>June</i> 1885.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN</span>,&mdash;You
know how much and for how long I have loved, respected, and
admired him; I am only able to feel a little with you.&nbsp; But
I know how he would have wished us to feel.&nbsp; I never knew a
better man, nor one to me more lovable; we shall all feel the
loss more greatly as time goes on.&nbsp; It scarce seems life to
me; what must it be to you?&nbsp; Yet one of the last things that
he said to me was, that from all these sad bereavements of yours
he had learned only more than ever to feel the goodness and what
we, in our feebleness, call the support of God; he had been
ripening so much&mdash;to other eyes <a name="page360"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 360</span>than ours, we must suppose he was
ripe, and try to feel it.&nbsp; I feel it is better not to say
much more.&nbsp; It will be to me a great pride to write a notice
of him: the last I can now do.&nbsp; What more in any way I can
do for you, please to think and let me know.&nbsp; For his sake
and for your own, I would not be a useless friend: I know, you
know me a most warm one; please command me or my wife, in any
way.&nbsp; Do not trouble to write to me; Austin, I have no
doubt, will do so, if you are, as I fear you will be, unfit.</p>
<p>My heart is sore for you.&nbsp; At least you know what you
have been to him; how he cherished and admired you; how he was
never so pleased as when he spoke of you; with what a boy&rsquo;s
love, up to the last, he loved you.&nbsp; This surely is a
consolation.&nbsp; Yours is the cruel part&mdash;to survive; you
must try and not grudge to him his better fortune, to go
first.&nbsp; It is the sad part of such relations that one must
remain and suffer; I cannot see my poor Jenkin without you.&nbsp;
Nor you indeed without him; but you may try to rejoice that he is
spared that extremity.&nbsp; Perhaps I (as I was so much his
confidant) know even better than you can do what your loss would
have been to him; he never spoke of you but his face changed; it
was&mdash;you were&mdash;his religion.</p>
<p>I write by this post to Austin and to the
<i>Academy</i>.&mdash;Yours most sincerely,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>,</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Skerryvore</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>June</i> 1885.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN</span>,&mdash;I
should have written sooner, but we are in a bustle, and I have
been very tired, though still well.&nbsp; Your very kind note was
most welcome to me.&nbsp; I shall be very much pleased to have
you call me Louis, as he has now done for so many years.&nbsp;
Sixteen, you say? is it so long?&nbsp; It seems too short now;
but of that we cannot judge, and must not complain.</p>
<p><a name="page361"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 361</span>I
wish that either I or my wife could do anything for you; when we
can, you will, I am sure, command us.</p>
<p>I trust that my notice gave you as little pain as was
possible.&nbsp; I found I had so much to say, that I preferred to
keep it for another place and make but a note in the
<i>Academy</i>.&nbsp; To try to draw my friend at greater length,
and say what he was to me and his intimates, what a good
influence in life and what an example, is a desire that grows
upon me.&nbsp; It was strange, as I wrote the note, how his old
tests and criticisms haunted me; and it reminded me afresh with
every few words how much I owe to him.</p>
<p>I had a note from Henley, very brief and very sad.&nbsp; We
none of us yet feel the loss; but we know what he would have said
and wished.</p>
<p>Do you know that Dew Smith has two photographs of him, neither
very bad? and one giving a lively, though not flattering air of
him in conversation?&nbsp; If you have not got them, would you
like me to write to Dew and ask him to give you proofs?</p>
<p>I was so pleased that he and my wife made friends; that is a
great pleasure.&nbsp; We found and have preserved one fragment
(the head) of the drawing he made and tore up when he was last
here.&nbsp; He had promised to come and stay with us this
summer.&nbsp; May we not hope, at least, some time soon to have
one from you?&mdash;Believe me, my dear Mrs. Jenkin, with the
most real sympathy, your sincere friend,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p>Dear me, what happiness I owe to both of you!</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. H. Low</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><a name="page362"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 362</span><i>Skerryvore</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>October</i> 22, 1885.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LOW</span>,&mdash;I trust you
are not annoyed with me beyond forgiveness; for indeed my silence
has been devilish prolonged.&nbsp; I can only tell you that I
have been nearly six months (more than six) in a strange
condition of collapse, when it was impossible to do any work, and
difficult (more difficult than you would suppose) to write the
merest note.&nbsp; I am now better, but not yet my own man in the
way of brains, and in health only so-so.&nbsp; I suppose I shall
learn (I begin to think I am learning) to fight this vast, vague
feather-bed of an obsession that now overlies and smothers me;
but in the beginnings of these conflicts, the inexperienced
wrestler is always worsted, and I own I have been quite
extinct.&nbsp; I wish you to know, though it can be no excuse,
that you are not the only one of my friends by many whom I have
thus neglected; and even now, having come so very late into the
possession of myself, with a substantial capital of debts, and my
work still moving with a desperate slowness&mdash;as a child
might fill a sandbag with its little handfuls&mdash;and my future
deeply pledged, there is almost a touch of virtue in my borrowing
these hours to write to you.&nbsp; Why I said &lsquo;hours&rsquo;
I know not; it would look blue for both of us if I made good the
word.</p>
<p>I was writing your address the other day, ordering a copy of
my next, <i>Prince Otto</i>, to go your way.&nbsp; I hope you
have not seen it in parts; it was not meant to be so read; and
only my poverty (dishonourably) consented to the serial
evolution.</p>
<p>I will send you with this a copy of the English edition of the
<i>Child&rsquo;s Garden</i>.&nbsp; I have heard there is some
vile rule of the post-office in the States against inscriptions;
so I send herewith a piece of doggerel which Mr. Bunner may, if
he thinks fit, copy off the fly leaf.</p>
<p>Sargent was down again and painted a portrait of me walking
about in my own dining-room, in my own velveteen jacket, and
twisting as I go my own moustache; at <a name="page363"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 363</span>one corner a glimpse of my wife, in
an Indian dress, and seated in a chair that was once my
grandfather&rsquo;s; but since some months goes by the name of
Henry James&rsquo;s, for it was there the novelist loved to
sit&mdash;adds a touch of poesy and comicality.&nbsp; It is, I
think, excellent, but is too eccentric to be exhibited.&nbsp; I
am at one extreme corner; my wife, in this wild dress, and
looking like a ghost, is at the extreme other end; between us an
open door exhibits my palatial entrance hall and a part of my
respected staircase.&nbsp; All this is touched in lovely, with
that witty touch of Sargent&rsquo;s; but, of course, it looks dam
queer as a whole.</p>
<p>Pray let me hear from you, and give me good news of yourself
and your wife, to whom please remember me.&mdash;Yours most
sincerely, my dear Low,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Skerryvore</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>Autumn</i> 1885.]</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR LAD</span>,&mdash;If there was any
more praise in what you wrote, I think [the editor] has done us
both a service; some of it stops my throat.&nbsp; What, it would
not have been the same if Dumas or Musset had done it, would it
not?&nbsp; Well, no, I do not think it would, do you know, now; I
am really of opinion it would not; and a dam good job too.&nbsp;
Why, think what Musset would have made of Otto!&nbsp; Think how
gallantly Dumas would have carried his crowd through!&nbsp; And
whatever you do, don&rsquo;t quarrel with &mdash;.&nbsp; It gives
me much pleasure to see your work there; I think <a
name="page364"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 364</span>you do
yourself great justice in that field; and I would let no
annoyance, petty or justifiable, debar me from such a
market.&nbsp; I think you do good there.&nbsp; Whether
(considering our intimate relations) you would not do better to
refrain from reviewing me, I will leave to yourself: were it all
on my side, you could foresee my answer; but there is your side
also, where you must be the judge.</p>
<p>As for the <i>Saturday</i>.&nbsp; Otto is no
&lsquo;fool,&rsquo; the reader is left in no doubt as to whether
or not Seraphina was a Messalina (though much it would matter, if
you come to that); and therefore on both these points the
reviewer has been unjust.&nbsp; Secondly, the romance lies
precisely in the freeing of two spirits from these court
intrigues; and here I think the reviewer showed himself
dull.&nbsp; Lastly, if Otto&rsquo;s speech is offensive to him,
he is one of the large class of unmanly and ungenerous dogs who
arrogate and defile the name of manly.&nbsp; As for the passages
quoted, I do confess that some of them reek Gongorically; they
are excessive, but they are not inelegant after all.&nbsp;
However, had he attacked me only there, he would have scored.</p>
<p>Your criticism on Gondremark is, I fancy, right.&nbsp; I
thought all your criticisms were indeed; only your
praise&mdash;chokes me.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to William Archer</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Skerryvore</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>October</i> 28, 1885.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MR. ARCHER</span>,&mdash;I have
read your paper with my customary admiration; it is very witty,
very adroit; it contains a great deal that is excellently true
(particularly the parts about my stories and the description of
me as an artist in life); but you will not be surprised if I do
not think it altogether just.&nbsp; It seems to me, in
particular, <a name="page365"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
365</span>that you have wilfully read all my works in terms of my
earliest; my aim, even in style, has quite changed in the last
six or seven years; and this I should have thought you would have
noticed.&nbsp; Again, your first remark upon the affectation of
the italic names; a practice only followed in my two affected
little books of travel, where a typographical <i>minauderie</i>
of the sort appeared to me in character; and what you say of it,
then, is quite just.&nbsp; But why should you forget yourself and
use these same italics as an index to my theology some pages
further on?&nbsp; This is lightness of touch indeed; may I say,
it is almost sharpness of practice?</p>
<p>Excuse these remarks.&nbsp; I have been on the whole much
interested, and sometimes amused.&nbsp; Are you aware that the
praiser of this &lsquo;brave gymnasium&rsquo; has not seen a
canoe nor taken a long walk since &rsquo;79? that he is rarely
out of the house nowadays, and carries his arm in a sling?&nbsp;
Can you imagine that he is a backslidden communist, and is sure
he will go to hell (if there be such an excellent institution)
for the luxury in which he lives?&nbsp; And can you believe that,
though it is gaily expressed, the thought is hag and skeleton in
every moment of vacuity or depression?&nbsp; Can you conceive how
profoundly I am irritated by the opposite affectation to my own,
when I see strong men and rich men bleating about their sorrows
and the burthen of life, in a world full of &lsquo;cancerous
paupers,&rsquo; and poor sick children, and the fatally bereaved,
ay, and down even to such happy creatures as myself, who has yet
been obliged to strip himself, one after another, of all the
pleasures that he had chosen except smoking (and the days of that
I know in my heart ought to be over), I forgot eating, which I
still enjoy, and who sees the circle of impotence closing very
slowly but quite steadily around him?&nbsp; In my view, one dank,
dispirited word is harmful, a crime of
<i>l&egrave;se-humanit&eacute;</i>, a piece of acquired evil;
every gay, every bright word or picture, like every pleasant air
of music, is a piece of pleasure set <a name="page366"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 366</span>afloat; the reader catches it, and,
if he be healthy, goes on his way rejoicing; and it is the
business of art so to send him, as often as possible.</p>
<p>For what you say, so kindly, so prettily, so precisely, of my
style, I must in particular thank you; though even here, I am
vexed you should not have remarked on my attempted change of
manner: seemingly this attempt is still quite unsuccessful!&nbsp;
Well, we shall fight it out on this line if it takes all
summer.</p>
<p>And now for my last word: Mrs. Stevenson is very anxious that
you should see me, and that she should see you, in the
flesh.&nbsp; If you at all share in these views, I am a
fixture.&nbsp; Write or telegraph (giving us time, however, to
telegraph in reply, lest the day be impossible), and come down
here to a bed and a dinner.&nbsp; What do you say, my dear
critic?&nbsp; I shall be truly pleased to see you; and to explain
at greater length what I meant by saying narrative was the most
characteristic mood of literature, on which point I have great
hopes I shall persuade you.&mdash;Yours truly,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;My opinion about Thoreau, and the passage in
<i>The Week</i>, is perhaps a fad, but it is sincere and
stable.&nbsp; I am still of the same mind five years later; did
you observe that I had said &lsquo;modern&rsquo; authors? and
will you observe again that this passage touches the very joint
of our division?&nbsp; It is one that appeals to me, deals with
that part of life that I think the most important, and you, if I
gather rightly, so much less so?&nbsp; You believe in the extreme
moment of the facts that humanity has acquired and is acquiring;
I think them of moment, but still or much less than those
inherent or inherited brute principles and laws that sit upon us
(in the character of conscience) as heavy as a shirt of mail, and
that (in the character of the affections and the airy spirit of
pleasure) make all the light of our lives.&nbsp; The house is,
indeed, a great thing, <a name="page367"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 367</span>and should be rearranged on sanitary
principles; but my heart and all my interest are with the
dweller, that ancient of days and day-old infant man.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<p>An excellent touch is p. 584.&nbsp; &lsquo;By instinct or
design he eschews what demands constructive
patience.&rsquo;&nbsp; I believe it is both; my theory is that
literature must always be most at home in treating movement and
change; hence I look for them.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Skerryvore</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>,] <i>October</i> 28, 1885.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAREST FATHER</span>,&mdash;Get the
November number of <i>Time</i>, and you will see a review of me
by a very clever fellow, who is quite furious at bottom because I
am too orthodox, just as Purcell was savage because I am not
orthodox enough.&nbsp; I fall between two stools.&nbsp; It is
odd, too, to see how this man thinks me a full-blooded
fox-hunter, and tells me my philosophy would fail if I lost my
health or had to give up exercise!</p>
<p>An illustrated <i>Treasure Island</i> will be out next
month.&nbsp; I have had an early copy, and the French pictures
are admirable.&nbsp; The artist has got his types up in Hogarth;
he is full of fire and spirit, can draw and can compose, and has
understood the book as I meant it, all but one or two little
accidents, such as making the <i>Hispaniola</i> a brig.&nbsp; I
would send you my copy, <i>but I cannot</i>; it is my new toy,
and I cannot divorce myself from this enjoyment.</p>
<p>I am keeping really better, and have been out about every
second day, though the weather is cold and very wild.</p>
<p>I was delighted to hear you were keeping better; you and
Archer would agree, more shame to you!&nbsp; (Archer is my
pessimist critic.)&nbsp; Good-bye to all of you, with my best
love.&nbsp; We had a dreadful overhauling of my conduct <a
name="page368"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 368</span>as a son
the other night; and my wife stripped me of my illusions and made
me admit I had been a detestable bad one.&nbsp; Of one thing in
particular she convicted me in my own eyes: I mean, a most unkind
reticence, which hung on me then, and I confess still hangs on me
now, when I try to assure you that I do love you.&mdash;Ever your
bad son,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to Henry James</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Skerryvore</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>October</i> 28, 1885.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENRY JAMES</span>,&mdash;At
last, my wife being at a concert, and a story being done, I am at
some liberty to write and give you of my views.&nbsp; And first,
many thanks for the works that came to my sickbed.&nbsp; And
second, and more important, as to the <i>Princess</i>. <a
name="citation368"></a><a href="#footnote368"
class="citation">[368]</a>&nbsp; Well, I think you are going to
do it this time; I cannot, of course, foresee, but these two
first numbers seem to me picturesque and sound and full of
lineament, and very much a new departure.&nbsp; As for your young
lady, she is all there; yes, sir, you can do low life, I
believe.&nbsp; The prison was excellent; it was of that nature of
touch that I sometimes achingly miss from your former work; with
some of the grime, that is, and some of the emphasis of skeleton
there is in nature.&nbsp; I pray you to take grime in a good
sense; it need not be ignoble: dirt may have dignity; in nature
it usually has; and your prison was imposing.</p>
<p>And now to the main point: why do we not see you?&nbsp; Do not
fail us.&nbsp; Make an alarming sacrifice, and let us see
&lsquo;Henry James&rsquo;s chair&rsquo; properly occupied.&nbsp;
I never sit in it myself (though it was my grandfather&rsquo;s);
it has been consecrated to guests by your approval, and now
stands at my elbow gaping.&nbsp; We have a new room, too, to
introduce to you&mdash;our last baby, the drawing-room; it <a
name="page369"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 369</span>never
cries, and has cut its teeth.&nbsp; Likewise, there is a cat
now.&nbsp; It promises to be a monster of laziness and
self-sufficiency.</p>
<p>Pray see, in the November <i>Time</i> (a dread name for a
magazine of light reading), a very clever fellow, W. Archer,
stating his views of me; the rosy-gilled
&lsquo;athletico-&aelig;sthete&rsquo;; and warning me, in a
fatherly manner, that a rheumatic fever would try my philosophy
(as indeed it would), and that my gospel would not do for
&lsquo;those who are shut out from the exercise of any manly
virtue save renunciation.&rsquo;&nbsp; To those who know that
rickety and cloistered spectre, the real R. L. S., the paper,
besides being clever in itself, presents rare elements of
sport.&nbsp; The critical parts are in particular very bright and
neat, and often excellently true.&nbsp; Get it by all manner of
means.</p>
<p>I hear on all sides I am to be attacked as an immoral writer;
this is painful.&nbsp; Have I at last got, like you, to the pitch
of being attacked?&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis the consecration I
lack&mdash;and could do without.&nbsp; Not that Archer&rsquo;s
paper is an attack, or what either he or I, I believe, would call
one; &rsquo;tis the attacks on my morality (which I had thought a
gem of the first water) I referred to.</p>
<p>Now, my dear James, come&mdash;come&mdash;come.&nbsp; The
spirit (that is me) says, Come; and the bride (and that is my
wife) says, Come; and the best thing you can do for us and
yourself and your work is to get up and do so right
away,&mdash;Yours affectionately,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to William Archer</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Skerryvore</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>,] <i>October</i> 30, 1885.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MR. ARCHER</span>.&mdash;It is
possible my father may be soon down with me; he is an old man and
in bad health and spirits; and I could neither leave him alone,
nor could we talk freely before him.&nbsp; If he should be here
<a name="page370"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 370</span>when you
offer your visit, you will understand if I have to say no, and
put you off.</p>
<p>I quite understand your not caring to refer to things of
private knowledge.&nbsp; What still puzzles me is how you
(&lsquo;in the witness box&rsquo;&mdash;ha!&nbsp; I like the
phrase) should have made your argument actually hinge on a
contention which the facts answered.</p>
<p>I am pleased to hear of the correctness of my guess.&nbsp; It
is then as I supposed; you are of the school of the generous and
not the sullen pessimists; and I can feel with you.&nbsp; I used
myself to rage when I saw sick folk going by in their
Bath-chairs; since I have been sick myself (and always when I was
sick myself), I found life, even in its rough places, to have a
property of easiness.&nbsp; That which we suffer ourselves has no
longer the same air of monstrous injustice and wanton cruelty
that suffering wears when we see it in the case of others.&nbsp;
So we begin gradually to see that things are not black, but have
their strange compensations; and when they draw towards their
worst, the idea of death is like a bed to lie on.&nbsp; I should
bear false witness if I did not declare life happy.&nbsp; And
your wonderful statement that happiness tends to die out and
misery to continue, which was what put me on the track of your
frame of mind, is diagnostic of the happy man raging over the
misery of others; it could never be written by the man who had
tried what unhappiness was like.&nbsp; And at any rate, it was a
slip of the pen: the ugliest word that science has to declare is
a reserved indifference to happiness and misery in the
individual; it declares no leaning toward the black, no iniquity
on the large scale in fate&rsquo;s doings, rather a marble
equality, dread not cruel, giving and taking away and
reconciling.</p>
<p>Why have I not written my <i>Timon</i>?&nbsp; Well, here is my
worst quarrel with you.&nbsp; You take my young books as my last
word.&nbsp; The tendency to try to say more has passed
unperceived (my fault, that).&nbsp; And you make no <a
name="page371"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 371</span>allowance
for the slowness with which a man finds and tries to learn his
tools.&nbsp; I began with a neat brisk little style, and a sharp
little knack of partial observation; I have tried to expand my
means, but still I can only utter a part of what I wish to say,
and am bound to feel; and much of it will die unspoken.&nbsp; But
if I had the pen of Shakespeare, I have no <i>Timon</i> to give
forth.&nbsp; I feel kindly to the powers that be; I marvel they
should use me so well; and when I think of the case of others, I
wonder too, but in another vein, whether they may not, whether
they must not, be like me, still with some compensation, some
delight.&nbsp; To have suffered, nay, to suffer, sets a keen edge
on what remains of the agreeable.&nbsp; This is a great truth,
and has to be learned in the fire.&mdash;Yours very truly,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span>.</p>
<p>We expect you, remember that.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to William Archer</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Skerryvore</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>November</i> 1, 1885.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MR. ARCHER</span>,&mdash;You will
see that I had already had a sight of your article and what were
my thoughts.</p>
<p>One thing in your letter puzzles me.&nbsp; Are you, too, not
in the witness-box?&nbsp; And if you are, why take a wilfully
false hypothesis?&nbsp; If you knew I was a chronic invalid, why
say that my philosophy was unsuitable to such a case?&nbsp; My
call for facts is not so general as yours, but an essential fact
should not be put the other way about.</p>
<p>The fact is, consciously or not, you doubt my honesty; you
think I am making faces, and at heart disbelieve my
utterances.&nbsp; And this I am disposed to think must spring
from your not having had enough of pain, sorrow, and trouble in
your existence.&nbsp; It is easy to have too much; easy also or
possible to have too little; enough is required <a
name="page372"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 372</span>that a man
may appreciate what elements of consolation and joy there are in
everything but absolutely over-powering physical pain or
disgrace, and how in almost all circumstances the human soul can
play a fair part.&nbsp; You fear life, I fancy, on the principle
of the hand of little employment.&nbsp; But perhaps my hypothesis
is as unlike the truth as the one you chose.&nbsp; Well, if it be
so, if you have had trials, sickness, the approach of death, the
alienation of friends, poverty at the heels, and have not felt
your soul turn round upon these things and spurn them
under&mdash;you must be very differently made from me, and I
earnestly believe from the majority of men.&nbsp; But at least
you are in the right to wonder and complain.</p>
<p>To &lsquo;say all&rsquo;?&nbsp; Stay here.&nbsp; All at
once?&nbsp; That would require a word from the pen of
Gargantua.&nbsp; We say each particular thing as it comes up, and
&lsquo;with that sort of emphasis that for the time there seems
to be no other.&rsquo;&nbsp; Words will not otherwise serve us;
no, nor even Shakespeare, who could not have put <i>As You Like
It</i> and <i>Timon</i> into one without ruinous loss both of
emphasis and substance.&nbsp; Is it quite fair then to keep your
face so steadily on my most light-hearted works, and then say I
recognise no evil?&nbsp; Yet in the paper on Burns, for instance,
I show myself alive to some sorts of evil.&nbsp; But then,
perhaps, they are not your sorts.</p>
<p>And again: &lsquo;to say all&rsquo;?&nbsp; All: yes.&nbsp;
Everything: no.&nbsp; The task were endless, the effect
nil.&nbsp; But my all, in such a vast field as this of life, is
what interests me, what stands out, what takes on itself a
presence for my imagination or makes a figure in that little
tricky abbreviation which is the best that my reason can
conceive.&nbsp; That I must treat, or I shall be fooling with my
readers.&nbsp; That, and not the all of some one else.</p>
<p>And here we come to the division: not only do I believe that
literature should give joy, but I see a universe, I suppose,
eternally different from yours; a solemn, a terrible, but a very
joyous and noble universe, where <a name="page373"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 373</span>suffering is not at least wantonly
inflicted, though it falls with dispassionate partiality, but
where it may be and generally is nobly borne; where, above all
(this I believe; probably you don&rsquo;t: I think he may, with
cancer), <i>any brave man may make</i> out a life which shall be
happy for himself, and, by so being, beneficent to those about
him.&nbsp; And if he fails, why should I hear him weeping?&nbsp;
I mean if I fail, why should I weep?&nbsp; Why should <i>you</i>
hear <i>me</i>?&nbsp; Then to me morals, the conscience, the
affections, and the passions are, I will own frankly and
sweepingly, so infinitely more important than the other parts of
life, that I conceive men rather triflers who become immersed in
the latter; and I will always think the man who keeps his lip
stiff, and makes &lsquo;a happy fireside clime,&rsquo; and
carries a pleasant face about to friends and neighbours,
infinitely greater (in the abstract) than an atrabilious
Shakespeare or a backbiting Kant or Darwin.&nbsp; No offence to
any of these gentlemen, two of whom probably (one for certain)
came up to my standard.</p>
<p>And now enough said; it were hard if a poor man could not
criticise another without having so much ink shed against
him.&nbsp; But I shall still regret you should have written on an
hypothesis you knew to be untenable, and that you should thus
have made your paper, for those who do not know me, essentially
unfair.&nbsp; The rich, fox-hunting squire speaks with one voice;
the sick man of letters with another.&mdash;Yours very truly,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
Stevenson</span><br />
(<span class="GutSmall"><i>Prometheus-Heine in
minimis</i></span>).</p>
<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;Here I go again.&nbsp; To me, the medicine
bottles on my chimney and the blood on my handkerchief are
accidents; they do not colour my view of life, as you would know,
I think, if you had experience of sickness; they do not exist in
my prospect; I would as soon drag them under the eyes of my
readers as I would mention a pimple I might chance to have
(saving your presence) <a name="page374"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 374</span>on my posteriors.&nbsp; What does it
prove? what does it change? it has not hurt, it has not changed
me in any essential part; and I should think myself a trifler and
in bad taste if I introduced the world to these unimportant
privacies.</p>
<p>But, again, there is this mountain-range between
us&mdash;<i>that you do not believe me</i>.&nbsp; It is not
flattering, but the fault is probably in my literary art.</p>
<h3><span class="smcap">to W. H. Low</span></h3>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Skerryvore</i>,
<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>December</i> 26, 1885.</p>
<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LOW</span>,&mdash;<i>Lamia</i>
has not yet turned up, but your letter came to me this evening
with a scent of the Boulevard Montparnasse that was
irresistible.&nbsp; The sand of Lavenue&rsquo;s crumbled under my
heel; and the bouquet of the old Fleury came back to me, and I
remembered the day when I found a twenty franc piece under my
fetish.&nbsp; Have you that fetish still? and has it brought you
luck?&nbsp; I remembered, too, my first sight of you in a frock
coat and a smoking-cap, when we passed the evening at the
Caf&eacute; de Medicis; and my last when we sat and talked in the
Parc Monceau; and all these things made me feel a little young
again, which, to one who has been mostly in bed for a month, was
a vivifying change.</p>
<p>Yes, you are lucky to have a bag that holds you
comfortably.&nbsp; Mine is a strange contrivance; I don&rsquo;t
die, damme, and I can&rsquo;t get along on both feet to save my
soul; I am a chronic sickist; and my work cripples along between
bed and the parlour, between the medicine bottle and the cupping
glass.&nbsp; Well, I like my life all the same; and should like
it none the worse if I could have another talk with you, though
even my talks now are measured <a name="page375"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 375</span>out to me by the minute hand like
poisons in a minim glass.</p>
<p>A photograph will be taken of my ugly mug and sent to you for
ulterior purposes: I have another thing coming out, which I did
not put in the way of the Scribners, I can scarce tell how; but I
was sick and penniless and rather back on the world, and
mismanaged it.&nbsp; I trust they will forgive me.</p>
<p>I am sorry to hear of Mrs. Low&rsquo;s illness, and glad to
hear of her recovery.&nbsp; I will announce the coming
<i>Lamia</i> to Bob: he steams away at literature like
smoke.&nbsp; I have a beautiful Bob on my walls, and a good
Sargent, and a delightful Lemon; and your etching now hangs
framed in the dining-room.&nbsp; So the arts surround
me.&mdash;Yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2>
<p><a name="footnotexv"></a><a href="#citationxv"
class="footnote">[xv]</a>&nbsp; <i>Vailima Letters</i>: Methuen
and Co., 1895.</p>
<p><a name="footnotexxi"></a><a href="#citationxxi"
class="footnote">[xxi]</a>&nbsp; Compare <i>Virginibus
Puerisque</i>: the essay on &lsquo;The English
Admirals.&rsquo;</p>
<p><a name="footnotexxx"></a><a href="#citationxxx"
class="footnote">[xxx]</a>&nbsp; The fragment called <i>Lay
Morals</i>, at present only printed in the Edinburgh edition
(<i>Miscellanies</i>, vol. iv.), contains the pith of his mental
history on these subjects.</p>
<p><a name="footnote17"></a><a href="#citation17"
class="footnote">[17]</a>&nbsp; Aikman&rsquo;s <i>Annals of the
Persecution in Scotland</i>.</p>
<p><a name="footnote24"></a><a href="#citation24"
class="footnote">[24]</a>&nbsp; Thomas Stevenson.</p>
<p><a name="footnote56"></a><a href="#citation56"
class="footnote">[56]</a>&nbsp; See Scott himself in the preface
to the Author&rsquo;s edition.</p>
<p><a name="footnote67"></a><a href="#citation67"
class="footnote">[67]</a>&nbsp; Compare the paragraph in
&lsquo;Ordered South&rsquo; describing the state of mind of the
invalid doubtful of recovery, and ending: &lsquo;He will pray for
Medea; when she comes, let here either rejuvenate or
slay.&rsquo;</p>
<p><a name="footnote144"></a><a href="#citation144"
class="footnote">[144]</a>&nbsp; &lsquo;The Story of a
Lie.&rsquo;</p>
<p><a name="footnote149"></a><a href="#citation149"
class="footnote">[149]</a>&nbsp; Engraisser, grow fat.</p>
<p><a name="footnote161"></a><a href="#citation161"
class="footnote">[161]</a>&nbsp; Here follows a long calculation
of ways and means.</p>
<p><a name="footnote185"></a><a href="#citation185"
class="footnote">[185]</a>&nbsp; &lsquo;The whole front of the
house was lighted, and there were pipes and fiddles, and as much
dancing and deray within as used to be in Sir Robert&rsquo;s
house at Pace and Yule, and such high seasons.&rsquo;&mdash;See
&lsquo;Wandering Willie&rsquo;s Tale&rsquo; in
<i>Redgauntlet</i>, borrowed perhaps from <i>Christ&rsquo;s Kirk
of the Green</i>.</p>
<p><a name="footnote186"></a><a href="#citation186"
class="footnote">[186]</a>&nbsp; In architecture, a series of
piles to defend the pier of a bridge.</p>
<p><a name="footnote191"></a><a href="#citation191"
class="footnote">[191]</a>&nbsp; Gentleman&rsquo;s library.</p>
<p><a name="footnote209"></a><a href="#citation209"
class="footnote">[209]</a>&nbsp; The reference is of course to
Wordsworth&rsquo;s <i>Song at the Feast of Brougham
Castle</i>.</p>
<p><a name="footnote210"></a><a href="#citation210"
class="footnote">[210]</a>&nbsp; At Davos-Platz.</p>
<p><a name="footnote223"></a><a href="#citation223"
class="footnote">[223]</a>&nbsp; From Landor&rsquo;s
<i>Gebir</i>: the line refers to Napoleon Bonaparte.</p>
<p><a name="footnote263"></a><a href="#citation263"
class="footnote">[263]</a>&nbsp; Fair copy of some of the
<i>Child&rsquo;s Garden</i> verses.</p>
<p><a name="footnote269"></a><a href="#citation269"
class="footnote">[269]</a>&nbsp; <i>Silverado Squatters</i>.</p>
<p><a name="footnote289"></a><a href="#citation289"
class="footnote">[289]</a>&nbsp; The well-known Scottish
landscape painter, who had been a friend of Stevenson&rsquo;s in
youth.</p>
<p><a name="footnote290"></a><a href="#citation290"
class="footnote">[290]</a>&nbsp; <i>Cro&ucirc;tes</i>: crude
studies or daubs from nature.</p>
<p><a name="footnote303"></a><a href="#citation303"
class="footnote">[303]</a>&nbsp; A favourite Skye terrier.&nbsp;
Mr. Stevenson was a great lover of dogs.</p>
<p><a name="footnote318"></a><a href="#citation318"
class="footnote">[318]</a>&nbsp; The essay so called.&nbsp; See
<i>Memories and Portraits</i>.</p>
<p><a name="footnote330"></a><a href="#citation330"
class="footnote">[330]</a>&nbsp; Of Sophocles.</p>
<p><a name="footnote337"></a><a href="#citation337"
class="footnote">[337]</a>&nbsp; Cough.</p>
<p><a name="footnote338"></a><a href="#citation338"
class="footnote">[338]</a>&nbsp; Loose talk.</p>
<p><a name="footnote339"></a><a href="#citation339"
class="footnote">[339]</a>&nbsp; Mr. Charles Morley, at this time
manager or assistant-manager of the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>.</p>
<p><a name="footnote368"></a><a href="#citation368"
class="footnote">[368]</a>&nbsp; <i>Princess Casamassina</i>.</p>
<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LETTERS OF ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON TO HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS - VOLUME 1 [OF 2]***
</p>
<pre>


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