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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson to his
+Family and Friends - Volume 2 [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 2 [of 2]
+
+
+Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+Editor: Sidney Colvin
+
+Release Date: August 27, 2019  [eBook #637]
+[This file was first posted on July 11, 1996]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LETTERS OF ROBERT LOUIS
+STEVENSON TO HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS - VOLUME 1 [OF 2]***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1906 Methuen and Co edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+                          [Picture: Book cover]
+
+                    [Picture: Robert Louis Stevenson]
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE LETTERS OF
+                               ROBERT LOUIS
+                                STEVENSON
+
+
+                        TO HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS
+
+                         SELECTED AND EDITED WITH
+                        NOTES AND INTRODUCTION BY
+
+                              SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+                                VOLUME II
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                  LONDON
+                             METHUEN AND CO.
+                             36 ESSEX STREET
+
+                            _Seventh Edition_
+
+_First Published_    _November 1899_
+_Second Edition_     _November 1899_
+_Third Edition_      _April 1900_
+_Fourth Edition_     _November 1900_
+_Fifth Edition_      _January 1901_
+_Sixth Edition_      _October 1902_
+_Seventh Edition_    _December 1906_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                        VIII                                 6
+           LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH—_Continued_
+                         IX                                 59
+               THE UNITED STATES AGAIN
+              WINTER IN THE ADIRONDACKS
+                          X                                114
+                   PACIFIC VOYAGES
+                         XI                                209
+                    LIFE IN SAMOA
+                         XII                               285
+              LIFE IN SAMOA—_continued_
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH,
+_Continued_,
+JANUARY 1886-JULY 1887.
+
+
+TO MRS. DE MATTOS
+
+
+                     [_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_], _January_ 1_st_, 1886.
+
+DEAREST KATHARINE,—Here, on a very little book and accompanied with lame
+verses, I have put your name.  Our kindness is now getting well on in
+years; it must be nearly of age; and it gets more valuable to me with
+every time I see you.  It is not possible to express any sentiment, and
+it is not necessary to try, at least between us.  You know very well that
+I love you dearly, and that I always will.  I only wish the verses were
+better, but at least you like the story; and it is sent to you by the one
+that loves you—Jekyll, and not Hyde.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+                                  _Ave_!
+
+   Bells upon the city are ringing in the night;
+   High above the gardens are the houses full of light;
+   On the heathy Pentlands is the curlew flying free;
+   And the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie.
+
+   We cannae break the bonds that God decreed to bind,
+   Still we’ll be the children of the heather and the wind;
+   Far away from home, O, it’s still for you and me
+   That the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie!
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
+
+
+                               [_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_], 1_st_, 1886.
+
+MY DEAR KINNICUM,—I am a very bad dog, but not for the first time.  Your
+book, which is very interesting, came duly; and I immediately got a very
+bad cold indeed, and have been fit for nothing whatever.  I am a bit
+better now, and aye on the mend; so I write to tell you, I thought of you
+on New Year’s Day; though, I own, it would have been more decent if I had
+thought in time for you to get my letter then.  Well, what can’t be cured
+must be endured, Mr. Lawrie; and you must be content with what I give.
+If I wrote all the letters I ought to write, and at the proper time, I
+should be very good and very happy; but I doubt if I should do anything
+else.
+
+I suppose you will be in town for the New Year; and I hope your health is
+pretty good.  What you want is diet; but it is as much use to tell you
+that as it is to tell my father.  And I quite admit a diet is a beastly
+thing.  I doubt, however, if it be as bad as not being allowed to speak,
+which I have tried fully, and do not like.  When, at the same time, I was
+not allowed to read, it passed a joke.  But these are troubles of the
+past, and on this day, at least, it is proper to suppose they won’t
+return.  But we are not put here to enjoy ourselves: it was not God’s
+purpose; and I am prepared to argue, it is not our sincere wish.  As for
+our deserts, the less said of them the better, for somebody might hear,
+and nobody cares to be laughed at.  A good man is a very noble thing to
+see, but not to himself; what he seems to God is, fortunately, not our
+business; that is the domain of faith; and whether on the first of
+January or the thirty-first of December, faith is a good word to end on.
+
+My dear Cummy, many happy returns to you and my best love.—The worst
+correspondent in the world,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
+
+
+                     [_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_], _January_ 1_st_, 1886.
+
+MY DEAR PEOPLE,—Many happy returns of the day to you all; I am fairly
+well and in good spirits; and much and hopefully occupied with dear
+Jenkin’s life.  The inquiry in every detail, every letter that I read,
+makes me think of him more nobly.  I cannot imagine how I got his
+friendship; I did not deserve it.  I believe the notice will be
+interesting and useful.
+
+My father’s last letter, owing to the use of a quill pen and the neglect
+of blotting-paper, was hopelessly illegible.  Every one tried, and every
+one failed to decipher an important word on which the interest of one
+whole clause (and the letter consisted of two) depended.
+
+I find I can make little more of this; but I’ll spare the blots.—Dear
+people, ever your loving son,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+I will try again, being a giant refreshed by the house being empty.  The
+presence of people is the great obstacle to letter-writing.  I deny that
+letters should contain news (I mean mine; those of other people should).
+But mine should contain appropriate sentiments and humorous nonsense, or
+nonsense without the humour.  When the house is empty, the mind is seized
+with a desire—no, that is too strong—a willingness to pour forth
+unmitigated rot, which constitutes (in me) the true spirit of
+correspondence.  When I have no remarks to offer (and nobody to offer
+them to), my pen flies, and you see the remarkable consequence of a page
+literally covered with words and genuinely devoid of sense.  I can always
+do that, if quite alone, and I like doing it; but I have yet to learn
+that it is beloved by correspondents.  The deuce of it is, that there is
+no end possible but the end of the paper; and as there is very little
+left of that—if I cannot stop writing—suppose you give up reading.  It
+would all come to the same thing; and I think we should all be happier . . .
+
+
+
+TO W. H. LOW
+
+
+                        [_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_], _Jan._ 2_nd_, 1886.
+
+MY DEAR LOW,—_Lamia_ has come, and I do not know how to thank you, not
+only for the beautiful art of the designs, but for the handsome and apt
+words of the dedication.  My favourite is ‘Bathes unseen,’ which is a
+masterpiece; and the next, ‘Into the green recessed woods,’ is perhaps
+more remarkable, though it does not take my fancy so imperiously.  The
+night scene at Corinth pleases me also.  The second part offers fewer
+opportunities.  I own I should like to see both _Isabella_ and the _Eve_
+thus illustrated; and then there’s _Hyperion_—O, yes, and _Endymion_!  I
+should like to see the lot: beautiful pictures dance before me by
+hundreds: I believe _Endymion_ would suit you best.  It also is in
+faery-land; and I see a hundred opportunities, cloudy and flowery
+glories, things as delicate as the cobweb in the bush; actions, not in
+themselves of any mighty purport, but made for the pencil: the feast of
+Pan, Peona’s isle, the ‘slabbed margin of a well,’ the chase of the
+butterfly, the nymph, Glaucus, Cybele, Sleep on his couch, a farrago of
+unconnected beauties.  But I divagate; and all this sits in the bosom of
+the publisher.
+
+What is more important, I accept the terms of the dedication with a frank
+heart, and the terms of your Latin legend fairly.  The sight of your
+pictures has once more awakened me to my right mind; something may come
+of it; yet one more bold push to get free of this prisonyard of the
+abominably ugly, where I take my daily exercise with my contemporaries.
+I do not know, I have a feeling in my bones, a sentiment which may take
+on the forms of imagination, or may not.  If it does, I shall owe it to
+you; and the thing will thus descend from Keats even if on the wrong side
+of the blanket.  If it can be done in prose—that is the puzzle—I divagate
+again.  Thank you again: you can draw and yet you do not love the ugly:
+what are you doing in this age?  Flee, while it is yet time; they will
+have your four limbs pinned upon a stable door to scare witches.  The
+ugly, my unhappy friend, is _de rigueur_: it is the only wear!  What a
+chance you threw away with the serpent!  Why had Apollonius no pimples?
+Heavens, my dear Low, you do not know your business. . . .
+
+I send you herewith a Gothic gnome for your Greek nymph; but the gnome is
+interesting, I think, and he came out of a deep mine, where he guards the
+fountain of tears.  It is not always the time to rejoice.—Yours ever,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+The gnome’s name is _Jekyll & Hyde_; I believe you will find he is
+likewise quite willing to answer to the name of Low or Stevenson.
+
+_Same day_.—I have copied out on the other sheet some bad verses, which
+somehow your picture suggested; as a kind of image of things that I
+pursue and cannot reach, and that you seem—no, not to have reached—but to
+have come a thought nearer to than I.  This is the life we have chosen:
+well, the choice was mad, but I should make it again.
+
+What occurs to me is this: perhaps they might be printed in (say) the
+_Century_ for the sake of my name; and if that were possible, they might
+advertise your book.  It might be headed as sent in acknowledgment of
+your _Lamia_.  Or perhaps it might be introduced by the phrases I have
+marked above.  I dare say they would stick it in: I want no payment,
+being well paid by _Lamia_.  If they are not, keep them to yourself.
+
+
+
+TO WILL H. LOW
+
+
+            _Damned bad lines in return for a beautiful book_
+
+   Youth now flees on feathered foot.
+   Faint and fainter sounds the flute;
+   Rarer songs of Gods.
+                                    And still,
+   Somewhere on the sunny hill,
+   Or along the winding stream,
+   Through the willows, flits a dream;
+   Flits, but shows a smiling face,
+   Flees, but with so quaint a grace,
+   None can choose to stay at home,
+   All must follow—all must roam.
+   This is unborn beauty: she
+   Now in air floats high and free,
+   Takes the sun, and breaks the blue;—
+   Late, with stooping pinion flew
+   Raking hedgerow trees, and wet
+   Her wing in silver streams, and set
+   Shining foot on temple roof.
+   Now again she flies aloof,
+   Coasting mountain clouds, and kissed
+   By the evening’s amethyst.
+   In wet wood and miry lane
+   Still we pound and pant in vain;
+   Still with earthy foot we chase
+   Waning pinion, fainting face;
+   Still, with grey hair, we stumble on
+   Till—behold!—the vision gone!
+   Where has fleeting beauty led?
+   To the doorway of the dead!
+   qy. omit? [Life is gone, but life was gay:
+   We have come the primrose way!] {11}
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO EDMUND GOSSE
+
+
+                          _Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _Jan._ 2_nd_, 1886.
+
+MY DEAR GOSSE,—Thank you for your letter, so interesting to my vanity.
+There is a review in the St. James’s, which, as it seems to hold somewhat
+of your opinions, and is besides written with a pen and not a poker, we
+think may possibly be yours.  The _Prince_ {12} has done fairly well in
+spite of the reviews, which have been bad: he was, as you doubtless saw,
+well slated in the _Saturday_; one paper received it as a child’s story;
+another (picture my agony) described it as a ‘Gilbert comedy.’  It was
+amusing to see the race between me and Justin M’Carthy: the Milesian has
+won by a length.
+
+That is the hard part of literature.  You aim high, and you take longer
+over your work, and it will not be so successful as if you had aimed low
+and rushed it.  What the public likes is work (of any kind) a little
+loosely executed; so long as it is a little wordy, a little slack, a
+little dim and knotless, the dear public likes it; it should (if
+possible) be a little dull into the bargain.  I know that good work
+sometimes hits; but, with my hand on my heart, I think it is by an
+accident.  And I know also that good work must succeed at last; but that
+is not the doing of the public; they are only shamed into silence or
+affectation.  I do not write for the public; I do write for money, a
+nobler deity; and most of all for myself, not perhaps any more noble, but
+both more intelligent and nearer home.
+
+Let us tell each other sad stories of the bestiality of the beast whom we
+feed.  What he likes is the newspaper; and to me the press is the mouth
+of a sewer, where lying is professed as from an university chair, and
+everything prurient, and ignoble, and essentially dull, finds its abode
+and pulpit.  I do not like mankind; but men, and not all of these—and
+fewer women.  As for respecting the race, and, above all, that fatuous
+rabble of burgesses called ‘the public,’ God save me from such
+irreligion!—that way lies disgrace and dishonour.  There must be
+something wrong in me, or I would not be popular.
+
+This is perhaps a trifle stronger than my sedate and permanent opinion.
+Not much, I think.  As for the art that we practise, I have never been
+able to see why its professors should be respected.  They chose the
+primrose path; when they found it was not all primroses, but some of it
+brambly, and much of it uphill, they began to think and to speak of
+themselves as holy martyrs.  But a man is never martyred in any honest
+sense in the pursuit of his pleasure; and _delirium tremens_ has more of
+the honour of the cross.  We were full of the pride of life, and chose,
+like prostitutes, to live by a pleasure.  We should be paid if we give
+the pleasure we pretend to give; but why should we be honoured?
+
+I hope some day you and Mrs. Gosse will come for a Sunday; but we must
+wait till I am able to see people.  I am very full of Jenkin’s life; it
+is painful, yet very pleasant, to dig into the past of a dead friend, and
+find him, at every spadeful, shine brighter.  I own, as I read, I wonder
+more and more why he should have taken me to be a friend.  He had many
+and obvious faults upon the face of him; the heart was pure gold.  I feel
+it little pain to have lost him, for it is a loss in which I cannot
+believe; I take it, against reason, for an absence; if not to-day, then
+to-morrow, I still fancy I shall see him in the door; and then, now when
+I know him better, how glad a meeting!  Yes, if I could believe in the
+immortality business, the world would indeed be too good to be true; but
+we were put here to do what service we can, for honour and not for hire:
+the sods cover us, and the worm that never dies, the conscience, sleeps
+well at last; these are the wages, besides what we receive so lavishly
+day by day; and they are enough for a man who knows his own frailty and
+sees all things in the proportion of reality.  The soul of piety was
+killed long ago by that idea of reward.  Nor is happiness, whether
+eternal or temporal, the reward that mankind seeks.  Happinesses are but
+his wayside campings; his soul is in the journey; he was born for the
+struggle, and only tastes his life in effort and on the condition that he
+is opposed.  How, then, is such a creature, so fiery, so pugnacious, so
+made up of discontent and aspiration, and such noble and uneasy
+passions—how can he be rewarded but by rest?  I would not say it aloud;
+for man’s cherished belief is that he loves that happiness which he
+continually spurns and passes by; and this belief in some ulterior
+happiness exactly fits him.  He does not require to stop and taste it; he
+can be about the rugged and bitter business where his heart lies; and yet
+he can tell himself this fairy tale of an eternal tea-party, and enjoy
+the notion that he is both himself and something else; and that his
+friends will yet meet him, all ironed out and emasculate, and still be
+lovable,—as if love did not live in the faults of the beloved only, and
+draw its breath in an unbroken round of forgiveness!  But the truth is,
+we must fight until we die; and when we die there can be no quiet for
+mankind but complete resumption into—what?—God, let us say—when all these
+desperate tricks will lie spellbound at last.
+
+Here came my dinner and cut this sermon short—_excusez_.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO JAMES PAYN
+
+
+                          _Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _Jan._ 2_nd_, 1886.
+
+DEAR JAMES PAYN,—Your very kind letter came very welcome; and still more
+welcome the news that you see —’s tale.  I will now tell you (and it was
+very good and very wise of me not to tell it before) that he is one of
+the most unlucky men I know, having put all his money into a pharmacy at
+Hyères, when the cholera (certainly not his fault) swept away his
+customers in a body.  Thus you can imagine the pleasure I have to
+announce to him a spark of hope, for he sits to-day in his pharmacy,
+doing nothing and taking nothing, and watching his debts inexorably mount
+up.
+
+To pass to other matters: your hand, you are perhaps aware, is not one of
+those that can be read running; and the name of your daughter remains for
+me undecipherable.  I call her, then, your daughter—and a very good name
+too—and I beg to explain how it came about that I took her house.  The
+hospital was a point in my tale; but there is a house on each side.  Now
+the true house is the one before the hospital: is that No. 11?  If not,
+what do you complain of?  If it is, how can I help what is true?
+Everything in the _Dynamiter_ is not true; but the story of the Brown Box
+is, in almost every particular; I lay my hand on my heart and swear to
+it.  It took place in that house in 1884; and if your daughter was in
+that house at the time, all I can say is she must have kept very bad
+society.
+
+But I see you coming.  Perhaps your daughter’s house has not a balcony at
+the back?  I cannot answer for that; I only know that side of Queen
+Square from the pavement and the back windows of Brunswick Row.  Thence I
+saw plenty of balconies (terraces rather); and if there is none to the
+particular house in question, it must have been so arranged to spite me.
+
+I now come to the conclusion of this matter.  I address three questions
+to your daughter:—
+
+  1st.   Has her house the proper terrace?
+
+  2nd.  Is it on the proper side of the hospital?
+
+  3rd.  Was she there in the summer of 1884?
+
+You see, I begin to fear that Mrs. Desborough may have deceived me on
+some trifling points, for she is not a lady of peddling exactitude.  If
+this should prove to be so, I will give your daughter a proper
+certificate, and her house property will return to its original value.
+
+Can man say more?—Yours very truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+I saw the other day that the Eternal had plagiarised from _Lost Sir
+Massingberd_: good again, sir!  I wish he would plagiarise the death of
+Zero.
+
+
+
+TO W. H. LOW
+
+
+            _Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _Jan. Somethingorother-th_, 1886.
+
+MY DEAR LOW,—I send you two photographs: they are both done by Sir Percy
+Shelley, the poet’s son, which may interest.  The sitting down one is, I
+think, the best; but if they choose that, see that the little reflected
+light on the nose does not give me a turn-up; that would be tragic.
+Don’t forget ‘Baronet’ to Sir Percy’s name.
+
+We all think a heap of your book; and I am well pleased with my
+dedication.—Yours ever,
+
+                                                          R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+_P.S._—_Apropos_ of the odd controversy about Shelley’s nose: I have
+before me four photographs of myself, done by Shelley’s son: my nose is
+hooked, not like the eagle, indeed, but like the accipitrine family in
+man: well, out of these four, only one marks the bend, one makes it
+straight, and one suggests a turn-up.  This throws a flood of light on
+calumnious man—and the scandal-mongering sun.  For personally I cling to
+my curve.  To continue the Shelley controversy: I have a look of him, all
+his sisters had noses like mine; Sir Percy has a marked hook; all the
+family had high cheek-bones like mine; what doubt, then, but that this
+turn-up (of which Jeaffreson accuses the poet, along with much other
+_fatras_) is the result of some accident similar to what has happened in
+my photographs by his son?
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO THOMAS STEVENSON
+
+
+                        [_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _January_ 25, 1886.]
+
+MY DEAR FATHER,—Many thanks for a letter quite like yourself.  I quite
+agree with you, and had already planned a scene of religion in _Balfour_;
+the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge furnishes me with
+a catechist whom I shall try to make the man.  I have another catechist,
+the blind, pistol-carrying highway robber, whom I have transferred from
+the Long Island to Mull.  I find it a most picturesque period, and wonder
+Scott let it escape.  The _Covenant_ is lost on one of the Tarrans, and
+David is cast on Earraid, where (being from inland) he is nearly starved
+before he finds out the island is tidal; then he crosses Mull to
+Toronsay, meeting the blind catechist by the way; then crosses Morven
+from Kinlochaline to Kingairloch, where he stays the night with the good
+catechist; that is where I am; next day he is to be put ashore in Appin,
+and be present at Colin Campbell’s death.  To-day I rest, being a little
+run down.  Strange how liable we are to brain fag in this scooty family!
+But as far as I have got, all but the last chapter, I think David is on
+his feet, and (to my mind) a far better story and far sounder at heart
+than _Treasure Island_.
+
+I have no earthly news, living entirely in my story, and only coming out
+of it to play patience.  The Shelleys are gone; the Taylors kinder than
+can be imagined.  The other day, Lady Taylor drove over and called on me;
+she is a delightful old lady, and great fun.  I mentioned a story about
+the Duchess of Wellington which I had heard Sir Henry tell; and though he
+was very tired, he looked it up and copied it out for me in his own
+hand.—Your most affectionate son,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO C. W. STODDARD
+
+
+                         _Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _Feb._ 13_th_, 1886.
+
+MY DEAR STODDARD,—I am a dreadful character; but, you see, I have at last
+taken pen in hand; how long I may hold it, God knows.  This is already my
+sixth letter to-day, and I have many more waiting; and my wrist gives me
+a jog on the subject of scrivener’s cramp, which is not encouraging.
+
+I gather you were a little down in the jaw when you wrote your last.  I
+am as usual pretty cheerful, but not very strong.  I stay in the house
+all winter, which is base; but, as you continue to see, the pen goes from
+time to time, though neither fast enough nor constantly enough to please
+me.
+
+My wife is at Bath with my father and mother, and the interval of
+widowery explains my writing.  Another person writing for you when you
+have done work is a great enemy to correspondence.  To-day I feel out of
+health, and shan’t work; and hence this so much overdue reply.
+
+I was re-reading some of your South Sea Idyls the other day: some of the
+chapters are very good indeed; some pages as good as they can be.
+
+How does your class get along?  If you like to touch on _Otto_, any day
+in a by-hour, you may tell them—as the author’s last dying
+confession—that it is a strange example of the difficulty of being ideal
+in an age of realism; that the unpleasant giddy-mindedness, which spoils
+the book and often gives it a wanton air of unreality and juggling with
+air-bells, comes from unsteadiness of key; from the too great realism of
+some chapters and passages—some of which I have now spotted, others I
+dare say I shall never spot—which disprepares the imagination for the
+cast of the remainder.
+
+Any story can be made _true_ in its own key; any story can be made
+_false_ by the choice of a wrong key of detail or style: Otto is made to
+reel like a drunken—I was going to say man, but let us substitute
+cipher—by the variations of the key.  Have you observed that the famous
+problem of realism and idealism is one purely of detail?  Have you seen
+my ‘Note on Realism’ in Cassell’s _Magazine of Art_; and ‘Elements of
+Style’ in the _Contemporary_; and ‘Romance’ and ‘Humble Apology’ in
+_Longman’s_?  They are all in your line of business; let me know what you
+have not seen and I’ll send ’em.
+
+I am glad I brought the old house up to you.  It was a pleasant old spot,
+and I remember you there, though still more dearly in your own strange
+den upon a hill in San Francisco; and one of the most San Francisco-y
+parts of San Francisco.
+
+Good-bye, my dear fellow, and believe me your friend,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO J. A. SYMONDS
+
+
+                              _Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_ [_Spring_ 1886].
+
+MY DEAR SYMONDS,—If we have lost touch, it is (I think) only in a
+material sense; a question of letters, not hearts.  You will find a warm
+welcome at Skerryvore from both the lightkeepers; and, indeed, we never
+tell ourselves one of our financial fairy tales, but a run to Davos is a
+prime feature.  I am not changeable in friendship; and I think I can
+promise you you have a pair of trusty well-wishers and friends in
+Bournemouth: whether they write or not is but a small thing; the flag may
+not be waved, but it is there.
+
+Jekyll is a dreadful thing, I own; but the only thing I feel dreadful
+about is that damned old business of the war in the members.  This time
+it came out; I hope it will stay in, in future.
+
+Raskolnikoff {20} is easily the greatest book I have read in ten years; I
+am glad you took to it.  Many find it dull: Henry James could not finish
+it: all I can say is, it nearly finished me.  It was like having an
+illness.  James did not care for it because the character of Raskolnikoff
+was not objective; and at that I divined a great gulf between us, and, on
+further reflection, the existence of a certain impotence in many minds of
+to-day, which prevents them from living _in_ a book or a character, and
+keeps them standing afar off, spectators of a puppet show.  To such I
+suppose the book may seem empty in the centre; to the others it is a
+room, a house of life, into which they themselves enter, and are tortured
+and purified.  The Juge d’Instruction I thought a wonderful, weird,
+touching, ingenious creation: the drunken father, and Sonia, and the
+student friend, and the uncircumscribed, protaplasmic humanity of
+Raskolnikoff, all upon a level that filled me with wonder: the execution
+also, superb in places.  Another has been translated—_Humiliés et
+Offensés_.  It is even more incoherent than _Le Crime et le Châtiment_,
+but breathes much of the same lovely goodness, and has passages of power.
+Dostoieffsky is a devil of a swell, to be sure.  Have you heard that he
+became a stout, imperialist conservative?  It is interesting to know.  To
+something of that side, the balance leans with me also in view of the
+incoherency and incapacity of all.  The old boyish idea of the march on
+Paradise being now out of season, and all plans and ideas that I hear
+debated being built on a superb indifference to the first principles of
+human character, a helpless desire to acquiesce in anything of which I
+know the worst assails me.  Fundamental errors in human nature of two
+sorts stand on the skyline of all this modern world of aspirations.
+First, that it is happiness that men want; and second, that happiness
+consists of anything but an internal harmony.  Men do not want, and I do
+not think they would accept, happiness; what they live for is rivalry,
+effort, success—the elements our friends wish to eliminate.  And, on the
+other hand, happiness is a question of morality—or of immorality, there
+is no difference—and conviction.  Gordon was happy in Khartoum, in his
+worst hours of danger and fatigue; Marat was happy, I suppose, in his
+ugliest frenzy; Marcus Aurelius was happy in the detested camp; Pepys was
+pretty happy, and I am pretty happy on the whole, because we both
+somewhat crowingly accepted a _via media_, both liked to attend to our
+affairs, and both had some success in managing the same.  It is quite an
+open question whether Pepys and I ought to be happy; on the other hand,
+there is no doubt that Marat had better be unhappy.  He was right (if he
+said it) that he was _la misère humaine_, cureless misery—unless perhaps
+by the gallows.  Death is a great and gentle solvent; it has never had
+justice done it, no, not by Whitman.  As for those crockery chimney-piece
+ornaments, the bourgeois (_quorum pars_), and their cowardly dislike of
+dying and killing, it is merely one symptom of a thousand how utterly
+they have got out of touch of life.  Their dislike of capital punishment
+and their treatment of their domestic servants are for me the two
+flaunting emblems of their hollowness.
+
+God knows where I am driving to.  But here comes my lunch.
+
+Which interruption, happily for you, seems to have stayed the issue.  I
+have now nothing to say, that had formerly such a pressure of twaddle.
+Pray don’t fail to come this summer.  It will be a great disappointment,
+now it has been spoken of, if you do.—Yours ever,
+
+                                                    ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+
+
+
+
+TO W. H. LOW
+
+
+                              [_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _March_ 1886.]
+
+MY DEAR LOW,—This is the most enchanting picture.  Now understand my
+state: I am really an invalid, but of a mysterious order.  I might be a
+_malade imaginaire_, but for one too tangible symptom, my tendency to
+bleed from the lungs.  If we could go, (1_st_)  We must have money enough
+to travel with _leisure and comfort_—especially the first.  (_2nd_)  You
+must be prepared for a comrade who would go to bed some part of every day
+and often stay silent (3_rd_)  You would have to play the part of a
+thoughtful courier, sparing me fatigue, looking out that my bed was
+warmed, etc. (4_th_)  If you are very nervous, you must recollect a bad
+hæmorrhage is always on the cards, with its concomitants of anxiety and
+horror for those who are beside me.
+
+Do you blench?  If so, let us say no more about it.
+
+If you are still unafraid, and the money were forthcoming, I believe the
+trip might do me good, and I feel sure that, working together, we might
+produce a fine book.  The Rhone is the river of Angels.  I adore it: have
+adored it since I was twelve, and first saw it from the train.
+
+Lastly, it would depend on how I keep from now on.  I have stood the
+winter hitherto with some credit, but the dreadful weather still
+continues, and I cannot holloa till I am through the wood.
+
+Subject to these numerous and gloomy provisos, I embrace the prospect
+with glorious feelings.
+
+I write this from bed, snow pouring without, and no circumstance of
+pleasure except your letter.  That, however, counts for much.  I am glad
+you liked the doggerel: I have already had a liberal cheque, over which I
+licked my fingers with a sound conscience.  I had not meant to make money
+by these stumbling feet, but if it comes, it is only too welcome in my
+handsome but impecunious house.
+
+Let me know soon what is to be expected—as far as it does not hang by
+that inconstant quantity, my want of health.  Remember me to Madam with
+the best thanks and wishes; and believe me your friend,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN
+
+
+                              [_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _April_ 1886.]
+
+MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN,—I try to tell myself it is good nature, but I know
+it is vanity that makes me write.
+
+I have drafted the first part of Chapter VI., Fleeming and his friends,
+his influence on me, his views on religion and literature, his part at
+the Savile; it should boil down to about ten pages, and I really do think
+it admirably good.  It has so much evoked Fleeming for myself that I
+found my conscience stirred just as it used to be after a serious talk
+with him: surely that means it is good?  I had to write and tell you,
+being alone.
+
+I have excellent news of Fanny, who is much better for the change.  My
+father is still very yellow, and very old, and very weak, but yesterday
+he seemed happier, and smiled, and followed what was said; even laughed,
+I think.  When he came away, he said to me, ‘Take care of yourself, my
+dearie,’ which had a strange sound of childish days, and will not leave
+my mind.
+
+You must get Litolf’s _Gavottes Célèbres_: I have made another trover
+there: a musette of Lully’s.  The second part of it I have not yet got
+the hang of; but the first—only a few bars!  The gavotte is beautiful and
+pretty hard, I think, and very much of the period; and at the end of it,
+this musette enters with the most really thrilling effect of simple
+beauty.  O—it’s first-rate.  I am quite mad over it.  If you find other
+books containing Lully, Rameau, Martini, please let me know; also you
+might tell me, you who know Bach, where the easiest is to be found.  I
+write all morning, come down, and never leave the piano till about five;
+write letters, dine, get down again about eight, and never leave the
+piano till I go to bed.  This is a fine life.—Yours most sincerely,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+If you get the musette (Lully’s), please tell me if I am right, and it
+was probably written for strings.  Anyway, it is as neat as—as neat as
+Bach—on the piano; or seems so to my ignorance.
+
+I play much of the Rigadoon but it is strange, it don’t come off _quite_
+so well with me!
+
+                          [Picture: Music store]
+
+There is the first part of the musette copied (from memory, so I hope
+there’s nothing wrong).  Is it not angelic?  But it ought, of course, to
+have the gavotte before.  The gavotte is in G, and ends on the keynote
+thus (if I remember):—
+
+                          [Picture: Music store]
+
+staccato, I think.  Then you sail into the musette.
+
+_N.B._—Where I have put an ‘A,’ is that a dominant eleventh, or what? or
+just a seventh on the D? and if the latter, is that allowed?  It sounds
+very funny.  Never mind all my questions; if I begin about music (which
+is my leading ignorance and curiosity), I have always to babble
+questions: all my friends know me now, and take no notice whatever.  The
+whole piece is marked allegro; but surely could easily be played too
+fast?  The dignity must not be lost; the periwig feeling.
+
+
+
+TO THOMAS STEVENSON
+
+
+                              [_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _March_ 1886.]
+
+MY DEAR FATHER,—The David problem has to-day been decided.  I am to leave
+the door open for a sequel if the public take to it, and this will save
+me from butchering a lot of good material to no purpose.  Your letter
+from Carlisle was pretty like yourself, sir, as I was pleased to see; the
+hand of Jekyll, not the hand of Hyde.  I am for action quite unfit, and
+even a letter is beyond me; so pray take these scraps at a vast deal more
+than their intrinsic worth.  I am in great spirits about David, Colvin
+agreeing with Henley, Fanny, and myself in thinking it far the most human
+of my labours hitherto.  As to whether the long-eared British public may
+take to it, all think it more than doubtful; I wish they would, for I
+could do a second volume with ease and pleasure, and Colvin thinks it sin
+and folly to throw away David and Alan Breck upon so small a field as
+this one.—Ever your affectionate son,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN
+
+
+    [_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_], _April_ 15 _or_ 16 (_the hour not being
+                                                            known_), 1886.
+
+MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN,—It is I know not what hour of the night; but I
+cannot sleep, have lit the gas, and here goes.
+
+First, all your packet arrived: I have dipped into the Schumann already
+with great pleasure.  Surely, in what concerns us there is a sweet little
+chirrup; the _Good Words_ arrived in the morning just when I needed it,
+and the famous notes that I had lost were recovered also in the nick of
+time.
+
+And now I am going to bother you with my affairs: premising, first, that
+this is _private_; second, that whatever I do the _Life_ shall be done
+first, and I am getting on with it well; and third, that I do not quite
+know why I consult you, but something tells me you will hear with
+fairness.
+
+Here is my problem.  The Curtin women are still miserable prisoners; no
+one dare buy their farm of them, all the manhood of England and the world
+stands aghast before a threat of murder.  (1) Now, my work can be done
+anywhere; hence I can take up without loss a back-going Irish farm, and
+live on, though not (as I had originally written) in it: First Reason.
+(2) If I should be killed, there are a good many who would feel it:
+writers are so much in the public eye, that a writer being murdered would
+attract attention, throw a bull’s-eye light upon this cowardly business:
+Second Reason.  (3) I am not unknown in the States, from which the funds
+come that pay for these brutalities: to some faint extent, my death (if I
+should be killed) would tell there: Third Reason.  (4) _Nobody else is
+taking up this obvious and crying duly_: Fourth Reason.  (5) I have a
+crazy health and may die at any moment, my life is of no purchase in an
+insurance office, it is the less account to husband it, and the business
+of husbanding a life is dreary and demoralising: Fifth Reason.
+
+I state these in no order, but as they occur to me.  And I shall do the
+like with the objections.
+
+First Objection: It will do no good; you have seen Gordon die and nobody
+minded; nobody will mind if you die.  This is plainly of the devil.
+Second Objection: You will not even be murdered, the climate will
+miserably kill you, you will strangle out in a rotten damp heat, in
+congestion, etc.  Well, what then?  It changes nothing: the purpose is to
+brave crime; let me brave it, for such time and to such an extent as God
+allows.  Third Objection: The Curtin women are probably highly
+uninteresting females.  I haven’t a doubt of it.  But the Government
+cannot, men will not, protect them.  If I am the only one to see this
+public duty, it is to the public and the Right I should perform it—not to
+Mesdames Curtin.  Fourth Objection: I am married.  ‘I have married a
+wife!’  I seem to have heard it before.  It smells ancient! what was the
+context?  Fifth Objection: My wife has had a mean life (1), loves me (2),
+could not bear to lose me (3).  (1) I admit: I am sorry.  (2) But what
+does she love me for? and (3) she must lose me soon or late.  And after
+all, because we run this risk, it does not follow we should fail.  Sixth
+Objection: My wife wouldn’t like it.  No, she wouldn’t.  Who would?  But
+the Curtins don’t like it.  And all those who are to suffer if this goes
+on, won’t like it.  And if there is a great wrong, somebody must suffer.
+Seventh Objection: I won’t like it.  No, I will not; I have thought it
+through, and I will not.  But what of that?  And both she and I may like
+it more than we suppose.  We shall lose friends, all comforts, all
+society: so has everybody who has ever done anything; but we shall have
+some excitement, and that’s a fine thing; and we shall be trying to do
+the right, and that’s not to be despised.  Eighth Objection: I am an
+author with my work before me.  See Second Reason.  Ninth Objection: But
+am I not taken with the hope of excitement?  I was at first.  I am not
+much now.  I see what a dreary, friendless, miserable, God-forgotten
+business it will be.  And anyway, is not excitement the proper reward of
+doing anything both right and a little dangerous?  Tenth Objection: But
+am I not taken with a notion of glory?  I dare say I am.  Yet I see quite
+clearly how all points to nothing coming, to a quite inglorious death by
+disease and from the lack of attendance; or even if I should be knocked
+on the head, as these poor Irish promise, how little any one will care.
+It will be a smile at a thousand breakfast-tables.  I am nearly forty
+now; I have not many illusions.  And if I had?  I do not love this
+health-tending, housekeeping life of mine.  I have a taste for danger,
+which is human, like the fear of it.  Here is a fair cause; a just cause;
+no knight ever set lance in rest for a juster.  Yet it needs not the
+strength I have not, only the passive courage that I hope I could muster,
+and the watchfulness that I am sure I could learn.
+
+Here is a long midnight dissertation; with myself; with you.  Please let
+me hear.  But I charge you this: if you see in this idea of mine the
+finger of duty, do not dissuade me.  I am nearing forty, I begin to love
+my ease and my home and my habits, I never knew how much till this arose;
+do not falsely counsel me to put my head under the bed-clothes.  And I
+will say this to you: my wife, who hates the idea, does not refuse.  ‘It
+is nonsense,’ says she, ‘but if you go, I will go.’  Poor girl, and her
+home and her garden that she was so proud of!  I feel her garden most of
+all, because it is a pleasure (I suppose) that I do not feel myself to
+share.
+
+  1.  Here is a great wrong.
+
+  2.  ,, growing wrong.
+
+  3.  ,, wrong founded on crime.
+
+  4.  ,, crime that the Government cannot prevent.
+
+  5.  ,, crime that it occurs to no man to defy.
+
+  6.  But it has occurred to me.
+
+  7.  Being a known person, some will notice my defiance.
+
+  8.  Being a writer, I can _make_ people notice it.
+
+  9.  And, I think, _make_ people imitate me.
+
+  10.  Which would destroy in time this whole scaffolding of oppression.
+
+  11.  And if I fail, however ignominiously, that is not my concern.  It
+  is, with an odd mixture of reverence and humorous remembrances of
+  Dickens, be it said—it is A-nother’s.
+
+And here, at I cannot think what hour of the morning, I shall dry up, and
+remain,—Yours, really in want of a little help,
+
+                                                                   R. L S.
+
+Sleepless at midnight’s      dewy hour.
+      ,,          ,,         witching ,,
+      ,,          ,,         maudlin ,,
+      ,,          ,,         etc.
+
+_Next morning_.—Eleventh Objection: I have a father and mother.  And who
+has not?  Macduff’s was a rare case; if we must wait for a Macduff.
+Besides, my father will not perhaps be long here.  Twelfth Objection: The
+cause of England in Ireland is not worth supporting.  _À qui le
+dites-vous_?  And I am not supporting that.  Home Rule, if you like.
+Cause of decency, the idea that populations should not be taught to gain
+public ends by private crime, the idea that for all men to bow before a
+threat of crime is to loosen and degrade beyond redemption the whole
+fabric of man’s decency.
+
+
+
+TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN
+
+
+                              [_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _April_ 1886.]
+
+MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN,—The Book—It is all drafted: I hope soon to send you
+for comments Chapters III., IV., and V.  Chapter VII. is roughly but
+satisfactorily drafted: a very little work should put that to rights.
+But Chapter VI. is no joke; it is a _mare magnum_: I swim and drown and
+come up again; and it is all broken ends and mystification: moreover, I
+perceive I am in want of more matter.  I must have, first of all, a
+little letter from Mr. Ewing about the phonograph work: _If_ you think he
+would understand it is quite a matter of chance whether I use a word or a
+fact out of it.  If you think he would not: I will go without.  Also,
+could I have a look at Ewing’s _précis_?  And lastly, I perceive I must
+interview you again about a few points; they are very few, and might come
+to little; and I propose to go on getting things as well together as I
+can in the meanwhile, and rather have a final time when all is ready and
+only to be criticised.  I do still think it will be good.  I wonder if
+Trélat would let me cut?  But no, I think I wouldn’t after all; ’tis so
+quaint and pretty and clever and simple and French, and gives such a good
+sight of Fleeming: the plum of the book, I think.
+
+You misunderstood me in one point: I always hoped to found such a
+society; that was the outside of my dream, and would mean entire success.
+_But_—I cannot play Peter the Hermit.  In these days of the Fleet Street
+journalist, I cannot send out better men than myself, with wives or
+mothers just as good as mine, and sisters (I may at least say) better, to
+a danger and a long-drawn dreariness that I do not share.  My wife says
+it’s cowardice; what brave men are the leader-writers!  Call it
+cowardice; it is mine.  Mind you, I may end by trying to do it by the pen
+only: I shall not love myself if I do; and is it ever a good thing to do
+a thing for which you despise yourself?—even in the doing?  And if the
+thing you do is to call upon others to do the thing you neglect?  I have
+never dared to say what I feel about men’s lives, because my own was in
+the wrong: shall I dare to send them to death?  The physician must heal
+himself; he must honestly _try_ the path he recommends: if he does not
+even try, should he not be silent?
+
+I thank you very heartily for your letter, and for the seriousness you
+brought to it.  You know, I think when a serious thing is your own, you
+keep a saner man by laughing at it and yourself as you go.  So I do not
+write possibly with all the really somewhat sickened gravity I feel.  And
+indeed, what with the book, and this business to which I referred, and
+Ireland, I am scarcely in an enviable state.  Well, I ought to be glad,
+after ten years of the worst training on earth—valetudinarianism—that I
+can still be troubled by a duty.  You shall hear more in time; so far, I
+am at least decided: I will go and see Balfour when I get to London.
+
+We have all had a great pleasure: a Mrs. Rawlinson came and brought with
+her a nineteen-year-old daughter, simple, human, as beautiful as—herself;
+I never admired a girl before, you know it was my weakness: we are all
+three dead in love with her.  How nice to be able to do so much good to
+harassed people by—yourself!  Ever yours,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO MISS RAWLINSON
+
+
+                              [_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _April_ 1886.]
+
+   OF the many flowers you brought me,
+      Only some were meant to stay,
+   And the flower I thought the sweetest
+      Was the flower that went away.
+
+   Of the many flowers you brought me,
+      All were fair and fresh and gay,
+   But the flower I thought the sweetest
+      Was the blossom of the May.
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO MISS MONROE
+
+
+                          _Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _May_ 25_th_, 1886.
+
+DEAR MISS MONROE,—(I hope I have this rightly) I must lose no time in
+thanking you for a letter singularly pleasant to receive.  It may
+interest you to know that I read to the signature without suspecting my
+correspondent was a woman; though in one point (a reference to the
+Countess) I might have found a hint of the truth.  You are not pleased
+with Otto; since I judge you do not like weakness; and no more do I.  And
+yet I have more than tolerance for Otto, whose faults are the faults of
+weakness, but never of ignoble weakness, and who seeks before all to be
+both kind and just.  Seeks, not succeeds.  But what is man?  So much of
+cynicism to recognise that nobody does right is the best equipment for
+those who do not wish to be cynics in good earnest.  Think better of
+Otto, if my plea can influence you; and this I mean for your own sake—not
+his, poor fellow, as he will never learn your opinion; but for yours,
+because, as men go in this world (and women too), you will not go far
+wrong if you light upon so fine a fellow; and to light upon one and not
+perceive his merits is a calamity.  In the flesh, of course, I mean; in
+the book the fault, of course, is with my stumbling pen.  Seraphina made
+a mistake about her Otto; it begins to swim before me dimly that you may
+have some traits of Seraphina?
+
+With true ingratitude you see me pitch upon your exception; but it is
+easier to defend oneself gracefully than to acknowledge praise.  I am
+truly glad that you should like my books; for I think I see from what you
+write that you are a reader worth convincing.  Your name, if I have
+properly deciphered it, suggests that you may be also something of my
+countrywoman; for it is hard to see where Monroe came from, if not from
+Scotland.  I seem to have here a double claim on your good nature: being
+myself pure Scotch and having appreciated your letter, make up two
+undeniable merits which, perhaps, if it should be quite without trouble,
+you might reward with your photograph.—Yours truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO MISS MONROE
+
+
+                               [_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _June_ 1886.]
+
+MY DEAR MISS MONROE,—I am ill in bed and stupid, incoherently stupid; yet
+I have to answer your letter, and if the answer is incomprehensible you
+must forgive me.  You say my letter caused you pleasure; I am sure, as it
+fell out, not near so much as yours has brought to me.  The interest
+taken in an author is fragile: his next book, or your next year of
+culture, might see the interest frosted or outgrown; and himself, in
+spite of all, you might probably find the most distasteful person upon
+earth.  My case is different.  I have bad health, am often condemned to
+silence for days together—was so once for six weeks, so that my voice was
+awful to hear when I first used it, like the whisper of a shadow—have
+outlived all my chief pleasures, which were active and adventurous, and
+ran in the open air: and being a person who prefers life to art, and who
+knows it is a far finer thing to be in love, or to risk a danger, than to
+paint the finest picture or write the noblest book, I begin to regard
+what remains to me of my life as very shadowy.  From a variety of
+reasons, I am ashamed to confess I was much in this humour when your
+letter came.  I had a good many troubles; was regretting a high average
+of sins; had been recently reminded that I had outlived some friends, and
+wondering if I had not outlived some friendships; and had just, while
+boasting of better health, been struck down again by my haunting enemy,
+an enemy who was exciting at first, but has now, by the iteration of his
+strokes, become merely annoying and inexpressibly irksome.  Can you fancy
+that to a person drawing towards the elderly this sort of conjunction of
+circumstances brings a rather aching sense of the past and the future?
+Well, it was just then that your letter and your photograph were brought
+to me in bed; and there came to me at once the most agreeable sense of
+triumph.  My books were still young; my words had their good health and
+could go about the world and make themselves welcome; and even (in a
+shadowy and distant sense) make something in the nature of friends for
+the sheer hulk that stays at home and bites his pen over the manuscripts.
+It amused me very much to remember that I had been in Chicago, not so
+many years ago, in my proper person; where I had failed to awaken much
+remark, except from the ticket collector; and to think how much more
+gallant and persuasive were the fellows that I now send instead of me,
+and how these are welcome in that quarter to the sitter of Herr Platz,
+while their author was not very welcome even in the villainous restaurant
+where he tried to eat a meal and rather failed.
+
+And this leads me directly to a confession.  The photograph which shall
+accompany this is not chosen as the most like, but the best-looking.  Put
+yourself in my place, and you will call this pardonable.  Even as it is,
+even putting forth a flattered presentment, I am a little pained; and
+very glad it is a photograph and not myself that has to go; for in this
+case, if it please you, you can tell yourself it is my image—and if it
+displeased you, you can lay the blame on the photographer; but in that,
+there were no help, and the poor author might belie his labours.
+
+_Kidnapped_ should soon appear; I am afraid you may not like it, as it is
+very unlike _Prince Otto_ in every way; but I am myself a great admirer
+of the two chief characters, Alan and David.  _Virginibus Puerisque_ has
+never been issued in the States.  I do not think it is a book that has
+much charm for publishers in any land; but I am to bring out a new
+edition in England shortly, a copy of which I must try to remember to
+send you.  I say try to remember, because I have some superficial
+acquaintance with myself: and I have determined, after a galling
+discipline, to promise nothing more until the day of my death: at least,
+in this way, I shall no more break my word, and I must now try being
+churlish instead of being false.
+
+I do not believe you to be the least like Seraphina.  Your photograph has
+no trace of her, which somewhat relieves me, as I am a good deal afraid
+of Seraphinas—they do not always go into the woods and see the sunrise,
+and some are so well-mailed that even that experience would leave them
+unaffected and unsoftened.  The ‘hair and eyes of several complexions’
+was a trait taken from myself; and I do not bind myself to the opinions
+of Sir John.  In this case, perhaps—but no, if the peculiarity is shared
+by two such pleasant persons as you and I (as you and me—the grammatical
+nut is hard), it must be a very good thing indeed, and Sir John must be
+an ass.
+
+The _Book Reader_ notice was a strange jumble of fact and fancy.  I wish
+you could have seen my father’s old assistant and present partner when he
+heard my father described as an ‘inspector of lighthouses,’ for we are
+all very proud of the family achievements, and the name of my house here
+in Bournemouth is stolen from one of the sea-towers of the Hebrides which
+are our pyramids and monuments.  I was never at Cambridge, again; but
+neglected a considerable succession of classes at Edinburgh.  But to
+correct that friendly blunderer were to write an autobiography.—And so
+now, with many thanks, believe me yours sincerely,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO R. A. M. STEVENSON
+
+
+                                 _Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _July_ 1886.
+
+SIR,—Your foolish letter was unduly received.  There may be hidden
+fifths, and if there are, it shows how dam spontaneous the thing was.  I
+could tinker and tic-tac-toe on a piece of paper, but scorned the act
+with a Threnody, which was poured forth like blood and water on the
+groaning organ.  If your heart (which was what I addressed) remained
+unmoved, let us refer to the affair no more: crystallised emotion, the
+statement and the reconciliation of the sorrows of the race and the
+individual, is obviously no more to you than supping sawdust.  Well,
+well.  If ever I write another Threnody!  My next op. will probably be a
+Passepied and fugue in G (or D).
+
+The mind is in my case shrunk to the size and sp. gr. of an aged Spanish
+filbert.  O, I am so jolly silly.  I now pickle with some freedom (1) the
+refrain of _Martini’s Moutons_; (2) _Sul margine d’un rio_, arranged for
+the infant school by the Aged Statesman; (3) the first phrase of Bach’s
+musette (Sweet Englishwoman, No. 3), {37} the rest of the musette being
+one prolonged cropper, which I take daily for the benefit of my health.
+All my other works (of which there are many) are either arranged (by R.
+L. Stevenson) for the manly and melodious forefinger, or else prolonged
+and melancholy croppers. . . . I find one can get a notion of music very
+nicely.  I have been pickling deeply in the Magic Flute; and have
+arranged _La dove prende_, almost to the end, for two melodious
+forefingers.  I am next going to score the really nobler _Colomba o
+tortorella_ for the same instruments.
+
+                          This day is published
+                    The works of Ludwig van Beethoven
+                                 arranged
+                       and wiederdurchgearbeiteted
+                      for two melodious forefingers
+                                   by,
+                       Sir,—Your obedient servant,
+
+                                                         PIMPERLY STIPPLE.
+
+That’s a good idea?  There’s a person called Lenz who actually does
+it—beware his den; I lost eighteenpennies on him, and found the bleeding
+corpses of pieces of music divorced from their keys, despoiled of their
+graces, and even changed in time; I do not wish to regard music (nor to
+be regarded) through that bony Lenz.  You say you are ‘a spumfed idiot’;
+but how about Lenz?  And how about me, sir, me?
+
+I yesterday sent Lloyd by parcel post, at great expense, an empty
+matchbox and empty cigarette-paper book, a bell from a cat’s collar, an
+iron kitchen spoon, and a piece of coal more than half the superficies of
+this sheet of paper.  They are now (appropriately enough) speeding
+towards the Silly Isles; I hope he will find them useful.  By that, and
+my telegram with prepaid answer to yourself, you may judge of my
+spiritual state.  The finances have much brightened; and if _Kidnapped_
+keeps on as it has begun, I may be solvent.—Yours,
+
+                                                          THRENODIÆ AVCTOR
+                                           (The authour of ane Threnodie).
+
+Op. 2: Scherzo (in G Major) expressive of the Sense of favours to come.
+
+
+
+TO R. A. M. STEVENSON
+
+
+                                _Skerryvore_ [_Bournemouth_, _July_ 1886].
+
+DEAR BOB,—Herewith another shy; more melancholy than before, but I think
+not so abjectly idiotic.  The musical terms seem to be as good as in
+Beethoven, and that, after all, is the great affair.  Bar the dam
+bareness of the base, it looks like a piece of real music from a
+distance.  I am proud to say it was not made one hand at a time; the base
+was of synchronous birth with the treble; they are of the same age, sir,
+and may God have mercy on their souls!—Yours,
+
+                                                              THE MAESTRO.
+
+
+
+TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
+
+
+                          _Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _July_ 7_th_, 1886.
+
+MY DEAR PEOPLE,—It is probably my fault, and not yours, that I did not
+understand.  I think it would be well worth trying the winter in
+Bournemouth; but I would only take the house by the month—this after
+mature discussion.  My leakage still pursues its course; if I were only
+well, I have a notion to go north and get in (if I could) at the inn at
+Kirkmichael, which has always smiled upon me much.  If I did well there,
+we might then meet and do what should most smile at the time.
+
+Meanwhile, of course, I must not move, and am in a rancid box here,
+feeling the heat a great deal, and pretty tired of things.  Alexander did
+a good thing of me at last; it looks like a mixture of an aztec idol, a
+lion, an Indian Rajah, and a woman; and certainly represents a mighty
+comic figure.  F. and Lloyd both think it is the best thing that has been
+done of me up to now.
+
+You should hear Lloyd on the penny whistle, and me on the piano!  Dear
+powers, what a concerto!  I now live entirely for the piano, he for the
+whistle; the neighbours, in a radius of a furlong and a half, are packing
+up in quest of brighter climes.—Ever yours,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+_P.S._—Please say if you can afford to let us have money for this trip,
+and if so, how much.  I can see the year through without help, I believe,
+and supposing my health to keep up; but can scarce make this change on my
+own metal.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                               [_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _July_ 1886].
+
+DEAR CHARLES,—Doubtless, if all goes well, towards the 1st of August we
+shall be begging at your door.  Thanks for a sight of the papers, which I
+return (you see) at once, fearing further responsibility.
+
+Glad you like Dauvit; but eh, man, yon’s terrible strange conduc’ o’ thon
+man Rankeillor.  Ca’ him a legal adviser!  It would make a bonny
+law-shuit, the Shaws case; and yon paper they signed, I’m thinking,
+wouldnae be muckle thought o’ by Puggy Deas.—Yours ever,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO THOMAS STEVENSON
+
+
+                           [_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_], _July_ 28, 1886.
+
+MY DEAR FATHER,—We have decided not to come to Scotland, but just to do
+as Dobell wished, and take an outing.  I believe this is wiser in all
+ways; but I own it is a disappointment.  I am weary of England; like
+Alan, ‘I weary for the heather,’ if not for the deer.  Lloyd has gone to
+Scilly with Katharine and C., where and with whom he should have a good
+time.  David seems really to be going to succeed, which is a pleasant
+prospect on all sides.  I am, I believe, floated financially; a book that
+sells will be a pleasant novelty.  I enclose another review; mighty
+complimentary, and calculated to sell the book too.
+
+Coolin’s tombstone has been got out, honest man! and it is to be
+polished, for it has got scratched, and have a touch of gilding in the
+letters, and be sunk in the front of the house.  Worthy man, he, too,
+will maybe weary for the heather, and the bents of Gullane, where (as I
+dare say you remember) he gaed clean gyte, and jumped on to his crown
+from a gig, in hot and hopeless chase of many thousand rabbits.  I can
+still hear the little cries of the honest fellow as he disappeared; and
+my mother will correct me, but I believe it was two days before he turned
+up again at North Berwick: to judge by his belly, he had caught not one
+out of these thousands, but he had had some exercise.
+
+I keep well.—Ever your affectionate son,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
+
+
+                                 _British Museum_ [_August_ 10_th_, 1886].
+
+MY DEAR MOTHER,—We are having a capital holiday, and I am much better,
+and enjoying myself to the nines.  Richmond is painting my portrait.
+To-day I lunch with him, and meet Burne-Jones; to-night Browning dines
+with us.  That sounds rather lofty work, does it not?  His path was paved
+with celebrities.  To-morrow we leave for Paris, and next week, I
+suppose, or the week after, come home.  Address here, as we may not reach
+Paris.  I am really very well.—Ever your affectionate son,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO T. WATTS-DUNTON
+
+
+                           _Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_ [_September_ 1886].
+
+DEAR MR. WATTS, The sight of the last _Athenæum_ reminds me of you, and
+of my debt, now too long due.  I wish to thank you for your notice of
+_Kidnapped_; and that not because it was kind, though for that also I
+valued it, but in the same sense as I have thanked you before now for a
+hundred articles on a hundred different writers.  A critic like you is
+one who fights the good fight, contending with stupidity, and I would
+fain hope not all in vain; in my own case, for instance, surely not in
+vain.
+
+What you say of the two parts in _Kidnapped_ was felt by no one more
+painfully than by myself.  I began it partly as a lark, partly as a
+pot-boiler; and suddenly it moved, David and Alan stepped out from the
+canvas, and I found I was in another world.  But there was the cursed
+beginning, and a cursed end must be appended; and our old friend Byles
+the butcher was plainly audible tapping at the back door.  So it had to
+go into the world, one part (as it does seem to me) alive, one part
+merely galvanised: no work, only an essay.  For a man of tentative
+method, and weak health, and a scarcity of private means, and not too
+much of that frugality which is the artist’s proper virtue, the days of
+sinecures and patrons look very golden: the days of professional
+literature very hard.  Yet I do not so far deceive myself as to think I
+should change my character by changing my epoch; the sum of virtue in our
+books is in a relation of equality to the sum of virtues in ourselves;
+and my _Kidnapped_ was doomed, while still in the womb and while I was
+yet in the cradle, to be the thing it is.
+
+And now to the more genial business of defence.  You attack my fight on
+board the _Covenant_: I think it literal.  David and Alan had every
+advantage on their side—position, arms, training, a good conscience; a
+handful of merchant sailors, not well led in the first attack, not led at
+all in the second, could only by an accident have taken the round-house
+by attack; and since the defenders had firearms and food, it is even
+doubtful if they could have been starved out.  The only doubtful point
+with me is whether the seamen would have ever ventured on the second
+onslaught; I half believe they would not; still the illusion of numbers
+and the authority of Hoseason would perhaps stretch far enough to justify
+the extremity.—I am, dear Mr. Watts, your very sincere admirer,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON
+
+
+                                        _Skerryvore_, _September_ 4, 1886.
+
+   NOT roses to the rose, I trow,
+      The thistle sends, nor to the bee
+   Do wasps bring honey.  Wherefore now
+      Should Locker ask a verse from me?
+
+   Martial, perchance,—but he is dead,
+      And Herrick now must rhyme no more;
+   Still burning with the muse, they tread
+      (And arm in arm) the shadowy shore.
+
+   They, if they lived, with dainty hand,
+      To music as of mountain brooks,
+   Might bring you worthy words to stand
+      Unshamed, dear Locker, in your books.
+
+   But tho’ these fathers of your race
+      Be gone before, yourself a sire,
+   To-day you see before your face
+      Your stalwart youngsters touch the lyre—
+
+   On these—on Lang, or Dobson—call,
+      Long leaders of the songful feast.
+   They lend a verse your laughing fall—
+      A verse they owe you at the least.
+
+
+
+TO FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON
+
+
+                          [_Skerryvore_], _Bournemouth_, _September_ 1886.
+
+DEAR LOCKER,—You take my verses too kindly, but you will admit, for such
+a bluebottle of a versifier to enter the house of Gertrude, where her
+necklace hangs, was not a little brave.  Your kind invitation, I fear,
+must remain unaccented; and yet—if I am very well—perhaps next
+spring—(for I mean to be very well)—my wife might. . . .  But all that is
+in the clouds with my better health.  And now look here: you are a rich
+man and know many people, therefore perhaps some of the Governors of
+Christ’s Hospital.  If you do, I know a most deserving case, in which I
+would (if I could) do anything.  To approach you, in this way, is not
+decent; and you may therefore judge by my doing it, how near this matter
+lies to my heart.  I enclose you a list of the Governors, which I beg you
+to return, whether or not you shall be able to do anything to help me.
+
+The boy’s name is —; he and his mother are very poor.  It may interest
+you in her cause if I tell you this: that when I was dangerously ill at
+Hyères, this brave lady, who had then a sick husband of her own (since
+dead) and a house to keep and a family of four to cook for, all with her
+own hands, for they could afford no servant, yet took watch-about with my
+wife, and contributed not only to my comfort, but to my recovery in a
+degree that I am not able to limit.  You can conceive how much I suffer
+from my impotence to help her, and indeed I have already shown myself a
+thankless friend.  Let not my cry go up before you in vain!—Yours in
+hope,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON
+
+
+                            _Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _September_ 1886.
+
+MY DEAR LOCKER,—That I should call myself a man of letters, and land
+myself in such unfathomable ambiguities!  No, my dear Locker, I did not
+want a cheque; and in my ignorance of business, which is greater even
+than my ignorance of literature, I have taken the liberty of drawing a
+pen through the document and returning it; should this be against the
+laws of God or man, forgive me.  All that I meant by my excessively
+disgusting reference to your material well-being was the vague notion
+that a man who is well off was sure to know a Governor of Christ’s
+Hospital; though how I quite arrived at this conclusion I do not see.  A
+man with a cold in the head does not necessarily know a ratcatcher; and
+the connection is equally close—as it now appears to my awakened and
+somewhat humbled spirit.  For all that, let me thank you in the warmest
+manner for your friendly readiness to contribute.  You say you have hopes
+of becoming a miser: I wish I had; but indeed I believe you deceive
+yourself, and are as far from it as ever.  I wish I had any excuse to
+keep your cheque, for it is much more elegant to receive than to return;
+but I have my way of making it up to you, and I do sincerely beg you to
+write to the two Governors.  This extraordinary outpouring of
+correspondence would (if you knew my habits) convince you of my great
+eagerness in this matter.  I would promise gratitude; but I have made a
+promise to myself to make no more promises to anybody else, having broken
+such a host already, and come near breaking my heart in consequence; and
+as for gratitude, I am by nature a thankless dog, and was spoiled from a
+child up.  But if you can help this lady in the matter of the Hospital,
+you will have helped the worthy.  Let me continue to hope that I shall
+make out my visit in the spring, and believe me, yours very truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+It may amuse you to know that a very long while ago, I broke my heart to
+try to imitate your verses, and failed hopelessly.  I saw some of the
+evidences the other day among my papers, and blushed to the heels.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+I give up finding out your name in the meantime, and keep to that by
+which you will be known—Frederick Locker.
+
+
+
+TO FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON
+
+
+                   [_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_], 24_th_ _September_ 1886.
+
+MY DEAR LOCKER,—You are simply an angel of light, and your two letters
+have gone to the post; I trust they will reach the hearts of the
+recipients—at least, that could not be more handsomely expressed.  About
+the cheque: well now, I am going to keep it; but I assure you Mrs. — has
+never asked me for money, and I would not dare to offer any till she did.
+For all that I shall stick to the cheque now, and act to that amount as
+your almoner.  In this way I reward myself for the ambiguity of my
+epistolary style.
+
+I suppose, if you please, you may say your verses are thin (would you so
+describe an arrow, by the way, and one that struck the gold?  It scarce
+strikes me as exhaustively descriptive), and, thin or not, they are (and
+I have found them) inimitably elegant.  I thank you again very sincerely
+for the generous trouble you have taken in this matter which was so near
+my heart, and you may be very certain it will be the fault of my health
+and not my inclination, if I do not see you before very long; for all
+that has past has made me in more than the official sense sincerely
+yours,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+                                            _Skerryvore_, _Dec._ 14, 1886.
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN,—This is first-rate of you, the Lord love you for it!  I
+am truly much obliged.  He—my father—is very changeable; at times, he
+seems only a slow quiet edition of himself; again, he will be very heavy
+and blank; but never so violent as last spring; and therefore, to my
+mind, better on the whole.
+
+Fanny is pretty peepy; I am splendid.  I have been writing much
+verse—quite the bard, in fact; and also a dam tale to order, which will
+be what it will be: I don’t love it, but some of it is passable in its
+mouldy way, _The Misadventures of John Nicholson_.  All my bardly
+exercises are in Scotch; I have struck my somewhat ponderous guitar in
+that tongue to no small extent: with what success, I know not, but I
+think it’s better than my English verse; more marrow and fatness, and
+more ruggedness.
+
+How goes _Keats_?  Pray remark, if he (Keats) hung back from Shelley, it
+was not to be wondered at, _when so many of his friends were Shelley’s
+pensioners_.  I forget if you have made this point; it has been borne in
+upon me reading Dowden and the _Shelley Papers_; and it will do no harm
+if you have made it.  I finished a poem to-day, and writ 3000 words of a
+story, _tant bien que mal_; and have a right to be sleepy, and (what is
+far nobler and rarer) am so.—My dear Colvin, ever yours,
+
+                                                          THE REAL MACKAY.
+
+
+
+TO FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON
+
+
+                      _Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _February_ 5_th_, 1887.
+
+MY DEAR LOCKER,—Here I am in my bed as usual, and it is indeed a long
+while since I went out to dinner.  You do not know what a crazy fellow
+this is.  My winter has not so far been luckily passed, and all hope of
+paying visits at Easter has vanished for twelve calendar months.  But
+because I am a beastly and indurated invalid, I am not dead to human
+feelings; and I neither have forgotten you nor will forget you.  Some day
+the wind may round to the right quarter and we may meet; till then I am
+still truly yours,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+                           [_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _February_ 1887.]
+
+MY DEAR JAMES,—My health has played me it in once more in the absurdest
+fashion, and the creature who now addresses you is but a stringy and
+white-faced _bouilli_ out of the pot of fever, with the devil to pay in
+every corner of his economy.  I suppose (to judge by your letter) I need
+not send you these sheets, which came during my collapse by the rush.  I
+am on the start with three volumes, that one of tales, {48a} a second one
+of essays, {48b} and one of—ahem—verse. {48c}  This is a great order, is
+it not?  After that I shall have empty lockers.  All new work stands
+still; I was getting on well with Jenkin when this blessed malady
+unhorsed me, and sent me back to the dung-collecting trade of the
+republisher.  I shall re-issue _Virg. Puer._ as Vol. I. of _Essays_, and
+the new vol. as Vol. II. of ditto; to be sold, however, separately.  This
+is but a dry maundering; however, I am quite unfit—‘I am for action quite
+unfit Either of exercise or wit.’  My father is in a variable state; many
+sorrows and perplexities environ the house of Stevenson; my mother shoots
+north at this hour on business of a distinctly rancid character; my
+father (under my wife’s tutorage) proceeds to-morrow to Salisbury; I
+remain here in my bed and whistle; in no quarter of heaven is anything
+encouraging apparent, except that the good Colvin comes to the hotel here
+on a visit.  This dreary view of life is somewhat blackened by the fact
+that my head aches, which I always regard as a liberty on the part of the
+powers that be.  This is also my first letter since my recovery.  God
+speed your laudatory pen!
+
+My wife joins in all warm messages.—Yours,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO W. H. LOW
+
+
+                                                           (_April_ 1887.)
+
+MY DEAR LOW,—The fares to London may be found in any continental Bradshaw
+or sich; from London to Bournemouth impoverished parties who can stoop to
+the third class get their ticket for the matter of 10s., or, as my wife
+loves to phrase it, ‘a half a pound.’  You will also be involved in a 3s.
+fare to get to Skerryvore; but this, I dare say, friends could help you
+in on your arrival; so that you may reserve your energies for the two
+tickets—costing the matter of a pound—and the usual gratuities to
+porters.  This does not seem to me much: considering the intellectual
+pleasures that await you here, I call it dirt cheap.  I _believe_ the
+third class from Paris to London (_viâ_ Dover) is _about_ forty francs,
+but I cannot swear.  Suppose it to be fifty.
+
+50 × 2=100                                                         100
+The expense of spirit or spontaneous lapse of coin                  10
+on the journey, at 5 frcs. a head, 5 × 2=10
+Victuals on ditto, at 5 frcs. a head, 5 × 2 = 10                    10
+Gratuity to stewardess, in case of severe                            3
+prostration, at 3 francs
+One night in London, on a modest footing, say 20                    20
+Two tickets to Bournemouth at 12.50, 12.50 × 2=25                   25
+Porters and general devilment, say 5                                 5
+Cabs in London, say 2 shillings, and in                           6.25
+Bournemouth, 3 shillings=5 shillings, 6 frcs. 25
+frcs.                                                           179.25
+Or, the same in pounds,                                   £7, 3s. 6½d.
+Or, the same in dollars,                                        $35.45
+
+if there be any arithmetical virtue in me.  I have left out dinner in
+London in case you want to blow out, which would come extry, and with the
+aid of _vangs fangs_ might easily double the whole amount—above all if
+you have a few friends to meet you.
+
+In making this valuable project, or budget, I discovered for the first
+time a reason (frequently overlooked) for the singular costliness of
+travelling with your wife.  Anybody would count the tickets double; but
+how few would have remembered—or indeed has any one ever remembered?—to
+count the spontaneous lapse of coin double also?  Yet there are two of
+you, each must do his daily leakage, and it must be done out of your
+travelling fund.  You will tell me, perhaps, that you carry the coin
+yourself: my dear sir, do you think you can fool your Maker?  Your wife
+has to lose her quota; and by God she will—if you kept the coin in a
+belt.  One thing I have omitted: you will lose a certain amount on the
+exchange, but this even I cannot foresee, as it is one of the few things
+that vary with the way a man has.—I am, dear sir, yours financially,
+
+                                                           SAMUEL BUDGETT.
+
+
+
+TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
+
+
+                                       _Skerryvore_, _April_ 16_th_, 1887.
+
+MY DEAREST CUMMY,—As usual, I have been a dreary bad fellow and not
+written for ages; but you must just try to forgive me, to believe (what
+is the truth) that the number of my letters is no measure of the number
+of times I think of you, and to remember how much writing I have to do.
+The weather is bright, but still cold; and my father, I’m afraid, feels
+it sharply.  He has had—still has, rather—a most obstinate jaundice,
+which has reduced him cruelly in strength, and really upset him
+altogether.  I hope, or think, he is perhaps a little better; but he
+suffers much, cannot sleep at night, and gives John and my mother a
+severe life of it to wait upon him.  My wife is, I think, a little
+better, but no great shakes.  I keep mightily respectable myself.
+
+Coolin’s Tombstone is now built into the front wall of Skerryvore, and
+poor Bogie’s (with a Latin inscription also) is set just above it.  Poor,
+unhappy wee man, he died, as you must have heard, in fight, which was
+what he would have chosen; for military glory was more in his line than
+the domestic virtues.  I believe this is about all my news, except that,
+as I write, there is a blackbird singing in our garden trees, as it were
+at Swanston.  I would like fine to go up the burnside a bit, and sit by
+the pool and be young again—or no, be what I am still, only there instead
+of here, for just a little.  Did you see that I had written about John
+Todd?  In this month’s _Longman_ it was; if you have not seen it, I will
+try and send it you.  Some day climb as high as Halkerside for me (I am
+never likely to do it for myself), and sprinkle some of the well water on
+the turf.  I am afraid it is a pagan rite, but quite harmless, and _ye
+can sain it wi’ a bit prayer_.  Tell the Peewies that I mind their
+forbears well.  My heart is sometimes heavy, and sometimes glad to mind
+it all.  But for what we have received, the Lord make us truly thankful.
+Don’t forget to sprinkle the water, and do it in my name; I feel a
+childish eagerness in this.
+
+Remember me most kindly to James, and with all sorts of love to yourself,
+believe me, your laddie,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+_P.S._—I suppose Mrs. Todd ought to see the paper about her man; judge of
+that, and if you think she would not dislike it, buy her one from me, and
+let me know.  The article is called ‘Pastoral,’ in _Longman’s Magazine_
+for April.  I will send you the money; I would to-day, but it’s the
+Sabbie day, and I cannae.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+Remembrances from all here.
+
+
+
+TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+                                               [_Edinburgh_, _June_ 1887.]
+
+MY DEAR S. C.,—At last I can write a word to you.  Your little note in
+the _P. M. G._ was charming.  I have written four pages in the
+_Contemporary_, which Bunting found room for: they are not very good, but
+I shall do more for his memory in time.
+
+About the death, I have long hesitated, I was long before I could tell my
+mind; and now I know it, and can but say that I am glad.  If we could
+have had my father, that would have been a different thing.  But to keep
+that changeling—suffering changeling—any longer, could better none and
+nothing.  Now he rests; it is more significant, it is more like himself.
+He will begin to return to us in the course of time, as he was and as we
+loved him.
+
+My favourite words in literature, my favourite scene—‘O let him pass,’
+Kent and Lear—was played for me here in the first moment of my return.  I
+believe Shakespeare saw it with his own father.  I had no words; but it
+was shocking to see.  He died on his feet, you know; was on his feet the
+last day, knowing nobody—still he would be up.  This was his constant
+wish; also that he might smoke a pipe on his last day.  The funeral would
+have pleased him; it was the largest private funeral in man’s memory
+here.
+
+We have no plans, and it is possible we may go home without going through
+town.  I do not know; I have no views yet whatever; nor can have any at
+this stage of my cold and my business.—Ever yours,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+THE UNITED STATES AGAIN:
+WINTER IN THE ADIRONDACKS
+AUGUST 1887-OCTOBER 1888
+
+
+TO W. E. HENLEY
+
+
+                             [_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_], _August_ 1887.
+
+DEAR LAD,—I write to inform you that Mr. Stevenson’s well-known work,
+_Virginibus Puerisque_, is about to be reprinted.  At the same time a
+second volume called _Memories and Portraits_ will issue from the roaring
+loom.  Its interest will be largely autobiographical, Mr. S. having
+sketched there the lineaments of many departed friends, and dwelt fondly,
+and with a m’istened eye, upon byegone pleasures.  The two will be issued
+under the common title of _Familiar Essays_; but the volumes will be
+vended separately to those who are mean enough not to hawk at both.
+
+The blood is at last stopped: only yesterday.  I began to think I should
+not get away.  However, I hope—I hope—remark the word—no boasting—I hope
+I may luff up a bit now.  Dobell, whom I saw, gave as usual a good
+account of my lungs, and expressed himself, like his neighbours,
+hopefully about the trip.  He says, my uncle says, Scott says, Brown
+says—they all say—You ought not to be in such a state of health; you
+should recover.  Well, then, I mean to.  My spirits are rising again
+after three months of black depression: I almost begin to feel as if I
+should care to live: I would, by God!  And so I believe I shall.—Yours,
+
+                                                        BULLETIN M‘GURDER.
+
+How has the Deacon gone?
+
+
+
+TO W. H. LOW
+
+
+                        [_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_], August 6_th_, 1887.
+
+MY DEAR LOW,—We—my mother, my wife, my stepson, my maidservant, and
+myself, five souls—leave, if all is well, Aug. 20th, per Wilson line SS.
+_Ludgate Hill_.  Shall probably evade N. Y. at first, cutting straight to
+a watering-place: Newport, I believe, its name.  Afterwards we shall
+steal incognito into _la bonne villa_, and see no one but you and the
+Scribners, if it may be so managed.  You must understand I have been very
+seedy indeed, quite a dead body; and unless the voyage does miracles, I
+shall have to draw it dam fine.  Alas, ‘The Canoe Speaks’ is now out of
+date; it will figure in my volume of verses now imminent.  However, I may
+find some inspiration some day.—Till very soon, yours ever,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
+
+
+                                     _Bournemouth_, _August_ 19_th_, 1887.
+
+MY DEAR MISS BOODLE,—I promise you the paper-knife shall go to sea with
+me; and if it were in my disposal, I should promise it should return with
+me too.  All that you say, I thank you for very much; I thank you for all
+the pleasantness that you have brought about our house; and I hope the
+day may come when I shall see you again in poor old Skerryvore, now left
+to the natives of Canada, or to worse barbarians, if such exist.  I am
+afraid my attempt to jest is rather _à contre-cœur_.  Good-bye—_au
+revoir_—and do not forget your friend,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO MESSRS. CHATTO AND WINDUS
+
+
+                                            _Bournemouth_ [_August_ 1887].
+
+DEAR SIRS,—I here enclose the two titles.  Had you not better send me the
+bargains to sign?  I shall be here till Saturday; and shall have an
+address in London (which I shall send you) till Monday, when I shall
+sail.  Even if the proofs do not reach you till Monday morning, you could
+send a clerk from Fenchurch Street Station at 10.23 A.M. for Galleons
+Station, and he would find me embarking on board the _Ludgate Hill_,
+Island Berth, Royal Albert Dock.  Pray keep this in case it should be
+necessary to catch this last chance.  I am most anxious to have the
+proofs with me on the voyage.—Yours very truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+                                                   _H.M.S._ ‘_Vulgarium_,’
+
+               _Off Havre de Grace_, _this_ 22_nd_ _day of August_ [1887].
+
+SIR,—The weather has been hitherto inimitable.  Inimitable is the only
+word that I can apply to our fellow-voyagers, whom a categorist, possibly
+premature, has been already led to divide into two classes—the better
+sort consisting of the baser kind of Bagman, and the worser of
+undisguised Beasts of the Field.  The berths are excellent, the pasture
+swallowable, the champagne of H. James (to recur to my favourite
+adjective) inimitable.  As for the Commodore, he slept awhile in the
+evening, tossed off a cup of Henry James with his plain meal, walked the
+deck till eight, among sands and floating lights and buoys and wrecked
+brigantines, came down (to his regret) a minute too soon to see Margate
+lit up, turned in about nine, slept, with some interruptions, but on the
+whole sweetly, until six, and has already walked a mile or so of deck,
+among a fleet of other steamers waiting for the tide, within view of
+Havre, and pleasantly entertained by passing fishing-boats, hovering
+sea-gulls, and Vulgarians pairing on deck with endearments of primitive
+simplicity.  There, sir, can be viewed the sham quarrel, the sham desire
+for information, and every device of these two poor ancient sexes (who
+might, you might think, have learned in the course of the ages something
+new) down to the exchange of head-gear.—I am, sir, yours,
+
+                                                       BOLD BOB BOLTSPRIT.
+
+B. B. B. (_alias_ the Commodore) will now turn to his proofs.  Havre de
+Grace is a city of some show.  It is for-ti-fied; and, so far as I can
+see, is a place of some trade.  It is situ-ated in France, a country of
+Europe.  You always complain there are no facts in my letters.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+                             _Newport_, _R. I. U.S.A._ [_September_ 1887].
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN,—So long it went excellent well, and I had a time I am
+glad to have had; really enjoying my life.  There is nothing like being
+at sea, after all.  And O, why have I allowed myself to rot so long on
+land?  But on the Banks I caught a cold, and I have not yet got over it.
+My reception here was idiotic to the last degree. . . .  It is very
+silly, and not pleasant, except where humour enters; and I confess the
+poor interviewer lads pleased me.  They are too good for their trade;
+avoided anything I asked them to avoid, and were no more vulgar in their
+reports than they could help.  I liked the lads.
+
+O, it was lovely on our stable-ship, chock full of stallions.  She rolled
+heartily, rolled some of the fittings out of our state-room, and I think
+a more dangerous cruise (except that it was summer) it would be hard to
+imagine.  But we enjoyed it to the masthead, all but Fanny; and even she
+perhaps a little.  When we got in, we had run out of beer, stout, cocoa,
+soda-water, water, fresh meat, and (almost) of biscuit.  But it was a
+thousandfold pleasanter than a great big Birmingham liner like a new
+hotel; and we liked the officers, and made friends with the
+quartermasters, and I (at least) made a friend of a baboon (for we
+carried a cargo of apes), whose embraces have pretty near cost me a coat.
+The passengers improved, and were a very good specimen lot, with no
+drunkard, no gambling that I saw, and less grumbling and backbiting than
+one would have asked of poor human nature.  Apes, stallions, cows,
+matches, hay, and poor men-folk, all, or almost all, came successfully to
+land.—Yours ever,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+                                  [_Newport_, _U.S.A._, _September_ 1887.]
+
+MY DEAR JAMES,—Here we are at Newport in the house of the good
+Fairchilds; and a sad burthen we have laid upon their shoulders.  I have
+been in bed practically ever since I came.  I caught a cold on the Banks
+after having had the finest time conceivable, and enjoyed myself more
+than I could have hoped on board our strange floating menagerie:
+stallions and monkeys and matches made our cargo; and the vast continent
+of these incongruities rolled the while like a haystack; and the
+stallions stood hypnotised by the motion, looking through the ports at
+our dinner-table, and winked when the crockery was broken; and the little
+monkeys stared at each other in their cages, and were thrown overboard
+like little bluish babies; and the big monkey, Jacko, scoured about the
+ship and rested willingly in my arms, to the ruin of my clothing; and the
+man of the stallions made a bower of the black tarpaulin, and sat therein
+at the feet of a raddled divinity, like a picture on a box of chocolates;
+and the other passengers, when they were not sick, looked on and laughed.
+Take all this picture, and make it roll till the bell shall sound
+unexpected notes and the fittings shall break lose in our state-room, and
+you have the voyage of the _Ludgate Hill_.  She arrived in the port of
+New York, without beer, porter, soda-water, curaçoa, fresh meat, or fresh
+water; and yet we lived, and we regret her.
+
+My wife is a good deal run down, and I am no great shakes.
+
+America is, as I remarked, a fine place to eat in, and a great place for
+kindness; but, Lord, what a silly thing is popularity!  I envy the cool
+obscurity of Skerryvore.  If it even paid, said Meanness! and was abashed
+at himself.—Yours most sincerely,
+
+                                                                   R. L S.
+
+
+
+TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+                                    [_New York_: _end of September_ 1887.]
+
+MY DEAR S. C.,—Your delightful letter has just come, and finds me in a
+New York hotel, waiting the arrival of a sculptor (St. Gaudens) who is
+making a medallion of yours truly and who is (to boot) one of the
+handsomest and nicest fellows I have seen.  I caught a cold on the Banks;
+fog is not for me; nearly died of interviewers and visitors, during
+twenty-four hours in New York; cut for Newport with Lloyd and Valentine,
+a journey like fairy-land for the most engaging beauties, one little
+rocky and pine-shaded cove after another, each with a house and a boat at
+anchor, so that I left my heart in each and marvelled why American
+authors had been so unjust to their country; caught another cold on the
+train; arrived at Newport to go to bed and to grow worse, and to stay in
+bed until I left again; the Fairchilds proving during this time kindness
+itself; Mr. Fairchild simply one of the most engaging men in the world,
+and one of the children, Blair, _aet._ ten, a great joy and amusement in
+his solemn adoring attitude to the author of _Treasure Island_.
+
+Here I was interrupted by the arrival of my sculptor.  I have begged him
+to make a medallion of himself and give me a copy.  I will not take up
+the sentence in which I was wandering so long, but begin fresh.  I was
+ten or twelve days at Newport; then came back convalescent to New York.
+Fanny and Lloyd are off to the Adirondacks to see if that will suit; and
+the rest of us leave Monday (this is Saturday) to follow them up.  I hope
+we may manage to stay there all winter.  I have a splendid appetite and
+have on the whole recovered well after a mighty sharp attack.  I am now
+on a salary of £500 a year for twelve articles in _Scribner’s Magazine_
+on what I like; it is more than £500, but I cannot calculate more
+precisely.  You have no idea how much is made of me here; I was offered
+£2000 for a weekly article—eh heh! how is that? but I refused that
+lucrative job.  The success of _Underwoods_ is gratifying.  You see, the
+verses are sane; that is their strong point, and it seems it is strong
+enough to carry them.
+
+A thousand thanks for your grand letter, ever yours,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO W. E. HENLEY
+
+
+                                             _New York_ [_September_ 1887]
+
+MY DEAR LAD,—Herewith verses for Dr. Hake, which please communicate.  I
+did my best with the interviewers; I don’t know if Lloyd sent you the
+result; my heart was too sick: you can do nothing with them; and
+yet—literally sweated with anxiety to please, and took me down in long
+hand!
+
+I have been quite ill, but go better.  I am being not busted, but
+medallioned, by St. Gaudens, who is a first-rate, plain, high-minded
+artist and honest fellow; you would like him down to the ground.  I
+believe sculptors are fine fellows when they are not demons.  O, I am now
+a salaried person, £600 a year, {66} to write twelve articles in
+_Scribner’s Magazine_; it remains to be seen if it really pays, huge as
+the sum is, but the slavery may overweigh me.  I hope you will like my
+answer to Hake, and specially that he will.
+
+Love to all.—Yours affectionately,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+                                                           (_le salarie_).
+
+
+
+TO R. A. M. STEVENSON
+
+
+                                            _Saranac Lake_, _Adirondacks_,
+                                    _New York_, _U.S.A._ [_October_ 1887].
+
+MY DEAR BOB,—The cold [of Colorado] was too rigorous for me; I could not
+risk the long railway voyage, and the season was too late to risk the
+Eastern, Cape Hatteras side of the steamer one; so here we stuck and
+stick.  We have a wooden house on a hill-top, overlooking a river, and a
+village about a quarter of a mile away, and very wooded hills; the whole
+scene is very Highland, bar want of heather and the wooden houses.
+
+I have got one good thing of my sea voyage: it is proved the sea agrees
+heartily with me, and my mother likes it; so if I get any better, or no
+worse, my mother will likely hire a yacht for a month or so in summer.
+Good Lord!  What fun!  Wealth is only useful for two things: a yacht and
+a string quartette.  For these two I will sell my soul.  Except for these
+I hold that £700 a year is as much as anybody can possibly want; and I
+have had more, so I know, for the extry coins were for no use, excepting
+for illness, which damns everything.
+
+I was so happy on board that ship, I could not have believed it possible.
+We had the beastliest weather, and many discomforts; but the mere fact of
+its being a tramp-ship gave us many comforts; we could cut about with the
+men and officers, stay in the wheel-house, discuss all manner of things,
+and really be a little at sea.  And truly there is nothing else.  I had
+literally forgotten what happiness was, and the full mind—full of
+external and physical things, not full of cares and labours and rot about
+a fellow’s behaviour.  My heart literally sang; I truly care for nothing
+so much as for that.  We took so north a course, that we saw
+Newfoundland; no one in the ship had ever seen it before.
+
+It was beyond belief to me how she rolled; in seemingly smooth water, the
+bell striking, the fittings bounding out of our state-room.  It is worth
+having lived these last years, partly because I have written some better
+books, which is always pleasant, but chiefly to have had the joy of this
+voyage.  I have been made a lot of here, and it is sometimes pleasant,
+sometimes the reverse; but I could give it all up, and agree that—was the
+author of my works, for a good seventy ton schooner and the coins to keep
+her on.  And to think there are parties with yachts who would make the
+exchange!  I know a little about fame now; it is no good compared to a
+yacht; and anyway there is more fame in a yacht, more genuine fame; to
+cross the Atlantic and come to anchor in Newport (say) with the Union
+Jack, and go ashore for your letters and hang about the pier, among the
+holiday yachtsmen—that’s fame, that’s glory, and nobody can take it away;
+they can’t say your book is bad; you _have_ crossed the Atlantic.  I
+should do it south by the West Indies, to avoid the damned Banks; and
+probably come home by steamer, and leave the skipper to bring the yacht
+home.
+
+Well, if all goes well, we shall maybe sail out of Southampton water some
+of these days and take a run to Havre, and try the Baltic, or somewhere.
+
+Love to you all.—Ever your afft.,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO EDMUND GOSSE
+
+
+                                       _Saranac Lake_, _Oct._ 8_th_, 1887.
+
+MY DEAR GOSSE,—I have just read your article twice, with cheers of
+approving laughter.  I do not believe you ever wrote anything so funny:
+Tyndall’s ‘shell,’ the passage on the Davos press and its invaluable
+issues, and that on V. Hugo and Swinburne, are exquisite; so, I say it
+more ruefully, is the touch about the doctors.  For the rest, I am very
+glad you like my verses so well; and the qualities you ascribe to them
+seem to me well found and well named.  I own to that kind of candour you
+attribute to me: when I am frankly interested, I suppose I fancy the
+public will be so too; and when I am moved, I am sure of it.  It has been
+my luck hitherto to meet with no staggering disillusion.  ‘Before’ and
+‘After’ may be two; and yet I believe the habit is now too thoroughly
+ingrained to be altered.  About the doctors, you were right, that
+dedication has been the subject of some pleasantries that made me grind,
+and of your happily touched reproof which made me blush.  And to miscarry
+in a dedication is an abominable form of book-wreck; I am a good captain,
+I would rather lose the tent and save my dedication.
+
+I am at Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks, I suppose for the winter: it
+seems a first-rate place; we have a house in the eye of many winds, with
+a view of a piece of running water—Highland, all but the dear hue of
+peat—and of many hills—Highland also, but for the lack of heather.  Soon
+the snow will close on us; we are here some twenty miles—twenty-seven,
+they say, but this I profoundly disbelieve—in the woods; communication by
+letter is slow and (let me be consistent) aleatory; by telegram is as
+near as may be impossible.
+
+I had some experience of American appreciation; I liked a little of it,
+but there is too much; a little of that would go a long way to spoil a
+man; and I like myself better in the woods.  I am so damned candid and
+ingenuous (for a cynic), and so much of a ‘cweatu’ of impulse—aw’ (if you
+remember that admirable Leech), that I begin to shirk any more taffy; I
+think I begin to like it too well.  But let us trust the Gods; they have
+a rod in pickle; reverently I doff my trousers, and with screwed eyes
+await the _amari aliquid_ of the great God Busby.
+
+I thank you for the article in all ways, and remain yours affectionately,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO W. H. LOW
+
+
+                                              [_Saranac_, _October_ 1887.]
+
+SIR,—I have to trouble you with the following _paroles bien senties_.  We
+are here at a first-rate place.  ‘Baker’s’ is the name of our house, but
+we don’t address there; we prefer the tender care of the Post-Office, as
+more aristocratic (it is no use to telegraph even to the care of the
+Post-Office who does not give a single damn {70}).  Baker’s has a
+prophet’s chamber, which the hypercritical might describe as a garret
+with a hole in the floor: in that garret, sir, I have to trouble you and
+your wife to come and slumber.  Not now, however: with manly hospitality,
+I choke off any sudden impulse.  Because first, my wife and my mother are
+gone (a note for the latter, strongly suspected to be in the hand of your
+talented wife, now sits silent on the mantel shelf), one to Niagara and
+t’other to Indianapolis.  Because, second, we are not yet installed.  And
+because third, I won’t have you till I have a buffalo robe and leggings,
+lest you should want to paint me as a plain man, which I am not, but a
+rank Saranacker and wild man of the woods.—Yours,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO WILLIAM ARCHER.
+
+
+                                           _Saranac Lake_, _October_ 1887.
+
+DEAR ARCHER,—Many thanks for the Wondrous Tale.  It is scarcely a work of
+genius, as I believe you felt.  Thanks also for your pencillings; though
+I defend ‘shrew,’ or at least many of the shrews.
+
+We are here (I suppose) for the winter in the Adirondacks, a hill and
+forest country on the Canadian border of New York State, very unsettled
+and primitive and cold, and healthful, or we are the more bitterly
+deceived.  I believe it will do well for me; but must not boast.
+
+My wife is away to Indiana to see her family; my mother, Lloyd, and I
+remain here in the cold, which has been exceeding sharp, and the hill
+air, which is inimitably fine.  We all eat bravely, and sleep well, and
+make great fires, and get along like one o’clock.
+
+I am now a salaried party; I am a _bourgeois_ now; I am to write a weekly
+paper for Scribner’s, at a scale of payment which makes my teeth ache for
+shame and diffidence.  The editor is, I believe, to apply to you; for we
+were talking over likely men, and when I instanced you, he said he had
+had his eye upon you from the first.  It is worth while, perhaps, to get
+in tow with the Scribners; they are such thorough gentlefolk in all ways
+that it is always a pleasure to deal with them.  I am like to be a
+millionaire if this goes on, and be publicly hanged at the social
+revolution: well, I would prefer that to dying in my bed; and it would be
+a godsend to my biographer, if ever I have one.  What are you about?  I
+hope you are all well and in good case and spirits, as I am now, after a
+most nefast experience of despondency before I left; but indeed I was
+quite run down.  Remember me to Mrs. Archer, and give my respects to
+Tom.—Yours very truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+                                         [_Saranac Lake_, _October_ 1887.]
+                                      I know not the day; but the month it
+                                               is the drear October by the
+                                            ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir
+
+MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,—This is to say _First_, the voyage was a huge
+success.  We all enjoyed it (bar my wife) to the ground: sixteen days at
+sea with a cargo of hay, matches, stallions, and monkeys, and in a ship
+with no style on, and plenty of sailors to talk to, and the endless
+pleasures of the sea—the romance of it, the sport of the scratch dinner
+and the smashing crockery, the pleasure—an endless pleasure—of balancing
+to the swell: well, it’s over.
+
+_Second_, I had a fine time, rather a troubled one, at Newport and New
+York; saw much of and liked hugely the Fairchilds, St. Gaudens the
+sculptor, Gilder of the _Century_—just saw the dear Alexander—saw a lot
+of my old and admirable friend Will Low, whom I wish you knew and
+appreciated—was medallioned by St. Gaudens, and at last escaped to
+
+_Third_, Saranac Lake, where we now are, and which I believe we mean to
+like and pass the winter at.  Our house—emphatically ‘Baker’s’—is on a
+hill, and has a sight of a stream turning a corner in the valley—bless
+the face of running water!—and sees some hills too, and the paganly
+prosaic roofs of Saranac itself; the Lake it does not see, nor do I
+regret that; I like water (fresh water I mean) either running swiftly
+among stones, or else largely qualified with whisky.  As I write, the sun
+(which has been long a stranger) shines in at my shoulder; from the next
+room, the bell of Lloyd’s typewriter makes an agreeable music as it
+patters off (at a rate which astonishes this experienced novelist) the
+early chapters of a humorous romance; from still further off—the walls of
+Baker’s are neither ancient nor massive—rumours of Valentine about the
+kitchen stove come to my ears; of my mother and Fanny I hear nothing, for
+the excellent reason that they have gone sparking off, one to Niagara,
+one to Indianapolis.  People complain that I never give news in my
+letters.  I have wiped out that reproach.
+
+But now, _Fourth_, I have seen the article; and it may be from natural
+partiality, I think it the best you have written.  O—I remember the
+Gautier, which was an excellent performance; and the Balzac, which was
+good; and the Daudet, over which I licked my chops; but the R. L. S. is
+better yet.  It is so humorous, and it hits my little frailties with so
+neat (and so friendly) a touch; and Alan is the occasion for so much
+happy talk, and the quarrel is so generously praised.  I read it twice,
+though it was only some hours in my possession; and Low, who got it for
+me from the _Century_, sat up to finish it ere he returned it; and, sir,
+we were all delighted.  Here is the paper out, nor will anything, not
+even friendship, not even gratitude for the article, induce me to begin a
+second sheet; so here with the kindest remembrances and the warmest good
+wishes, I remain, yours affectionately,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                                        _Saranac_, 18_th_ _November_ 1887.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—No likely I’m going to waste a sheet of paper. . . .  I
+am offered £1600 ($8000) for the American serial rights on my next story!
+As you say, times are changed since the Lothian Road.  Well, the Lothian
+Road was grand fun too; I could take an afternoon of it with great
+delight.  But I’m awfu’ grand noo, and long may it last!
+
+Remember me to any of the faithful—if there are any left.  I wish I could
+have a crack with you.—Yours ever affectionately,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+I find I have forgotten more than I remembered of business. . . .  Please
+let us know (if you know) for how much Skerryvore is let; you will here
+detect the female mind; I let it for what I could get; nor shall the
+possession of this knowledge (which I am happy to have forgot) increase
+the amount by so much as the shadow of a sixpenny piece; but my females
+are agog.—Yours ever,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES SCRIBNER
+
+
+                                 [_Saranac_, _November_ 20 _or_ 21, 1887.]
+
+MY DEAR MR. SCRIBNER,—Heaven help me, I am under a curse just now.  I
+have played fast and loose with what I said to you; and that, I beg you
+to believe, in the purest innocence of mind.  I told you you should have
+the power over all my work in this country; and about a fortnight ago,
+when M’Clure was here, I calmly signed a bargain for the serial
+publication of a story.  You will scarce believe that I did this in mere
+oblivion; but I did; and all that I can say is that I will do so no more,
+and ask you to forgive me.  Please write to me soon as to this.
+
+Will you oblige me by paying in for three articles, as already sent, to
+my account with John Paton & Co., 52 William Street?  This will be most
+convenient for us.
+
+The fourth article is nearly done; and I am the more deceived, or it is
+_A Buster_.
+
+Now as to the first thing in this letter, I do wish to hear from you
+soon; and I am prepared to hear any reproach, or (what is harder to hear)
+any forgiveness; for I have deserved the worst.—Yours sincerely,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+                                               _Saranac_, _November_ 1887.
+
+DEAR MR. BURLINGAME,—I enclose corrected proof of _Beggars_, which seems
+good.  I mean to make a second sermon, which, if it is about the same
+length as _Pulvis et Umbra_, might go in along with it as two sermons, in
+which case I should call the first ‘The Whole Creation,’ and the second
+‘Any Good.’  We shall see; but you might say how you like the notion.
+
+One word: if you have heard from Mr. Scribner of my unhappy oversight in
+the matter of a story, you will make me ashamed to write to you, and yet
+I wish to beg you to help me into quieter waters.  The oversight
+committed—and I do think it was not so bad as Mr. Scribner seems to think
+it-and discovered, I was in a miserable position.  I need not tell you
+that my first impulse was to offer to share or to surrender the price
+agreed upon when it should fall due; and it is almost to my credit that I
+arranged to refrain.  It is one of these positions from which there is no
+escape; I cannot undo what I have done.  And I wish to beg you—should Mr.
+Scribner speak to you in the matter—to try to get him to see this neglect
+of mine for no worse than it is: unpardonable enough, because a breach of
+an agreement; but still pardonable, because a piece of sheer carelessness
+and want of memory, done, God knows, without design and since most
+sincerely regretted.  I have no memory.  You have seen how I omitted to
+reserve the American rights in _Jekyll_: last winter I wrote and
+demanded, as an increase, a less sum than had already been agreed upon
+for a story that I gave to Cassell’s.  For once that my forgetfulness
+has, by a cursed fortune, seemed to gain, instead of lose, me money, it
+is painful indeed that I should produce so poor an impression on the mind
+of Mr. Scribner.  But I beg you to believe, and if possible to make him
+believe, that I am in no degree or sense a _faiseur_, and that in matters
+of business my design, at least, is honest.  Nor (bating bad memory and
+self-deception) am I untruthful in such affairs.
+
+If Mr. Scribner shall have said nothing to you in the matter, please
+regard the above as unwritten, and believe me, yours very truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+                                               _Saranac_, _November_ 1887.
+
+DEAR MR. BURLINGAME,—The revise seemed all right, so I did not trouble
+you with it; indeed, my demand for one was theatrical, to impress that
+obdurate dog, your reader.  Herewith a third paper: it has been a cruel
+long time upon the road, but here it is, and not bad at last, I fondly
+hope.  I was glad you liked the _Lantern Bearers_; I did, too.  I thought
+it was a good paper, really contained some excellent sense, and was
+ingeniously put together.  I have not often had more trouble than I have
+with these papers; thirty or forty pages of foul copy, twenty is the very
+least I have had.  Well, you pay high; it is fit that I should have to
+work hard, it somewhat quiets my conscience.—Yours very truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO J. A. SYMONDS
+
+
+                                   _Saranac Lake_, _Adirondack Mountains_,
+                                _New York_, _U.S.A._, _November_ 21, 1887.
+
+MY DEAR SYMONDS,—I think we have both meant and wanted to write to you
+any time these months; but we have been much tossed about, among new
+faces and old, and new scenes and old, and scenes (like this of Saranac)
+which are neither one nor other.  To give you some clue to our affairs, I
+had best begin pretty well back.  We sailed from the Thames in a vast
+bucket of iron that took seventeen days from shore to shore.  I cannot
+describe how I enjoyed the voyage, nor what good it did me; but on the
+Banks I caught friend catarrh.  In New York and then in Newport I was
+pretty ill; but on my return to New York, lying in bed most of the time,
+with St. Gaudens the sculptor sculping me, and my old friend Low around,
+I began to pick up once more.  Now here we are in a kind of wilderness of
+hills and firwoods and boulders and snow and wooden houses.  So far as we
+have gone the climate is grey and harsh, but hungry and somnolent; and
+although not charming like that of Davos, essentially bracing and
+briskening.  The country is a kind of insane mixture of Scotland and a
+touch of Switzerland and a dash of America, and a thought of the British
+Channel in the skies.  We have a decent house—
+
+                                                         _December_ 6_th_.
+
+—A decent house, as I was saying, sir, on a hill-top, with a look down a
+Scottish river in front, and on one hand a Perthshire hill; on the other,
+the beginnings and skirts of the village play hide and seek among other
+hills.  We have been below zero, I know not how far (10 at 8 A.M. once),
+and when it is cold it is delightful; but hitherto the cold has not held,
+and we have chopped in and out from frost to thaw, from snow to rain,
+from quiet air to the most disastrous north-westerly curdlers of the
+blood.  After a week of practical thaw, the ice still bears in favoured
+places.  So there is hope.
+
+I wonder if you saw my book of verses?  It went into a second edition,
+because of my name, I suppose, and its _prose_ merits.  I do not set up
+to be a poet.  Only an all-round literary man: a man who talks, not one
+who sings.  But I believe the very fact that it was only speech served
+the book with the public.  Horace is much a speaker, and see how popular!
+most of Martial is only speech, and I cannot conceive a person who does
+not love his Martial; most of Burns, also, such as ‘The Louse,’ ‘The
+Toothache,’ ‘The Haggis,’ and lots more of his best.  Excuse this little
+apology for my house; but I don’t like to come before people who have a
+note of song, and let it be supposed I do not know the difference.
+
+To return to the more important—news.  My wife again suffers in high and
+cold places; I again profit.  She is off to-day to New York for a change,
+as heretofore to Berne, but I am glad to say in better case than then.
+Still it is undeniable she suffers, and you must excuse her (at least) if
+we both prove bad correspondents.  I am decidedly better, but I have been
+terribly cut up with business complications: one disagreeable, as
+threatening loss; one, of the most intolerable complexion, as involving
+me in dishonour.  The burthen of consistent carelessness: I have lost
+much by it in the past; and for once (to my damnation) I have gained.  I
+am sure you will sympathise.  It is hard work to sleep; it is hard to be
+told you are a liar, and have to hold your peace, and think, ‘Yes, by
+God, and a thief too!’  You remember my lectures on Ajax, or the
+Unintentional Sin?  Well, I know all about that now.  Nothing seems so
+unjust to the sufferer: or is more just in essence.  _Laissez passer la
+justice de Dieu_.
+
+Lloyd has learned to use the typewriter, and has most gallantly completed
+upon that the draft of a tale, which seems to me not without merit and
+promise, it is so silly, so gay, so absurd, in spots (to my partial eyes)
+so genuinely humorous.  It is true, he would not have written it but for
+the New Arabian Nights; but it is strange to find a young writer funny.
+Heavens, but I was depressing when I took the pen in hand!  And now I
+doubt if I am sadder than my neighbours.  Will this beginner move in the
+inverse direction?
+
+Let me have your news, and believe me, my dear Symonds, with genuine
+affection, yours,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO W. E. HENLEY
+
+
+                                              _Saranac_ [_December_ 1887].
+
+MY DEAR LAD,—I was indeed overjoyed to hear of the Dumas.  In the matter
+of the dedication, are not cross dedications a little awkward?  Lang and
+Rider Haggard did it, to be sure.  Perpend.  And if you should conclude
+against a dedication, there is a passage in _Memories and Portraits_
+written _at_ you, when I was most desperate (to stir you up a bit), which
+might be quoted: something about Dumas still waiting his biographer.  I
+have a decent time when the weather is fine; when it is grey, or windy,
+or wet (as it too often is), I am merely degraded to the dirt.  I get
+some work done every day with a devil of a heave; not extra good ever;
+and I regret my engagement.  Whiles I have had the most deplorable
+business annoyances too; have been threatened with having to refund
+money; got over that; and found myself in the worse scrape of being a
+kind of unintentional swindler.  These have worried me a great deal; also
+old age with his stealing steps seems to have clawed me in his clutch to
+some tune.
+
+Do you play All Fours?  We are trying it; it is still all haze to me.
+Can the elder hand _beg_ more than once?  The Port Admiral is at Boston
+mingling with millionaires.  I am but a weed on Lethe wharf.  The wife is
+only so-so.  The Lord lead us all: if I can only get off the stage with
+clean hands, I shall sing Hosanna.  ‘Put’ is described quite differently
+from your version in a book I have; what are your rules?  The Port
+Admiral is using a game of put in a tale of his, the first copy of which
+was gloriously finished about a fortnight ago, and the revise gallantly
+begun: _The Finsbury Tontine_ it is named, and might fill two volumes,
+and is quite incredibly silly, and in parts (it seems to me) pretty
+humorous.—Love to all from
+
+                                                          AN OLD, OLD MAN.
+
+I say, Taine’s _Origines de la France Contemporaine_ is no end; it would
+turn the dead body of Charles Fox into a living Tory.
+
+
+
+TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN
+
+
+                                        [_Saranac Lake_, _December_ 1887.]
+
+MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN,—The Opal is very well; it is fed with glycerine when
+it seems hungry.  I am very well, and get about much more than I could
+have hoped.  My wife is not very well; there is no doubt the high level
+does not agree with her, and she is on the move for a holiday to New
+York.  Lloyd is at Boston on a visit, and I hope has a good time.  My
+mother is really first-rate; she and I, despairing of other games for
+two, now play All Fours out of a gamebook, and have not yet discovered
+its niceties, if any.
+
+You will have heard, I dare say, that they made a great row over me here.
+They also offered me much money, a great deal more than my works are
+worth: I took some of it, and was greedy and hasty, and am now very
+sorry.  I have done with big prices from now out.  Wealth and
+self-respect seem, in my case, to be strangers.
+
+We were talking the other day of how well Fleeming managed to grow rich.
+Ah, that is a rare art; something more intellectual than a virtue.  The
+book has not yet made its appearance here; the life alone, with a little
+preface, is to appear in the States; and the Scribners are to send you
+half the royalties.  I should like it to do well, for Fleeming’s sake.
+
+Will you please send me the Greek water-carrier’s song?  I have a
+particular use for it.
+
+Have I any more news, I wonder?—and echo wonders along with me.  I am
+strangely disquieted on all political matters; and I do not know if it is
+‘the signs of the times’ or the sign of my own time of life.  But to me
+the sky seems black both in France and England, and only partly clear in
+America.  I have not seen it so dark in my time; of that I am sure.
+
+Please let us have some news; and, excuse me, for the sake of my
+well-known idleness; and pardon Fanny, who is really not very well, for
+this long silence.—Very sincerely your friend,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
+
+
+                                        [_Saranac Lake_, _December_ 1887.]
+
+MY DEAR MISS BOODLE,—I am so much afraid, our gamekeeper may weary of
+unacknowledged reports!  Hence, in the midst of a perfect horror of
+detestable weathers of a quite incongruous strain, and with less desire
+for correspondence than—well, than—well, with no desire for
+correspondence, behold me dash into the breach.  Do keep up your letters.
+They are most delightful to this exiled backwoods family; and in your
+next, we shall hope somehow or other to hear better news of you and
+yours—that in the first place—and to hear more news of our beasts and
+birds and kindly fruits of earth and those human tenants who are (truly)
+too much with us.
+
+I am very well; better than for years: that is for good.  But then my
+wife is no great shakes; the place does not suit her—it is my private
+opinion that no place does—and she is now away down to New York for a
+change, which (as Lloyd is in Boston) leaves my mother and me and
+Valentine alone in our wind-beleaguered hilltop hatbox of a house.  You
+should hear the cows butt against the walls in the early morning while
+they feed; you should also see our back log when the thermometer goes (as
+it does go) away—away below zero, till it can be seen no more by the eye
+of man—not the thermometer, which is still perfectly visible, but the
+mercury, which curls up into the bulb like a hibernating bear; you should
+also see the lad who ‘does chores’ for us, with his red stockings and his
+thirteen year old face, and his highly manly tramp into the room; and his
+two alternative answers to all questions about the weather: either
+‘Cold,’ or with a really lyrical movement of the voice,
+‘_Lovely_—raining!’
+
+Will you take this miserable scarp for what it is worth?  Will you also
+understand that I am the man to blame, and my wife is really almost too
+much out of health to write, or at least doesn’t write?—And believe me,
+with kind remembrance to Mrs. Boodle and your sisters, very sincerely
+yours,
+
+                                                    ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                                         _Saranac_, 12_th_ _December_ ’87.
+
+Give us news of all your folk.  A Merry Christmas from all of us.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—Will you please send £20 to — for a Christmas gift from
+—?  Moreover, I cannot remember what I told you to send to —; but as God
+has dealt so providentially with me this year, I now propose to make it
+£20.
+
+I beg of you also to consider my strange position.  I jined a club which
+it was said was to defend the Union; and had a letter from the secretary,
+which his name I believe was Lord Warmingpan (or words to that effect),
+to say I am elected, and had better pay up a certain sum of money, I
+forget what.  Now I cannae verra weel draw a blank cheque and send to—
+
+                LORD WARMINGPAN (or words to that effect),
+                             London, England.
+
+And, man, if it was possible, I would be dooms glad to be out o’ this bit
+scrapie.  Mebbe the club was ca’d ‘The Union,’ but I wouldnae like to
+sweir; and mebbe it wasnae, or mebbe only words to that effec’—but I
+wouldnae care just exac’ly about sweirin’.  Do ye no think Henley, or
+Pollick, or some o’ they London fellies, micht mebbe perhaps find out for
+me? and just what the soom was?  And that you would aiblins pay for me?
+For I thocht I was sae dam patriotic jinin’, and it would be a kind o’ a
+come-doun to be turned out again.  Mebbe Lang would ken; or mebbe Rider
+Haggyard: they’re kind o’ Union folks.  But it’s my belief his name was
+Warmingpan whatever. Yours,
+
+                                                                  THOMSON,
+                                           _alias_ ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+Could it be Warminster? {83}
+
+
+
+TO MISS MONROE
+
+
+                         _Saranac Lake_, _New York_ [_December_ 19, 1887].
+
+DEAR MISS MONROE,—Many thanks for your letter and your good wishes.  It
+was much my desire to get to Chicago: had I done—or if I yet do—so, I
+shall hope to see the original of my photograph, which is one of my show
+possessions; but the fates are rather contrary.  My wife is far from
+well; I myself dread worse than almost any other imaginable peril, that
+miraculous and really insane invention the American Railroad Car.  Heaven
+help the man—may I add the woman—that sets foot in one!  Ah, if it were
+only an ocean to cross, it would be a matter of small thought to me—and
+great pleasure.  But the railroad car—every man has his weak point; and I
+fear the railroad car as abjectly as I do an earwig, and, on the whole,
+on better grounds.  You do not know how bitter it is to have to make such
+a confession; for you have not the pretension nor the weakness of a man.
+If I do get to Chicago, you will hear of me: so much can be said.  And do
+you never come east?
+
+I was pleased to recognise a word of my poor old Deacon in your letter.
+It would interest me very much to hear how it went and what you thought
+of piece and actors; and my collaborator, who knows and respects the
+photograph, would be pleased too.—Still in the hope of seeing you, I am,
+yours very truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+                                          _Saranac Lake_, _Winter_ 1887–8.
+
+MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,—It may please you to know how our family has been
+employed.  In the silence of the snow the afternoon lamp has lighted an
+eager fireside group: my mother reading, Fanny, Lloyd, and I devoted
+listeners; and the work was really one of the best works I ever heard;
+and its author is to be praised and honoured; and what do you suppose is
+the name of it? and have you ever read it yourself? and (I am bound I
+will get to the bottom of the page before I blow the gaff, if I have to
+fight it out on this line all summer; for if you have not to turn a leaf,
+there can be no suspense, the conspectory eye being swift to pick out
+proper names; and without suspense, there can be little pleasure in this
+world, to my mind at least)—and, in short, the name of it is _Roderick
+Hudson_, if you please.  My dear James, it is very spirited, and very
+sound, and very noble too.  Hudson, Mrs. Hudson, Rowland, O, all
+first-rate: Rowland a very fine fellow; Hudson as good as he can stick
+(did you know Hudson?  I suspect you did), Mrs. H. his real born mother,
+a thing rarely managed in fiction.
+
+We are all keeping pretty fit and pretty hearty; but this letter is not
+from me to you, it is from a reader of _R. H._ to the author of the same,
+and it says nothing, and has nothing to say, but thank you.
+
+We are going to re-read _Casamassima_ as a proper pendant.  Sir, I think
+these two are your best, and care not who knows it.
+
+May I beg you, the next time _Roderick_ is printed off, to go over the
+sheets of the last few chapters, and strike out ‘immense’ and
+‘tremendous’?  You have simply dropped them there like your
+pocket-handkerchief; all you have to do is to pick them up and pouch
+them, and your room—what do I say?—your cathedral!—will be swept and
+garnished.—I am, dear sir, your delighted reader,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+_P.S._—Perhaps it is a pang of causeless honesty, perhaps.  I hope it
+will set a value on my praise of _Roderick_, perhaps it’s a burst of the
+diabolic, but I must break out with the news that I can’t bear the
+_Portrait of a Lady_.  I read it all, and I wept too; but I can’t stand
+your having written it; and I beg you will write no more of the like.
+_Infra_, sir; Below you: I can’t help it—it may be your favourite work,
+but in my eyes it’s BELOW YOU to write and me to read.  I thought
+_Roderick_ was going to be another such at the beginning; and I cannot
+describe my pleasure as I found it taking bones and blood, and looking
+out at me with a moved and human countenance, whose lineaments are
+written in my memory until my last of days.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+My wife begs your forgiveness; I believe for her silence.
+
+                     [Picture: Manuscript of letter]
+
+                     [Picture: Manuscript of letter]
+
+
+
+TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+                                         _Saranac Lake_ [_December_ 1887].
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN,—This goes to say that we are all fit, and the place is
+very bleak and wintry, and up to now has shown no such charms of climate
+as Davos, but is a place where men eat and where the cattarh, catarrh
+(cattarrh, or cattarrhh) appears to be unknown.  I walk in my verandy in
+the snaw, sir, looking down over one of those dabbled wintry landscapes
+that are (to be frank) so chilly to the human bosom, and up at a grey,
+English—nay, _mehercle_, Scottish—heaven; and I think it pretty bleak;
+and the wind swoops at me round the corner, like a lion, and fluffs the
+snow in my face; and I could aspire to be elsewhere; but yet I do not
+catch cold, and yet, when I come in, I eat.  So that hitherto Saranac, if
+not deliriously delectable, has not been a failure; nay, from the mere
+point of view of the wicked body, it has proved a success.  But I wish I
+could still get to the woods; alas, _nous n’irons plus au bois_ is my
+poor song; the paths are buried, the dingles drifted full, a little walk
+is grown a long one; till spring comes, I fear the burthen will hold
+good.
+
+I get along with my papers for _Scribner_ not fast, nor so far specially
+well; only this last, the fourth one (which makes a third part of my
+whole task), I do believe is pulled off after a fashion.  It is a mere
+sermon: ‘Smith opens out’; {86} but it is true, and I find it touching
+and beneficial, to me at least; and I think there is some fine writing in
+it, some very apt and pregnant phrases.  _Pulvis et Umbra_, I call it; I
+might have called it a Darwinian Sermon, if I had wanted.  Its
+sentiments, although parsonic, will not offend even you, I believe.  The
+other three papers, I fear, bear many traces of effort, and the ungenuine
+inspiration of an income at so much per essay, and the honest desire of
+the incomer to give good measure for his money.  Well, I did my damndest
+anyway.
+
+We have been reading H. James’s _Roderick Hudson_, which I eagerly press
+you to get at once: it is a book of a high order—the last volume in
+particular.  I wish Meredith would read it.  It took my breath away.
+
+I am at the seventh book of the _Æneid_, and quite amazed at its merits
+(also very often floored by its difficulties).  The Circe passage at the
+beginning, and the sublime business of Amata with the simile of the boy’s
+top—O Lord, what a happy thought!—have specially delighted me.—I am, dear
+sir, your respected friend,
+
+                                  JOHN GREGG GILLSON, J.P., M.R.I.A., etc.
+
+
+
+TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+                                         [_Saranac_, _December_ 24, 1887.]
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN,—Thank you for your explanations.  I have done no more
+Virgil since I finished the seventh book, for I have, first been eaten up
+with Taine, and next have fallen head over heels into a new tale, _The
+Master of Ballantrae_.  No thought have I now apart from it, and I have
+got along up to page ninety-two of the draft with great interest.  It is
+to me a most seizing tale: there are some fantastic elements; the most is
+a dead genuine human problem—human tragedy, I should say rather.  It will
+be about as long, I imagine, as _Kidnapped_.
+
+                            DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
+
+  (1) My old Lord Durrisdeer.
+
+  (2) The Master of Ballantrae, _and_
+
+  (3) Henry Durie, _his sons_.
+
+  (4) Clementina, _engaged to the first_, _married to the second_.
+
+  (5) Ephraim Mackellar, _land steward at Durrisdeer and narrator of the
+  most of the book_.
+
+  (6) Francis Burke, Chevalier de St. Louis, _one of Prince Charlie’s
+  Irishmen and narrator of the rest_.
+
+Besides these, many instant figures, most of them dumb or nearly so:
+Jessie Brown the whore, Captain Crail, Captain MacCombie, our old friend
+Alan Breck, our old friend Riach (both only for an instant), Teach the
+pirate (vulgarly Blackbeard), John Paul and Macconochie, servants at
+Durrisdeer.  The date is from 1745 to ’65 (about).  The scene, near
+Kirkcudbright, in the States, and for a little moment in the French East
+Indies.  I have done most of the big work, the quarrel, duel between the
+brothers, and announcement of the death to Clementina and my
+Lord—Clementina, Henry, and Mackellar (nicknamed Squaretoes) are really
+very fine fellows; the Master is all I know of the devil.  I have known
+hints of him, in the world, but always cowards; he is as bold as a lion,
+but with the same deadly, causeless duplicity I have watched with so much
+surprise in my two cowards.  ’Tis true, I saw a hint of the same nature
+in another man who was not a coward; but he had other things to attend
+to; the Master has nothing else but his devilry.  Here come my
+visitors—and have now gone, or the first relay of them; and I hope no
+more may come.  For mark you, sir, this is our ‘day’—Saturday, as ever
+was, and here we sit, my mother and I, before a large wood fire and await
+the enemy with the most steadfast courage; and without snow and greyness:
+and the woman Fanny in New York for her health, which is far from good;
+and the lad Lloyd at the inn in the village because he has a cold; and
+the handmaid Valentine abroad in a sleigh upon her messages; and
+to-morrow Christmas and no mistake.  Such is human life: _la carrière
+humaine_.  I will enclose, if I remember, the required autograph.
+
+I will do better, put it on the back of this page.  Love to all, and
+mostly, my very dear Colvin, to yourself.  For whatever I say or do, or
+don’t say or do, you may be very sure I am,—Yours always affectionately,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
+
+
+        _Saranac Lake_, _Adirondacks_, _N.Y._, _U.S.A._, _Christmas_ 1887.
+
+MY DEAR MISS BOODLE,—And a very good Christmas to you all; and better
+fortune; and if worse, the more courage to support it—which I think is
+the kinder wish in all human affairs.  Somewhile—I fear a good
+while—after this, you should receive our Christmas gift; we have no tact
+and no taste, only a welcome and (often) tonic brutality; and I dare say
+the present, even after my friend Baxter has acted on and reviewed my
+hints, may prove a White Elephant.  That is why I dread presents.  And
+therefore pray understand if any element of that hamper prove unwelcome,
+_it is to be exchanged_.  I will not sit down under the name of a giver
+of White Elephants.  I never had any elephant but one, and his initials
+were R. L. S.; and he trod on my foot at a very early age.  But this is a
+fable, and not in the least to the point: which is that if, for once in
+my life, I have wished to make things nicer for anybody but the Elephant
+(see fable), do not suffer me to have made them ineffably more
+embarrassing, and exchange—ruthlessly exchange!
+
+For my part, I am the most cockered up of any mortal being; and one of
+the healthiest, or thereabout, at some modest distance from the bull’s
+eye.  I am condemned to write twelve articles in _Scribner’s Magazine_
+for the love of gain; I think I had better send you them; what is far
+more to the purpose, I am on the jump with a new story which has
+bewitched me—I doubt it may bewitch no one else.  It is called _The
+Master of Ballantrae_—pronounce Bällän-tray.  If it is not good, well,
+mine will be the fault; for I believe it is a good tale.
+
+The greetings of the season to you, and your mother, and your sisters.
+My wife heartily joins.—And I am, yours very sincerely,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+_P.S._—You will think me an illiterate dog: I am, for the first time,
+reading _Robertson’s Sermons_.  I do not know how to express how much I
+think of them.  If by any chance you should be as illiterate as I, and
+not know them, it is worth while curing the defect.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                                            _Saranac Lake_, _January_ ’88.
+
+DEAR CHARLES,—You are the flower of Doers. . . . Will my doer collaborate
+thus much in my new novel?  In the year 1794 or 5, Mr. Ephraim Mackellar,
+A.M., late steward on the Durrisdeer estates, completed a set of
+memoranda (as long as a novel) with regard to the death of the (then)
+late Lord Durrisdeer, and as to that of his attainted elder brother,
+called by the family courtesy title the Master of Ballantrae.  These he
+placed in the hands of John Macbrair.  W.S., the family agent, on the
+understanding they were to be sealed until 1862, when a century would
+have elapsed since the affair in the wilderness (my lord’s death).  You
+succeeded Mr. Macbrair’s firm; the Durrisdeers are extinct; and last
+year, in an old green box, you found these papers with Macbrair’s
+indorsation.  It is that indorsation of which I want a copy; you may
+remember, when you gave me the papers, I neglected to take that, and I am
+sure you are a man too careful of antiquities to have let it fall aside.
+I shall have a little introduction descriptive of my visit to Edinburgh,
+arrival there, denner with yoursel’, and first reading of the papers in
+your smoking-room: all of which, of course, you well remember.—Ever yours
+affectionately,
+
+                                                                   R. L S.
+
+Your name is my friend Mr. Johnstone Thomson, W.S.!!!
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+                                               _Saranac_, _Winter_ 1887–8.
+
+DEAR MR. BURLINGAME,—I am keeping the sermon to see if I can’t add
+another.  Meanwhile, I will send you very soon a different paper which
+may take its place.  Possibly some of these days soon I may get together
+a talk on things current, which should go in (if possible) earlier than
+either.  I am now less nervous about these papers; I believe I can do the
+trick without great strain, though the terror that breathed on my back in
+the beginning is not yet forgotten.
+
+_The Master of Ballantrae_ I have had to leave aside, as I was quite
+worked out.  But in about a week I hope to try back and send you the
+first four numbers: these are all drafted, it is only the revision that
+has broken me down, as it is often the hardest work.  These four I
+propose you should set up for me at once, and we’ll copyright ’em in a
+pamphlet.  I will tell you the names of the _bona fide_ purchasers in
+England.
+
+The numbers will run from twenty to thirty pages of my manuscript.  You
+can give me that much, can you not?  It is a howling good tale—at least
+these first four numbers are; the end is a trifle more fantastic, but
+’tis all picturesque.
+
+Don’t trouble about any more French books; I am on another scent, you
+see, just now.  Only the _French in Hindustan_ I await with impatience,
+as that is for _Ballantrae_.  The scene of that romance is Scotland—the
+States—Scotland—India—Scotland—and the States again; so it jumps like a
+flea.  I have enough about the States now, and very much obliged I am;
+yet if Drake’s _Tragedies of the Wilderness_ is (as I gather) a
+collection of originals, I should like to purchase it.  If it is a
+picturesque vulgarisation, I do not wish to look it in the face.
+Purchase, I say; for I think it would be well to have some such
+collection by me with a view to fresh works.—Yours very sincerely,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+_P.S._—If you think of having the _Master_ illustrated, I suggest that
+Hole would be very well up to the Scottish, which is the larger part.  If
+you have it done here, tell your artist to look at the hall of Craigievar
+in Billing’s _Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities_, and he will get a
+broad hint for the hall at Durrisdeer: it is, I think, the chimney of
+Craigievar and the roof of Pinkie, and perhaps a little more of Pinkie
+altogether; but I should have to see the book myself to be sure.  Hole
+would be invaluable for this.  I dare say if you had it illustrated, you
+could let me have one or two for the English edition.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO WILLIAM ARCHER
+
+
+                                             [_Saranac_, _Winter_ 1887–8.]
+
+MY DEAR ARCHER,—What am I to say?  I have read your friend’s book with
+singular relish.  If he has written any other, I beg you will let me see
+it; and if he has not, I beg him to lose no time in supplying the
+deficiency.  It is full of promise; but I should like to know his age.
+There are things in it that are very clever, to which I attach small
+importance; it is the shape of the age.  And there are passages,
+particularly the rally in presence of the Zulu king, that show genuine
+and remarkable narrative talent—a talent that few will have the wit to
+understand, a talent of strength, spirit, capacity, sufficient vision,
+and sufficient self-sacrifice, which last is the chief point in a
+narrator.
+
+As a whole, it is (of course) a fever dream of the most feverish.  Over
+Bashville the footman I howled with derision and delight; I dote on
+Bashville—I could read of him for ever; _de Bashville je suis le
+fervent_—there is only one Bashville, and I am his devoted slave;
+_Bashville est magnifique_, _mais il n’est guère possible_.  He is the
+note of the book.  It is all mad, mad and deliriously delightful; the
+author has a taste in chivalry like Walter Scott’s or Dumas’, and then he
+daubs in little bits of socialism; he soars away on the wings of the
+romantic griffon—even the griffon, as he cleaves air, shouting with
+laughter at the nature of the quest—and I believe in his heart he thinks
+he is labouring in a quarry of solid granite realism.
+
+It is this that makes me—the most hardened adviser now extant—stand back
+and hold my peace.  If Mr. Shaw is below five-and-twenty, let him go his
+path; if he is thirty, he had best be told that he is a romantic, and
+pursue romance with his eyes open;—or perhaps he knows it;—God knows!—my
+brain is softened.
+
+It is HORRID FUN.  All I ask is more of it.  Thank you for the pleasure
+you gave us, and tell me more of the inimitable author.
+
+(I say, Archer, my God, what women!)—Yours very truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO WILLIAM ARCHER
+
+
+                                               _Saranac_, _February_ 1888.
+
+MY DEAR ARCHER,—Pretty sick in bed; but necessary to protest and continue
+your education.
+
+Why was Jenkin an amateur in my eyes?  You think because not amusing (I
+think he often was amusing).  The reason is this: I never, or almost
+never, saw two pages of his work that I could not have put in one without
+the smallest loss of material.  That is the only test I know of writing.
+If there is anywhere a thing said in two sentences that could have been
+as clearly and as engagingly and as forcibly said in one, then it’s
+amateur work.  Then you will bring me up with old Dumas.  Nay, the object
+of a story is to be long, to fill up hours; the story-teller’s art of
+writing is to water out by continual invention, historical and technical,
+and yet not seem to water; seem on the other hand to practise that same
+wit of conspicuous and declaratory condensation which is the proper art
+of writing.  That is one thing in which my stories fail: I am always
+cutting the flesh off their bones.
+
+I would rise from the dead to preach!
+
+Hope all well.  I think my wife better, but she’s not allowed to write;
+and this (only wrung from me by desire to Boss and Parsonise and
+Dominate, strong in sickness) is my first letter for days, and will
+likely be my last for many more.  Not blame my wife for her silence:
+doctor’s orders.  All much interested by your last, and fragment from
+brother, and anecdotes of Tomarcher.—The sick but still Moral
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+Tell Shaw to hurry up: I want another.
+
+
+
+TO WILLIAM ARCHER
+
+
+                                               [_Saranac_, _Spring_ 1888?]
+
+MY DEAR ARCHER,—It happened thus.  I came forth from that performance in
+a breathing heat of indignation.  (Mind, at this distance of time and
+with my increased knowledge, I admit there is a problem in the piece; but
+I saw none then, except a problem in brutality; and I still consider the
+problem in that case not established.)  On my way down the _Français_
+stairs, I trod on an old gentleman’s toes, whereupon with that suavity
+that so well becomes me, I turned about to apologise, and on the instant,
+repenting me of that intention, stopped the apology midway, and added
+something in French to this effect: No, you are one of the _lâches_ who
+have been applauding that piece.  I retract my apology.  Said the old
+Frenchman, laying his hand on my arm, and with a smile that was truly
+heavenly in temperance, irony, good-nature, and knowledge of the world,
+‘Ah, monsieur, vous êtes bien jeune!’—Yours very truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+                                              _Saranac_ [_February_ 1888].
+
+DEAR MR. BURLINGAME,—Will you send me (from the library) some of the
+works of my dear old G. P. R. James.  With the following especially I
+desire to make or to renew acquaintance: _The Songster_, _The Gipsy_,
+_The Convict_, _The Stepmother_, _The Gentleman of the Old School_, _The
+Robber_.
+
+_Excusez du peu_.
+
+This sudden return to an ancient favourite hangs upon an accident.  The
+‘Franklin County Library’ contains two works of his, _The Cavalier_ and
+_Morley Ernstein_.  I read the first with indescribable amusement—it was
+worse than I had feared, and yet somehow engaging; the second (to my
+surprise) was better than I had dared to hope: a good honest, dull,
+interesting tale, with a genuine old-fashioned talent in the invention
+when not strained; and a genuine old-fashioned feeling for the English
+language.  This experience awoke appetite, and you see I have taken steps
+to stay it.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+                                             [_Saranac_, _February_ 1888.]
+
+DEAR MR. BURLINGAME,—1.  Of course then don’t use it.  Dear Man, I write
+these to please you, not myself, and you know a main sight better than I
+do what is good.  In that case, however, I enclose another paper, and
+return the corrected proof of _Pulvis et Umbra_, so that we may be
+afloat.
+
+2.  I want to say a word as to the _Master_.  (_The Master of Ballantrae_
+shall be the name by all means.)  If you like and want it, I leave it to
+you to make an offer.  You may remember I thought the offer you made when
+I was still in England too small; by which I did not at all mean, I
+thought it less than it was worth, but too little to tempt me to undergo
+the disagreeables of serial publication.  This tale (if you want it) you
+are to have; for it is the least I can do for you; and you are to observe
+that the sum you pay me for my articles going far to meet my wants, I am
+quite open to be satisfied with less than formerly.  I tell you I do
+dislike this battle of the dollars.  I feel sure you all pay too much
+here in America; and I beg you not to spoil me any more.  For I am
+getting spoiled: I do not want wealth, and I feel these big sums
+demoralise me.
+
+My wife came here pretty ill; she had a dreadful bad night; to-day she is
+better.  But now Valentine is ill; and Lloyd and I have got breakfast,
+and my hand somewhat shakes after washing dishes.—Yours very sincerely,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+_P.S._—Please order me the _Evening Post_ for two months.  My
+subscription is run out.  The _Mutiny_ and _Edwardes_ to hand.
+
+
+
+TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+                                                [_Saranac_, _March_ 1888.]
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN,—Fanny has been very unwell.  She is not long home, has
+been ill again since her return, but is now better again to a degree.
+You must not blame her for not writing, as she is not allowed to write at
+all, not even a letter.  To add to our misfortunes, Valentine is quite
+ill and in bed.  Lloyd and I get breakfast; I have now, 10.15, just got
+the dishes washed and the kitchen all clear, and sit down to give you as
+much news as I have spirit for, after such an engagement.  Glass is a
+thing that really breaks my spirit: I do not like to fail, and with glass
+I cannot reach the work of my high calling—the artist’s.
+
+I am, as you may gather from this, wonderfully better: this harsh, grey,
+glum, doleful climate has done me good.  You cannot fancy how sad a
+climate it is.  When the thermometer stays all day below 10°, it is
+really cold; and when the wind blows, O commend me to the result.
+Pleasure in life is all delete; there is no red spot left, fires do not
+radiate, you burn your hands all the time on what seem to be cold stones.
+It is odd, zero is like summer heat to us now; and we like, when the
+thermometer outside is really low, a room at about 48°: 60° we find
+oppressive.  Yet the natives keep their holes at 90° or even 100°.
+
+This was interrupted days ago by household labours.  Since then I have
+had and (I tremble to write it, but it does seem as if I had) beaten off
+an influenza.  The cold is exquisite.  Valentine still in bed.  The
+proofs of the first part of the _Master of Ballantrae_ begin to come in;
+soon you shall have it in the pamphlet form; and I hope you will like it.
+The second part will not be near so good; but there—we can but do as
+it’ll do with us.  I have every reason to believe this winter has done me
+real good, so far as it has gone; and if I carry out my scheme for next
+winter, and succeeding years, I should end by being a tower of strength.
+I want you to save a good holiday for next winter; I hope we shall be
+able to help you to some larks.  Is there any Greek Isle you would like
+to explore? or any creek in Asia Minor?—Yours ever affectionately,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO THE REV. DR. CHARTERIS
+
+
+                                     [_Saranac Lake_, _Winter_ 1887–1888.]
+
+MY DEAR DR. CHARTERIS,—I have asked Douglas and Foulis to send you my
+last volume, so that you may possess my little paper on my father in a
+permanent shape; not for what that is worth, but as a tribute of respect
+to one whom my father regarded with such love, esteem, and affection.
+Besides, as you will see, I have brought you under contribution, and I
+have still to thank you for your letter to my mother; so more than kind;
+in much, so just.  It is my hope, when time and health permit, to do
+something more definite for my father’s memory.  You are one of the very
+few who can (if you will) help me.  Pray believe that I lay on you no
+obligation; I know too well, you may believe me, how difficult it is to
+put even two sincere lines upon paper, where all, too, is to order.  But
+if the spirit should ever move you, and you should recall something
+memorable of your friend, his son will heartily thank you for a note of
+it.—With much respect, believe me, yours sincerely,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+                                           [_Saranac Lake_, _March_ 1888.]
+
+MY DEAR DELIGHTFUL JAMES,—To quote your heading to my wife, I think no
+man writes so elegant a letter, I am sure none so kind, unless it be
+Colvin, and there is more of the stern parent about him.  I was vexed at
+your account of my admired Meredith: I wish I could go and see him; as it
+is I will try to write.  I read with indescribable admiration your
+_Emerson_.  I begin to long for the day when these portraits of yours
+shall be collected: do put me in.  But Emerson is a higher flight.  Have
+you a _Tourgueneff_?  You have told me many interesting things of him,
+and I seem to see them written, and forming a graceful and _bildend_
+sketch.  My novel is a tragedy; four parts out of six or seven are
+written, and gone to Burlingame.  Five parts of it are sound, human
+tragedy; the last one or two, I regret to say, not so soundly designed; I
+almost hesitate to write them; they are very picturesque, but they are
+fantastic; they shame, perhaps degrade, the beginning.  I wish I knew;
+that was how the tale came to me however.  I got the situation; it was an
+old taste of mine: The older brother goes out in the ’45, the younger
+stays; the younger, of course, gets title and estate and marries the
+bride designate of the elder—a family match, but he (the younger) had
+always loved her, and she had really loved the elder.  Do you see the
+situation?  Then the devil and Saranac suggested this _dénouement_, and I
+joined the two ends in a day or two of constant feverish thought, and
+began to write.  And now—I wonder if I have not gone too far with the
+fantastic?  The elder brother is an INCUBUS: supposed to be killed at
+Culloden, he turns up again and bleeds the family of money; on that
+stopping he comes and lives with them, whence flows the real tragedy, the
+nocturnal duel of the brothers (very naturally, and indeed, I think,
+inevitably arising), and second supposed death of the elder.  Husband and
+wife now really make up, and then the cloven hoof appears.  For the third
+supposed death and the manner of the third reappearance is steep; steep,
+sir.  It is even very steep, and I fear it shames the honest stuff so
+far; but then it is highly pictorial, and it leads up to the death of the
+elder brother at the hands of the younger in a perfectly cold-blooded
+murder, of which I wish (and mean) the reader to approve.  You see how
+daring is the design.  There are really but six characters, and one of
+these episodic, and yet it covers eighteen years, and will be, I imagine,
+the longest of my works.—Yours ever,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+_Read Gosse’s Raleigh_.  First-rate.—Yours ever,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO THE REV. DR. CHARTERIS
+
+
+                                            _Saranac Lake_, _Adirondacks_,
+                                      _New York_, _U.S.A._, _Spring_ 1888.
+
+MY DEAR DR. CHARTERIS,—The funeral letter, your notes, and many other
+things, are reserved for a book, _Memorials of a Scottish Family_, if
+ever I can find time and opportunity.  I wish I could throw off all else
+and sit down to it to-day.  Yes, my father was a ‘distinctly religious
+man,’ but not a pious.  The distinction painfully and pleasurably recalls
+old conflicts; it used to be my great gun—and you, who suffered for the
+whole Church, know how needful it was to have some reserve artillery!
+His sentiments were tragic; he was a tragic thinker.  Now, granted that
+life is tragic to the marrow, it seems the proper function of religion to
+make us accept and serve in that tragedy, as officers in that other and
+comparable one of war.  Service is the word, active service, in the
+military sense; and the religious man—I beg pardon, the pious man—is he
+who has a military joy in duty—not he who weeps over the wounded.  We can
+do no more than try to do our best.  Really, I am the grandson of the
+manse—I preach you a kind of sermon.  Box the brat’s ears!
+
+My mother—to pass to matters more within my competence—finely enjoys
+herself.  The new country, some new friends we have made, the interesting
+experiment of this climate-which (at least) is tragic—all have done her
+good.  I have myself passed a better winter than for years, and now that
+it is nearly over have some diffident hopes of doing well in the summer
+and ‘eating a little more air’ than usual.
+
+I thank you for the trouble you are taking, and my mother joins with me
+in kindest regards to yourself and Mrs. Charteris.—Yours very truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO S. R. CROCKETT
+
+
+                                          [_Saranac Lake_, _Spring_ 1888.]
+
+DEAR MINISTER OF THE FREE KIRK AT PENICUIK,—For O, man, I cannae read
+your name!—That I have been so long in answering your delightful letter
+sits on my conscience badly.  The fact is I let my correspondence
+accumulate until I am going to leave a place; and then I pitch in,
+overhaul the pile, and my cries of penitence might be heard a mile about.
+Yesterday I despatched thirty-five belated letters: conceive the state of
+my conscience, above all as the Sins of Omission (see boyhood’s guide,
+the Shorter Catechism) are in my view the only serious ones; I call it my
+view, but it cannot have escaped you that it was also Christ’s.  However,
+all that is not to the purpose, which is to thank you for the sincere
+pleasure afforded by your charming letter.  I get a good few such; how
+few that please me at all, you would be surprised to learn—or have a
+singularly just idea of the dulness of our race; how few that please me
+as yours did, I can tell you in one word—_None_.  I am no great kirkgoer,
+for many reasons—and the sermon’s one of them, and the first prayer
+another, but the chief and effectual reason is the stuffiness.  I am no
+great kirkgoer, says I, but when I read yon letter of yours, I thought I
+would like to sit under ye.  And then I saw ye were to send me a bit
+buik, and says I, I’ll wait for the bit buik, and then I’ll mebbe can
+read the man’s name, and anyway I’ll can kill twa birds wi’ ae stane.
+And, man! the buik was ne’er heard tell o’!
+
+That fact is an adminicle of excuse for my delay.
+
+And now, dear minister of the illegible name, thanks to you, and greeting
+to your wife, and may you have good guidance in your difficult labours,
+and a blessing on your life.
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+              (No just so young sae young’s he was, though—
+                       I’m awfae near forty, man.)
+
+                                      Address c/o CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS,
+                                                   743 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.
+
+Don’t put ‘N.B.’ in your paper: put _Scotland_, and be done with it.
+Alas, that I should be thus stabbed in the home of my friends!  The name
+of my native land is not _North Britain_, whatever may be the name of
+yours.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO MISS FERRIER
+
+
+                                           [_Saranac Lake_, _April_ 1888.]
+
+MY DEAREST COGGIE,—I wish I could find the letter I began to you some
+time ago when I was ill; but I can’t and I don’t believe there was much
+in it anyway.  We have all behaved like pigs and beasts and barn-door
+poultry to you; but I have been sunk in work, and the lad is lazy and
+blind and has been working too; and as for Fanny, she has been (and still
+is) really unwell.  I had a mean hope you might perhaps write again
+before I got up steam: I could not have been more ashamed of myself than
+I am, and I should have had another laugh.
+
+They always say I cannot give news in my letters: I shall shake off that
+reproach.  On Monday, if she is well enough, Fanny leaves for California
+to see her friends; it is rather an anxiety to let her go alone; but the
+doctor simply forbids it in my case, and she is better anywhere than
+here—a bleak, blackguard, beggarly climate, of which I can say no good
+except that it suits me and some others of the same or similar
+persuasions whom (by all rights) it ought to kill.  It is a form of
+Arctic St. Andrews, I should imagine; and the miseries of forty degrees
+below zero, with a high wind, have to be felt to be appreciated.  The
+greyness of the heavens here is a circumstance eminently revolting to the
+soul; I have near forgot the aspect of the sun—I doubt if this be news;
+it is certainly no news to us.  My mother suffers a little from the
+inclemency of the place, but less on the whole than would be imagined.
+Among other wild schemes, we have been projecting yacht voyages; and I
+beg to inform you that Cogia Hassan was cast for the part of passenger.
+They may come off!—Again this is not news.  The lad?  Well, the lad wrote
+a tale this winter, which appeared to me so funny that I have taken it in
+hand, and some of these days you will receive a copy of a work entitled
+‘_A Game of Bluff_, by Lloyd Osbourne and Robert Louis Stevenson.’
+
+Otherwise he (the lad) is much as usual.  There remains, I believe, to be
+considered only R. L. S., the house-bond, prop, pillar, bread-winner, and
+bully of the establishment.  Well, I do think him much better; he is
+making piles of money; the hope of being able to hire a yacht ere long
+dances before his eyes; otherwise he is not in very high spirits at this
+particular moment, though compared with last year at Bournemouth an angel
+of joy.
+
+And now is this news, Cogia, or is it not?  It all depends upon the point
+of view, and I call it news.  The devil of it is that I can think of
+nothing else, except to send you all our loves, and to wish exceedingly
+you were here to cheer us all up.  But we’ll see about that on board the
+yacht.—Your affectionate friend,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+                                    [_Saranac Lake_], _April_ 9_th_!! 1888
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN,—I have been long without writing to you, but am not to
+blame, I had some little annoyances quite for a private eye, but they ran
+me so hard that I could not write without lugging them in, which (for
+several reasons) I did not choose to do.  Fanny is off to San Francisco,
+and next week I myself flit to New York: address Scribner’s.  Where we
+shall go I know not, nor (I was going to say) care; so bald and bad is my
+frame of mind.  Do you know our—ahem!—fellow clubman, Colonel Majendie?
+I had such an interesting letter from him.  Did you see my sermon?  It
+has evoked the worst feeling: I fear people don’t care for the truth, or
+else I don’t tell it.  Suffer me to wander without purpose.  I have sent
+off twenty letters to-day, and begun and stuck at a twenty-first, and
+taken a copy of one which was on business, and corrected several galleys
+of proof, and sorted about a bushel of old letters; so if any one has a
+right to be romantically stupid it is I—and I am.  Really deeply stupid,
+and at that stage when in old days I used to pour out words without any
+meaning whatever and with my mind taking no part in the performance.  I
+suspect that is now the case.  I am reading with extraordinary pleasure
+the life of Lord Lawrence: Lloyd and I have a mutiny novel—
+
+(_Next morning_, _after twelve other letters_)—mutiny novel on hand—a
+tremendous work—so we are all at Indian books.  The idea of the novel is
+Lloyd’s: I call it a novel.  ’Tis a tragic romance, of the most tragic
+sort: I believe the end will be almost too much for human endurance—when
+the hero is thrown to the ground with one of his own (Sepoy) soldier’s
+knees upon his chest, and the cries begin in the Beebeeghar.  O truly,
+you know it is a howler!  The whole last part is—well the difficulty is
+that, short of resuscitating Shakespeare, I don’t know who is to write
+it.
+
+I still keep wonderful.  I am a great performer before the Lord on the
+penny whistle.  Dear sir, sincerely yours,
+
+                                                           ANDREW JACKSON.
+
+
+
+TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
+
+
+                                           [_Saranac Lake_, _April_ 1888.]
+                                    _Address c/o Messrs. Scribner’s Sons_,
+                                                    743 _Broadway_, _N.Y._
+
+MY DEAR GAMEKEEPER,—Your p. c. (proving you a good student of Micawber)
+has just arrived, and it paves the way to something I am anxious to say.
+I wrote a paper the other day—_Pulvis et Umbra_;—I wrote it with great
+feeling and conviction: to me it seemed bracing and healthful, it is in
+such a world (so seen by me), that I am very glad to fight out my battle,
+and see some fine sunsets, and hear some excellent jests between whiles
+round the camp fire.  But I find that to some people this vision of mine
+is a nightmare, and extinguishes all ground of faith in God or pleasure
+in man.  Truth I think not so much of; for I do not know it.  And I could
+wish in my heart that I had not published this paper, if it troubles folk
+too much: all have not the same digestion, nor the same sight of things.
+And it came over me with special pain that perhaps this article (which I
+was at the pains to send to her) might give dismalness to my _Gamekeeper
+at Home_.  Well, I cannot take back what I have said; but yet I may add
+this.  If my view be everything but the nonsense that it may be—to me it
+seems self-evident and blinding truth—surely of all things it makes this
+world holier.  There is nothing in it but the moral side—but the great
+battle and the breathing times with their refreshments.  I see no more
+and no less.  And if you look again, it is not ugly, and it is filled
+with promise.
+
+Pray excuse a desponding author for this apology.  My wife is away off to
+the uttermost parts of the States, all by herself.  I shall be off, I
+hope, in a week; but where?  Ah! that I know not.  I keep wonderful, and
+my wife a little better, and the lad flourishing.  We now perform duets
+on two D tin whistles; it is no joke to make the bass; I think I must
+really send you one, which I wish you would correct . . . I may be said
+to live for these instrumental labours now, but I have always some
+childishness on hand.—I am, dear Gamekeeper, your indulgent but
+intemperate Squire,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+          _Union House_, _Manasquan_, _N.J._, _but address to Scribner’s_,
+                                                        11_th_ _May_ 1888.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—I have found a yacht, and we are going the full pitch
+for seven months.  If I cannot get my health back (more or less), ’tis
+madness; but, of course, there is the hope, and I will play big. . . . If
+this business fails to set me up, well, £2000 is gone, and I know I can’t
+get better.  We sail from San Francisco, June 15th, for the South Seas in
+the yacht _Casco_.—With a million thanks for all your dear friendliness,
+ever yours affectionately,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO HOMER ST. GAUDENS
+
+
+                             _Manasquan_, _New Jersey_, 27_th_ _May_ 1888.
+
+DEAR HOMER ST. GAUDENS,—Your father has brought you this day to see me,
+and he tells me it is his hope you may remember the occasion.  I am going
+to do what I can to carry out his wish; and it may amuse you, years
+after, to see this little scrap of paper and to read what I write.  I
+must begin by testifying that you yourself took no interest whatever in
+the introduction, and in the most proper spirit displayed a single-minded
+ambition to get back to play, and this I thought an excellent and
+admirable point in your character.  You were also (I use the past tense,
+with a view to the time when you shall read, rather than to that when I
+am writing) a very pretty boy, and (to my European views) startlingly
+self-possessed.  My time of observation was so limited that you must
+pardon me if I can say no more: what else I marked, what restlessness of
+foot and hand, what graceful clumsiness, what experimental designs upon
+the furniture, was but the common inheritance of human youth.  But you
+may perhaps like to know that the lean flushed man in bed, who interested
+you so little, was in a state of mind extremely mingled and unpleasant:
+harassed with work which he thought he was not doing well, troubled with
+difficulties to which you will in time succeed, and yet looking forward
+to no less a matter than a voyage to the South Seas and the visitation of
+savage and desert islands.—Your father’s friend,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+                  _Manasquan_ (_ahem_!), _New Jersey_, _May_ 28_th_, 1888.
+
+MY DEAR JAMES,—With what a torrent it has come at last!  Up to now, what
+I like best is the first number of a _London Life_.  You have never done
+anything better, and I don’t know if perhaps you have ever done anything
+so good as the girl’s outburst: tip-top.  I have been preaching your
+later works in your native land.  I had to present the Beltraffio volume
+to Low, and it has brought him to his knees; he was _amazed_ at the first
+part of Georgina’s Reasons, although (like me) not so well satisfied with
+Part II.  It is annoying to find the American public as stupid as the
+English, but they will waken up in time: I wonder what they will think of
+_Two Nations_? . . .
+
+This, dear James, is a valedictory.  On June 15th the schooner yacht
+_Casco_ will (weather and a jealous providence permitting) steam through
+the Golden Gates for Honolulu, Tahiti, the Galapagos, Guayaquil, and—I
+hope _not_ the bottom of the Pacific.  It will contain your obedient
+’umble servant and party.  It seems too good to be true, and is a very
+good way of getting through the green-sickness of maturity which, with
+all its accompanying ills, is now declaring itself in my mind and life.
+They tell me it is not so severe as that of youth; if I (and the _Casco_)
+are spared, I shall tell you more exactly, as I am one of the few people
+in the world who do not forget their own lives.
+
+Good-bye, then, my dear fellow, and please write us a word; we expect to
+have three mails in the next two months: Honolulu, Tahiti, and Guayaquil.
+But letters will be forwarded from Scribner’s, if you hear nothing more
+definite directly.  In 3 (three) days I leave for San Francisco.—Ever
+yours most cordially,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+
+X
+PACIFIC VOYAGES
+JUNE 1888-NOVEMBER 1890
+
+
+TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+                               _Yacht_ ‘_Casco_,’ _Anaho Bay_, _Nukahiva_,
+                                        _Marquesas Islands_ [_July_ 1888].
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN,—From this somewhat (ahem) out of the way place, I write
+to say how d’ye do.  It is all a swindle: I chose these isles as having
+the most beastly population, and they are far better, and far more
+civilised than we.  I know one old chief Ko-o-amua, a great cannibal in
+his day, who ate his enemies even as he walked home from killing ’em, and
+he is a perfect gentleman and exceedingly amiable and simple-minded: no
+fool, though.
+
+The climate is delightful; and the harbour where we lie one of the
+loveliest spots imaginable.  Yesterday evening we had near a score
+natives on board; lovely parties.  We have a native god; very rare now.
+Very rare and equally absurd to view.
+
+This sort of work is not favourable to correspondence: it takes me all
+the little strength I have to go about and see, and then come home and
+note, the strangeness around us.  I shouldn’t wonder if there came
+trouble here some day, all the same.  I could name a nation that is not
+beloved in certain islands—and it does not know it! {114}  Strange: like
+ourselves, perhaps, in India!  Love to all and much to yourself.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                         _Yacht_ ‘_Casco_,’ _at sea_, _near the Paumotus_,
+                   7 A.M., _September_ 6_th_, 1888, _with a dreadful pen_.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—Last night as I lay under my blanket in the cockpit,
+courting sleep, I had a comic seizure.  There was nothing visible but the
+southern stars, and the steersman there out by the binnacle lamp; we were
+all looking forward to a most deplorable landfall on the morrow, praying
+God we should fetch a tuft of palms which are to indicate the Dangerous
+Archipelago; the night was as warm as milk, and all of a sudden I had a
+vision of—Drummond Street.  It came on me like a flash of lightning: I
+simply returned thither, and into the past.  And when I remember all I
+hoped and feared as I pickled about Rutherford’s in the rain and the east
+wind; how I feared I should make a mere shipwreck, and yet timidly hoped
+not; how I feared I should never have a friend, far less a wife, and yet
+passionately hoped I might; how I hoped (if I did not take to drink) I
+should possibly write one little book, etc. etc.  And then now—what a
+change!  I feel somehow as if I should like the incident set upon a brass
+plate at the corner of that dreary thoroughfare for all students to read,
+poor devils, when their hearts are down.  And I felt I must write one
+word to you.  Excuse me if I write little: when I am at sea, it gives me
+a headache; when I am in port, I have my diary crying ‘Give, give.’  I
+shall have a fine book of travels, I feel sure; and will tell you more of
+the South Seas after very few months than any other writer has
+done—except Herman Melville perhaps, who is a howling cheese.  Good luck
+to you, God bless you.—Your affectionate friend,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+                  _Fakarava_, _Low Archipelago_, _September_ 21_st_, 1888.
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN,—Only a word.  Get out your big atlas, and imagine a
+straight line from San Francisco to Anaho, the N.E. corner of Nukahiva,
+one of the Marquesas Islands; imagine three weeks there: imagine a day’s
+sail on August 12th round the eastern end of the island to Tai-o-hae, the
+capital; imagine us there till August 22nd: imagine us skirt the east
+side of Ua-pu—perhaps Rona-Poa on your atlas—and through the Bondelais
+straits to Taaka-uku in Hiva-Oa, where we arrive on the 23rd; imagine us
+there until September 4th, when we sailed for Fakarava, which we reached
+on the 9th, after a very difficult and dangerous passage among these
+isles.  Tuesday, we shall leave for Taiti, where I shall knock off and do
+some necessary work ashore.  It looks pretty bald in the atlas; not in
+fact; nor I trust in the 130 odd pages of diary which I have just been
+looking up for these dates: the interest, indeed, has been _incredible_:
+I did not dream there were such places or such races.  My health has
+stood me splendidly; I am in for hours wading over the knees for shells;
+I have been five hours on horseback: I have been up pretty near all night
+waiting to see where the _Casco_ would go ashore, and with my diary all
+ready—simply the most entertaining night of my life.  Withal I still have
+colds; I have one now, and feel pretty sick too; but not as at home:
+instead of being in bed, for instance, I am at this moment sitting
+snuffling and writing in an undershirt and trousers; and as for colour,
+hands, arms, feet, legs, and face, I am browner than the berry: only my
+trunk and the aristocratic spot on which I sit retain the vile whiteness
+of the north.
+
+Please give my news and kind love to Henley, Henry James, and any whom
+you see of well-wishers.  Accept from me the very best of my affection:
+and believe me ever yours,
+
+                                                     THE OLD MAN VIRULENT.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                           _Taiti_, _October_ 7_th_, 1888.
+
+Never having found a chance to send this off, I may add more of my news.
+My cold took a very bad turn, and I am pretty much out of sorts at this
+particular, living in a little bare one-twentieth-furnished house,
+surrounded by mangoes, etc.  All the rest are well, and I mean to be
+soon.  But these Taiti colds are very severe and, to children, often
+fatal; so they were not the thing for me.  Yesterday the brigantine came
+in from San Francisco, so we can get our letters off soon.  There are in
+Papeete at this moment, in a little wooden house with grated verandahs,
+two people who love you very much, and one of them is
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                             _Taiti_, _as ever was_, 6_th_ _October_ 1888.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—. . . You will receive a lot of mostly very bad proofs
+of photographs: the paper was so bad.  Please keep them very private, as
+they are for the book.  We send them, having learned so dread a fear of
+the sea, that we wish to put our eggs in different baskets.  We have been
+thrice within an ace of being ashore: we were lost (!) for about twelve
+hours in the Low Archipelago, but by God’s blessing had quiet weather all
+the time; and once, in a squall, we cam’ so near gaun heels ower hurdies,
+that I really dinnae ken why we didnae athegither.  Hence, as I say, a
+great desire to put our eggs in different baskets, particularly on the
+Pacific (aw-haw-haw) Pacific Ocean.
+
+You can have no idea what a mean time we have had, owing to incidental
+beastlinesses, nor what a glorious, owing to the intrinsic interest of
+these isles.  I hope the book will be a good one; nor do I really very
+much doubt that—the stuff is so curious; what I wonder is, if the public
+will rise to it.  A copy of my journal, or as much of it as is made,
+shall go to you also; it is, of course, quite imperfect, much being to be
+added and corrected; but O, for the eggs in the different baskets.
+
+All the rest are well enough, and all have enjoyed the cruise so far, in
+spite of its drawbacks.  We have had an awfae time in some ways, Mr.
+Baxter; and if I wasnae sic a verra patient man (when I ken that I _have_
+to be) there wad hae been a braw row; and ance if I hadnae happened to be
+on deck about three in the marnin’, I _think_ there would have been
+_murder_ done.  The American Mairchant Marine is a kent service; ye’ll
+have heard its praise, I’m thinkin’; an’ if ye never did, ye can get _Twa
+Years Before the Mast_, by Dana, whaur forbye a great deal o’ pleisure,
+ye’ll get a’ the needcessary information.  Love to your father and all
+the family.—Ever your affectionate friend,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
+
+
+                                          _Taiti_, _October_ 10_th_, 1888.
+
+DEAR GIVER,—I am at a loss to conceive your object in giving me to a
+person so locomotory as my proprietor.  The number of thousand miles that
+I have travelled, the strange bed-fellows with which I have been made
+acquainted, I lack the requisite literary talent to make clear to your
+imagination.  I speak of bed-fellows; pocket-fellows would be a more
+exact expression, for the place of my abode is in my master’s righthand
+trouser-pocket; and there, as he waded on the resounding beaches of
+Nukahiva, or in the shallow tepid water on the reef of Fakarava, I have
+been overwhelmed by and buried among all manner of abominable South Sea
+shells, beautiful enough in their way, I make no doubt, but singular
+company for any self-respecting paper-cutter.  He, my master—or as I more
+justly call him, my bearer; for although I occasionally serve him, does
+not he serve me daily and all day long, carrying me like an African
+potentate on my subject’s legs?—_he_ is delighted with these isles, and
+this climate, and these savages, and a variety of other things.  He now
+blows a flageolet with singular effects: sometimes the poor thing appears
+stifled with shame, sometimes it screams with agony; he pursues his
+career with truculent insensibility.  Health appears to reign in the
+party.  I was very nearly sunk in a squall.  I am sorry I ever left
+England, for here there are no books to be had, and without books there
+is no stable situation for, dear Giver, your affectionate
+
+                                                      WOODEN PAPER-CUTTER.
+
+A neighbouring pair of scissors snips a kiss in your direction.
+
+
+
+TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+                                          _Taiti_, _October_ 16_th_, 1888.
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN,—The cruiser for San Francisco departs to-morrow morning
+bearing you some kind of a scratch.  This much more important packet will
+travel by way of Auckland.  It contains a ballant; and I think a better
+ballant than I expected ever to do.  I can imagine how you will wag your
+pow over it; and how ragged you will find it, etc., but has it not spirit
+all the same? and though the verse is not all your fancy painted it, has
+it not some life?  And surely, as narrative, the thing has considerable
+merit!  Read it, get a typewritten copy taken, and send me that and your
+opinion to the Sandwiches.  I know I am only courting the most
+excruciating mortification; but the real cause of my sending the thing is
+that I could bear to go down myself, but not to have much MS. go down
+with me.  To say truth, we are through the most dangerous; but it has
+left in all minds a strong sense of insecurity, and we are all for
+putting eggs in various baskets.
+
+We leave here soon, bound for Uahiva, Reiatea, Bora-Bora, and the
+Sandwiches.
+
+   O, how my spirit languishes
+   To step ashore on the Sanguishes;
+   For there my letters wait,
+   There shall I know my fate.
+   O, how my spirit languidges
+   To step ashore on the Sanguidges.
+
+18_th_.—I think we shall leave here if all is well on Monday.  I am quite
+recovered, astonishingly recovered. It must be owned these climates and
+this voyage have given me more strength than I could have thought
+possible.  And yet the sea is a terrible place, stupefying to the mind
+and poisonous to the temper, the sea, the motion, the lack of space, the
+cruel publicity, the villainous tinned foods, the sailors, the captain,
+the passengers—but you are amply repaid when you sight an island, and
+drop anchor in a new world.  Much trouble has attended this trip, but I
+must confess more pleasure.  Nor should I ever complain, as in the last
+few weeks, with the curing of my illness indeed, as if that were the
+bursting of an abscess, the cloud has risen from my spirits and to some
+degree from my temper.  Do you know what they called the _Casco_ at
+Fakarava?  The _Silver Ship_.  Is that not pretty?  Pray tell Mrs.
+Jenkin, _die silberne Frau_, as I only learned it since I wrote her.  I
+think of calling the book by that name: _The Cruise of the Silver
+Ship_—so there will be one poetic page at least—the title.  At the
+Sandwiches we shall say farewell to the _S. S._ with mingled feelings.
+She is a lovely creature: the most beautiful thing at this moment in
+Taiti.
+
+Well, I will take another sheet, though I know I have nothing to say.
+You would think I was bursting: but the voyage is all stored up for the
+book, which is to pay for it, we fondly hope; and the troubles of the
+time are not worth telling; and our news is little.
+
+Here I conclude (Oct. 24th, I think), for we are now stored, and the Blue
+Peter metaphorically flies.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO WILLIAM AND THOMAS ARCHER
+
+
+                                          _Taiti_, _October_ 17_th_, 1888.
+
+DEAR ARCHER,—Though quite unable to write letters, I nobly send you a
+line signifying nothing.  The voyage has agreed well with all; it has had
+its pains, and its extraordinary pleasures; nothing in the world can
+equal the excitement of the first time you cast anchor in some bay of a
+tropical island, and the boats begin to surround you, and the tattooed
+people swarm aboard.  Tell Tomarcher, with my respex, that hide-and-seek
+is not equal to it; no, nor hidee-in-the-dark; which, for the matter of
+that, is a game for the unskilful: the artist prefers daylight, a
+good-sized garden, some shrubbery, an open paddock, and—come on, Macduff.
+
+TOMARCHER, I am now a distinguished litterytour, but that was not the
+real bent of my genius.  I was the best player of hide-and-seek going;
+not a good runner, I was up to every shift and dodge, I could jink very
+well, I could crawl without any noise through leaves, I could hide under
+a carrot plant, it used to be my favourite boast that I always _walked_
+into the den.  You may care to hear, Tomarcher, about the children in
+these parts; their parents obey them, they do not obey their parents; and
+I am sorry to tell you (for I dare say you are already thinking the idea
+a good one) that it does not pay one halfpenny.  There are three sorts of
+civilisation, Tomarcher: the real old-fashioned one, in which children
+either had to find out how to please their dear papas, or their dear
+papas cut their heads off.  This style did very well, but is now out of
+fashion.  Then the modern European style: in which children have to
+behave reasonably well, and go to school and say their prayers, or their
+dear papas _will know the reason why_.  This does fairly well.  Then
+there is the South Sea Island plan, which does not do one bit.  The
+children beat their parents here; it does not make their parents any
+better; so do not try it.
+
+Dear Tomarcher, I have forgotten the address of your new house, but will
+send this to one of your papa’s publishers.  Remember us all to all of
+you, and believe me, yours respectably,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                 _Tautira_ (_The Garden of the World_), _otherwise called_
+                        _Hans-Christian-Andersen-ville_ [_November_ 1888].
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—Whether I have a penny left in the wide world, I know
+not, nor shall know, till I get to Honolulu, where I anticipate a devil
+of an awakening.  It will be from a mighty pleasant dream at least:
+Tautira being mere Heaven.  But suppose, for the sake of argument, any
+money to be left in the hands of my painful doer, what is to be done with
+it?  Save us from exile would be the wise man’s choice, I suppose; for
+the exile threatens to be eternal.  But yet I am of opinion—in case there
+should be _some_ dibs in the hand of the P.D., _i.e._ painful doer;
+because if there be none, I shall take to my flageolet on the high-road,
+and work home the best way I can, having previously made away with my
+family—I am of opinion that if — and his are in the customary state, and
+you are thinking of an offering, and there should be still some funds
+over, you would be a real good P.D. to put some in with yours and tak’
+the credit o’t, like a wee man!  I know it’s a beastly thing to ask; but
+it, after all, does no earthly harm, only that much good.  And besides,
+like enough there’s nothing in the till, and there is an end.  Yet I live
+here in the full lustre of millions; it is thought I am the richest son
+of man that has yet been to Tautira: I!—and I am secretly eaten with the
+fear of lying in pawn, perhaps for the remainder of my days, in San
+Francisco.  As usual, my colds have much hashed my finances.
+
+Do tell Henley I write this just after having dismissed Ori the
+sub-chief, in whose house I live, Mrs. Ori, and Pairai, their adopted
+child, from the evening hour of music: during which I Publickly (with a
+k) Blow on the Flageolet.  These are words of truth.  Yesterday I told
+Ori about W. E. H., counterfeited his playing on the piano and the pipe,
+and succeeded in sending the six feet four there is of that sub-chief
+somewhat sadly to his bed; feeling that his was not the genuine article
+after all.  Ori is exactly like a colonel in the Guards.—I am, dear
+Charles, ever yours affectionately,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+                                         _Tautira_, 10_th_ _November_ ’88.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—Our mainmast is dry-rotten, and we are all to the devil;
+I shall lie in a debtor’s jail.  Never mind, Tautira is first chop.  I am
+so besotted that I shall put on the back of this my attempt at words to
+Wandering Willie; if you can conceive at all the difficulty, you will
+also conceive the vanity with which I regard any kind of result; and
+whatever mine is like, it has some sense, and Burns’s has none.
+
+   Home no more home to me, whither must I wander?
+      Hunger my driver, I go where I must.
+   Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather;
+      Thick drives the rain, and my roof is in the dust.
+   Loved of wise men was the shade of my roof-tree.
+      The true word of welcome was spoken in the door—
+   Dear days of old, with the faces in the firelight,
+      Kind folks of old, you come again no more.
+
+   Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces,
+      Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child.
+   Fire and the windows bright glittered on the moorland;
+      Song, tuneful song, built a palace in the wild.
+   Now, when day dawns on the brow of the moorland,
+      Lone stands the house, and the chimney-stone is cold.
+   Lone let it stand, now the friends are all departed,
+      The kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place of old.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO J. A. SYMONDS
+
+
+                                                   _November_ 11_th_ 1888.
+
+_One November night_, _in the village of Tautira_, _we sat at the high
+table in the hall of assembly_, _hearing the natives sing_.  _It was dark
+in the hall_, _and very warm_; _though at times the land wind blew a
+little shrewdly through the chinks_, _and at times_, _through the larger
+openings_, _we could see the moonlight on the lawn_.  _As the songs arose
+in the rattling Tahitian chorus_, _the chief translated here and there a
+verse_.  _Farther on in the volume you shall read the songs themselves_;
+_and I am in hopes that not you only_, _but all who can find a savour in
+the ancient poetry of places_, _will read them with some pleasure_.  _You
+are to conceive us_, _therefore_, _in strange circumstances and very
+pleasing_; _in a strange land and climate_, _the most beautiful on
+earth_; _surrounded by a foreign race that all travellers have agreed to
+be the most engaging_; _and taking a double interest in two foreign
+arts_.
+
+_We came forth again at last_, _in a cloudy moonlight_, _on the forest
+lawn which is the street of Tautira_.  _The Pacific roared outside upon
+the reef_.  _Here and there one of the scattered palm-built lodges shone
+out under the shadow of the wood_, _the lamplight bursting through the
+crannies of the wall_.  _We went homeward slowly_, _Ori a Ori carrying
+behind us the lantern and the chairs_, _properties with which we had just
+been enacting our part of the distinguished visitor_.  _It was one of
+those moments in which minds not altogether churlish recall the names and
+deplore the absence of congenial friends_; _and it was your name that
+first rose upon our lips_.  ‘_How Symonds would have enjoyed this
+evening_!’ _said one_, _and then another_.  _The word caught in my mind_;
+_I went to bed_, _and it was still there_.  _The glittering_, _frosty
+solitudes in which your days are cast arose before me_: _I seemed to see
+you walking there in the late night_, _under the pine-trees and the
+stars_; _and I received the image with something like remorse_.
+
+_There is a modern attitude towards fortune_; _in this place I will not
+use a graver name_.  _Staunchly to withstand her buffets and to enjoy
+with equanimity her favours was the code of the virtuous of old_.  _Our
+fathers_, _it should seem_, _wondered and doubted how they had merited
+their misfortunes_: _we_, _rather how we have deserved our happiness_.
+_And we stand often abashed and sometimes revolted_, _at those
+partialities of fate by which we profit most_.  _It was so with me on
+that November night_: _I felt that our positions should be changed_.  _It
+was you_, _dear Symonds_, _who should have gone upon that voyage and
+written this account_.  _With your rich stores of knowledge_, _you could
+have remarked and understood a thousand things of interest and beauty
+that escaped my ignorance_; _and the brilliant colours of your style
+would have carried into a thousand sickrooms the sea air and the strong
+sun of tropic islands_.  _It was otherwise decreed_.  _But suffer me at
+least to connect you_, _if only in name and only in the fondness of
+imagination_, _with the voyage of the_ ‘Silver Ship.’
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+DEAR SYMONDS,—I send you this (November 11th), the morning of its
+completion.  If I ever write an account of this voyage, may I place this
+letter at the beginning?  It represents—I need not tell you, for you too
+are an artist—a most genuine feeling, which kept me long awake last
+night; and though perhaps a little elaborate, I think it a good piece of
+writing.  We are _in heaven here_.  Do not forget
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+Please keep this: I have no perfect copy.
+
+_Tautira_, _on the peninsula of Tahiti_.
+
+
+
+TO THOMAS ARCHER
+
+
+                          _Tautira_, _Island of Tahiti_ [_November_ 1888].
+
+DEAR TOMARCHER,—This is a pretty state of things! seven o’clock and no
+word of breakfast!  And I was awake a good deal last night, for it was
+full moon, and they had made a great fire of cocoa-nut husks down by the
+sea, and as we have no blinds or shutters, this kept my room very bright.
+And then the rats had a wedding or a school-feast under my bed.  And then
+I woke early, and I have nothing to read except Virgil’s _Æneid_, which
+is not good fun on an empty stomach, and a Latin dictionary, which is
+good for naught, and by some humorous accident, your dear papa’s article
+on Skerryvore.  And I read the whole of that, and very impudent it is,
+but you must not tell your dear papa I said so, or it might come to a
+battle in which you might lose either a dear papa or a valued
+correspondent, or both, which would be prodigal.  And still no breakfast;
+so I said ‘Let’s write to Tomarcher.’
+
+This is a much better place for children than any I have hitherto seen in
+these seas.  The girls (and sometimes the boys) play a very elaborate
+kind of hopscotch.  The boys play horses exactly as we do in Europe; and
+have very good fun on stilts, trying to knock each other down, in which
+they do not often succeed.  The children of all ages go to church and are
+allowed to do what they please, running about the aisles, rolling balls,
+stealing mamma’s bonnet and publicly sitting on it, and at last going to
+sleep in the middle of the floor.  I forgot to say that the whips to play
+horses, and the balls to roll about the church—at least I never saw them
+used elsewhere—grow ready made on trees; which is rough on toy-shops.
+The whips are so good that I wanted to play horses myself; but no such
+luck! my hair is grey, and I am a great, big, ugly man.  The balls are
+rather hard, but very light and quite round.  When you grow up and become
+offensively rich, you can charter a ship in the port of London, and have
+it come back to you entirely loaded with these balls; when you could
+satisfy your mind as to their character, and give them away when done
+with to your uncles and aunts.  But what I really wanted to tell you was
+this: besides the tree-top toys (Hush-a-by, toy-shop, on the tree-top!),
+I have seen some real _made_ toys, the first hitherto observed in the
+South Seas.
+
+This was how.  You are to imagine a four-wheeled gig; one horse; in the
+front seat two Tahiti natives, in their Sunday clothes, blue coat, white
+shirt, kilt (a little longer than the Scotch) of a blue stuff with big
+white or yellow flowers, legs and feet bare; in the back seat me and my
+wife, who is a friend of yours; under our feet, plenty of lunch and
+things: among us a great deal of fun in broken Tahitian, one of the
+natives, the sub-chief of the village, being a great ally of mine.
+Indeed we have exchanged names; so that he is now called Rui, the nearest
+they can come to Louis, for they have no _l_ and no _s_ in their
+language.  Rui is six feet three in his stockings, and a magnificent man.
+We all have straw hats, for the sun is strong.  We drive between the sea,
+which makes a great noise, and the mountains; the road is cut through a
+forest mostly of fruit trees, the very creepers, which take the place of
+our ivy, heavy with a great and delicious fruit, bigger than your head
+and far nicer, called Barbedine.  Presently we came to a house in a
+pretty garden, quite by itself, very nicely kept, the doors and windows
+open, no one about, and no noise but that of the sea.  It looked like a
+house in a fairy-tale, and just beyond we must ford a river, and there we
+saw the inhabitants.  Just in the mouth of the river, where it met the
+sea waves, they were ducking and bathing and screaming together like a
+covey of birds: seven or eight little naked brown boys and girls as happy
+as the day was long; and on the banks of the stream beside them, real
+toys—toy ships, full rigged, and with their sails set, though they were
+lying in the dust on their beam ends.  And then I knew for sure they were
+all children in a fairy-story, living alone together in that lonely house
+with the only toys in all the island; and that I had myself driven, in my
+four-wheeled gig, into a corner of the fairy-story, and the question was,
+should I get out again?  But it was all right; I guess only one of the
+wheels of the gig had got into the fairy-story; and the next jolt the
+whole thing vanished, and we drove on in our sea-side forest as before,
+and I have the honour to be Tomarcher’s valued correspondent, TERIITEPA,
+which he was previously known as
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+                      _Yacht_ ‘_Casco_,’ _at Sea_, 14_th_ _January_, 1889.
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN,—Twenty days out from Papeete.  Yes, sir, all that, and
+only (for a guess) in 4° north or at the best 4° 30′, though already the
+wind seems to smell a little of the North Pole.  My handwriting you must
+take as you get, for we are speeding along through a nasty swell, and I
+can only keep my place at the table by means of a foot against the divan,
+the unoccupied hand meanwhile gripping the ink-bottle.  As we begin (so
+very slowly) to draw near to seven months of correspondence, we are all
+in some fear; and I want to have letters written before I shall be
+plunged into that boiling pot of disagreeables which I constantly expect
+at Honolulu.  What is needful can be added there.
+
+We were kept two months at Tautira in the house of my dear old friend,
+Ori a Ori, till both the masts of this invaluable yacht had been
+repaired.  It was all for the best: Tautira being the most beautiful
+spot, and its people the most amiable, I have ever found.  Besides which,
+the climate suited me to the ground; I actually went sea-bathing almost
+every day, and in our feasts (we are all huge eaters in Taiarapu) have
+been known to apply four times for pig.  And then again I got wonderful
+materials for my book, collected songs and legends on the spot; songs
+still sung in chorus by perhaps a hundred persons, not two of whom can
+agree on their translation; legends, on which I have seen half a dozen
+seniors sitting in conclave and debating what came next.  Once I went a
+day’s journey to the other side of the island to Tati, the high chief of
+the Tevas—_my_ chief that is, for I am now a Teva and Teriitera, at your
+service—to collect more and correct what I had already.  In the meanwhile
+I got on with my work, almost finished the _Master of Ballantrae_, which
+contains more human work than anything of mine but _Kidnapped_, and wrote
+the half of another ballad, the _Song of Rahero_, on a Taiarapu legend of
+my own clan, sir—not so much fire as the _Feast of Famine_, but promising
+to be more even and correct.  But the best fortune of our stay at Tautira
+was my knowledge of Ori himself, one of the finest creatures extant.  The
+day of our parting was a sad one.  We deduced from it a rule for
+travellers: not to stay two months in one place—which is to cultivate
+regrets.
+
+At last our contemptible ship was ready; to sea we went, bound for
+Honolulu and the letter-bag, on Christmas Day; and from then to now have
+experienced every sort of minor misfortune, squalls, calms, contrary
+winds and seas, pertinacious rains, declining stores, till we came almost
+to regard ourselves as in the case of Vanderdecken.  Three days ago our
+luck seemed to improve, we struck a leading breeze, got creditably
+through the doldrums, and just as we looked to have the N.E. trades and a
+straight run, the rains and squalls and calms began again about midnight,
+and this morning, though there is breeze enough to send us along, we are
+beaten back by an obnoxious swell out of the north.  Here is a page of
+complaint, when a verse of thanksgiving had perhaps been more in place.
+For all this time we must have been skirting past dangerous weather, in
+the tail and circumference of hurricanes, and getting only annoyance
+where we should have had peril, and ill-humour instead of fear.
+
+I wonder if I have managed to give you any news this time, or whether the
+usual damn hangs over my letter?  ‘The midwife whispered, Be thou dull!’
+or at least inexplicit.  Anyway I have tried my best, am exhausted with
+the effort, and fall back into the land of generalities.  I cannot tell
+you how often we have planned our arrival at the Monument: two nights
+ago, the 12th January, we had it all planned out, arrived in the lights
+and whirl of Waterloo, hailed a hansom, span up Waterloo Road, over the
+bridge, etc. etc., and hailed the Monument gate in triumph and with
+indescribable delight.  My dear Custodian, I always think we are too
+sparing of assurances: Cordelia is only to be excused by Regan and
+Goneril in the same nursery; I wish to tell you that the longer I live,
+the more dear do you become to me; nor does my heart own any stronger
+sentiment.  If the bloody schooner didn’t send me flying in every sort of
+direction at the same time, I would say better what I feel so much; but
+really, if you were here, you would not be writing letters, I believe;
+and even I, though of a more marine constitution, am much perturbed by
+this bobbery and wish—O ye Gods, how I wish!—that it was done, and we had
+arrived, and I had Pandora’s Box (my mail bag) in hand, and was in the
+lively hope of something eatable for dinner instead of salt horse, tinned
+mutton, duff without any plums, and pie fruit, which now make up our
+whole repertory.  O Pandora’s Box!  I wonder what you will contain.  As
+like as not you will contain but little money: if that be so, we shall
+have to retire to ’Frisco in the _Casco_, and thence by sea _via_ Panama
+to Southampton, where we should arrive in April.  I would like fine to
+see you on the tug: ten years older both of us than the last time you
+came to welcome Fanny and me to England.  If we have money, however, we
+shall do a little differently: send the _Casco_ away from Honolulu empty
+of its high-born lessees, for that voyage to ’Frisco is one long dead
+beat in foul and at last in cold weather; stay awhile behind, follow by
+steamer, cross the States by train, stay awhile in New York on business,
+and arrive probably by the German Line in Southampton.  But all this is a
+question of money.  We shall have to lie very dark awhile to recruit our
+finances: what comes from the book of the cruise, I do not want to touch
+until the capital is repaid.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+                                               _Honolulu_, _January_ 1889.
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—Here at last I have arrived.  We could not get away
+from Tahiti till Christmas Day, and then had thirty days of calms and
+squalls, a deplorable passage.  This has thrown me all out of gear in
+every way.  I plunge into business.
+
+1.  _The Master_: Herewith go three more parts.  You see he grows in
+balk; this making ten already, and I am not yet sure if I can finish it
+in an eleventh; which shall go to you _quam primum_—I hope by next mail.
+
+2.  _Illustrations to M_.  I totally forgot to try to write to Hole.  It
+was just as well, for I find it impossible to forecast with sufficient
+precision.  You had better throw off all this and let him have it at
+once.  _Please do_: _all_, _and at once_: _see further_; and I should
+hope he would still be in time for the later numbers.  The three pictures
+I have received are so truly good that I should bitterly regret having
+the volume imperfectly equipped.  They are the best illustrations I have
+seen since I don’t know when.
+
+3.  _Money_.  To-morrow the mail comes in, and I hope it will bring me
+money either from you or home, but I will add a word on that point.
+
+4.  My address will be Honolulu—no longer Yacht _Casco_, which I am
+packing off—till probably April.
+
+5.  As soon as I am through with _The Master_, I shall finish the _Game
+of Bluff_—now rechristened _The Wrong Box_.  This I wish to sell, cash
+down.  It is of course copyright in the States; and I offer it to you for
+five thousand dollars.  Please reply on this by return.  Also please tell
+the typewriter who was so good as to be amused by our follies that I am
+filled with admiration for his piece of work.
+
+6.  _Master_ again.  Please see that I haven’t the name of the Governor
+of New York wrong (1764 is the date) in part ten.  I have no book of
+reference to put me right.  Observe you now have up to August inclusive
+in hand, so you should begin to feel happy.
+
+Is this all?  I wonder, and fear not.  Henry the Trader has not yet
+turned up: I hope he may to-morrow, when we expect a mail.  Not one word
+of business have I received either from the States or England, nor
+anything in the shape of coin; which leaves me in a fine uncertainty and
+quite penniless on these islands.  H.M. {132} (who is a gentleman of a
+courtly order and much tinctured with letters) is very polite; I may
+possibly ask for the position of palace doorkeeper.  My voyage has been a
+singular mixture of good and ill-fortune.  As far as regards interest and
+material, the fortune has been admirable; as far as regards time, money,
+and impediments of all kinds, from squalls and calms to rotten masts and
+sprung spars, simply detestable.  I hope you will be interested to hear
+of two volumes on the wing.  The cruise itself, you are to know, will
+make a big volume with appendices; some of it will first appear as (what
+they call) letters in some of M’Clure’s papers.  I believe the book when
+ready will have a fair measure of serious interest: I have had great
+fortune in finding old songs and ballads and stories, for instance, and
+have many singular instances of life in the last few years among these
+islands.
+
+The second volume is of ballads.  You know _Ticonderoga_.  I have written
+another: _The Feast of Famine_, a Marquesan story.  A third is half done:
+_The Song of Rahero_, a genuine Tahitian legend.  A fourth dances before
+me.  A Hawaiian fellow this, _The Priest’s Drought_, or some such name.
+If, as I half suspect, I get enough subjects out of the islands,
+_Ticonderoga_ shall be suppressed, and we’ll call the volume _South Sea
+Ballads_.  In health, spirits, renewed interest in life, and, I do
+believe, refreshed capacity for work, the cruise has proved a wise folly.
+Still we’re not home, and (although the friend of a crowned head) are
+penniless upon these (as one of my correspondents used to call them)
+‘lovely but _fatil_ islands.’  By the way, who wrote the _Lion of the
+Nile_?  My dear sir, that is Something Like.  Overdone in bits, it has a
+true thought and a true ring of language.  Beg the anonymous from me, to
+delete (when he shall republish) the two last verses, and end on ‘the
+lion of the Nile.’  One Lampman has a good sonnet on a ‘Winter Evening’
+in, I think, the same number: he seems ill named, but I am tempted to
+hope a man is not always answerable for his name. {133}  For instance,
+you would think you knew mine.  No such matter.  It is—at your service
+and Mr. Scribner’s and that of all of the faithful—Teriitera (pray
+pronounce Tayree-Tayra) or (_gallicé_) Téri-téra.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+More when the mail shall come.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+I am an idiot.  I want to be clear on one point.  Some of Hole’s drawings
+must of course be too late; and yet they seem to me so excellent I would
+fain have the lot complete.  It is one thing for you to pay for drawings
+which are to appear in that soul-swallowing machine, your magazine: quite
+another if they are only to illustrate a volume.  I wish you to take a
+brisk (even a fiery) decision on the point; and let Hole know.  To resume
+my desultory song, I desire you would carry the same fire (hereinbefore
+suggested) into your decision on the _Wrong Box_; for in my present state
+of benighted ignorance as to my affairs for the last seven months—I know
+not even whether my house or my mother’s house have been let—I desire to
+see something definite in front of me—outside the lot of palace
+doorkeeper.  I believe the said _Wrong Box_ is a real lark; in which, of
+course, I may be grievously deceived; but the typewriter is with me.  I
+may also be deceived as to the numbers of _The Master_ now going and
+already gone; but to me they seem First Chop, sir, First Chop.  I hope I
+shall pull off that damned ending; but it still depresses me: this is
+your doing, Mr. Burlingame: you would have it there and then, and I fear
+it—I fear that ending.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                                       _Honolulu_, _February_ 8_th_, 1889.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—Here we are at Honolulu, and have dismissed the yacht,
+and lie here till April anyway, in a fine state of haze, which I am yet
+in hopes some letter of yours (still on the way) may dissipate.  No
+money, and not one word as to money!  However, I have got the yacht paid
+off in triumph, I think; and though we stay here impignorate, it should
+not be for long, even if you bring us no extra help from home.  The
+cruise has been a great success, both as to matter, fun, and health; and
+yet, Lord, man! we’re pleased to be ashore!  Yon was a very fine voyage
+from Tahiti up here, but—the dry land’s a fine place too, and we don’t
+mind squalls any longer, and eh, man, that’s a great thing.  Blow, blow,
+thou wintry wind, thou hast done me no appreciable harm beyond a few grey
+hairs!  Altogether, this foolhardy venture is achieved; and if I have but
+nine months of life and any kind of health, I shall have both eaten my
+cake and got it back again with usury.  But, man, there have been days
+when I felt guilty, and thought I was in no position for the head of a
+house.
+
+Your letter and accounts are doubtless at S. F., and will reach me in
+course.  My wife is no great shakes; she is the one who has suffered
+most.  My mother has had a Huge Old Time; Lloyd is first chop; I so well
+that I do not know myself—sea-bathing, if you please, and what is far
+more dangerous, entertaining and being entertained by His Majesty here,
+who is a very fine intelligent fellow, but O, Charles! what a crop for
+the drink!  He carries it, too, like a mountain with a sparrow on its
+shoulders.  We calculated five bottles of champagne in three hours and a
+half (afternoon), and the sovereign quite presentable, although
+perceptibly more dignified at the end. . . .
+
+The extraordinary health I enjoy and variety of interests I find among
+these islands would tempt me to remain here; only for Lloyd, who is not
+well placed in such countries for a permanency; and a little for Colvin,
+to whom I feel I owe a sort of filial duty.  And these two considerations
+will no doubt bring me back—to go to bed again—in England.—Yours ever
+affectionately,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO R. A. M. STEVENSON
+
+
+                          _Honolulu_, _Hawaiian Islands_, _February_ 1889.
+
+MY DEAR BOB,—My extremely foolhardy venture is practically over.  How
+foolhardy it was I don’t think I realised.  We had a very small schooner,
+and, like most yachts, over-rigged and over-sparred, and like many
+American yachts on a very dangerous sail plan.  The waters we sailed in
+are, of course, entirely unlighted, and very badly charted; in the
+Dangerous Archipelago, through which we were fools enough to go, we were
+perfectly in ignorance of where we were for a whole night and half the
+next day, and this in the midst of invisible islands and rapid and
+variable currents; and we were lucky when we found our whereabouts at
+last.  We have twice had all we wanted in the way of squalls: once, as I
+came on deck, I found the green sea over the cockpit coamings and running
+down the companion like a brook to meet me; at that same moment the
+foresail sheet jammed and the captain had no knife; this was the only
+occasion on the cruise that ever I set a hand to a rope, but I worked
+like a Trojan, judging the possibility of hæmorrhage better than the
+certainty of drowning.  Another time I saw a rather singular thing: our
+whole ship’s company as pale as paper from the captain to the cook; we
+had a black squall astern on the port side and a white squall ahead to
+starboard; the complication passed off innocuous, the black squall only
+fetching us with its tail, and the white one slewing off somewhere else.
+Twice we were a long while (days) in the close vicinity of hurricane
+weather, but again luck prevailed, and we saw none of it.  These are
+dangers incident to these seas and small craft.  What was an amazement,
+and at the same time a powerful stroke of luck, both our masts were
+rotten, and we found it out—I was going to say in time, but it was
+stranger and luckier than that.  The head of the mainmast hung over so
+that hands were afraid to go to the helm; and less than three weeks
+before—I am not sure it was more than a fortnight—we had been nearly
+twelve hours beating off the lee shore of Eimeo (or Moorea, next island
+to Tahiti) in half a gale of wind with a violent head sea: she would
+neither tack nor wear once, and had to be boxed off with the mainsail—you
+can imagine what an ungodly show of kites we carried—and yet the mast
+stood.  The very day after that, in the southern bight of Tahiti, we had
+a near squeak, the wind suddenly coming calm; the reefs were close in
+with, my eye! what a surf!  The pilot thought we were gone, and the
+captain had a boat cleared, when a lucky squall came to our rescue.  My
+wife, hearing the order given about the boats, remarked to my mother,
+‘Isn’t that nice?  We shall soon be ashore!’  Thus does the female mind
+unconsciously skirt along the verge of eternity.  Our voyage up here was
+most disastrous—calms, squalls, head sea, waterspouts of rain, hurricane
+weather all about, and we in the midst of the hurricane season, when even
+the hopeful builder and owner of the yacht had pronounced these seas
+unfit for her.  We ran out of food, and were quite given up for lost in
+Honolulu: people had ceased to speak to Belle {137} about the _Casco_, as
+a deadly subject.
+
+But the perils of the deep were part of the programme; and though I am
+very glad to be done with them for a while and comfortably ashore, where
+a squall does not matter a snuff to any one, I feel pretty sure I shall
+want to get to sea again ere long.  The dreadful risk I took was
+financial, and double-headed.  First, I had to sink a lot of money in the
+cruise, and if I didn’t get health, how was I to get it back?  I have got
+health to a wonderful extent; and as I have the most interesting matter
+for my book, bar accidents, I ought to get all I have laid out and a
+profit.  But, second (what I own I never considered till too late), there
+was the danger of collisions, of damages and heavy repairs, of
+disablement, towing, and salvage; indeed, the cruise might have turned
+round and cost me double.  Nor will this danger be quite over till I hear
+the yacht is in San Francisco; for though I have shaken the dust of her
+deck from my feet, I fear (as a point of law) she is still mine till she
+gets there.
+
+From my point of view, up to now the cruise has been a wonderful success.
+I never knew the world was so amusing.  On the last voyage we had grown
+so used to sea-life that no one wearied, though it lasted a full month,
+except Fanny, who is always ill.  All the time our visits to the islands
+have been more like dreams than realities: the people, the life, the
+beachcombers, the old stories and songs I have picked up, so interesting;
+the climate, the scenery, and (in some places) the women, so beautiful.
+The women are handsomest in Tahiti, the men in the Marquesas; both as
+fine types as can be imagined.  Lloyd reminds me, I have not told you one
+characteristic incident of the cruise from a semi-naval point of view.
+One night we were going ashore in Anaho Bay; the most awful noise on
+deck; the breakers distinctly audible in the cabin; and there I had to
+sit below, entertaining in my best style a negroid native chieftain, much
+the worse for rum!  You can imagine the evening’s pleasure.
+
+This naval report on cruising in the South Seas would be incomplete
+without one other trait.  On our voyage up here I came one day into the
+dining-room, the hatch in the floor was open, the ship’s boy was below
+with a baler, and two of the hands were carrying buckets as for a fire;
+this meant that the pumps had ceased working.
+
+One stirring day was that in which we sighted Hawaii.  It blew fair, but
+very strong; we carried jib, foresail, and mainsail, all single-reefed,
+and she carried her lee rail under water and flew.  The swell, the
+heaviest I have ever been out in—I tried in vain to estimate the height,
+_at least_ fifteen feet—came tearing after us about a point and a half
+off the wind.  We had the best hand—old Louis—at the wheel; and, really,
+he did nobly, and had noble luck, for it never caught us once.  At times
+it seemed we must have it; Louis would look over his shoulder with the
+queerest look and dive down his neck into his shoulders; and then it
+missed us somehow, and only sprays came over our quarter, turning the
+little outside lane of deck into a mill race as deep as to the cockpit
+coamings.  I never remember anything more delightful and exciting.
+Pretty soon after we were lying absolutely becalmed under the lee of
+Hawaii, of which we had been warned; and the captain never confessed he
+had done it on purpose, but when accused, he smiled.  Really, I suppose
+he did quite right, for we stood committed to a dangerous race, and to
+bring her to the wind would have been rather a heart-sickening manœuvre.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO MARCEL SCHWOB
+
+
+                   _Honolulu_, _Sandwich Islands_, _February_ 8_th_, 1889.
+
+DEAR SIR,—I thank you—from the midst of such a flurry as you can imagine,
+with seven months’ accumulated correspondence on my table—for your two
+friendly and clever letters.  Pray write me again.  I shall be home in
+May or June, and not improbably shall come to Paris in the summer.  Then
+we can talk; or in the interval I may be able to write, which is to-day
+out of the question.  Pray take a word from a man of crushing
+occupations, and count it as a volume.  Your little _conte_ is
+delightful.  Ah yes, you are right, I love the eighteenth century; and so
+do you, and have not listened to its voice in vain.—The Hunted One,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                                           _Honolulu_, 8_th_ _March_ 1889.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—At last I have the accounts: the Doer has done
+excellently, and in the words of —, ‘I reciprocate every step of your
+behaviour.’ . .  I send a letter for Bob in your care, as I don’t know
+his Liverpool address, by which (for he is to show you part of it) you
+will see we have got out of this adventure—or hope to have—with wonderful
+fortune.  I have the retrospective horrors on me when I think of the
+liabilities I incurred; but, thank God, I think I’m in port again, and I
+have found one climate in which I can enjoy life.  Even Honolulu is too
+cold for me; but the south isles were a heaven upon earth to a puir,
+catarrhal party like Johns’one.  We think, as Tahiti is too complete a
+banishment, to try Madeira.  It’s only a week from England, good
+communications, and I suspect in climate and scenery not unlike our dear
+islands; in people, alas! there can be no comparison.  But friends could
+go, and I could come in summer, so I should not be quite cut off.
+
+Lloyd and I have finished a story, _The Wrong Box_.  If it is not funny,
+I am sure I do not know what is.  I have split over writing it.  Since I
+have been here, I have been toiling like a galley slave: three numbers of
+_The Master_ to rewrite, five chapters of the _Wrong Box_ to write and
+rewrite, and about five hundred lines of a narrative poem to write,
+rewrite, and re-rewrite.  Now I have _The Master_ waiting me for its
+continuation, two numbers more; when that’s done, I shall breathe.  This
+spasm of activity has been chequered with champagne parties: Happy and
+Glorious, Hawaii Ponoi paua: kou moi—(Native Hawaiians, dote upon your
+monarch!) Hawaiian God save the King.  (In addition to my other labours,
+I am learning the language with a native moonshee.)  Kalakaua is a
+terrible companion; a bottle of fizz is like a glass of sherry to him, he
+thinks nothing of five or six in an afternoon as a whet for dinner.  You
+should see a photograph of our party after an afternoon with H. H. M.:
+my! what a crew!—Yours ever affectionately,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+                                                _Honolulu_ [_March_ 1889].
+
+MY DEAR JAMES,—Yes—I own up—I am untrue to friendship and (what is less,
+but still considerable) to civilisation.  I am not coming home for
+another year.  There it is, cold and bald, and now you won’t believe in
+me at all, and serve me right (says you) and the devil take me.  But look
+here, and judge me tenderly.  I have had more fun and pleasure of my life
+these past months than ever before, and more health than any time in ten
+long years.  And even here in Honolulu I have withered in the cold; and
+this precious deep is filled with islands, which we may still visit; and
+though the sea is a deathful place, I like to be there, and like squalls
+(when they are over); and to draw near to a new island, I cannot say how
+much I like.  In short, I take another year of this sort of life, and
+mean to try to work down among the poisoned arrows, and mean (if it may
+be) to come back again when the thing is through, and converse with Henry
+James as heretofore; and in the meanwhile issue directions to H. J. to
+write to me once more.  Let him address here at Honolulu, for my views
+are vague; and if it is sent here it will follow and find me, if I am to
+be found; and if I am not to be found the man James will have done his
+duty, and we shall be at the bottom of the sea, where no post-office
+clerk can be expected to discover us, or languishing on a coral island,
+the philosophic drudges of some barbarian potentate: perchance, of an
+American Missionary.  My wife has just sent to Mrs. Sitwell a translation
+(_tant bien que mal_) of a letter I have had from my chief friend in this
+part of the world: go and see her, and get a hearing of it; it will do
+you good; it is a better method of correspondence than even Henry
+James’s. {141}  I jest, but seriously it is a strange thing for a tough,
+sick, middle-aged scrivener like R. L. S. to receive a letter so
+conceived from a man fifty years old, a leading politician, a crack
+orator, and the great wit of his village: boldly say, ‘the highly popular
+M.P. of Tautira.’  My nineteenth century strikes here, and lies alongside
+of something beautiful and ancient.  I think the receipt of such a letter
+might humble, shall I say even —? and for me, I would rather have
+received it than written _Redgauntlet_ or the _Sixth Æneid_.  All told,
+if my books have enabled or helped me to make this voyage, to know Rui,
+and to have received such a letter, they have (in the old prefatorial
+expression) not been writ in vain.  It would seem from this that I have
+been not so much humbled as puffed up; but, I assure you, I have in fact
+been both.  A little of what that letter says is my own earning; not all,
+but yet a little; and the little makes me proud, and all the rest
+ashamed; and in the contrast, how much more beautiful altogether is the
+ancient man than him of to-day!
+
+Well, well, Henry James is pretty good, though he _is_ of the nineteenth
+century, and that glaringly.  And to curry favour with him, I wish I
+could be more explicit; but, indeed, I am still of necessity extremely
+vague, and cannot tell what I am to do, nor where I am to go for some
+while yet.  As soon as I am sure, you shall hear.  All are fairly
+well—the wife, your countrywoman, least of all; troubles are not entirely
+wanting; but on the whole we prosper, and we are all affectionately
+yours,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+                                          _Honolulu_, _April_ 2_nd_, 1889.
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN,—I am beginning to be ashamed of writing on to you without
+the least acknowledgment, like a tramp; but I do not care—I am hardened;
+and whatever be the cause of your silence, I mean to write till all is
+blue.  I am outright ashamed of my news, which is that we are not coming
+home for another year.  I cannot but hope it may continue the vast
+improvement of my health: I think it good for Fanny and Lloyd; and we
+have all a taste for this wandering and dangerous life.  My mother I send
+home, to my relief, as this part of our cruise will be (if we can carry
+it out) rather difficult in places.  Here is the idea: about the middle
+of June (unless the Boston Board objects) we sail from Honolulu in the
+missionary ship (barquentine auxiliary steamer) _Morning Star_: she takes
+us through the Gilberts and Marshalls, and drops us (this is my great
+idea) on Ponape, one of the volcanic islands of the Carolines.  Here we
+stay marooned among a doubtful population, with a Spanish vice-governor
+and five native kings, and a sprinkling of missionaries all at
+loggerheads, on the chance of fetching a passage to Sydney in a trader, a
+labour ship, or (maybe, but this appears too bright) a ship of war.  If
+we can’t get the _Morning Star_ (and the Board has many reasons that I
+can see for refusing its permission) I mean to try to fetch Fiji, hire a
+schooner there, do the Fijis and Friendlies, hit the course of the
+_Richmond_ at Tonga Tabu, make back by Tahiti, and so to S. F., and home:
+perhaps in June 1890.  For the latter part of the cruise will likely be
+the same in either case.  You can see for yourself how much variety and
+adventure this promises, and that it is not devoid of danger at the best;
+but if we can pull it off in safety, gives me a fine book of travel, and
+Lloyd a fine lecture and diorama, which should vastly better our
+finances.
+
+I feel as if I were untrue to friendship; believe me, Colvin, when I look
+forward to this absence of another year, my conscience sinks at thought
+of the Monument; but I think you will pardon me if you consider how much
+this tropical weather mends my health.  Remember me as I was at home, and
+think of me sea-bathing and walking about, as jolly as a sandboy: you
+will own the temptation is strong; and as the scheme, bar fatal
+accidents, is bound to pay into the bargain, sooner or later, it seems it
+would be madness to come home now, with an imperfect book, no
+illustrations to speak of, no diorama, and perhaps fall sick again by
+autumn.  I do not think I delude myself when I say the tendency to
+catarrh has visibly diminished.
+
+It is a singular tiring that as I was packing up old papers ere I left
+Skerryvore, I came on the prophecies of a drunken Highland sibyl, when I
+was seventeen.  She said I was to be very happy, to visit America, and
+_to be much upon the sea_.  It seems as if it were coming true with a
+vengeance.  Also, do you remember my strong, old, rooted belief that I
+shall die by drowning?  I don’t want that to come true, though it is an
+easy death; but it occurs to me oddly, with these long chances in front.
+I cannot say why I like the sea; no man is more cynically and constantly
+alive to its perils; I regard it as the highest form of gambling; and yet
+I love the sea as much as I hate gambling.  Fine, clean emotions; a world
+all and always beautiful; air better than wine; interest unflagging;
+there is upon the whole no better life.—Yours ever,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+                                               [_Honolulu_, _April_ 1889.]
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—This is to announce the most prodigious change of
+programme.  I have seen so much of the South Seas that I desire to see
+more, and I get so much health here that I dread a return to our vile
+climates.  I have applied accordingly to the missionary folk to let me go
+round in the _Morning Star_; and if the Boston Board should refuse, I
+shall get somehow to Fiji, hire a trading schooner, and see the Fijis and
+Friendlies and Samoa.  He would be a South Seayer, Mr. Burlingame.  Of
+course, if I go in the _Morning Star_, I see all the eastern (or
+western?) islands.
+
+Before I sail, I shall make out to let you have the last of _The Master_:
+though I tell you it sticks!—and I hope to have had some proofs forbye,
+of the verses anyway.  And now to business.
+
+I want (if you can find them) in the British sixpenny edition, if not, in
+some equally compact and portable shape—Seaside Library, for instance—the
+Waverley Novels entire, or as entire as you can get ’em, and the
+following of Marryat: _Phantom Ship_, _Peter Simple_, _Percival Keene_,
+_Privateersman_, _Children of the New Forest_, _Frank Mildmay_, _Newton
+Forster_, _Dog Fiend_ (_Snarleyyow_).  Also _Midshipman Easy_,
+_Kingsburn_, Carlyle’s _French Revolution_, Motley’s _Dutch Republic_,
+Lang’s _Letters on Literature_, a complete set of my works, _Jenkin_, in
+duplicate; also _Familiar Studies_, ditto.
+
+I have to thank you for the accounts, which are satisfactory indeed, and
+for the cheque for $1000.  Another account will have come and gone before
+I see you.  I hope it will be equally roseate in colour.  I am quite
+worked out, and this cursed end of _The Master_ hangs over me like the
+arm of the gallows; but it is always darkest before dawn, and no doubt
+the clouds will soon rise; but it is a difficult thing to write, above
+all in Mackellarese; and I cannot yet see my way clear.  If I pull this
+off, _The Master_ will be a pretty good novel or I am the more deceived;
+and even if I don’t pull it off, it’ll still have some stuff in it.
+
+We shall remain here until the middle of June anyway; but my mother
+leaves for Europe early in May.  Hence our mail should continue to come
+here; but not hers.  I will let you know my next address, which will
+probably be Sydney.  If we get on the _Morning Star_, I propose at
+present to get marooned on Ponape, and take my chance of getting a
+passage to Australia.  It will leave times and seasons mighty vague, and
+the cruise is risky; but I shall know something of the South Seas when it
+is done, or else the South Seas will contain all there is of me.  It
+should give me a fine book of travels, anyway.
+
+Low will probably come and ask some dollars of you.  Pray let him have
+them, they are for outfit.  O, another complete set of my books should go
+to Captain A. H. Otis, care of Dr. Merritt, Yacht _Casco_, Oakland, Cal.
+In haste,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
+
+
+                                          _Honolulu_, _April_ 6_th_, 1889.
+
+MY DEAR MISS BOODLE,—Nobody writes a better letter than my Gamekeeper: so
+gay, so pleasant, so engagingly particular, answering (by some delicate
+instinct) all the questions she suggests.  It is a shame you should get
+such a poor return as I can make, from a mind essentially and originally
+incapable of the art epistolary.  I would let the paper-cutter take my
+place; but I am sorry to say the little wooden seaman did after the
+manner of seamen, and deserted in the Societies.  The place he seems to
+have stayed at—seems, for his absence was not observed till we were near
+the Equator—was Tautira, and, I assure you, he displayed good taste,
+Tautira being as ‘nigh hand heaven’ as a paper-cutter or anybody has a
+right to expect.
+
+I think all our friends will be very angry with us, and I give the
+grounds of their probable displeasure bluntly—we are not coming home for
+another year.  My mother returns next month.  Fanny, Lloyd, and I push on
+again among the islands on a trading schooner, the _Equator_—first for
+the Gilbert group, which we shall have an opportunity to explore
+thoroughly; then, if occasion serve, to the Marshalls and Carolines; and
+if occasion (or money) fail, to Samoa, and back to Tahiti.  I own we are
+deserters, but we have excuses.  You cannot conceive how these climates
+agree with the wretched house-plant of Skerryvore: he wonders to find
+himself sea-bathing, and cutting about the world loose, like a grown-up
+person.  They agree with Fanny too, who does not suffer from her
+rheumatism, and with Lloyd also.  And the interest of the islands is
+endless; and the sea, though I own it is a fearsome place, is very
+delightful.  We had applied for places in the American missionary ship,
+the _Morning Star_, but this trading schooner is a far preferable idea,
+giving us more time and a thousandfold more liberty; so we determined to
+cut off the missionaries with a shilling.
+
+The Sandwich Islands do not interest us very much; we live here,
+oppressed with civilisation, and look for good things in the future.  But
+it would surprise you if you came out to-night from Honolulu (all shining
+with electric lights, and all in a bustle from the arrival of the mail,
+which is to carry you these lines) and crossed the long wooden causeway
+along the beach, and came out on the road through Kapiolani park, and
+seeing a gate in the palings, with a tub of gold-fish by the wayside,
+entered casually in.  The buildings stand in three groups by the edge of
+the beach, where an angry little spitfire sea continually spirts and
+thrashes with impotent irascibility, the big seas breaking further out
+upon the reef.  The first is a small house, with a very large summer
+parlour, or _lanai_, as they call it here, roofed, but practically open.
+There you will find the lamps burning and the family sitting about the
+table, dinner just done: my mother, my wife, Lloyd, Belle, my wife’s
+daughter, Austin her child, and to-night (by way of rarity) a guest.  All
+about the walls our South Sea curiosities, war clubs, idols, pearl
+shells, stone axes, etc.; and the walls are only a small part of a lanai,
+the rest being glazed or latticed windows, or mere open space.  You will
+see there no sign of the Squire, however; and being a person of a humane
+disposition, you will only glance in over the balcony railing at the
+merry-makers in the summer parlour, and proceed further afield after the
+Exile.  You look round, there is beautiful green turf, many trees of an
+outlandish sort that drop thorns—look out if your feet are bare; but I
+beg your pardon, you have not been long enough in the South Seas—and many
+oleanders in full flower.  The next group of buildings is ramshackle, and
+quite dark; you make out a coach-house door, and look in—only some
+cocoanuts; you try round to the left and come to the sea front, where
+Venus and the moon are making luminous tracks on the water, and a great
+swell rolls and shines on the outer reef; and here is another door—all
+these places open from the outside—and you go in, and find photography,
+tubs of water, negatives steeping, a tap, and a chair and an inkbottle,
+where my wife is supposed to write; round a little further, a third door,
+entering which you find a picture upon the easel and a table sticky with
+paints; a fourth door admits you to a sort of court, where there is a hen
+sitting—I believe on a fallacious egg.  No sign of the Squire in all
+this.  But right opposite the studio door you have observed a third
+little house, from whose open door lamplight streams and makes hay of the
+strong moonlight shadows.  You had supposed it made no part of the
+grounds, for a fence runs round it lined with oleander; but as the Squire
+is nowhere else, is it not just possible he may be here?  It is a grim
+little wooden shanty; cobwebs bedeck it; friendly mice inhabit its
+recesses; the mailed cockroach walks upon the wall; so also, I regret to
+say, the scorpion.  Herein are two pallet beds, two mosquito curtains,
+strung to the pitch-boards of the roof, two tables laden with books and
+manuscripts, three chairs, and, in one of the beds, the Squire busy
+writing to yourself, as it chances, and just at this moment somewhat
+bitten by mosquitoes.  He has just set fire to the insect powder, and
+will be all right in no time; but just now he contemplates large white
+blisters, and would like to scratch them, but knows better.  The house is
+not bare; it has been inhabited by Kanakas, and—you know what children
+are!—the bare wood walls are pasted over with pages from the _Graphic_,
+_Harper’s Weekly_, etc.  The floor is matted, and I am bound to say the
+matting is filthy.  There are two windows and two doors, one of which is
+condemned; on the panels of that last a sheet of paper is pinned up, and
+covered with writing.  I cull a few plums:—
+
+    ‘A duck-hammock for each person.
+
+    A patent organ like the commandant’s at Taiohae.
+
+    Cheap and bad cigars for presents.
+
+    Revolvers.
+
+    Permanganate of potass.
+
+    Liniment for the head and sulphur.
+
+    Fine tooth-comb.’
+
+What do you think this is?  Simply life in the South Seas foreshortened.
+These are a few of our desiderata for the next trip, which we jot down as
+they occur.
+
+There, I have really done my best and tried to send something like a
+letter—one letter in return for all your dozens.  Pray remember us all to
+yourself, Mrs. Boodle, and the rest of your house.  I do hope your mother
+will be better when this comes.  I shall write and give you a new address
+when I have made up my mind as to the most probable, and I do beg you
+will continue to write from time to time and give us airs from home.
+To-morrow—think of it—I must be off by a quarter to eight to drive in to
+the palace and breakfast with his Hawaiian Majesty at 8.30: I shall be
+dead indeed.  Please give my news to Scott, I trust he is better; give
+him my warm regards.  To you we all send all kinds of things, and I am
+the absentee Squire,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                                                 _Honolulu_, _April_ 1889.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—As usual, your letter is as good as a cordial, and I
+thank you for it, and all your care, kindness, and generous and
+thoughtful friendship, from my heart.  I was truly glad to hear a word of
+Colvin, whose long silence has terrified me; and glad to hear that you
+condoned the notion of my staying longer in the South Seas, for I have
+decided in that sense.  The first idea was to go in the _Morning Star_,
+missionary ship; but now I have found a trading schooner, the _Equator_,
+which is to call for me here early in June and carry us through the
+Gilberts.  What will happen then, the Lord knows.  My mother does not
+accompany us: she leaves here for home early in May, and you will hear of
+us from her; but not, I imagine, anything more definite.  We shall get
+dumped on Butaritari, and whether we manage to go on to the Marshalls and
+Carolines, or whether we fall back on Samoa, Heaven must decide; but I
+mean to fetch back into the course of the _Richmond_—(to think you don’t
+know what the _Richmond_ is!—the steamer of the Eastern South Seas,
+joining New Zealand, Tongatabu, the Samoas, Taheite, and Rarotonga, and
+carrying by last advices sheep in the saloon!)—into the course of the
+_Richmond_ and make Taheite again on the home track.  Would I like to see
+the _Scots Observer_?  Wouldn’t I not?  But whaur?  I’m direckit at
+space.  They have nae post offishes at the Gilberts, and as for the
+Car’lines!  Ye see, Mr. Baxter, we’re no just in the punkshewal _centre_
+o’ civ’lisation.  But pile them up for me, and when I’ve decided on an
+address, I’ll let you ken, and ye’ll can send them stavin’ after me.—Ever
+your affectionate,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                                            _Honolulu_, 10_th_ _May_ 1889.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—I am appalled to gather from your last just to hand that
+you have felt so much concern about the letter.  Pray dismiss it from
+your mind.  But I think you scarce appreciate how disagreeable it is to
+have your private affairs and private unguarded expressions getting into
+print.  It would soon sicken any one of writing letters.  I have no doubt
+that letter was very wisely selected, but it just shows how things crop
+up.  There was a raging jealousy between the two yachts; our captain was
+nearly in a fight over it.  However, no more; and whatever you think, my
+dear fellow, do not suppose me angry with you or —; although I was
+_annoyed at the circumstance_—a very different thing.  But it is
+difficult to conduct life by letter, and I continually feel I may be
+drifting into some matter of offence, in which my heart takes no part.
+
+I must now turn to a point of business.  This new cruise of ours is
+somewhat venturesome; and I think it needful to warn you not to be in a
+hurry to suppose us dead.  In these ill-charted seas, it is quite on the
+cards we might be cast on some unvisited, or very rarely visited, island;
+that there we might lie for a long time, even years, unheard of; and yet
+turn up smiling at the hinder end.  So do not let me be ‘rowpit’ till you
+get some certainty we have gone to Davie Jones in a squall, or graced the
+feast of some barbarian in the character of Long Pig.
+
+I have just been a week away alone on the lee coast of Hawaii, the only
+white creature in many miles, riding five and a half hours one day,
+living with a native, seeing four lepers shipped off to Molokai, hearing
+native causes, and giving my opinion as _amicus curiæ_ as to the
+interpretation of a statute in English; a lovely week among God’s best—at
+least God’s sweetest works—Polynesians.  It has bettered me greatly.  If
+I could only stay there the time that remains, I could get my work done
+and be happy; but the care of my family keeps me in vile Honolulu, where
+I am always out of sorts, amidst heat and cold and cesspools and beastly
+_haoles_. {152}  What is a haole?  You are one; and so, I am sorry to
+say, am I.  After so long a dose of whites, it was a blessing to get
+among Polynesians again even for a week.
+
+Well, Charles, there are waur haoles than yoursel’, I’ll say that for ye;
+and trust before I sail I shall get another letter with more about
+yourself.—Ever your affectionate friend
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO W. H. LOW
+
+
+                                   _Honolulu_, (_about_) 20_th_ _May_ ’89.
+
+MY DEAR LOW,—. . . The goods have come; many daughters have done
+virtuously, but thou excellest them all.—I have at length finished _The
+Master_; it has been a sore cross to me; but now he is buried, his body’s
+under hatches,—his soul, if there is any hell to go to, gone to hell; and
+I forgive him: it is harder to forgive Burlingame for having induced me
+to begin the publication, or myself for suffering the induction.—Yes, I
+think Hole has done finely; it will be one of the most adequately
+illustrated books of our generation; he gets the note, he tells the
+story—_my_ story: I know only one failure—the Master standing on the
+beach.—You must have a letter for me at Sydney—till further notice.
+Remember me to Mrs. Will. H., the godlike sculptor, and any of the
+faithful.  If you want to cease to be a republican, see my little
+Kaiulani, as she goes through—but she is gone already.  You will die a
+red, I wear the colours of that little royal maiden, _Nous allons chanter
+à la ronde_, _si vous voulez_! only she is not blonde by several chalks,
+though she is but a half-blood, and the wrong half Edinburgh Scots like
+mysel’.  But, O Low, I love the Polynesian: this civilisation of ours is
+a dingy, ungentlemanly business; it drops out too much of man, and too
+much of that the very beauty of the poor beast: who has his beauties in
+spite of Zola and Co.  As usual, here is a whole letter with no news: I
+am a bloodless, inhuman dog; and no doubt Zola is a better
+correspondent.—Long live your fine old English admiral—yours, I mean—the
+U.S.A. one at Samoa; I wept tears and loved myself and mankind when I
+read of him: he is not too much civilised.  And there was Gordon, too;
+and there are others, beyond question.  But if you could live, the only
+white folk, in a Polynesian village; and drink that warm, light _vin du
+pays_ of human affection, and enjoy that simple dignity of all about
+you—I will not gush, for I am now in my fortieth year, which seems highly
+unjust, but there it is, Mr. Low, and the Lord enlighten your
+affectionate
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO MRS. R. L. STEVENSON
+
+
+                                        _Kalawao_, _Molokai_ [_May_ 1889].
+
+DEAR FANNY,—I had a lovely sail up.  Captain Cameron and Mr. Gilfillan,
+both born in the States, yet the first still with a strong Highland, and
+the second still with a strong Lowland accent, were good company; the
+night was warm, the victuals plain but good.  Mr. Gilfillan gave me his
+berth, and I slept well, though I heard the sisters sick in the next
+stateroom, poor souls.  Heavy rolling woke me in the morning; I turned in
+all standing, so went right on the upper deck.  The day was on the peep
+out of a low morning bank, and we were wallowing along under stupendous
+cliffs.  As the lights brightened, we could see certain abutments and
+buttresses on their front where wood clustered and grass grew brightly.
+But the whole brow seemed quite impassable, and my heart sank at the
+sight.  Two thousand feet of rock making 19° (the Captain guesses) seemed
+quite beyond my powers.  However, I had come so far; and, to tell you the
+truth, I was so cowed with fear and disgust that I dared not go back on
+the adventure in the interests of my own self-respect.  Presently we came
+up with the leper promontory: lowland, quite bare and bleak and harsh, a
+little town of wooden houses, two churches, a landing-stair, all
+unsightly, sour, northerly, lying athwart the sunrise, with the great
+wall of the pali cutting the world out on the south.  Our lepers were
+sent on the first boat, about a dozen, one poor child very horrid, one
+white man, leaving a large grown family behind him in Honolulu, and then
+into the second stepped the sisters and myself.  I do not know how it
+would have been with me had the sisters not been there.  My horror of the
+horrible is about my weakest point; but the moral loveliness at my elbow
+blotted all else out; and when I found that one of them was crying, poor
+soul, quietly under her veil, I cried a little myself; then I felt as
+right as a trivet, only a little crushed to be there so uselessly.  I
+thought it was a sin and a shame she should feel unhappy; I turned round
+to her, and said something like this: ‘Ladies, God Himself is here to
+give you welcome.  I’m sure it is good for me to be beside you; I hope it
+will be blessed to me; I thank you for myself and the good you do me.’
+It seemed to cheer her up; but indeed I had scarce said it when we were
+at the landing-stairs, and there was a great crowd, hundreds of (God save
+us!) pantomime masks in poor human flesh, waiting to receive the sisters
+and the new patients.
+
+Every hand was offered: I had gloves, but I had made up my mind on the
+boat’s voyage _not_ to give my hand; that seemed less offensive than the
+gloves.  So the sisters and I went up among that crew, and presently I
+got aside (for I felt I had no business there) and set off on foot across
+the promontory, carrying my wrap and the camera.  All horror was quite
+gone from me: to see these dread creatures smile and look happy was
+beautiful.  On my way through Kalaupapa I was exchanging cheerful
+_alohas_ with the patients coming galloping over on their horses; I was
+stopping to gossip at house-doors; I was happy, only ashamed of myself
+that I was here for no good.  One woman was pretty, and spoke good
+English, and was infinitely engaging and (in the old phrase) towardly;
+she thought I was the new white patient; and when she found I was only a
+visitor, a curious change came in her face and voice—the only sad thing,
+morally sad, I mean—that I met that morning.  But for all that, they tell
+me none want to leave.  Beyond Kalaupapa the houses became rare; dry
+stone dykes, grassy, stony land, one sick pandanus; a dreary country;
+from overhead in the little clinging wood shogs of the pali chirruping of
+birds fell; the low sun was right in my face; the trade blew pure and
+cool and delicious; I felt as right as ninepence, and stopped and chatted
+with the patients whom I still met on their horses, with not the least
+disgust.  About half-way over, I met the superintendent (a leper) with a
+horse for me, and O, wasn’t I glad!  But the horse was one of those
+curious, dogged, cranky brutes that always dully want to go somewhere
+else, and my traffic with him completed my crushing fatigue.  I got to
+the guest-house, an empty house with several rooms, kitchen, bath, etc.
+There was no one there, and I let the horse go loose in the garden, lay
+down on the bed, and fell asleep.
+
+Dr. Swift woke me and gave me breakfast, then I came back and slept again
+while he was at the dispensary, and he woke me for dinner; and I came
+back and slept again, and he woke me about six for supper; and then in
+about an hour I felt tired again, and came up to my solitary guest-house,
+played the flageolet, and am now writing to you.  As yet, you see, I have
+seen nothing of the settlement, and my crushing fatigue (though I believe
+that was moral and a measure of my cowardice) and the doctor’s opinion
+make me think the pali hopeless.  ‘You don’t look a strong man,’ said the
+doctor; ‘but are you sound?’  I told him the truth; then he said it was
+out of the question, and if I were to get up at all, I must be carried
+up.  But, as it seems, men as well as horses continually fall on this
+ascent: the doctor goes up with a change of clothes—it is plain that to
+be carried would in itself be very fatiguing to both mind and body; and I
+should then be at the beginning of thirteen miles of mountain road to be
+ridden against time.  How should I come through?  I hope you will think
+me right in my decision: I mean to stay, and shall not be back in
+Honolulu till Saturday, June first.  You must all do the best you can to
+make ready.
+
+Dr. Swift has a wife and an infant son, beginning to toddle and run, and
+they live here as composed as brick and mortar—at least the wife does, a
+Kentucky German, a fine enough creature, I believe, who was quite amazed
+at the sisters shedding tears!  How strange is mankind!  Gilfillan too, a
+good fellow I think, and far from a stupid, kept up his hard Lowland
+Scottish talk in the boat while the sister was covering her face; but I
+believe he knew, and did it (partly) in embarrassment, and part perhaps
+in mistaken kindness.  And that was one reason, too, why I made my speech
+to them.  Partly, too, I did it, because I was ashamed to do so, and
+remembered one of my golden rules, ‘When you are ashamed to speak, speak
+up at once.’  But, mind you, that rule is only golden with strangers;
+with your own folks, there are other considerations.  This is a strange
+place to be in.  A bell has been sounded at intervals while I wrote, now
+all is still but a musical humming of the sea, not unlike the sound of
+telegraph wires; the night is quite cool and pitch dark, with a small
+fine rain; one light over in the leper settlement, one cricket whistling
+in the garden, my lamp here by my bedside, and my pen cheeping between my
+inky fingers.
+
+Next day, lovely morning, slept all night, 80° in the shade, strong,
+sweet Anaho trade-wind.
+
+                                                                    LOUIS.
+
+
+
+TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+                                                  _Honolulu_, _June_ 1889.
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN,—I am just home after twelve days journey to Molokai,
+seven of them at the leper settlement, where I can only say that the
+sight of so much courage, cheerfulness, and devotion strung me too high
+to mind the infinite pity and horror of the sights.  I used to ride over
+from Kalawao to Kalaupapa (about three miles across the promontory, the
+cliff-wall, ivied with forest and yet inaccessible from steepness, on my
+left), go to the Sisters’ home, which is a miracle of neatness, play a
+game of croquet with seven leper girls (90° in the shade), got a little
+old-maid meal served me by the Sisters, and ride home again, tired
+enough, but not too tired.  The girls have all dolls, and love dressing
+them.  You who know so many ladies delicately clad, and they who know so
+many dressmakers, please make it known it would be an acceptable gift to
+send scraps for doll dressmaking to the Reverend Sister Maryanne, Bishop
+Home, Kalaupapa, Molokai, Hawaiian Islands.
+
+I have seen sights that cannot be told, and heard stories that cannot be
+repeated: yet I never admired my poor race so much, nor (strange as it
+may seem) loved life more than in the settlement.  A horror of moral
+beauty broods over the place: that’s like bad Victor Hugo, but it is the
+only way I can express the sense that lived with me all these days.  And
+this even though it was in great part Catholic, and my sympathies flew
+never with so much difficulty as towards Catholic virtues.  The pass-book
+kept with heaven stirs me to anger and laughter.  One of the sisters
+calls the place ‘the ticket office to heaven.’  Well, what is the odds?
+They do their darg and do it with kindness and efficiency incredible; and
+we must take folk’s virtues as we find them, and love the better part.
+Of old Damien, whose weaknesses and worse perhaps I heard fully, I think
+only the more.  It was a European peasant: dirty, bigoted, untruthful,
+unwise, tricky, but superb with generosity, residual candour and
+fundamental good-humour: convince him he had done wrong (it might take
+hours of insult) and he would undo what he had done and like his
+corrector better.  A man, with all the grime and paltriness of mankind,
+but a saint and hero all the more for that.  The place as regards scenery
+is grand, gloomy, and bleak.  Mighty mountain walls descending sheer
+along the whole face of the island into a sea unusually deep; the front
+of the mountain ivied and furred with clinging forest, one viridescent
+cliff: about half-way from east to west, the low, bare, stony promontory
+edged in between the cliff and the ocean; the two little towns (Kalawao
+and Kalaupapa) seated on either side of it, as bare almost as bathing
+machines upon a beach; and the population—gorgons and chimaeras dire.
+All this tear of the nerves I bore admirably; and the day after I got
+away, rode twenty miles along the opposite coast and up into the
+mountains: they call it twenty, I am doubtful of the figures: I should
+guess it nearer twelve; but let me take credit for what residents allege;
+and I was riding again the day after, so I need say no more about health.
+Honolulu does not agree with me at all: I am always out of sorts there,
+with slight headache, blood to the head, etc.  I had a good deal of work
+to do and did it with miserable difficulty; and yet all the time I have
+been gaining strength, as you see, which is highly encouraging.  By the
+time I am done with this cruise I shall have the material for a very
+singular book of travels: names of strange stories and characters,
+cannibals, pirates, ancient legends, old Polynesian poetry,—never was so
+generous a farrago.  I am going down now to get the story of a
+shipwrecked family, who were fifteen months on an island with a murderer:
+there is a specimen.  The Pacific is a strange place; the nineteenth
+century only exists there in spots: all round, it is a no man’s land of
+the ages, a stir-about of epochs and races, barbarisms and civilisations,
+virtues and crimes.
+
+It is good of you to let me stay longer, but if I had known how ill you
+were, I should be now on my way home.  I had chartered my schooner and
+made all arrangements before (at last) we got definite news.  I feel
+highly guilty; I should be back to insult and worry you a little.  Our
+address till further notice is to be c/o R. Towns and Co., Sydney.  That
+is final: I only got the arrangement made yesterday; but you may now
+publish it abroad.—Yours ever,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO JAMES PAYN
+
+
+                                  _Honolulu_, _H.I._, _June_ 13_th_, 1889.
+
+MY DEAR JAMES PAYN,—I get sad news of you here at my offsetting for
+further voyages: I wish I could say what I feel.  Sure there was never
+any man less deserved this calamity; for I have heard you speak time and
+again, and I remember nothing that was unkind, nothing that was untrue,
+nothing that was not helpful, from your lips.  It is the ill-talkers that
+should hear no more.  God knows, I know no word of consolation; but I do
+feel your trouble.  You are the more open to letters now; let me talk to
+you for two pages.  I have nothing but happiness to tell; and you may
+bless God you are a man so sound-hearted that (even in the freshness of
+your calamity) I can come to you with my own good fortune unashamed and
+secure of sympathy.  It is a good thing to be a good man, whether deaf or
+whether dumb; and of all our fellow-craftsmen (whom yet they count a
+jealous race), I never knew one but gave you the name of honesty and
+kindness: come to think of it gravely, this is better than the finest
+hearing.  We are all on the march to deafness, blindness, and all
+conceivable and fatal disabilities; we shall not all get there with a
+report so good.  My good news is a health astonishingly reinstated.  This
+climate; these voyagings; these landfalls at dawn; new islands peaking
+from the morning bank; new forested harbours; new passing alarms of
+squalls and surf; new interests of gentle natives,—the whole tale of my
+life is better to me than any poem.
+
+I am fresh just now from the leper settlement of Molokai, playing croquet
+with seven leper girls, sitting and yarning with old, blind, leper
+beachcombers in the hospital, sickened with the spectacle of abhorrent
+suffering and deformation amongst the patients, touched to the heart by
+the sight of lovely and effective virtues in their helpers: no stranger
+time have I ever had, nor any so moving.  I do not think it a little
+thing to be deaf, God knows, and God defend me from the same!—but to be a
+leper, of one of the self-condemned, how much more awful! and yet there’s
+a way there also.  ‘There are Molokais everywhere,’ said Mr. Dutton,
+Father Damien’s dresser; you are but new landed in yours; and my dear and
+kind adviser, I wish you, with all my soul, that patience and courage
+which you will require.  Think of me meanwhile on a trading schooner,
+bound for the Gilbert Islands, thereafter for the Marshalls, with a diet
+of fish and cocoanut before me; bound on a cruise of—well, of
+investigation to what islands we can reach, and to get (some day or
+other) to Sydney, where a letter addressed to the care of R. Towns & Co.
+will find me sooner or later; and if it contain any good news, whether of
+your welfare or the courage with which you bear the contrary, will do me
+good.—Yours affectionately (although so near a stranger),
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+          _Schooner_ ‘_Equator_,’ _Apaiang Lagoon_, _August_ 22_nd_, 1889.
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN,—The missionary ship is outside the reef trying (vainly)
+to get in; so I may have a chance to get a line off.  I am glad to say I
+shall be home by June next for the summer, or we shall know the reason
+why.  For God’s sake be well and jolly for the meeting.  I shall be, I
+believe, a different character from what you have seen this long while.
+This cruise is up to now a huge success, being interesting, pleasant, and
+profitable.  The beachcomber is perhaps the most interesting character
+here; the natives are very different, on the whole, from Polynesians:
+they are moral, stand-offish (for good reasons), and protected by a dark
+tongue.  It is delightful to meet the few Hawaiians (mostly missionaries)
+that are dotted about, with their Italian _brio_ and their ready
+friendliness.  The whites are a strange lot, many of them good, kind,
+pleasant fellows; others quite the lowest I have ever seen even in the
+slums of cities.  I wish I had time to narrate to you the doings and
+character of three white murderers (more or less proven) I have met.
+One, the only undoubted assassin of the lot, quite gained my affection in
+his big home out of a wreck, with his New Hebrides wife in her savage
+turban of hair and yet a perfect lady, and his three adorable little
+girls in Rob Roy Macgregor dresses, dancing to the hand organ, performing
+circus on the floor with startling effects of nudity, and curling up
+together on a mat to sleep, three sizes, three attitudes, three Rob Roy
+dresses, and six little clenched fists: the murderer meanwhile brooding
+and gloating over his chicks, till your whole heart went out to him; and
+yet his crime on the face of it was dark: disembowelling, in his own
+house, an old man of seventy, and him drunk.
+
+It is lunch-time, I see, and I must close up with my warmest love to you.
+I wish you were here to sit upon me when required.  Ah! if you were but a
+good sailor!  I will never leave the sea, I think; it is only there that
+a Briton lives: my poor grandfather, it is from him I inherit the taste,
+I fancy, and he was round many islands in his day; but I, please God,
+shall beat him at that before the recall is sounded.  Would you be
+surprised to learn that I contemplate becoming a shipowner?  I do, but it
+is a secret.  Life is far better fun than people dream who fall asleep
+among the chimney stacks and telegraph wires.
+
+Love to Henry James and others near.—Ever yours, my dear fellow,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                _Equator Town_, _Apemama_, _October_ 1889.
+
+No _Morning Star_ came, however; and so now I try to send this to you by
+the schooner _J. L. Tiernan_.  We have been about a month ashore, camping
+out in a kind of town the king set up for us: on the idea that I was
+really a ‘big chief’ in England.  He dines with us sometimes, and sends
+up a cook for a share of our meals when he does not come himself.  This
+sounds like high living! alas, undeceive yourself.  Salt junk is the
+mainstay; a low island, except for cocoanuts, is just the same as a ship
+at sea: brackish water, no supplies, and very little shelter.  The king
+is a great character—a thorough tyrant, very much of a gentleman, a poet,
+a musician, a historian, or perhaps rather more a genealogist—it is
+strange to see him lying in his house among a lot of wives (nominal
+wives) writing the History of Apemama in an account-book; his description
+of one of his own songs, which he sang to me himself, as ‘about
+sweethearts, and trees, and the sea—and no true, all-the-same lie,’ seems
+about as compendious a definition of lyric poetry as a man could ask.
+Tembinoka is here the great attraction: all the rest is heat and tedium
+and villainous dazzle, and yet more villainous mosquitoes.  We are like
+to be here, however, many a long week before we get away, and then
+whither?  A strange trade this voyaging: so vague, so bound-down, so
+helpless.  Fanny has been planting some vegetables, and we have actually
+onions and radishes coming up: ah, onion-despiser, were you but awhile in
+a low island, how your heart would leap at sight of a coster’s barrow!  I
+think I could shed tears over a dish of turnips.  No doubt we shall all
+be glad to say farewell to low islands—I had near said for ever.  They
+are very tame; and I begin to read up the directory, and pine for an
+island with a profile, a running brook, or were it only a well among the
+rocks.  The thought of a mango came to me early this morning and set my
+greed on edge; but you do not know what a mango is, so—.
+
+I have been thinking a great deal of you and the Monument of late, and
+even tried to get my thoughts into a poem, hitherto without success.  God
+knows how you are: I begin to weary dreadfully to see you—well, in nine
+months, I hope; but that seems a long time.  I wonder what has befallen
+me too, that flimsy part of me that lives (or dwindles) in the public
+mind; and what has befallen _The Master_, and what kind of a Box the
+Merry Box has been found.  It is odd to know nothing of all this.  We had
+an old woman to do devil-work for you about a month ago, in a Chinaman’s
+house on Apaiang (August 23rd or 24th).  You should have seen the crone
+with a noble masculine face, like that of an old crone [_sic_], a body
+like a man’s (naked all but the feathery female girdle), knotting
+cocoanut leaves and muttering spells: Fanny and I, and the good captain
+of the _Equator_, and the Chinaman and his native wife and sister-in-law,
+all squatting on the floor about the sibyl; and a crowd of dark faces
+watching from behind her shoulder (she sat right in the doorway) and
+tittering aloud with strange, appalled, embarrassed laughter at each
+fresh adjuration.  She informed us you were in England, not travelling
+and now no longer sick; she promised us a fair wind the next day, and we
+had it, so I cherish the hope she was as right about Sidney Colvin.  The
+shipownering has rather petered out since I last wrote, and a good many
+other plans beside.
+
+Health?  Fanny very so-so; I pretty right upon the whole, and getting
+through plenty work: I know not quite how, but it seems to me not bad and
+in places funny.
+
+South Sea Yarns:
+
+  1. _The Wrecker_
+
+  2. _The Pearl Fisher_
+
+  3. _The Beachcombers_
+
+                                                  by R. L. S. and Lloyd O.
+
+_The Pearl Fisher_, part done, lies in Sydney.  It is _The Wrecker_ we
+are now engaged upon: strange ways of life, I think, they set forth:
+things that I can scarce touch upon, or even not at all, in my travel
+book; and the yarns are good, I do believe.  _The Pearl Fisher_ is for
+the _New York Ledger_: the yarn is a kind of Monte Cristo one.  _The
+Wrecker_ is the least good as a story, I think; but the characters seem
+to me good.  _The Beachcombers_ is more sentimental.  These three scarce
+touch the outskirts of the life we have been viewing; a hot-bed of
+strange characters and incidents: Lord, how different from Europe or the
+Pallid States!  Farewell.  Heaven knows when this will get to you.  I
+burn to be in Sydney and have news.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+                  _Schooner_ ‘_Equator_,’ _at sea_. 190 _miles off Samoa_.
+                                          _Monday_, _December_ 2_nd_, 1889
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN,—We are just nearing the end of our long cruise.  Rain,
+calms, squalls, bang—there’s the foretopmast gone; rain, calm, squalls,
+away with the staysail; more rain, more calm, more squalls; a prodigious
+heavy sea all the time, and the _Equator_ staggering and hovering like a
+swallow in a storm; and the cabin, a great square, crowded with wet human
+beings, and the rain avalanching on the deck, and the leaks dripping
+everywhere: Fanny, in the midst of fifteen males, bearing up wonderfully.
+But such voyages are at the best a trial.  We had one particularity:
+coming down on Winslow Reef, p. d. (position doubtful): two positions in
+the directory, a third (if you cared to count that) on the chart; heavy
+sea running, and the night due.  The boats were cleared, bread put on
+board, and we made up our packets for a boat voyage of four or five
+hundred miles, and turned in, expectant of a crash.  Needless to say it
+did not come, and no doubt we were far to leeward.  If we only had
+twopenceworth of wind, we might be at dinner in Apia to-morrow evening;
+but no such luck: here we roll, dead before a light air—and that is no
+point of sailing at all for a fore and aft schooner—the sun blazing
+overhead, thermometer 88°, four degrees above what I have learned to call
+South Sea temperature; but for all that, land so near, and so much grief
+being happily astern, we are all pretty gay on board, and have been
+photographing and draught-playing and sky-larking like anything.  I am
+minded to stay not very long in Samoa and confine my studies there (as
+far as any one can forecast) to the history of the late war.  My book is
+now practically modelled: if I can execute what is designed, there are
+few better books now extant on this globe, bar the epics, and the big
+tragedies, and histories, and the choice lyric poetics and a novel or
+so—none.  But it is not executed yet; and let not him that putteth on his
+armour, vaunt himself.  At least, nobody has had such stuff; such wild
+stories, such beautiful scenes, such singular intimacies, such manners
+and traditions, so incredible a mixture of the beautiful and horrible,
+the savage and civilised.  I will give you here some idea of the table of
+contents, which ought to make your mouth water.  I propose to call the
+book _The South Seas_: it is rather a large title, but not many people
+have seen more of them than I, perhaps no one—certainly no one capable of
+using the material.
+
+  _Part I_.  _General_.  ‘_Of schooners_, _islands_, _and maroons_.’
+CHAPTER              I.  Marine.
+                    II.  Contraband (smuggling, barratry, labour
+                         traffic).
+                   III.  The Beachcomber.
+                    IV.  Beachcomber stories.  i. The Murder of the
+                         Chinaman.  ii. Death of a Beachcomber.  iii.
+                         A Character.  iv. The Apia Blacksmith.
+                     _Part II_.  _The Marquesas_.
+                     V.  Anaho.  i. Arrival.  ii. Death.  iii. The
+                         Tapu.  iv. Morals.  v. Hoka.
+                    VI.  Tai-o-hae.  i. Arrival.  ii. The French.
+                         iii. The Royal Family.  iv. Chiefless Folk.
+                         v. The Catholics.  vi. Hawaiian
+                         Missionaries.
+                   VII.  Observations of a Long Pig.  i. Cannibalism.
+                         ii. Hatiheu.  iii. Frère Michel.  iv.
+                         Toahauka and Atuona.  v. The Vale of Atuona.
+                         vi. Moipu.  vii. Captain Hati.
+              _Part III_.  _The Dangerous Archipelago_.
+                  VIII.  The Group.
+                    IX.  A House to let in a Low Island.
+                     X.  A Paumotuan Funeral.  i. The Funeral.  ii.
+                         Tales of the Dead.
+                        _Part IV_.  _Tahiti_.
+                    XI.  Tautira.
+                   XII.  Village Government in Tahiti.
+                  XIII.  A Journey in Quest of Legends.
+                   XIV.  Legends and Songs.
+                    XV.  Life in Eden.
+                   XVI.  Note on the French Regimen.
+                   _Part V_.  _The Eight Islands_.
+                  XVII.  A Note on Missions.
+                 XVIII.  The Kona Coast of Hawaii.  i. Hookena.  ii.
+                         A Ride in the Forest.  iii. A Law Case.  iv.
+                         The City of Refuge.  v. The Lepers.
+                   XIX.  Molokai.  i. A Week in the Precinct.  ii.
+                         History of the Leper Settlement.  iii. The
+                         Mokolii.  iv. The Free Island.
+                     _Part VI_.  _The Gilberts_.
+                    XX.  The Group.  ii. Position of Woman.  iii. The
+                         Missions.  iv. Devilwork.  v. Republics.
+                   XXI.  Rule and Misrule on Makin.  i. Butaritari,
+                         its King and Court.  ii. History of Three
+                         Kings.  iii. The Drink Question.
+                  XXII.  A Butaritarian Festival.
+                 XXIII.  The King of Apemama.  i. First Impressions.
+                         ii. Equator Town and the Palace.  iii. The
+                         Three Corselets.
+                        _Part VII_.  _Samoa_.
+                    which I have not yet reached.
+
+Even as so sketched it makes sixty chapters, not less than 300 _Cornhill_
+pages; and I suspect not much under 500.  Samoa has yet to be accounted
+for: I think it will be all history, and I shall work in observations on
+Samoan manners, under the similar heads in other Polynesian islands.  It
+is still possible, though unlikely, that I may add a passing visit to
+Fiji or Tonga, or even both; but I am growing impatient to see yourself,
+and I do not want to be later than June of coming to England.  Anyway,
+you see it will be a large work, and as it will be copiously illustrated,
+the Lord knows what it will cost.  We shall return, God willing, by
+Sydney, Ceylon, Suez and, I guess, Marseilles the many-masted (copyright
+epithet).  I shall likely pause a day or two in Paris, but all that is
+too far ahead—although now it begins to look near—so near, and I can hear
+the rattle of the hansom up Endell Street, and see the gates swing back,
+and feel myself jump out upon the Monument steps—Hosanna!—home again.  My
+dear fellow, now that my father is done with his troubles, and 17 Heriot
+Row no more than a mere shell, you and that gaunt old Monument in
+Bloomsbury are all that I have in view when I use the word home; some
+passing thoughts there may be of the rooms at Skerryvore, and the
+black-birds in the chine on a May morning; but the essence is S. C. and
+the Museum.  Suppose, by some damned accident, you were no more: well, I
+should return just the same, because of my mother and Lloyd, whom I now
+think to send to Cambridge; but all the spring would have gone out of me,
+and ninety per cent. of the attraction lost.  I will copy for you here a
+copy of verses made in Apemama.
+
+   I heard the pulse of the besieging sea
+   Throb far away all night.  I heard the wind
+   Fly crying, and convulse tumultuous palms.
+   I rose and strolled.  The isle was all bright sand,
+   And flailing fans and shadows of the palm:
+   The heaven all moon, and wind, and the blind vault—
+   The keenest planet slain, for Venus slept.
+   The King, my neighbour, with his host of wives,
+   Slept in the precinct of the palisade:
+   Where single, in the wind, under the moon,
+   Among the slumbering cabins, blazed a fire,
+   Sole street-lamp and the only sentinel.
+      To other lands and nights my fancy turned,
+   To London first, and chiefly to your house,
+   The many-pillared and the well-beloved.
+   There yearning fancy lighted; there again
+   In the upper room I lay and heard far off
+   The unsleeping city murmur like a shell;
+   The muffled tramp of the Museum guard
+   Once more went by me; I beheld again
+   Lamps vainly brighten the dispeopled street;
+   Again I longed for the returning morn,
+   The awaking traffic, the bestirring birds,
+   The consentaneous trill of tiny song
+   That weaves round monumental cornices
+   A passing charm of beauty: most of all,
+   For your light foot I wearied, and your knock
+   That was the glad réveillé of my day.
+      Lo, now, when to your task in the great house
+   At morning through the portico you pass,
+   One moment glance where, by the pillared wall,
+   Far-voyaging island gods, begrimed with smoke,
+   Sit now unworshipped, the rude monument
+   Of faiths forgot and races undivined;
+   Sit now disconsolate, remembering well
+   The priest, the victim, and the songful crowd,
+   The blaze of the blue noon, and that huge voice
+   Incessant, of the breakers on the shore.
+   As far as these from their ancestral shrine,
+   So far, so foreign, your divided friends
+   Wander, estranged in body, not in mind.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+     _Schooner_ ‘_Equator_,’ _at sea_, _Wednesday_, 4_th_ _December_ 1889.
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—We are now about to rise, like whales, from this long
+dive, and I make ready a communication which is to go to you by the first
+mail from Samoa.  How long we shall stay in that group I cannot forecast;
+but it will be best still to address at Sydney, where I trust, when I
+shall arrive, perhaps in one month from now, more probably in two or
+three, to find all news.
+
+_Business_.—Will you be likely to have a space in the Magazine for a
+serial story, which should be, ready, I believe, by April, at latest by
+autumn?  It is called _The Wrecker_; and in book form will appear as
+number 1 of South Sea Yarns by R. L. S. and Lloyd Osbourne.  Here is the
+table as far as fully conceived, and indeed executed. {170} . . .
+
+The story is founded on fact, the mystery I really believe to be
+insoluble; the purchase of a wreck has never been handled before, no more
+has San Francisco.  These seem all elements of success.  There is,
+besides, a character, Jim Pinkerton, of the advertising American, on whom
+we build a good deal; and some sketches of the American merchant marine,
+opium smuggling in Honolulu, etc.  It should run to (about) three hundred
+pages of my MS.  I would like to know if this tale smiles upon you, if
+you will have a vacancy, and what you will be willing to pay.  It will of
+course be copyright in both the States and England.  I am a little
+anxious to have it tried serially, as it tests the interest of the
+mystery.
+
+_Pleasure_.—We have had a fine time in the Gilbert group, though four
+months on low islands, which involves low diet, is a largish order; and
+my wife is rather down.  I am myself, up to now, a pillar of health,
+though our long and vile voyage of calms, squalls, cataracts of rain,
+sails carried away, foretopmast lost, boats cleared and packets made on
+the approach of a p. d. reef, etc., has cured me of salt brine, and
+filled me with a longing for beef steak and mangoes not to be depicted.
+The interest has been immense.  Old King Tembinoka of Apemama, the
+Napoleon of the group, poet, tyrant, altogether a man of mark, gave me
+the woven corselets of his grandfather, his father and his uncle, and,
+what pleased me more, told me their singular story, then all manner of
+strange tales, facts and experiences for my South Sea book, which should
+be a Tearer, Mr. Burlingame: no one at least has had such stuff.
+
+We are now engaged in the hell of a dead calm, the heat is cruel—it is
+the only time when I suffer from heat: I have nothing on but a pair of
+serge trousers, and a singlet without sleeves of Oxford gauze—O, yes, and
+a red sash about my waist; and yet as I sit here in the cabin, sweat
+streams from me.  The rest are on deck under a bit of awning; we are not
+much above a hundred miles from port, and we might as well be in
+Kamschatka.  However, I should be honest: this is the first calm I have
+endured without the added bane of a heavy swell, and the intoxicated
+blue-bottle wallowings and knockings of the helpless ship.
+
+I wonder how you liked the end of _The Master_; that was the hardest job
+I ever had to do; did I do it?
+
+My wife begs to be remembered to yourself and Mrs. Burlingame.  Remember
+all of us to all friends, particularly Low, in case I don’t get a word
+through for him.—I am, yours very sincerely,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                                               _Samoa_, [_December_ 1889].
+
+MY DEAR BAXTER,—. . . I cannot return until I have seen either Tonga or
+Fiji or both: and I must not leave here till I have finished my
+collections on the war—a very interesting bit of history, the truth often
+very hard to come at, and the search (for me) much complicated by the
+German tongue, from the use of which I have desisted (I suppose) these
+fifteen years.  The last two days I have been mugging with a dictionary
+from five to six hours a day; besides this, I have to call upon, keep
+sweet, and judiciously interview all sorts of persons—English, American,
+German, and Samoan.  It makes a hard life; above all, as after every
+interview I have to come and get my notes straight on the nail.  I
+believe I should have got my facts before the end of January, when I
+shall make our Tonga or Fiji.  I am down right in the hurricane season;
+but they had so bad a one last year, I don’t imagine there will be much
+of an edition this.  Say that I get to Sydney some time in April, and I
+shall have done well, and be in a position to write a very singular and
+interesting book, or rather two; for I shall begin, I think, with a
+separate opuscule on the Samoan Trouble, about as long as _Kidnapped_,
+not very interesting, but valuable—and a thing proper to be done.  And
+then, hey! for the big South Sea Book: a devil of a big one, and full of
+the finest sport.
+
+This morning as I was going along to my breakfast a little before seven,
+reading a number of _Blackwood’s Magazine_, I was startled by a soft
+_talofa_, _alii_ (note for my mother: they are quite courteous here in
+the European style, quite unlike Tahiti), right in my ear: it was Mataafa
+coming from early mass in his white coat and white linen kilt, with three
+fellows behind him.  Mataafa is the nearest thing to a hero in my
+history, and really a fine fellow; plenty sense, and the most dignified,
+quiet, gentle manners.  Talking of _Blackwood_—a file of which I was
+lucky enough to find here in the lawyer’s—Mrs. Oliphant seems in a
+staggering state: from the _Wrong Box_ to _The Master_ I scarce recognise
+either my critic or myself.  I gather that _The Master_ should do well,
+and at least that notice is agreeable reading.  I expect to be home in
+June: you will have gathered that I am pretty well.  In addition to my
+labours, I suppose I walk five or six miles a day, and almost every day I
+ride up and see Fanny and Lloyd, who are in a house in the bush with Ah
+Fu.  I live in Apia for history’s sake with Moors, an American trader.
+Day before yesterday I was arrested and fined for riding fast in the
+street, which made my blood bitter, as the wife of the manager of the
+German Firm has twice almost ridden me down, and there seems none to say
+her nay.  The Germans have behaved pretty badly here, but not in all ways
+so ill as you may have gathered: they were doubtless much provoked; and
+if the insane Knappe had not appeared upon the scene, might have got out
+of the muddle with dignity.  I write along without rhyme or reason, as
+things occur to me.
+
+I hope from my outcries about printing you do not think I want you to
+keep my news or letters in a Blue Beard closet.  I like all friends to
+hear of me; they all should if I had ninety hours in the day, and
+strength for all of them; but you must have gathered how hard worked I
+am, and you will understand I go to bed a pretty tired man.
+
+                                                29_th_ _December_, [1889].
+
+To-morrow (Monday, I won’t swear to my day of the month; this is the
+Sunday between Christmas and New Year) I go up the coast with Mr. Clarke,
+one of the London Society missionaries, in a boat to examine schools, see
+Tamasese, etc.  Lloyd comes to photograph.  Pray Heaven we have good
+weather; this is the rainy season; we shall be gone four or five days;
+and if the rain keep off, I shall be glad of the change; if it rain, it
+will be beastly.  This explains still further how hard pressed I am, as
+the mail will be gone ere I return, and I have thus lost the days I meant
+to write in.  I have a boy, Henry, who interprets and copies for me, and
+is a great nuisance.  He said he wished to come to me in order to learn
+‘long expressions.’  Henry goes up along with us; and as I am not fond of
+him, he may before the trip is over hear some ‘strong expressions.’  I am
+writing this on the back balcony at Moors’, palms and a hill like the
+hill of Kinnoull looking in at me; myself lying on the floor, and (like
+the parties in Handel’s song) ‘clad in robes of virgin white’; the ink is
+dreadful, the heat delicious, a fine going breeze in the palms, and from
+the other side of the house the sudden angry splash and roar of the
+Pacific on the reef, where the warships are still piled from last year’s
+hurricane, some under water, one high and dry upon her side, the
+strangest figure of a ship was ever witnessed; the narrow bay there is
+full of ships; the men-of-war covered with sail after the rains, and
+(especially the German ship, which is fearfully and awfully top heavy)
+rolling almost yards in, in what appears to be calm water.
+
+Samoa, Apia at least, is far less beautiful than the Marquesas or Tahiti:
+a more gentle scene, gentler acclivities, a tamer face of nature; and
+this much aided, for the wanderer, by the great German plantations with
+their countless regular avenues of palms.  The island has beautiful
+rivers, of about the bigness of our waters in the Lothians, with pleasant
+pools and waterfalls and overhanging verdure, and often a great volume of
+sound, so that once I thought I was passing near a mill, and it was only
+the voice of the river.  I am not specially attracted by the people; but
+they are courteous; the women very attractive, and dress lovely; the men
+purposelike, well set up, tall, lean, and dignified.  As I write the
+breeze is brisking up, doors are beginning to slam: and shutters; a
+strong draught sweeps round the balcony; it looks doubtful for to-morrow.
+Here I shut up.—Ever your affectionate,
+
+                                                          R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO DR. SCOTT
+
+
+                                  _Apia_, _Samoa_, _January_ 20_th_, 1890.
+
+MY DEAR SCOTT,—Shameful indeed that you should not have heard of me
+before!  I have now been some twenty months in the South Seas, and am (up
+to date) a person whom you would scarce know.  I think nothing of long
+walks and rides: I was four hours and a half gone the other day, partly
+riding, partly climbing up a steep ravine.  I have stood a six months’
+voyage on a copra schooner with about three months ashore on coral
+atolls, which means (except for cocoanuts to drink) no change whatever
+from ship’s food.  My wife suffered badly—it was too rough a business
+altogether—Lloyd suffered—and, in short, I was the only one of the party
+who ‘kept my end up.’
+
+I am so pleased with this climate that I have decided to settle; have
+even purchased a piece of land from three to four hundred acres, I know
+not which till the survey is completed, and shall only return next summer
+to wind up my affairs in England; thenceforth I mean to be a subject of
+the High Commissioner.
+
+Now you would have gone longer yet without news of your truant patient,
+but that I have a medical discovery to communicate.  I find I can (almost
+immediately) fight off a cold with liquid extract of coca; two or (if
+obstinate) three teaspoonfuls in the day for a variable period of from
+one to five days sees the cold generally to the door.  I find it at once
+produces a glow, stops rigour, and though it makes one very
+uncomfortable, prevents the advance of the disease.  Hearing of this
+influenza, it occurred to me that this might prove remedial; and perhaps
+a stronger exhibition—injections of cocaine, for instance—still better.
+
+If on my return I find myself let in for this epidemic, which seems
+highly calculated to nip me in the bud, I shall feel very much inclined
+to make the experiment.  See what a gulf you may save me from if you
+shall have previously made it on _anima vili_, on some less important
+sufferer, and shall have found it worse than useless.
+
+How is Miss Boodle and her family?  Greeting to your brother and all
+friends in Bournemouth, yours very sincerely,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                                                 _Februar den_ 3_en_ 1890.
+
+                                _Dampfer Lübeck zwischen Apia und Sydney_.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—I have got one delightful letter from you, and heard
+from my mother of your kindness in going to see her.  Thank you for that:
+you can in no way more touch and serve me. . . . Ay, ay, it is sad to
+sell 17; sad and fine were the old days: when I was away in Apemama, I
+wrote two copies of verse about Edinburgh and the past, so ink black, so
+golden bright.  I will send them, if I can find them, for they will say
+something to you, and indeed one is more than half addressed to you.
+This is it—
+
+                            TO MY OLD COMRADES
+
+   Do you remember—can we e’er forget?—
+   How, in the coiled perplexities of youth,
+   In our wild climate, in our scowling town,
+   We gloomed and shivered, sorrowed, sobbed, and feared?
+   The belching winter wind, the missile rain,
+   The rare and welcome silence of the snows,
+   The laggard morn, the haggard day, the night,
+   The grimy spell of the nocturnal town,
+   Do you remember?—Ah, could one forget!
+   As when the fevered sick that all night long
+   Listed the wind intone, and hear at last
+   The ever-welcome voice of the chanticleer
+   Sing in the bitter hour before the dawn,—
+   With sudden ardour, these desire the day:
+
+(Here a squall sends all flying.)
+
+   So sang in the gloom of youth the bird of hope;
+   So we, exulting, hearkened and desired.
+   For lo! as in the palace porch of life
+   We huddled with chimeras, from within—
+   How sweet to hear!—the music swelled and fell,
+   And through the breach of the revolving doors
+   What dreams of splendour blinded us and fled!
+   I have since then contended and rejoiced;
+   Amid the glories of the house of life
+   Profoundly entered, and the shrine beheld:
+   Yet when the lamp from my expiring eyes
+   Shall dwindle and recede, the voice of love
+   Fall insignificant on my closing ears,
+   What sound shall come but the old cry of the wind
+   In our inclement city? what return
+   But the image of the emptiness of youth,
+   Filled with the sound of footsteps and that voice
+   Of discontent and rapture and despair?
+   So, as in darkness, from the magic lamp,
+   The momentary pictures gleam and fade
+   And perish, and the night resurges—these
+   Shall I remember, and then all forget.
+
+They’re pretty second-rate, but felt.  I can’t be bothered to copy the
+other.
+
+I have bought 314½ acres of beautiful land in the bush behind Apia; when
+we get the house built, the garden laid, and cattle in the place, it will
+be something to fall back on for shelter and food; and if the island
+could stumble into political quiet, it is conceivable it might even bring
+a little income. . . . We range from 600 to 1500 feet, have five streams,
+waterfalls, precipices, profound ravines, rich tablelands, fifty head of
+cattle on the ground (if any one could catch them), a great view of
+forest, sea, mountains, the warships in the haven: really a noble place.
+Some day you are to take a long holiday and come and see us: it has been
+all planned.
+
+With all these irons in the fire, and cloudy prospects, you may be sure I
+was pleased to hear a good account of business.  I believed _The Master_
+was a sure card: I wonder why Henley thinks it grimy; grim it is, God
+knows, but sure not grimy, else I am the more deceived.  I am sorry he
+did not care for it; I place it on the line with _Kidnapped_ myself.
+We’ll see as time goes on whether it goes above or falls below.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+               _SS. Lübeck_, [_between Apia and Sydney_, _February_] 1890.
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—I desire nothing better than to continue my relation
+with the Magazine, to which it pleases me to hear I have been useful.
+The only thing I have ready is the enclosed barbaric piece.  As soon as I
+have arrived in Sydney I shall send you some photographs, a portrait of
+Tembinoka, perhaps a view of the palace or of the ‘matted men’ at their
+singing; also T.’s flag, which my wife designed for him: in a word, what
+I can do best for you.  It will be thus a foretaste of my book of
+travels.  I shall ask you to let me have, if I wish it, the use of the
+plates made, and to make up a little tract of the verses and
+illustrations, of which you might send six copies to H. M. Tembinoka,
+King of Apemama _via_ Butaritari, Gilbert Islands.  It might be best to
+send it by Crawford and Co., S. F.  There is no postal service; and
+schooners must take it, how they may and when.  Perhaps some such note as
+this might be prefixed:
+
+_At my departure from the island of Apemama_, _for which you will look in
+vain in most atlases_, _the king and I agreed_, _since we both set up to
+be in the poetical way_, _that we should celebrate our separation in
+verse_.  _Whether or not his majesty has been true to his bargain_, _the
+laggard posts of the Pacific may perhaps inform me in six months_,
+_perhaps not before a year_.  _The following lines represent my part of
+the contract_, _and it is hoped_, _by their pictures of strange manners_,
+_they may entertain a civilised audience_.  _Nothing throughout has been
+invented or exaggerated_; _the lady herein referred to as the author’s
+Muse_, _has confined herself to stringing into rhyme facts and legends
+that I saw or heard during two months’ residence upon the island_.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+You will have received from me a letter about _The Wrecker_.  No doubt it
+is a new experiment for me, being disguised so much as a study of
+manners, and the interest turning on a mystery of the detective sort, I
+think there need be no hesitation about beginning it in the fall of the
+year.  Lloyd has nearly finished his part, and I shall hope to send you
+very soon the MS. of about the first four-sevenths.  At the same time, I
+have been employing myself in Samoa, collecting facts about the recent
+war; and I propose to write almost at once and to publish shortly a small
+volume, called I know not what—the War In Samoa, the Samoa Trouble, an
+Island War, the War of the Three Consuls, I know not—perhaps you can
+suggest.  It was meant to be a part of my travel book; but material has
+accumulated on my hands until I see myself forced into volume form, and I
+hope it may be of use, if it come soon.  I have a few photographs of the
+war, which will do for illustrations.  It is conceivable you might wish
+to handle this in the Magazine, although I am inclined to think you
+won’t, and to agree with you.  But if you think otherwise, there it is.
+The travel letters (fifty of them) are already contracted for in papers;
+these I was quite bound to let M’Clure handle, as the idea was of his
+suggestion, and I always felt a little sore as to one trick I played him
+in the matter of the end-papers.  The war-volume will contain some very
+interesting and picturesque details: more I can’t promise for it.  Of
+course the fifty newspaper letters will be simply patches chosen from the
+travel volume (or volumes) as it gets written.
+
+But you see I have in hand:—
+
+Say half done.                      1. _The Wrecker_.
+Lloyd’s copy half done, mine not    2. _The Pearl Fisher_ (a novel
+touched.                            promised to the _Ledger_, and
+                                    which will form, when it comes in
+                                    book form, No. 2 of our _South
+                                    Sea Yarns_).
+Not begun, but all material         3. _The War Volume_.
+ready.
+Ditto.                              4. _The Big Travel Book_, which
+                                    includes the letters.
+You know how they stand.            5. _The Ballads_.
+
+_Excusez du peu_!  And you see what madness it would be to make any fresh
+engagement.  At the same time, you have _The Wrecker_ and the _War
+Volume_, if you like either—or both—to keep my name in the Magazine.
+
+It begins to look as if I should not be able to get any more ballads done
+this somewhile.  I know the book would sell better if it were all
+ballads; and yet I am growing half tempted to fill up with some other
+verses.  A good few are connected with my voyage, such as the ‘Home of
+Tembinoka’ sent herewith, and would have a sort of slight affinity to the
+_South Sea Ballads_.  You might tell me how that strikes a stranger.
+
+In all this, my real interest is with the travel volume, which ought to
+be of a really extraordinary interest.
+
+I am sending you ‘Tembinoka’ as he stands; but there are parts of him
+that I hope to better, particularly in stanzas III. and II.  I scarce
+feel intelligent enough to try just now; and I thought at any rate you
+had better see it, set it up if you think well, and let me have a proof;
+so, at least, we shall get the bulk of it straight.  I have spared you
+Teñkoruti, Tenbaitake, Tembinatake, and other barbarous names, because I
+thought the dentists in the States had work enough without my assistance;
+but my chiefs name is TEMBINOKA, pronounced, according to the present
+quite modern habit in the Gilberts, Tembinok’.  Compare in the margin
+Tengkorootch; a singular new trick, setting at defiance all South Sea
+analogy, for nowhere else do they show even the ability, far less the
+will, to end a word upon a consonant.  Loia is Lloyd’s name, ship becomes
+shipé, teapot, tipoté, etc.  Our admirable friend Herman Melville, of
+whom, since I could judge, I have thought more than ever, had no ear for
+languages whatever: his Hapar tribe should be Hapaa, etc.
+
+But this is of no interest to you: suffice it, you see how I am as usual
+up to the neck in projects, and really all likely bairns this time.  When
+will this activity cease?  Too soon for me, I dare to say.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO JAMES PAYN
+
+
+                                 _February_ 4_th_, 1890, _SS._ ‘_Lübeck_.’
+
+MY DEAR JAMES PAYN,—In virtue of confessions in your last, you would at
+the present moment, if you were along of me, be sick; and I will ask you
+to receive that as an excuse for my hand of write.  Excuse a plain seaman
+if he regards with scorn the likes of you pore land-lubbers ashore now.
+(Reference to nautical ditty.)  Which I may however be allowed to add
+that when eight months’ mail was laid by my side one evening in Apia, and
+my wife and I sat up the most of the night to peruse the same—(precious
+indisposed we were next day in consequence)—no letter, out of so many,
+more appealed to our hearts than one from the pore, stick-in-the-mud,
+land-lubbering, common (or garden) Londoner, James Payn.  Thank you for
+it; my wife says, ‘Can’t I see him when we get back to London?’  I have
+told her the thing appeared to me within the spear of practical politix.
+(Why can’t I spell and write like an honest, sober, god-fearing litry
+gent?  I think it’s the motion of the ship.)  Here I was interrupted to
+play chess with the chief engineer; as I grow old, I prefer the ‘athletic
+sport of cribbage,’ of which (I am sure I misquote) I have just been
+reading in your delightful _Literary Recollections_.  How you skim along,
+you and Andrew Lang (different as you are), and yet the only two who can
+keep a fellow smiling every page, and ever and again laughing out loud.
+I joke wi’ deeficulty, I believe; I am not funny; and when I am, Mrs.
+Oliphant says I’m vulgar, and somebody else says (in Latin) that I’m a
+whore, which seems harsh and even uncalled for: I shall stick to weepers;
+a 5s. weeper, 2s. 6d. laugher, 1s. shocker.
+
+My dear sir, I grow more and more idiotic; I cannot even feign sanity.
+Sometime in the month of June a stalwart weather-beaten man, evidently of
+seafaring antecedents, shall be observed wending his way between the
+Athenæum Club and Waterloo Place.  Arrived off No. 17, he shall be
+observed to bring his head sharply to the wind, and tack into the outer
+haven.  ‘Captain Payn in the harbour?’—‘Ay, ay, sir.  What
+ship?’—‘Barquentin R. L. S., nine hundred and odd days out from the port
+of Bournemouth, homeward bound, with yarns and curiosities.’
+
+Who was it said, ‘For God’s sake, don’t speak of it!’ about Scott and his
+tears?  He knew what he was saying.  The fear of that hour is the
+skeleton in all our cupboards; that hour when the pastime and the
+livelihood go together; and—I am getting hard of hearing myself; a pore
+young child of forty, but new come frae my Mammy, O!
+
+Excuse these follies, and accept the expression of all my regards.—Yours
+affectionately,
+
+                                                          R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                              _Union Club_, _Sydney_, _March_ 7_th_, 1890.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—I did not send off the enclosed before from laziness;
+having gone quite sick, and being a blooming prisoner here in the club,
+and indeed in my bedroom.  I was in receipt of your letters and your
+ornamental photo, and was delighted to see how well you looked, and how
+reasonably well I stood. . . . I am sure I shall never come back home
+except to die; I may do it, but shall always think of the move as
+suicidal, unless a great change comes over me, of which as yet I see no
+symptom.  This visit to Sydney has smashed me handsomely; and yet I made
+myself a prisoner here in the club upon my first arrival.  This is not
+encouraging for further ventures; Sydney winter—or, I might almost say,
+Sydney spring, for I came when the worst was over—is so small an affair,
+comparable to our June depression at home in Scotland. . . . The pipe is
+right again; it was the springs that had rusted, and ought to have been
+oiled.  Its voice is now that of an angel; but, Lord! here in the club I
+dare not wake it!  Conceive my impatience to be in my own backwoods and
+raise the sound of minstrelsy.  What pleasures are to be compared with
+those of the Unvirtuous Virtuoso.—Yours ever affectionately, the
+Unvirtuous Virtuoso,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+                      _SS._ ‘_Janet Nicoll_,’ _off Upolu_ [_Spring_ 1890].
+
+MY DEAREST COLVIN,—I was sharply ill at Sydney, cut off, right out of
+bed, in this steamer on a fresh island cruise, and have already reaped
+the benefit.  We are excellently found this time, on a spacious vessel,
+with an excellent table; the captain, supercargo, our one
+fellow-passenger, etc., very nice; and the charterer, Mr. Henderson, the
+very man I could have chosen.  The truth is, I fear, this life is the
+only one that suits me; so long as I cruise in the South Seas, I shall be
+well and happy—alas, no, I do not mean that, and _absit omen_!—I mean
+that, so soon as I cease from cruising, the nerves are strained, the
+decline commences, and I steer slowly but surely back to bedward.  We
+left Sydney, had a cruel rough passage to Auckland, for the _Janet_ is
+the worst roller I was ever aboard of.  I was confined to my cabin, ports
+closed, self shied out of the berth, stomach (pampered till the day I
+left on a diet of perpetual egg-nogg) revolted at ship’s food and ship
+eating, in a frowsy bunk, clinging with one hand to the plate, with the
+other to the glass, and using the knife and fork (except at intervals)
+with the eyelid.  No matter: I picked up hand over hand.  After a day in
+Auckland, we set sail again; were blown up in the main cabin with calcium
+fires, as we left the bay.  Let no man say I am unscientific: when I ran,
+on the alert, out of my stateroom, and found the main cabin incarnadined
+with the glow of the last scene of a pantomime, I stopped dead: ‘What is
+this?’ said I.  ‘This ship is on fire, I see that; but why a pantomime?’
+And I stood and reasoned the point, until my head was so muddled with the
+fumes that I could not find the companion.  A few seconds later, the
+captain had to enter crawling on his belly, and took days to recover (if
+he has recovered) from the fumes.  By singular good fortune, we got the
+hose down in time and saved the ship, but Lloyd lost most of his clothes
+and a great part of our photographs was destroyed.  Fanny saw the native
+sailors tossing overboard a blazing trunk; she stopped them in time, and
+behold, it contained my manuscripts.  Thereafter we had three (or two)
+days fine weather: then got into a gale of wind, with rain and a
+vexatious sea.  As we drew into our anchorage in a bight of Savage
+Island, a man ashore told me afterwards the sight of the _Janet Nicoll_
+made him sick; and indeed it was rough play, though nothing to the night
+before.  All through this gale I worked four to six hours per diem,
+spearing the ink-bottle like a flying fish, and holding my papers
+together as I might.  For, of all things, what I was at was history—the
+Samoan business—and I had to turn from one to another of these piles of
+manuscript notes, and from one page to another in each, until I should
+have found employment for the hands of Briareus.  All the same, this
+history is a godsend for a voyage; I can put in time, getting events
+co-ordinated and the narrative distributed, when my much-heaving numskull
+would be incapable of finish or fine style.  At Savage we met the
+missionary barque _John Williams_.  I tell you it was a great day for
+Savage Island: the path up the cliffs was crowded with gay islandresses
+(I like that feminine plural) who wrapped me in their embraces, and
+picked my pockets of all my tobacco, with a manner which a touch would
+have made revolting, but as it was, was simply charming, like the Golden
+Age.  One pretty, little, stalwart minx, with a red flower behind her
+ear, had searched me with extraordinary zeal; and when, soon after, I
+missed my matches, I accused her (she still following us) of being the
+thief.  After some delay, and with a subtle smile, she produced the box,
+gave me _one match_, and put the rest away again.  Too tired to add
+more.—Your most affectionate,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+           _S.S._ ‘_Janet Nicoll_,’ _off Peru Island_, _Kingsmills Group_,
+                                                       _July_ 13_th_, ’90.
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—I am moved to write to you in the matter of the end
+papers.  I am somewhat tempted to begin them again.  Follow the reasons
+_pro_ and _con_:—
+
+1st.  I must say I feel as if something in the nature of the end paper
+were a desirable finish to the number, and that the substitutes of
+occasional essays by occasional contributors somehow fail to fill the
+bill.  Should you differ with me on this point, no more is to be said.
+And what follows must be regarded as lost words.
+
+2nd.  I am rather taken with the idea of continuing the work.  For
+instance, should you have no distaste for papers of the class called
+_Random Memories_, I should enjoy continuing them (of course at
+intervals), and when they were done I have an idea they might make a
+readable book.  On the other hand, I believe a greater freedom of choice
+might be taken, the subjects more varied and more briefly treated, in
+somewhat approaching the manner of Andrew Lang in the _Sign of the Ship_;
+it being well understood that the broken sticks {187} method is one not
+very suitable (as Colonel Burke would say) to my genius, and not very
+likely to be pushed far in my practice.  Upon this point I wish you to
+condense your massive brain.  In the last lot I was promised, and I
+fondly expected to receive, a vast amount of assistance from intelligent
+and genial correspondents.  I assure you, I never had a scratch of a pen
+from any one above the level of a village idiot, except once, when a lady
+sowed my head full of grey hairs by announcing that she was going to
+direct her life in future by my counsels.  Will the correspondents be
+more copious and less irrelevant in the future?  Suppose that to be the
+case, will they be of any use to me in my place of exile?  Is it possible
+for a man in Samoa to be in touch with the great heart of the People?
+And is it not perhaps a mere folly to attempt, from so hopeless a
+distance, anything so delicate as a series of papers?  Upon these points,
+perpend, and give me the results of your perpensions.
+
+3rd.  The emolument would be agreeable to your humble servant.
+
+I have now stated all the _pros_, and the most of the _cons_ are come in
+by the way.  There follows, however, one immense Con (with a capital
+‘C’), which I beg you to consider particularly.  I fear that, to be of
+any use for your magazine, these papers should begin with the beginning
+of a volume.  Even supposing my hands were free, this would be now
+impossible for next year.  You have to consider whether, supposing you
+have no other objection, it would be worth while to begin the series in
+the middle of a volume, or desirable to delay the whole matter until the
+beginning of another year.
+
+Now supposing that the _cons_ have it, and you refuse my offer, let me
+make another proposal, which you will be very inclined to refuse at the
+first off-go, but which I really believe might in time come to something.
+You know how the penny papers have their answers to correspondents.  Why
+not do something of the same kind for the ‘culchawed’?  Why not get men
+like Stimson, Brownell, Professor James, Goldwin Smith, and others who
+will occur to you more readily than to me, to put and to answer a series
+of questions of intellectual and general interest, until at last you
+should have established a certain standard of matter to be discussed in
+this part of the Magazine?
+
+I want you to get me bound volumes of the Magazine from its start.  The
+Lord knows I have had enough copies; where they are I know not.  A
+wandering author gathers no magazines.
+
+_The Wrecker_ is in no forrader state than in last reports.  I have
+indeed got to a period when I cannot well go on until I can refresh
+myself on the proofs of the beginning.  My respected collaborator, who
+handles the machine which is now addressing you, has indeed carried his
+labours farther, but not, I am led to understand, with what we used to
+call a blessing; at least, I have been refused a sight of his latest
+labours.  However, there is plenty of time ahead, and I feel no anxiety
+about the tale, except that it may meet with your approval.
+
+All this voyage I have been busy over my _Travels_, which, given a very
+high temperature and the saloon of a steamer usually going before the
+wind, and with the cabins in front of the engines, has come very near to
+prostrating me altogether.  You will therefore understand that there are
+no more poems.  I wonder whether there are already enough, and whether
+you think that such a volume would be worth the publishing?  I shall hope
+to find in Sydney some expression of your opinion on this point.  Living
+as I do among—not the most cultured of mankind (‘splendidly educated and
+perfect gentlemen when sober’)—I attach a growing importance to friendly
+criticisms from yourself.
+
+I believe that this is the most of our business.  As for my health, I got
+over my cold in a fine style, but have not been very well of late.  To my
+unaffected annoyance, the blood-spitting has started again.  I find the
+heat of a steamer decidedly wearing and trying in these latitudes, and I
+am inclined to think the superior expedition rather dearly paid for.
+Still, the fact that one does not even remark the coming of a squall, nor
+feel relief on its departure, is a mercy not to be acknowledged without
+gratitude.  The rest of the family seem to be doing fairly well; both
+seem less run down than they were on the _Equator_, and Mrs. Stevenson
+very much less so.  We have now been three months away, have visited
+about thirty-five islands, many of which were novel to us, and some
+extremely entertaining; some also were old acquaintances, and pleasant to
+revisit.  In the meantime, we have really a capital time aboard ship, in
+the most pleasant and interesting society, and with (considering the
+length and nature of the voyage) an excellent table.  Please remember us
+all to Mr. Scribner, the young chieftain of the house, and the lady,
+whose health I trust is better.  To Mrs. Burlingame we all desire to be
+remembered, and I hope you will give our news to Low, St. Gaudens, Faxon,
+and others of the faithful in the city.  I shall probably return to Samoa
+direct, having given up all idea of returning to civilisation in the
+meanwhile.  There, on my ancestral acres, which I purchased six months
+ago from a blind Scots blacksmith, you will please address me until
+further notice.  The name of the ancestral acres is going to be Vailima;
+but as at the present moment nobody else knows the name, except myself
+and the co-patentees, it will be safer, if less ambitious, to address R.
+L. S., Apia, Samoa.  The ancestral acres run to upwards of three hundred;
+they enjoy the ministrations of five streams, whence the name.  They are
+all at the present moment under a trackless covering of magnificent
+forest, which would be worth a great deal if it grew beside a railway
+terminus.  To me, as it stands, it represents a handsome deficit.
+Obliging natives from the Cannibal Islands are now cutting it down at my
+expense.  You would be able to run your magazine to much greater
+advantage if the terms of authors were on the same scale with those of my
+cannibals.  We have also a house about the size of a manufacturer’s
+lodge.  ’Tis but the egg of the future palace, over the details of which
+on paper Mrs. Stevenson and I have already shed real tears; what it will
+be when it comes to paying for it, I leave you to imagine.  But if it can
+only be built as now intended, it will be with genuine satisfaction and a
+growunded pride that I shall welcome you at the steps of my Old Colonial
+Home, when you land from the steamer on a long-merited holiday.  I speak
+much at my ease; yet I do not know, I may be now an outlaw, a bankrupt,
+the abhorred of all good men.  I do not know, you probably do.  Has Hyde
+{190} turned upon me?  Have I fallen, like Danvers Carew?
+
+It is suggested to me that you might like to know what will be my future
+society.  Three consuls, all at logger-heads with one another, or at the
+best in a clique of two against one; three different sects of
+missionaries, not upon the best of terms; and the Catholics and
+Protestants in a condition of unhealable ill-feeling as to whether a
+wooden drum ought or ought not to be beaten to announce the time of
+school.  The native population, very genteel, very songful, very
+agreeable, very good-looking, chronically spoiling for a fight (a
+circumstance not to be entirely neglected in the design of the palace).
+As for the white population of (technically, ‘The Beach’), I don’t
+suppose it is possible for any person not thoroughly conversant with the
+South Seas to form the smallest conception of such a society, with its
+grog-shops, its apparently unemployed hangers-on, its merchants of all
+degrees of respectability and the reverse.  The paper, of which I must
+really send you a copy—if yours were really a live magazine, you would
+have an exchange with the editor: I assure you, it has of late contained
+a great deal of matter about one of your contributors—rejoices in the
+name of _Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser_.  The advertisements in
+the _Advertiser_ are permanent, being simply subsidies for its existence.
+A dashing warfare of newspaper correspondence goes on between the various
+residents, who are rather fond of recurring to one another’s antecedents.
+But when all is said, there are a lot of very nice, pleasant people, and
+I don’t know that Apia is very much worse than half a hundred towns that
+I could name.
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                              _Hotel Sebastopol_, _Noumea_, _August_ 1890.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—I have stayed here a week while Lloyd and my wife
+continue to voyage in the _Janet Nicoll_; this I did, partly to see the
+convict system, partly to shorten my stay in the extreme cold—hear me
+with my extreme! _moi qui suis originaire d’Edinbourg_—of Sydney at this
+season.  I am feeling very seedy, utterly fatigued, and overborne with
+sleep.  I have a fine old gentleman of a doctor, who attends and cheers
+and entertains, if he does not cure me; but even with his ministrations I
+am almost incapable of the exertion sufficient for this letter; and I am
+really, as I write, falling down with sleep.  What is necessary to say, I
+must try to say shortly.  Lloyd goes to clear out our establishments:
+pray keep him in funds, if I have any; if I have not, pray try to raise
+them.  Here is the idea: to install ourselves, at the risk of bankruptcy,
+in Samoa.  It is not the least likely it will pay (although it may); but
+it is almost certain it will support life, with very few external
+expenses.  If I die, it will be an endowment for the survivors, at least
+for my wife and Lloyd; and my mother, who might prefer to go home, has
+her own.  Hence I believe I shall do well to hurry my installation.  The
+letters are already in part done; in part done is a novel for Scribner;
+in the course of the next twelve months I should receive a considerable
+amount of money.  I am aware I had intended to pay back to my capital
+some of this.  I am now of opinion I should act foolishly.  Better to
+build the house and have a roof and farm of my own; and thereafter, with
+a livelihood assured, save and repay . . .  There is my livelihood, all
+but books and wine, ready in a nutshell; and it ought to be more easy to
+save and to repay afterwards.  Excellent, say you, but will you save and
+will you repay?  I do not know, said the Bell of Old Bow. . . . It seems
+clear to me. . . . The deuce of the affair is that I do not know when I
+shall see you and Colvin.  I guess you will have to come and see me: many
+a time already we have arranged the details of your visit in the yet
+unbuilt house on the mountain.  I shall be able to get decent wine from
+Noumea.  We shall be able to give you a decent welcome, and talk of old
+days.  _Apropos_ of old days, do you remember still the phrase we heard
+in Waterloo Place?  I believe you made a piece for the piano on that
+phrase.  Pray, if you remember it, send it me in your next.  If you find
+it impossible to write correctly, send it me _à la récitative_, and
+indicate the accents.  Do you feel (you must) how strangely heavy and
+stupid I am?  I must at last give up and go sleep; I am simply a rag.
+
+The morrow: I feel better, but still dim and groggy.  To-night I go to
+the governor’s; such a lark—no dress clothes—twenty-four hours’
+notice—able-bodied Polish tailor—suit made for a man with the figure of a
+puncheon—same hastily altered for self with the figure of a bodkin—sight
+inconceivable.  Never mind; dress clothes, ‘which nobody can deny’; and
+the officials have been all so civil that I liked neither to refuse nor
+to appear in mufti.  Bad dress clothes only prove you are a grisly ass;
+no dress clothes, even when explained, indicate a want of respect.  I
+wish you were here with me to help me dress in this wild raiment, and to
+accompany me to M. Noel-Pardon’s.  I cannot say what I would give if
+there came a knock now at the door and you came in.  I guess Noel-Pardon
+would go begging, and we might burn the fr. 200 dress clothes in the back
+garden for a bonfire; or what would be yet more expensive and more
+humorous, get them once more expanded to fit you, and when that was done,
+a second time cut down for my gossamer dimensions.
+
+I hope you never forget to remember me to your father, who has always a
+place in my heart, as I hope I have a little in his.  His kindness helped
+me infinitely when you and I were young; I recall it with gratitude and
+affection in this town of convicts at the world’s end.  There are very
+few things, my dear Charles, worth mention: on a retrospect of life, the
+day’s flash and colour, one day with another, flames, dazzles, and puts
+to sleep; and when the days are gone, like a fast-flying thaumatrope,
+they make but a single pattern.  Only a few things stand out; and among
+these—most plainly to me—Rutland Square,—Ever, my dear Charles, your
+affectionate friend,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+_P.S._—Just returned from trying on the dress clo’.  Lord, you should see
+the coat!  It stands out at the waist like a bustle, the flaps cross in
+front, the sleeves are like bags.
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+                                   _Union Club_, _Sydney_ [_August_ 1890].
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—
+
+                                _Ballads_.
+
+The deuce is in this volume.  It has cost me more botheration and dubiety
+than any other I ever took in hand.  On one thing my mind is made up: the
+verses at the end have no business there, and throw them down.  Many of
+them are bad, many of the rest want nine years’ keeping, and the
+remainder are not relevant—throw them down; some I never want to hear of
+more, others will grow in time towards decent items in a second
+_Underwoods_—and in the meanwhile, down with them!  At the same time, I
+have a sneaking idea the ballads are not altogether without merit—I don’t
+know if they’re poetry, but they’re good narrative, or I’m deceived.
+(You’ve never said one word about them, from which I astutely gather you
+are dead set against: ‘he was a diplomatic man’—extract from epitaph of
+E. L. B.—‘and remained on good terms with Minor Poets.’)  You will have
+to judge: one of the Gladstonian trinity of paths must be chosen.  (1st)
+Either publish the five ballads, such as they are, in a volume called
+_Ballads_; in which case pray send sheets at once to Chatto and Windus.
+Or (2nd) write and tell me you think the book too small, and I’ll try and
+get into the mood to do some more.  Or (3rd) write and tell me the whole
+thing is a blooming illusion; in which case draw off some twenty copies
+for my private entertainment, and charge me with the expense of the whole
+dream.
+
+In the matter of rhyme no man can judge himself; I am at the world’s end,
+have no one to consult, and my publisher holds his tongue.  I call it
+unfair and almost unmanly.  I do indeed begin to be filled with
+animosity; Lord, wait till you see the continuation of _The Wrecker_,
+when I introduce some New York publishers. . . It’s a good scene; the
+quantities you drink and the really hideous language you are represented
+as employing may perhaps cause you one tithe of the pain you have
+inflicted by your silence on, sir, The Poetaster,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+Lloyd is off home; my wife and I dwell sundered: she in lodgings,
+preparing for the move; I here in the club, and at my old
+trade—bedridden.  Naturally, the visit home is given up; we only wait our
+opportunity to get to Samoa, where, please, address me.
+
+Have I yet asked you to despatch the books and papers left in your care
+to me at Apia, Samoa?  I wish you would, _quam primum_.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+                                    _Union Club_, _Sydney_, _August_ 1890.
+
+MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,—Kipling is too clever to live.  The _Bête Humaine_ I
+had already perused in Noumea, listening the while to the strains of the
+convict band.  He a Beast; but not human, and, to be frank, not very
+interesting.  ‘Nervous maladies: the homicidal ward,’ would be the better
+name: O, this game gets very tedious.
+
+Your two long and kind letters have helped to entertain the old familiar
+sickbed.  So has a book called _The Bondman_, by Hall Caine; I wish you
+would look at it.  I am not half-way through yet.  Read the book, and
+communicate your views.  Hall Caine, by the way, appears to take Hugo’s
+view of History and Chronology.  (_Later_; the book doesn’t keep up; it
+gets very wild.)
+
+I must tell you plainly—I can’t tell Colvin—I do not think I shall come
+to England more than once, and then it’ll be to die.  Health I enjoy in
+the tropics; even here, which they call sub- or semi-tropical, I come
+only to catch cold.  I have not been out since my arrival; live here in a
+nice bedroom by the fireside, and read books and letters from Henry
+James, and send out to get his _Tragic Muse_, only to be told they can’t
+be had as yet in Sydney, and have altogether a placid time.  But I can’t
+go out!  The thermometer was nearly down to 50° the other day—no
+temperature for me, Mr. James: how should I do in England?  I fear not at
+all.  Am I very sorry?  I am sorry about seven or eight people in
+England, and one or two in the States.  And outside of that, I simply
+prefer Samoa.  These are the words of honesty and soberness.  (I am
+fasting from all but sin, coughing, _The Bondman_, a couple of eggs and a
+cup of tea.)  I was never fond of towns, houses, society, or (it seems)
+civilisation.  Nor yet it seems was I ever very fond of (what is
+technically called) God’s green earth.  The sea, islands, the islanders,
+the island life and climate, make and keep me truly happier.  These last
+two years I have been much at sea, and I have _never wearied_; sometimes
+I have indeed grown impatient for some destination; more often I was
+sorry that the voyage drew so early to an end; and never once did I lose
+my fidelity to blue water and a ship.  It is plain, then, that for me my
+exile to the place of schooners and islands can be in no sense regarded
+as a calamity.
+
+Good-bye just now: I must take a turn at my proofs.
+
+_N.B._—Even my wife has weakened about the sea.  She wearied, the last
+time we were ashore, to get afloat again.—Yours ever,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO MARCEL SCHWOB
+
+
+                            _Union Club_, _Sydney_, _August_ 19_th_, 1890.
+
+MY DEAR MR. SCHWOB,—_Mais_, _alors_, _vous avez tous les bonheurs_,
+_vous_!  More about Villon; it seems incredible: when it is put in order,
+pray send it me.
+
+You wish to translate the _Black Arrow_: dear sir, you are hereby
+authorised; but I warn you, I do not like the work.  Ah, if you, who know
+so well both tongues, and have taste and instruction—if you would but
+take a fancy to translate a book of mine that I myself admired—for we
+sometimes admire our own—or I do—with what satisfaction would the
+authority be granted!  But these things are too much to expect.  _Vous ne
+détestez pas alors mes bonnes femmes_? _moi_, _je les déteste_.  I have
+never pleased myself with any women of mine save two character parts, one
+of only a few lines—the Countess of Rosen, and Madame Desprez in the
+_Treasure of Franchard_.
+
+I had indeed one moment of pride about my poor _Black Arrow_: Dickon
+Crookback I did, and I do, think is a spirited and possible figure.
+Shakespeare’s—O, if we can call that cocoon Shakespeare!—Shakespeare’s is
+spirited—one likes to see the untaught athlete butting against the
+adamantine ramparts of human nature, head down, breach up; it reminds us
+how trivial we are to-day, and what safety resides in our triviality.
+For spirited it may be, but O, sure not possible!  I love Dumas and I
+love Shakespeare: you will not mistake me when I say that the Richard of
+the one reminds me of the Porthos of the other; and if by any sacrifice
+of my own literary baggage I could clear the _Vicomte de Bragelonne_ of
+Porthos, _Jekyll_ might go, and the _Master_, and the _Black Arrow_, you
+may be sure, and I should think my life not lost for mankind if half a
+dozen more of my volumes must be thrown in.
+
+The tone of your pleasant letters makes me egotistical; you make me take
+myself too gravely.  Comprehend how I have lived much of my time in
+France, and loved your country, and many of its people, and all the time
+was learning that which your country has to teach—breathing in rather
+that atmosphere of art which can only there be breathed; and all the time
+knew—and raged to know—that I might write with the pen of angels or of
+heroes, and no Frenchman be the least the wiser!  And now steps in M.
+Marcel Schwob, writes me the most kind encouragement, and reads and
+understands, and is kind enough to like my work.
+
+I am just now overloaded with work.  I have two huge novels on hand—_The
+Wrecker_ and the _Pearl Fisher_, {198} in collaboration with my stepson:
+the latter, the _Pearl Fisher_, I think highly of, for a black, ugly,
+trampling, violent story, full of strange scenes and striking characters.
+And then I am about waist-deep in my big book on the South Seas: _the_
+big book on the South Seas it ought to be, and shall.  And besides, I
+have some verses in the press, which, however, I hesitate to publish.
+For I am no judge of my own verse; self-deception is there so facile.
+All this and the cares of an impending settlement in Samoa keep me very
+busy, and a cold (as usual) keeps me in bed.
+
+Alas, I shall not have the pleasure to see you yet awhile, if ever.  You
+must be content to take me as a wandering voice, and in the form of
+occasional letters from recondite islands; and address me, if you will be
+good enough to write, to Apia, Samoa.  My stepson, Mr. Osbourne, goes
+home meanwhile to arrange some affairs; it is not unlikely he may go to
+Paris to arrange about the illustrations to my South Seas; in which case
+I shall ask him to call upon you, and give you some word of our
+outlandish destinies.  You will find him intelligent, I think; and I am
+sure, if (_par hasard_) you should take any interest in the islands, he
+will have much to tell you.—Herewith I conclude, and am your obliged and
+interested correspondent,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+_P.S._—The story you refer to has got lost in the post.
+
+
+
+TO ANDREW LANG
+
+
+                                   _Union Club_, _Sydney_ [_August _1890].
+
+MY DEAR LANG,—I observed with a great deal of surprise and interest that
+a controversy in which you have been taking sides at home, in yellow
+London, hinges in part at least on the Gilbert Islanders and their
+customs in burial.  Nearly six months of my life has been passed in the
+group: I have revisited it but the other day; and I make haste to tell
+you what I know.  The upright stones—I enclose you a photograph of one on
+Apemama—are certainly connected with religion; I do not think they are
+adored.  They stand usually on the windward shore of the islands, that is
+to say, apart from habitation (on _enclosed islands_, where the people
+live on the sea side, I do not know how it is, never having lived on
+one).  I gathered from Tembinoka, Rex Apemamae, that the pillars were
+supposed to fortify the island from invasion: spiritual martellos.  I
+think he indicated they were connected with the cult of Tenti—pronounce
+almost as chintz in English, the _t_ being explosive; but you must take
+this with a grain of salt, for I knew no word of Gilbert Island; and the
+King’s English, although creditable, is rather vigorous than exact.  Now,
+here follows the point of interest to you: such pillars, or standing
+stones, have no connection with graves.  The most elaborate grave that I
+have ever seen in the group—to be certain—is in the form of a _raised
+border_ of gravel, usually strewn with broken glass.  One, of which I
+cannot be sure that it was a grave, for I was told by one that it was,
+and by another that it was not—consisted of a mound about breast high in
+an excavated taro swamp, on the top of which was a child’s house, or
+rather _maniapa_—that is to say, shed, or open house, such as is used in
+the group for social or political gatherings—so small that only a child
+could creep under its eaves.  I have heard of another great tomb on
+Apemama, which I did not see; but here again, by all accounts, no sign of
+a standing stone.  My report would be—no connection between standing
+stones and sepulture.  I shall, however, send on the terms of the problem
+to a highly intelligent resident trader, who knows more than perhaps any
+one living, white or native, of the Gilbert group; and you shall have the
+result.  In Samoa, whither I return for good, I shall myself make
+inquiries; up to now, I have neither seen nor heard of any standing
+stones in that group.—Yours,
+
+                                                          R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO MRS. CHARLES FAIRCHILD
+
+
+                                _Union Club_, _Sydney_ [_September_ 1890].
+
+MY DEAR MRS. FAIRCHILD,—I began a letter to you on board the _Janet
+Nicoll_ on my last cruise, wrote, I believe, two sheets, and ruthlessly
+destroyed the flippant trash.  Your last has given me great pleasure and
+some pain, for it increased the consciousness of my neglect.  Now, this
+must go to you, whatever it is like.
+
+. . . You are quite right; our civilisation is a hollow fraud, all the
+fun of life is lost by it; all it gains is that a larger number of
+persons can continue to be contemporaneously unhappy on the surface of
+the globe.  O, unhappy!—there is a big word and a false—continue to be
+not nearly—by about twenty per cent.—so happy as they might be: that
+would be nearer the mark.
+
+When—observe that word, which I will write again and larger—WHEN you come
+to see us in Samoa, you will see for yourself a healthy and happy people.
+
+You see, you are one of the very few of our friends rich enough to come
+and see us; and when my house is built, and the road is made, and we have
+enough fruit planted and poultry and pigs raised, it is undeniable that
+you must come—must is the word; that is the way in which I speak to
+ladies.  You and Fairchild, anyway—perhaps my friend Blair—we’ll arrange
+details in good time.  It will be the salvation of your souls, and make
+you willing to die.
+
+Let me tell you this: In ’74 or 5 there came to stay with my father and
+mother a certain Mr. Seed, a prime minister or something of New Zealand.
+He spotted what my complaint was; told me that I had no business to stay
+in Europe; that I should find all I cared for, and all that was good for
+me, in the Navigator Islands; sat up till four in the morning persuading
+me, demolishing my scruples.  And I resisted: I refused to go so far from
+my father and mother.  O, it was virtuous, and O, wasn’t it silly!  But
+my father, who was always my dearest, got to his grave without that pang;
+and now in 1890, I (or what is left of me) go at last to the Navigator
+Islands.  God go with us!  It is but a Pisgah sight when all is said; I
+go there only to grow old and die; but when you come, you will see it is
+a fair place for the purpose.
+
+Flaubert {201} has not turned up; I hope he will soon; I knew of him only
+through Maxime Descamps.—With kindest messages to yourself and all of
+yours, I remain,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+LIFE IN SAMOA,
+NOVEMBER 1890–DECEMBER 1892
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+                               _Vailima_, _Apia_, _Samoa_, _Nov._ 7, 1890.
+
+I WISH you to add to the words at the end of the prologue; they run, I
+think, thus, ‘And this is the yarn of Loudon Dodd’; add, ‘not as he told,
+but as he wrote it afterwards for his diversion.’  This becomes the more
+needful, because, when all is done, I shall probably revert to Tai-o-hae,
+and give final details about the characters in the way of a conversation
+between Dodd and Havers.  These little snippets of information and
+_faits-divers_ have always a disjointed, broken-backed appearance; yet,
+readers like them.  In this book we have introduced so many characters,
+that this kind of epilogue will be looked for; and I rather hope, looking
+far ahead, that I can lighten it in dialogue.
+
+We are well past the middle now.  How does it strike you? and can you
+guess my mystery?  It will make a fattish volume!
+
+I say, have you ever read the _Highland Widow_?  I never had till
+yesterday: I am half inclined, bar a trip or two, to think it Scott’s
+masterpiece; and it has the name of a failure!  Strange things are
+readers.
+
+I expect proofs and revises in duplicate.
+
+We have now got into a small barrack at our place.  We see the sea six
+hundred feet below filling the end of two vales of forest.  On one hand
+the mountain runs above us some thousand feet higher; great trees stand
+round us in our clearing; there is an endless voice of birds; I have
+never lived in such a heaven; just now, I have fever, which mitigates but
+not destroys my gusto in my circumstances.—You may envy
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+. . . O, I don’t know if I mentioned that having seen your new tail to
+the magazine, I cried off interference, at least for this trip.  Did I
+ask you to send me my books and papers, and all the bound volumes of the
+mag.? _quorum pars_.  I might add that were there a good book or so—new—I
+don’t believe there is—such would be welcome.
+
+I desire—I positively begin to awake—to be remembered to Scribner, Low,
+St. Gaudens, Russell Sullivan.  Well, well, you fellows have the feast of
+reason and the flow of soul; I have a better-looking place and climate:
+you should hear the birds on the hill now!  The day has just wound up
+with a shower; it is still light without, though I write within here at
+the cheek of a lamp; my wife and an invaluable German are wrestling about
+bread on the back verandah; and how the birds and the frogs are rattling,
+and piping, and hailing from the woods!  Here and there a throaty
+chuckle; here and there, cries like those of jolly children who have lost
+their way; here and there, the ringing sleigh-bell of the tree frog.  Out
+and away down below me on the sea it is still raining; it will be wet
+under foot on schooners, and the house will leak; how well I know that!
+Here the showers only patter on the iron roof, and sometimes roar; and
+within, the lamp burns steady on the tafa-covered walls, with their dusky
+tartan patterns, and the book-shelves with their thin array of books; and
+no squall can rout my house or bring my heart into my mouth.—The
+well-pleased South Sea Islander,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+                                             [_Vailima_, _December_ 1890.]
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—By some diabolical accident, I have mislaid your
+last.  What was in it?  I know not, and here I am caught unexpectedly by
+the American mail, a week earlier than by computation.  The computation,
+not the mail, is supposed to be in error.  The vols. of _Scribner’s_ have
+arrived, and present a noble appearance in my house, which is not a noble
+structure at present.  But by autumn we hope to be sprawling in our
+verandah, twelve feet, sir, by eighty-eight in front, and seventy-two on
+the flank; view of the sea and mountains, sunrise, moonrise, and the
+German fleet at anchor three miles away in Apia harbour.  I hope some day
+to offer you a bowl of kava there, or a slice of a pineapple, or some
+lemonade from my own hedge.  ‘I know a hedge where the lemons
+grow’—_Shakespeare_.  My house at this moment smells of them strong; and
+the rain, which a while ago roared there, now rings in minute drops upon
+the iron roof.  I have no _Wrecker_ for you this mail, other things
+having engaged me.  I was on the whole rather relieved you did not vote
+for regular papers, as I feared the traces.  It is my design from time to
+time to write a paper of a reminiscential (beastly word) description;
+some of them I could scarce publish from different considerations; but
+some of them—for instance, my long experience of gambling places—Homburg,
+Wiesbaden, Baden-Baden, old Monaco, and new Monte Carlo—would make good
+magazine padding, if I got the stuff handled the right way.  I never
+could fathom why verse was put in magazines; it has something to do with
+the making-up, has it not?  I am scribbling a lot just now; if you are
+taken badly that way, apply to the South Seas.  I could send you some, I
+believe, anyway, only none of it is thoroughly ripe.  If kept back the
+volume of ballads, I’ll soon make it a respectable size if this fit
+continue.  By the next mail you may expect some more _Wrecker_, or I
+shall be displeased.  Probably no more than a chapter, however, for it is
+a hard one, and I am denuded of my proofs, my collaborator having walked
+away with them to England; hence some trouble in catching the just note.
+
+I am a mere farmer: my talk, which would scarce interest you on Broadway,
+is all of fuafua and tuitui, and black boys, and planting and weeding,
+and axes and cutlasses; my hands are covered with blisters and full of
+thorns; letters are, doubtless, a fine thing, so are beer and skittles,
+but give me farmering in the tropics for real interest.  Life goes in
+enchantment; I come home to find I am late for dinner; and when I go to
+bed at night, I could cry for the weariness of my loins and thighs.  Do
+not speak to me of vexation, the life brims with it, but with living
+interest fairly.
+
+Christmas I go to Auckland, to meet Tamate, the New Guinea missionary, a
+man I love.  The rest of my life is a prospect of much rain, much weeding
+and making of paths, a little letters, and devilish little to eat.—I am,
+my dear Burlingame, with messages to all whom it may concern, very
+sincerely yours,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+                      _Vailima_, _Apia_, _Samoa_, _December_ 29_th_, 1890.
+
+MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,—It is terrible how little everybody writes, and how
+much of that little disappears in the capacious maw of the Post Office.
+Many letters, both from and to me, I now know to have been lost in
+transit: my eye is on the Sydney Post Office, a large ungainly structure
+with a tower, as being not a hundred miles from the scene of
+disappearance; but then I have no proof.  _The Tragic Muse_ you announced
+to me as coming; I had already ordered it from a Sydney bookseller: about
+two months ago he advised me that his copy was in the post; and I am
+still tragically museless.
+
+News, news, news.  What do we know of yours?  What do you care for ours?
+We are in the midst of the rainy season, and dwell among alarms of
+hurricanes, in a very unsafe little two-storied wooden box 650 feet above
+and about three miles from the sea-beach.  Behind us, till the other
+slope of the island, desert forest, peaks, and loud torrents; in front
+green slopes to the sea, some fifty miles of which we dominate.  We see
+the ships as they go out and in to the dangerous roadstead of Apia; and
+if they lie far out, we can even see their topmasts while they are at
+anchor.  Of sounds of men, beyond those of our own labourers, there reach
+us, at very long intervals, salutes from the warships in harbour, the
+bell of the cathedral church, and the low of the conch-shell calling the
+labour boys on the German plantations.  Yesterday, which was Sunday—the
+_quantième_ is most likely erroneous; you can now correct it—we had a
+visitor—Baker of Tonga.  Heard you ever of him?  He is a great man here:
+he is accused of theft, rape, judicial murder, private poisoning,
+abortion, misappropriation of public moneys—oddly enough, not forgery,
+nor arson: you would be amused if you knew how thick the accusations fly
+in this South Sea world.  I make no doubt my own character is something
+illustrious; or if not yet, there is a good time coming.
+
+But all our resources have not of late been Pacific.  We have had
+enlightened society: La Farge the painter, and your friend Henry Adams: a
+great privilege—would it might endure.  I would go oftener to see them,
+but the place is awkward to reach on horseback.  I had to swim my horse
+the last time I went to dinner; and as I have not yet returned the
+clothes I had to borrow, I dare not return in the same plight: it seems
+inevitable—as soon as the wash comes in, I plump straight into the
+American consul’s shirt or trousers!  They, I believe, would come oftener
+to see me but for the horrid doubt that weighs upon our commissariat
+department; we have _often_ almost nothing to eat; a guest would simply
+break the bank; my wife and I have dined on one avocado pear; I have
+several times dined on hard bread and onions.  What would you do with a
+guest at such narrow seasons?—eat him? or serve up a labour boy
+fricasseed?
+
+Work? work is now arrested, but I have written, I should think, about
+thirty chapters of the South Sea book; they will all want rehandling, I
+dare say.  Gracious, what a strain is a long book!  The time it took me
+to design this volume, before I could dream of putting pen to paper, was
+excessive; and then think of writing a book of travels on the spot, when
+I am continually extending my information, revising my opinions, and
+seeing the most finely finished portions of my work come part by part in
+pieces.  Very soon I shall have no opinions left.  And without an
+opinion, how to string artistically vast accumulations of fact?  Darwin
+said no one could observe without a theory; I suppose he was right; ’tis
+a fine point of metaphysic; but I will take my oath, no man can write
+without one—at least the way he would like to, and my theories melt,
+melt, melt, and as they melt the thaw-waters wash down my writing, and
+leave unideal tracts—wastes instead of cultivated farms.
+
+Kipling is by far the most promising young man who has appeared
+since—ahem—I appeared.  He amazes me by his precocity and various
+endowment.  But he alarms me by his copiousness and haste.  He should
+shield his fire with both hands ‘and draw up all his strength and
+sweetness in one ball.’  (‘Draw all his strength and all His sweetness up
+into one ball’?  I cannot remember Marvell’s words.)  So the critics have
+been saying to me; but I was never capable of—and surely never guilty
+of—such a debauch of production.  At this rate his works will soon fill
+the habitable globe; and surely he was armed for better conflicts than
+these succinct sketches and flying leaves of verse?  I look on, I admire,
+I rejoice for myself; but in a kind of ambition we all have for our
+tongue and literature I am wounded.  If I had this man’s fertility and
+courage, it seems to me I could heave a pyramid.
+
+Well, we begin to be the old fogies now; and it was high time _something_
+rose to take our places.  Certainly Kipling has the gifts; the fairy
+godmothers were all tipsy at his christening: what will he do with them?
+
+Goodbye, my dear James; find an hour to write to us, and register your
+letter.—Yours affectionately,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+
+                                                        [_Vailima_, 1891.]
+
+SIR,—I cannot call to mind having written you, but I am so throng with
+occupation this may have fallen aside.  I never heard tell I had any
+friends in Ireland, and I am led to understand you are come of no
+considerable family.  The gentleman I now serve with assures me, however,
+you are a very pretty fellow and your letter deserves to be remarked.
+It’s true he is himself a man of a very low descent upon the one side;
+though upon the other he counts cousinship with a gentleman, my very good
+friend, the late Mr. Balfour of the Shaws, in the Lothian; which I should
+be wanting in good fellowship to forget.  He tells me besides you are a
+man of your hands; I am not informed of your weapon; but if all be true
+it sticks in my mind I would be ready to make exception in your favour,
+and meet you like one gentleman with another.  I suppose this’ll be your
+purpose in your favour, which I could very ill make out; it’s one I would
+be sweir to baulk you of.  It seems, Mr. McIlvaine, which I take to be
+your name, you are in the household of a gentleman of the name of
+Coupling: for whom my friend is very much engaged.  The distances being
+very uncommodious, I think it will be maybe better if we leave it to
+these two to settle all that’s necessary to honour.  I would have you to
+take heed it’s a very unusual condescension on my part, that bear a
+King’s name; and for the matter of that I think shame to be mingled with
+a person of the name of Coupling, which is doubtless a very good house
+but one I never heard tell of, any more than Stevenson.  But your purpose
+being laudable, I would be sorry (as the word goes) to cut off my nose to
+spite my face.—I am, Sir, your humble servant,
+
+                                                               A. STEWART,
+                                                 _Chevalier de St. Louis_.
+
+_To Mr. M’Ilvaine_,
+      _Gentleman Private in a foot regiment_,
+         _under cover to Mr. Coupling_.
+
+He has read me some of your Barrack Room Ballants, which are not of so
+noble a strain as some of mine in the Gaelic, but I could set some of
+them to the pipes if this rencounter goes as it’s to be desired.  Let’s
+first, as I understand you to move, do each other this rational
+courtesys; and if either will survive, we may grow better acquaint.  For
+your tastes for what’s martial and for poetry agree with mine.
+
+                                                                     A. S.
+
+
+
+TO MARCEL SCHWOB
+
+
+                                         _Sydney_, _January_ 19_th_, 1891.
+
+MY DEAR SIR,—_Sapristi_, _comme vous y allez_!  Richard III. and Dumas,
+with all my heart; but not Hamlet.  Hamlet is great literature; Richard
+III. a big, black, gross, sprawling melodrama, writ with infinite spirit
+but with no refinement or philosophy by a man who had the world, himself,
+mankind, and his trade still to learn.  I prefer the Vicomte de
+Bragelonne to Richard III.; it is better done of its kind: I simply do
+not mention the Vicomte in the same part of the building with Hamlet, or
+Lear, or Othello, or any of those masterpieces that Shakespeare survived
+to give us.
+
+Also, _comme vous y allez_ in my commendation!  I fear my _solide
+éducation classique_ had best be described, like Shakespeare’s, as
+‘little Latin and no Greek,’ and I was educated, let me inform you, for
+an engineer.  I shall tell my bookseller to send you a copy of _Memories
+and Portraits_, where you will see something of my descent and education,
+as it was, and hear me at length on my dear Vicomte.  I give you
+permission gladly to take your choice out of my works, and translate what
+you shall prefer, too much honoured that so clever a young man should
+think it worth the pains.  My own choice would lie between _Kidnapped_
+and the _Master of Ballantrae_.  Should you choose the latter, pray do
+not let Mrs. Henry thrust the sword up to the hilt in the frozen
+ground—one of my inconceivable blunders, an exaggeration to stagger Hugo.
+Say ‘she sought to thrust it in the ground.’  In both these works you
+should be prepared for Scotticisms used deliberately.
+
+I fear my stepson will not have found time to get to Paris; he was
+overwhelmed with occupation, and is already on his voyage back.  We live
+here in a beautiful land, amid a beautiful and interesting people.  The
+life is still very hard: my wife and I live in a two-roomed cottage,
+about three miles and six hundred and fifty feet above the sea; we have
+had to make the road to it; our supplies are very imperfect; in the wild
+weather of this (the hurricane) season we have much discomfort: one night
+the wind blew in our house so outrageously that we must sit in the dark;
+and as the sound of the rain on the roof made speech inaudible, you may
+imagine we found the evening long.  All these things, however, are
+pleasant to me.  You say _l’artiste inconscient_ set off to travel: you
+do not divide me right.  0.6 of me is artist; 0.4, adventurer.  First, I
+suppose, come letters; then adventure; and since I have indulged the
+second part, I think the formula begins to change: 0.55 of an artist,
+0.45 of the adventurer were nearer true.  And if it had not been for my
+small strength, I might have been a different man in all things.
+
+Whatever you do, do not neglect to send me what you publish on Villon: I
+look forward to that with lively interest.  I have no photograph at hand,
+but I will send one when I can.  It would be kind if you would do the
+like, for I do not see much chance of our meeting in the flesh: and a
+name, and a handwriting, and an address, and even a style?  I know about
+as much of Tacitus, and more of Horace; it is not enough between
+contemporaries, such as we still are.  I have just remembered another of
+my books, which I re-read the other day, and thought in places
+good—_Prince Otto_.  It is not as good as either of the others; but it
+has one recommendation—it has female parts, so it might perhaps please
+better in France.
+
+I will ask Chatto to send you, then—_Prince Otto_, _Memories and
+Portraits_, _Underwoods_, and _Ballads_, none of which you seem to have
+seen.  They will be too late for the New Year: let them be an Easter
+present.
+
+You must translate me soon; you will soon have better to do than to
+transverse the work of others.—Yours very truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON,
+                                  With the worst pen in the South Pacific.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+   _SS._ ‘_Lübeck_,’ _at sea_ [_on the return voyage from Sydney_, _March_
+                                                                    1891].
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—Perhaps in my old days I do grow irascible; ‘the old man
+virulent’ has long been my pet name for myself.  Well, the temper is at
+least all gone now; time is good at lowering these distemperatures; far
+better is a sharp sickness, and I am just (and scarce) afoot again after
+a smoking hot little malady at Sydney.  And the temper being gone, I
+still think the same. . . .  We have not our parents for ever; we are
+never very good to them; when they go and we have lost our front-file
+man, we begin to feel all our neglects mighty sensibly.  I propose a
+proposal.  My mother is here on board with me; to-day for once I mean to
+make her as happy as I am able, and to do that which I know she likes.
+You, on the other hand, go and see your father, and do ditto, and give
+him a real good hour or two.  We shall both be glad hereafter.—Yours
+ever,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO H. B. BAILDON
+
+
+                    _Vailima_, _Upolu_ [_Undated_, _but written in_ 1891].
+
+MY DEAR BAILDON,—This is a real disappointment.  It was so long since we
+had met, I was anxious to see where time had carried and stranded us.
+Last time we saw each other—it must have been all ten years ago, as we
+were new to the thirties—it was only for a moment, and now we’re in the
+forties, and before very long we shall be in our graves.  Sick and well,
+I have had a splendid life of it, grudge nothing, regret very little—and
+then only some little corners of misconduct for which I deserve hanging,
+and must infallibly be damned—and, take it all over, damnation and all,
+would hardly change with any man of my time, unless perhaps it were
+Gordon or our friend Chalmers: a man I admire for his virtues, love for
+his faults, and envy for the really A1 life he has, with everything
+heart—my heart, I mean—could wish.  It is curious to think you will read
+this in the grey metropolis; go the first grey, east-windy day into the
+Caledonian Station, if it looks at all as it did of yore: I met Satan
+there.  And then go and stand by the cross, and remember the other
+one—him that went down—my brother, Robert Fergusson.  It is a pity you
+had not made me out, and seen me as patriarch and planter.  I shall look
+forward to some record of your time with Chalmers: you can’t weary me of
+that fellow, he is as big as a house and far bigger than any church,
+where no man warms his hands.  Do you know anything of Thomson?  Of A—,
+B—, C—, D—, E—, F—, at all?  As I write C.’s name mustard rises my nose;
+I have never forgiven that weak, amiable boy a little trick he played me
+when I could ill afford it: I mean that whenever I think of it, some of
+the old wrath kindles, not that I would hurt the poor soul, if I got the
+world with it.  And Old X—?  Is he still afloat?  Harmless bark!  I
+gather you ain’t married yet, since your sister, to whom I ask to be
+remembered, goes with you.  Did you see a silly tale, _John Nicholson’s
+Predicament_, {220} or some such name, in which I made free with your
+home at Murrayfield?  There is precious little sense in it, but it might
+amuse.  Cassell’s published it in a thing called _Yule-Tide_ years ago,
+and nobody that ever I heard of read or has ever seen _Yule-Tide_.  It is
+addressed to a class we never met—readers of Cassell’s series and that
+class of conscientious chaff, and my tale was dull, though I don’t recall
+that it was conscientious.  Only, there’s the house at Murrayfield and a
+dead body in it.  Glad the _Ballads_ amused you.  They failed to
+entertain a coy public, at which I wondered, not that I set much account
+by my verses, which are the verses of Prosator; but I do know how to tell
+a yarn, and two of the yarns are great.  _Rahero_ is for its length a
+perfect folk-tale: savage and yet fine, full of tailforemost morality,
+ancient as the granite rocks; if the historian, not to say the
+politician, could get that yarn into his head, he would have learned some
+of his A B C. But the average man at home cannot understand antiquity; he
+is sunk over the ears in Roman civilisation; and a tale like that of
+_Rahero_ falls on his ears inarticulate.  The _Spectator_ said there was
+no psychology in it; that interested me much: my grandmother (as I used
+to call that able paper, and an able paper it is, and a fair one) cannot
+so much as observe the existence of savage psychology when it is put
+before it.  I am at bottom a psychologist and ashamed of it; the tale
+seized me one-third because of its picturesque features, two-thirds
+because of its astonishing psychology, and the _Spectator_ says there’s
+none.  I am going on with a lot of island work, exulting in the knowledge
+of a new world, ‘a new created world’ and new men; and I am sure my
+income will DECLINE and FALL off; for the effort of comprehension is
+death to the intelligent public, and sickness to the dull.
+
+I do not know why I pester you with all this trash, above all as you
+deserve nothing.  I give you my warm _talofa_ (‘my love to you,’ Samoan
+salutation).  Write me again when the spirit moves you.  And some day, if
+I still live, make out the trip again and let us hob-a-nob with our grey
+pows on my verandah.—Yours sincerely,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO W. CRAIBE ANGUS
+
+
+                                         _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _April_ 1891.
+
+DEAR MR. ANGUS,—Surely I remember you!  It was W. C. Murray who made us
+acquainted, and we had a pleasant crack.  I see your poet is not yet
+dead.  I remember even our talk—or you would not think of trusting that
+invaluable _Jolly Beggars_ to the treacherous posts, and the perils of
+the sea, and the carelessness of authors.  I love the idea, but I could
+not bear the risk.  However—
+
+    ‘Hale be your heart, hale be your fiddle—’
+
+it was kindly thought upon.
+
+My interest in Burns is, as you suppose, perennial.  I would I could be
+present at the exhibition, with the purpose of which I heartily
+sympathise; but the _Nancy_ has not waited in vain for me, I have
+followed my chest, the anchor is weighed long ago, I have said my last
+farewell to the hills and the heather and the lynns: like Leyden, I have
+gone into far lands to die, not stayed like Burns to mingle in the end
+with Scottish soil.  I shall not even return like Scott for the last
+scene.  Burns Exhibitions are all over.  ’Tis a far cry to Lochow from
+tropical Vailima.
+
+    ‘But still our hearts are true, our hearts are Highland,
+    And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.’
+
+When your hand is in, will you remember our poor Edinburgh Robin?  Burns
+alone has been just to his promise; follow Burns, he knew best, he knew
+whence he drew fire—from the poor, white-faced, drunken, vicious boy that
+raved himself to death in the Edinburgh madhouse.  Surely there is more
+to be gleaned about Fergusson, and surely it is high time the task was
+set about.  I may tell you (because your poet is not dead) something of
+how I feel: we are three Robins who have touched the Scots lyre this last
+century.  Well, the one is the world’s, he did it, he came off, he is for
+ever; but I and the other—ah! what bonds we have—born in the same city;
+both sickly, both pestered, one nearly to madness, one to the madhouse,
+with a damnatory creed; both seeing the stars and the dawn, and wearing
+shoe-leather on the same ancient stones, under the same pends, down the
+same closes, where our common ancestors clashed in their armour, rusty or
+bright.  And the old Robin, who was before Burns and the flood, died in
+his acute, painful youth, and left the models of the great things that
+were to come; and the new, who came after, outlived his greensickness,
+and has faintly tried to parody the finished work.  If you will collect
+the strays of Robin Fergusson, fish for material, collect any last
+re-echoing of gossip, command me to do what you prefer—to write the
+preface—to write the whole if you prefer: anything, so that another
+monument (after Burns’s) be set up to my unhappy predecessor on the
+causey of Auld Reekie.  You will never know, nor will any man, how deep
+this feeling is: I believe Fergusson lives in me.  I do, but tell it not
+in Gath; every man has these fanciful superstitions, coming, going, but
+yet enduring; only most men are so wise (or the poet in them so dead)
+that they keep their follies for themselves.—I am, yours very truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO EDMUND GOSSE
+
+
+                                                  _Vailima_, _April_ 1891.
+
+MY DEAR GOSSE,—I have to thank you and Mrs. Gosse for many mementoes,
+chiefly for your _Life_ of your father.  There is a very delicate task,
+very delicately done.  I noted one or two carelessnesses, which I meant
+to point out to you for another edition; but I find I lack the time, and
+you will remark them for yourself against a new edition.  They were two,
+or perhaps three, flabbinesses of style which (in your work) amazed me.
+Am I right in thinking you were a shade bored over the last chapters? or
+was it my own fault that made me think them susceptible of a more
+athletic compression?  (The flabbinesses were not there, I think, but in
+the more admirable part, where they showed the bigger.)  Take it all
+together, the book struck me as if you had been hurried at the last, but
+particularly hurried over the proofs, and could still spend a very
+profitable fortnight in earnest revision and (towards the end) heroic
+compression.  The book, in design, subject, and general execution, is
+well worth the extra trouble.  And even if I were wrong in thinking it
+specially wanted, it will not be lost; for do we not know, in Flaubert’s
+dread confession, that ‘prose is never done’?  What a medium to work in,
+for a man tired, perplexed among different aims and subjects, and spurred
+by the immediate need of ‘siller’!  However, it’s mine for what it’s
+worth; and it’s one of yours, the devil take it; and you know, as well as
+Flaubert, and as well as me, that it is _never done_; in other words, it
+is a torment of the pit, usually neglected by the bards who (lucky
+beggars!) approached the Styx in measure.  I speak bitterly at the
+moment, having just detected in myself the last fatal symptom, three
+blank verses in succession—and I believe, God help me, a hemistich at the
+tail of them; hence I have deposed the labourer, come out of hell by my
+private trap, and now write to you from my little place in purgatory.
+But I prefer hell: would I could always dig in those red coals—or else be
+at sea in a schooner, bound for isles unvisited: to be on shore and not
+to work is emptiness—suicidal vacancy.
+
+I was the more interested in your _Life_ of your father, because I
+meditate one of mine, or rather of my family.  I have no such materials
+as you, and (our objections already made) your attack fills me with
+despair; it is direct and elegant, and your style is always admirable to
+me—lenity, lucidity, usually a high strain of breeding, an elegance that
+has a pleasant air of the accidental.  But beware of purple passages.  I
+wonder if you think as well of your purple passages as I do of mine?  I
+wonder if you think as ill of mine as I do of yours?  I wonder; I can
+tell you at least what is wrong with yours—they are treated in the spirit
+of verse.  The spirit—I don’t mean the measure, I don’t mean you fall
+into bastard cadences; what I mean is that they seem vacant and smoothed
+out, ironed, if you like.  And in a style which (like yours) aims more
+and more successfully at the academic, one purple word is already much;
+three—a whole phrase—is inadmissible.  Wed yourself to a clean austerity:
+that is your force.  Wear a linen ephod, splendidly candid.  Arrange its
+folds, but do not fasten it with any brooch.  I swear to you, in your
+talking robes, there should be no patch of adornment; and where the
+subject forces, let it force you no further than it must; and be ready
+with a twinkle of your pleasantry.  Yours is a fine tool, and I see so
+well how to hold it; I wonder if you see how to hold mine?  But then I am
+to the neck in prose, and just now in the ‘dark _interstylar_ cave,’ all
+methods and effects wooing me, myself in the midst impotent to follow
+any.  I look for dawn presently, and a full flowing river of expression,
+running whither it wills.  But these useless seasons, above all, when a
+man _must_ continue to spoil paper, are infinitely weary.
+
+We are in our house after a fashion; without furniture, ’tis true,
+camping there, like the family after a sale.  But the bailiff has not yet
+appeared; he will probably come after.  The place is beautiful beyond
+dreams; some fifty miles of the Pacific spread in front; deep woods all
+round; a mountain making in the sky a profile of huge trees upon our
+left; about us, the little island of our clearing, studded with brave old
+gentlemen (or ladies, or ‘the twa o’ them’) whom we have spared.  It is a
+good place to be in; night and morning, we have Theodore Rousseaus
+(always a new one) hung to amuse us on the walls of the world; and the
+moon—this is our good season, we have a moon just now—makes the night a
+piece of heaven.  It amazes me how people can live on in the dirty north;
+yet if you saw our rainy season (which is really a caulker for wind, wet,
+and darkness—howling showers, roaring winds, pit-blackness at noon) you
+might marvel how we could endure that.  And we can’t.  But there’s a
+winter everywhere; only ours is in the summer.  Mark my words: there will
+be a winter in heaven—and in hell.  _Cela rentre dans les procédés du bon
+Dieu_; _et vous verrez_!  There’s another very good thing about Vailima,
+I am away from the little bubble of the literary life.  It is not all
+beer and skittles, is it?  By the by, my _Ballads_ seem to have been dam
+bad; all the crickets sing so in their crickety papers; and I have no
+ghost of an idea on the point myself: verse is always to me the
+unknowable.  You might tell me how it strikes a professional bard: not
+that it really matters, for, of course, good or bad, I don’t think I
+shall get into _that_ galley any more.  But I should like to know if you
+join the shrill chorus of the crickets.  The crickets are the devil in
+all to you: ’tis a strange thing, they seem to rejoice like a strong man
+in their injustice.  I trust you got my letter about your Browning book.
+In case it missed, I wish to say again that your publication of
+Browning’s kind letter, as an illustration of _his_ character, was
+modest, proper, and in radiant good taste.—In Witness whereof, etc.,
+etc.,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO MISS RAWLINSON
+
+
+                                 _Vailima_, _Apia_, _Samoa_, _April_ 1891.
+
+MY DEAR MAY,—I never think of you by any more ceremonial name, so I will
+not pretend.  There is not much chance that I shall forget you until the
+time comes for me to forget all this little turmoil in a corner (though
+indeed I have been in several corners) of an inconsiderable planet.  You
+remain in my mind for a good reason, having given me (in so short a time)
+the most delightful pleasure.  I shall remember, and you must still be
+beautiful.  The truth is, you must grow more so, or you will soon be
+less.  It is not so easy to be a flower, even when you bear a flower’s
+name.  And if I admired you so much, and still remember you, it is not
+because of your face, but because you were then worthy of it, as you must
+still continue.
+
+Will you give my heartiest congratulations to Mr. S.?  He has my
+admiration; he is a brave man; when I was young, I should have run away
+from the sight of you, pierced with the sense of my unfitness.  He is
+more wise and manly.  What a good husband he will have to be!  And
+you—what a good wife!  Carry your love tenderly.  I will never forgive
+him—or you—it is in both your hands—if the face that once gladdened my
+heart should be changed into one sour or sorrowful.
+
+What a person you are to give flowers!  It was so I first heard of you;
+and now you are giving the May flower!
+
+Yes, Skerryvore has passed; it was, for us.  But I wish you could see us
+in our new home on the mountain, in the middle of great woods, and
+looking far out over the Pacific.  When Mr. S. is very rich, he must
+bring you round the world and let you see it, and see the old gentleman
+and the old lady.  I mean to live quite a long while yet, and my wife
+must do the same, or else I couldn’t manage it; so, you see, you will
+have plenty of time; and it’s a pity not to see the most beautiful
+places, and the most beautiful people moving there, and the real stars
+and moon overhead, instead of the tin imitations that preside over
+London.  I do not think my wife very well; but I am in hopes she will now
+have a little rest.  It has been a hard business, above all for her; we
+lived four months in the hurricane season in a miserable house, overborne
+with work, ill-fed, continually worried, drowned in perpetual rain,
+beaten upon by wind, so that we must sit in the dark in the evenings; and
+then I ran away, and she had a month of it alone.  Things go better now;
+the back of the work is broken; and we are still foolish enough to look
+forward to a little peace.  I am a very different person from the
+prisoner of Skerryvore.  The other day I was three-and-twenty hours in an
+open boat; it made me pretty ill; but fancy its not killing me half-way!
+It is like a fairy story that I should have recovered liberty and
+strength, and should go round again among my fellow-men, boating, riding,
+bathing, toiling hard with a wood-knife in the forest.  I can wish you
+nothing more delightful than my fortune in life; I wish it you; and
+better, if the thing be possible.
+
+Lloyd is tinkling below me on the typewriter; my wife has just left the
+room; she asks me to say she would have written had she been well enough,
+and hopes to do it still.—Accept the best wishes of your admirer,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
+
+
+                                                  [_Vailima_, _May_ 1891.]
+
+MY DEAR ADELAIDE,—I will own you just did manage to tread on my gouty
+toe; and I beg to assure you with most people I should simply have turned
+away and said no more.  My cudgelling was therefore in the nature of a
+caress or testimonial.
+
+God forbid, I should seem to judge for you on such a point; it was what
+you seemed to set forth as your reasons that fluttered my old
+Presbyterian spirit—for, mind you, I am a child of the Covenanters—whom I
+do not love, but they are mine after all, my father’s and my mother’s—and
+they had their merits too, and their ugly beauties, and grotesque
+heroisms, that I love them for, the while I laugh at them; but in their
+name and mine do what you think right, and let the world fall.  That is
+the privilege and the duty of private persons; and I shall think the more
+of you at the greater distance, because you keep a promise to your
+fellow-man, your helper and creditor in life, by just so much as I was
+tempted to think the less of you (O not much, or I would never have been
+angry) when I thought you were the swallower of a (tinfoil) formula.
+
+I must say I was uneasy about my letter, not because it was too strong as
+an expression of my unregenerate sentiments, but because I knew full well
+it should be followed by something kinder.  And the mischief has been in
+my health.  I fell sharply sick in Sydney, was put aboard the _Lübeck_
+pretty bad, got to Vailima, hung on a month there, and didn’t pick up as
+well as my work needed; set off on a journey, gained a great deal, lost
+it again; and am back at Vailima, still no good at my necessary work.  I
+tell you this for my imperfect excuse that I should not have written you
+again sooner to remove the bad taste of my last.
+
+A road has been called Adelaide Road; it leads from the back of our house
+to the bridge, and thence to the garden, and by a bifurcation to the pig
+pen.  It is thus much traversed, particularly by Fanny.  An oleander, the
+only one of your seeds that prospered in this climate, grows there; and
+the name is now some week or ten days applied and published.  ADELAIDE
+ROAD leads also into the bush, to the banana patch, and by a second
+bifurcation over the left branch of the stream to the plateau and the
+right hand of the gorges.  In short, it leads to all sorts of good, and
+is, besides, in itself a pretty winding path, bound downhill among big
+woods to the margin of the stream.
+
+What a strange idea, to think me a Jew-hater!  Isaiah and David and Heine
+are good enough for me; and I leave more unsaid.  Were I of Jew blood, I
+do not think I could ever forgive the Christians; the ghettos would get
+in my nostrils like mustard or lit gunpowder.  Just so you as being a
+child of the Presbytery, I retain—I need not dwell on that.  The
+ascendant hand is what I feel most strongly; I am bound in and in with my
+forbears; were he one of mine, I should not be struck at all by Mr. Moss
+of Bevis Marks, I should still see behind him Moses of the Mount and the
+Tables and the shining face.  We are all nobly born; fortunate those who
+know it; blessed those who remember.
+
+I am, my dear Adelaide, most genuinely yours,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+Write by return to say you are better, and I will try to do the same.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                                 [_Vailima_], _Tuesday_, 19_th_ _May_ ’91.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—I don’t know what you think of me, not having written to
+you at all during your illness.  I find two sheets begun with your name,
+but that is no excuse. . . . I am keeping bravely; getting about better,
+every day, and hope soon to be in my usual fettle.  My books begin to
+come; and I fell once more on the Old Bailey session papers.  I have
+1778, 1784, and 1786.  Should you be able to lay hands on any other
+volumes, above all a little later, I should be very glad you should buy
+them for me.  I particularly want _one_ or _two_ during the course of the
+Peninsular War.  Come to think, I ought rather to have communicated this
+want to Bain.  Would it bore you to communicate to that effect with the
+great man?  The sooner I have them, the better for me.  ’Tis for Henry
+Shovel.  But Henry Shovel has now turned into a work called ‘The Shovels
+of Newton French: Including Memoirs of Henry Shovel, a Private in the
+Peninsular War,’ which work is to begin in 1664 with the marriage of
+Skipper, afterwards Alderman Shovel of Bristol, Henry’s
+great-great-grandfather, and end about 1832 with his own second marriage
+to the daughter of his runaway aunt.  Will the public ever stand such an
+opus?  Gude kens, but it tickles me.  Two or three historical personages
+will just appear: Judge Jeffreys, Wellington, Colquhoun, Grant, and I
+think Townsend the runner.  I know the public won’t like it; let ’em lump
+it then; I mean to make it good; it will be more like a saga.—Adieu,
+yours ever affectionately,
+
+                                                          R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+                                                _Vailima_ [_Summer_ 1891].
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—I find among my grandfather’s papers his own
+reminiscences of his voyage round the north with Sir Walter, eighty years
+ago, _labuntur anni_!  They are not remarkably good, but he was not a bad
+observer, and several touches seem to me speaking.  It has occurred to me
+you might like them to appear in the _Magazine_.  If you would, kindly
+let me know, and tell me how you would like it handled.  My grandad’s MS.
+runs to between six and seven thousand words, which I could abbreviate of
+anecdotes that scarce touch Sir W.  Would you like this done?  Would you
+like me to introduce the old gentleman?  I had something of the sort in
+my mind, and could fill a few columns rather _à propos_.  I give you the
+first offer of this, according to your request; for though it may
+forestall one of the interests of my biography, the thing seems to me
+particularly suited for prior appearance in a magazine.
+
+I see the first number of the _Wrecker_; I thought it went lively enough;
+and by a singular accident, the picture is not unlike Tai-o-hae!
+
+Thus we see the age of miracles, etc.—Yours very sincerely,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+Proofs for next mail.
+
+
+
+TO W. CRAIBE ANGUS
+
+
+                                                          [_Summer_ 1891.]
+
+DEAR MR. ANGUS,—You can use my letter as you will.  The parcel has not
+come; pray Heaven the next post bring it safe.  Is it possible for me to
+write a preface here?  I will try if you like, if you think I must:
+though surely there are Rivers in Assyria.  Of course you will send me
+sheets of the catalogue; I suppose it (the preface) need not be long;
+perhaps it should be rather very short?  Be sure you give me your views
+upon these points.  Also tell me what names to mention among those of
+your helpers, and do remember to register everything, else it is not
+safe.
+
+The true place (in my view) for a monument to Fergusson were the
+churchyard of Haddington.  But as that would perhaps not carry many
+votes, I should say one of the two following sites:—First, either as near
+the site of the old Bedlam as we could get, or, second, beside the Cross,
+the heart of his city.  Upon this I would have a fluttering butterfly,
+and, I suggest, the citation,
+
+   Poor butterfly, thy case I mourn.
+
+For the case of Fergusson is not one to pretend about.  A more miserable
+tragedy the sun never shone upon, or (in consideration of our climate) I
+should rather say refused to brighten.—Yours truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+Where Burns goes will not matter.  He is no local poet, like your Robin
+the First; he is general as the casing air.  Glasgow, as the chief city
+of Scottish men, would do well; but for God’s sake, don’t let it be like
+the Glasgow memorial to Knox: I remember, when I first saw this, laughing
+for an hour by Shrewsbury clock.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO H. C. IDE
+
+
+                                             [_Vailima_, _June_ 19, 1891.]
+
+DEAR MR. IDE,—Herewith please find the DOCUMENT, which I trust will prove
+sufficient in law.  It seems to me very attractive in its eclecticism;
+Scots, English, and Roman law phrases are all indifferently introduced,
+and a quotation from the works of Haynes Bayly can hardly fail to attract
+the indulgence of the Bench.—Yours very truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+I, Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate of the Scots Bar, author of _The
+Master of Ballantrae_ and _Moral Emblems_, stuck civil engineer, sole
+owner and patentee of the Palace and Plantation known as Vailima in the
+island of Upolu, Samoa, a British Subject, being in sound mind, and
+pretty well, I thank you, in body:
+
+In consideration that Miss Annie H. Ide, daughter of H. C. Ide, in the
+town of Saint Johnsbury, in the county of Caledonia, in the state of
+Vermont, United States of America, was born, out of all reason, upon
+Christmas Day, and is therefore out of all justice denied the consolation
+and profit of a proper birthday;
+
+And considering that I, the said Robert Louis Stevenson, have attained an
+age when O, we never mention it, and that I have now no further use for a
+birthday of any description;
+
+And in consideration that I have met H. C. Ide, the father of the said
+Annie H. Ide, and found him about as white a land commissioner as I
+require:
+
+_Have transferred_, and _do hereby transfer_, to the said Annie H. Ide,
+_all and whole_ my rights and priviledges in the thirteenth day of
+November, formerly my birthday, now, hereby, and henceforth, the birthday
+of the said Annie H. Ide, to have, hold, exercise, and enjoy the same in
+the customary manner, by the sporting of fine raiment, eating of rich
+meats, and receipt of gifts, compliments, and copies of verse, according
+to the manner of our ancestors;
+
+_And I direct_ the said Annie H. Ide to add to the said name of Annie H.
+Ide the name Louisa—at least in private; and I charge her to use my said
+birthday with moderation and humanity, _et tamquam bona filia familiæ_,
+the said birthday not being so young as it once was, and having carried
+me in a very satisfactory manner since I can remember;
+
+And in case the said Annie H. Ide shall neglect or contravene either of
+the above conditions, I hereby revoke the donation and transfer my rights
+in the said birthday to the President of the United States of America for
+the time being:
+
+In witness whereof I have hereto set my hand and seal this nineteenth day
+of June in the year of grace eighteen hundred and ninety-one.
+
+                                  [Picture: Circle with word ‘seal’ in it]
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+_Witness_, LLOYD OSBOURNE,
+
+_Witness_, HAROLD WATTS.
+
+
+
+TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+                                              [_Vailima_, _October_ 1891.]
+
+MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,—From this perturbed and hunted being expect but a
+line, and that line shall be but a whoop for Adela.  O she’s delicious,
+delicious; I could live and die with Adela—die, rather the better of the
+two; you never did a straighter thing, and never will.
+
+_David Balfour_, second part of _Kidnapped_, is on the stocks at last;
+and is not bad, I think.  As for _The Wrecker_, it’s a machine, you
+know—don’t expect aught else—a machine, and a police machine; but I
+believe the end is one of the most genuine butcheries in literature; and
+we point to our machine with a modest pride, as the only police machine
+without a villain.  Our criminals are a most pleasing crew, and leave the
+dock with scarce a stain upon their character.
+
+What a different line of country to be trying to draw Adela, and trying
+to write the last four chapters of _The Wrecker_!  Heavens, it’s like two
+centuries; and ours is such rude, transpontine business, aiming only at a
+certain fervour of conviction and sense of energy and violence in the
+men; and yours is so neat and bright and of so exquisite a surface!
+Seems dreadful to send such a book to such an author; but your name is on
+the list.  And we do modestly ask you to consider the chapters on the
+_Norah Creina_ with the study of Captain Nares, and the forementioned
+last four, with their brutality of substance and the curious (and perhaps
+unsound) technical manœuvre of running the story together to a point as
+we go along, the narrative becoming more succinct and the details fining
+off with every page.—Sworn affidavit of
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+_No person now alive has beaten Adela_: _I adore Adela and her maker_.
+_Sic subscrib._
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+A Sublime Poem to follow.
+
+   Adela, Adela, Adela Chart,
+   What have you done to my elderly heart?
+   Of all the ladies of paper and ink
+   I count you the paragon, call you the pink.
+   The word of your brother depicts you in part:
+   ‘You raving maniac!’ Adela Chart;
+   But in all the asylums that cumber the ground,
+   So delightful a maniac was ne’er to be found.
+
+   I pore on you, dote on you, clasp you to heart,
+   I laud, love, and laugh at you, Adela Chart,
+   And thank my dear maker the while I admire
+   That I can be neither your husband nor sire.
+
+   Your husband’s, your sire’s were a difficult part;
+   You’re a byway to suicide, Adela Chart;
+   But to read of, depicted by exquisite James,
+   O, sure you’re the flower and quintessence of dames.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+                          _Eructavit cor meum._
+
+My heart was inditing a goodly matter about Adela Chart.
+
+   Though oft I’ve been touched by the volatile dart,
+   To none have I grovelled but Adela Chart,
+   There are passable ladies, no question, in art—
+   But where is the marrow of Adela Chart?
+   I dreamed that to Tyburn I passed in the cart—
+   I dreamed I was married to Adela Chart:
+   From the first I awoke with a palpable start,
+   The second dumfoundered me, Adela Chart!
+
+Another verse bursts from me, you see; no end to the violence of the
+Muse.
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+                                                    _October_ 8_th_, 1891.
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—All right, you shall have the _Tales of my
+Grandfather_ soon, but I guess we’ll try and finish off _The Wrecker_
+first.  _À propos_ of whom, please send some advanced sheets to
+Cassell’s—away ahead of you—so that they may get a dummy out.
+
+Do you wish to illustrate _My Grandfather_?  He mentions as excellent a
+portrait of Scott by Basil Hall’s brother.  I don’t think I ever saw this
+engraved; would it not, if you could get track of it, prove a taking
+embellishment?  I suggest this for your consideration and inquiry.  A new
+portrait of Scott strikes me as good.  There is a hard, tough,
+constipated old portrait of my grandfather hanging in my aunt’s house,
+Mrs. Alan Stevenson, 16 St. Leonard’s Terrace, Chelsea, which has never
+been engraved—the better portrait, Joseph’s bust has been reproduced, I
+believe, twice—and which, I am sure, my aunt would let you have a copy
+of.  The plate could be of use for the book when we get so far, and thus
+to place it in the _Magazine_ might be an actual saving.
+
+I am swallowed up in politics for the first, I hope for the last, time in
+my sublunary career.  It is a painful, thankless trade; but one thing
+that came up I could not pass in silence.  Much drafting, addressing,
+deputationising has eaten up all my time, and again (to my contrition) I
+leave you Wreckerless.  As soon as the mail leaves I tackle it
+straight.—Yours very sincerely,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+                                                _Vailima_ [_Autumn_ 1891].
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—The time draws nigh, the mail is near due, and I
+snatch a moment of collapse so that you may have at least some sort of a
+scratch of note along with the
+
+         end
+
+                  of
+
+                                   The
+
+                                 Wrecker.
+
+                                                                   Hurray!
+
+which I mean to go herewith.  It has taken me a devil of a pull, but I
+think it’s going to be ready.  If I did not know you were on the stretch
+waiting for it and trembling for your illustrations, I would keep it for
+another finish; but things being as they are, I will let it go the best
+way I can get it.  I am now within two pages of the end of Chapter XXV.,
+which is the last chapter, the end with its gathering up of loose
+threads, being the dedication to Low, and addressed to him: this is my
+last and best expedient for the knotting up of these loose cards.  ’Tis
+possible I may not get that finished in time, in which case you’ll
+receive only Chapters XXII. to XXV. by this mail, which is all that can
+be required for illustration.
+
+I wish you would send me _Memoirs of Baron Marbot_ (French);
+_Introduction to the Study of the History of Language_, Strong, Logeman &
+Wheeler; _Principles of Psychology_, William James; Morris & Magnusson’s
+_Saga Library_, any volumes that are out; George Meredith’s _One of our
+Conquerors_; _Là Bas_, by Huysmans (French); O’Connor Morris’s _Great
+Commanders of Modern Times_; _Life’s Handicap_, by Kipling; of Taine’s
+_Origines de la France Contemporaine_, I have only as far as _la
+Révolution_, vol. iii.; if another volume is out, please add that.  There
+is for a book-box.
+
+I hope you will like the end; I think it is rather strong meat.  I have
+got into such a deliberate, dilatory, expansive turn, that the effort to
+compress this last yarn was unwelcome; but the longest yarn has to come
+to an end sometime.  Please look it over for carelessnesses, and tell me
+if it had any effect upon your jaded editorial mind.  I’ll see if ever I
+have time to add more.
+
+I add to my book-box list Adams’ _Historical Essays_; the Plays of A. W.
+Pinero—all that have appeared, and send me the rest in course as they do
+appear; _Noughts and Crosses_ by Q.; Robertson’s _Scotland under her
+Early Kings_.
+
+                                                                 _Sunday_.
+
+The deed is done, didst thou not hear a noise?  ‘The end’ has been
+written to this endless yarn, and I am once more a free man.  What will
+he do with it?
+
+
+
+TO W. CRAIBE ANGUS
+
+
+                                      _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _November_ 1891.
+
+MY DEAR MR. ANGUS,—Herewith the invaluable sheets.  They came months
+after your letter, and I trembled; but here they are, and I have scrawled
+my vile name on them, and ‘thocht shame’ as I did it.  I am expecting the
+sheets of your catalogue, so that I may attack the preface.  Please give
+me all the time you can.  The sooner the better; you might even send me
+early proofs as they are sent out, to give me more incubation.  I used to
+write as slow as judgment; now I write rather fast; but I am still ‘a
+slow study,’ and sit a long while silent on my eggs.  Unconscious
+thought, there is the only method: macerate your subject, let it boil
+slow, then take the lid off and look in—and there your stuff is, good or
+bad.  But the journalist’s method is the way to manufacture lies; it is
+will-worship—if you know the luminous quaker phrase; and the will is only
+to be brought in the field for study, and again for revision.  The
+essential part of work is not an act, it is a state.
+
+I do not know why I write you this trash.
+
+Many thanks for your handsome dedication.  I have not yet had time to do
+more than glance at Mrs. Begg; it looks interesting.—Yours very truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO MISS ANNIE H. IDE
+
+
+                                     _Vailima_, _Samoa_ [_November_ 1891].
+
+MY DEAR LOUISA,—Your picture of the church, the photograph of yourself
+and your sister, and your very witty and pleasing letter, came all in a
+bundle, and made me feel I had my money’s worth for that birthday.  I am
+now, I must be, one of your nearest relatives; exactly what we are to
+each other, I do not know, I doubt if the case has ever happened
+before—your papa ought to know, and I don’t believe he does; but I think
+I ought to call you in the meanwhile, and until we get the advice of
+counsel learned in the law, my name-daughter.  Well, I was extremely
+pleased to see by the church that my name-daughter could draw; by the
+letter, that she was no fool; and by the photograph, that she was a
+pretty girl, which hurts nothing.  See how virtues are rewarded!  My
+first idea of adopting you was entirely charitable; and here I find that
+I am quite proud of it, and of you, and that I chose just the kind of
+name-daughter I wanted.  For I can draw too, or rather I mean to say I
+could before I forgot how; and I am very far from being a fool myself,
+however much I may look it; and I am as beautiful as the day, or at least
+I once hoped that perhaps I might be going to be.  And so I might.  So
+that you see we are well met, and peers on these important points.  I am
+_very_ glad also that you are older than your sister.  So should I have
+been, if I had had one.  So that the number of points and virtues which
+you have inherited from your name-father is already quite surprising.
+
+I wish you would tell your father—not that I like to encourage my
+rival—that we have had a wonderful time here of late, and that they are
+having a cold day on Mulinuu, and the consuls are writing reports, and I
+am writing to the _Times_, and if we don’t get rid of our friends this
+time I shall begin to despair of everything but my name-daughter.
+
+You are quite wrong as to the effect of the birthday on your age.  From
+the moment the deed was registered (as it was in the public press with
+every solemnity), the 13th of November became your own _and only_
+birthday, and you ceased to have been born on Christmas Day.  Ask your
+father: I am sure he will tell you this is sound law.  You are thus
+become a month and twelve days younger than you were, but will go on
+growing older for the future in the regular and human manner from one
+13th November to the next.  The effect on me is more doubtful; I may, as
+you suggest, live for ever; I might, on the other hand, come to pieces
+like the one-horse shay at a moment’s notice; doubtless the step was
+risky, but I do not the least regret that which enables me to sign myself
+your revered and delighted name-father,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO FRED ORR
+
+
+                     _Vailima_, _Upolu_, _Samoa_, _November_ 28_th_, 1891.
+
+DEAR SIR,—Your obliging communication is to hand.  I am glad to find that
+you have read some of my books, and to see that you spell my name right.
+This is a point (for some reason) of great difficulty; and I believe that
+a gentleman who can spell Stevenson with a v at sixteen, should have a
+show for the Presidency before fifty.  By that time
+
+    I, nearer to the wayside inn,
+
+predict that you will have outgrown your taste for autographs, but
+perhaps your son may have inherited the collection, and on the morning of
+the great day will recall my prophecy to your mind.  And in the papers of
+1921 (say) this letter may arouse a smile.
+
+Whatever you do, read something else besides novels and newspapers; the
+first are good enough when they are good; the second, at their best, are
+worth nothing.  Read great books of literature and history; try to
+understand the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages; be sure you do not
+understand when you dislike them; condemnation is non-comprehension.  And
+if you know something of these two periods, you will know a little more
+about to-day, and may be a good President.
+
+I send you my best wishes, and am yours,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON,
+                              _Author of a vast quantity of little books_.
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+                                             [_Vailima_, _December_ 1891.]
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—The end of _The Wrecker_ having but just come in, you
+will, I dare say, be appalled to receive three (possibly four) chapters
+of a new book of the least attractive sort: a history of nowhere in a
+corner, for no time to mention, running to a volume!  Well, it may very
+likely be an illusion; it is very likely no one could possibly wish to
+read it, but I wish to publish it.  If you don’t cotton to the idea,
+kindly set it up at my expense, and let me know your terms for
+publishing.  The great affair to me is to have per return (if it might
+be) four or five—better say half a dozen—sets of the roughest proofs that
+can be drawn.  There are a good many men here whom I want to read the
+blessed thing, and not one would have the energy to read MS.  At the same
+time, if you care to glance at it, and have the time, I should be very
+glad of your opinion as to whether I have made any step at all towards
+possibly inducing folk at home to read matter so extraneous and
+outlandish.  I become heavy and owlish; years sit upon me; it begins to
+seem to me to be a man’s business to leave off his damnable faces and say
+his say.  Else I could have made it pungent and light and lively.  In
+considering, kindly forget that I am R. L. S.; think of the four chapters
+as a book you are reading, by an inhabitant of our ‘lovely but fatil’
+islands; and see if it could possibly amuse the hebetated public.  I have
+to publish anyway, you understand; I have a purpose beyond; I am
+concerned for some of the parties to this quarrel.  What I want to hear
+is from curiosity; what I want you to judge of is what we are to do with
+the book in a business sense.  To me it is not business at all; I had
+meant originally to lay all the profits to the credit of Samoa; when it
+comes to the pinch of writing, I judge this unfair—I give too much—and I
+mean to keep (if there be any profit at all) one-half for the artisan;
+the rest I shall hold over to give to the Samoans _for that which I
+choose and against work done_.  I think I have never heard of greater
+insolence than to attempt such a subject; yet the tale is so strange and
+mixed, and the people so oddly charactered—above all, the whites—and the
+high note of the hurricane and the warships is so well prepared to take
+popular interest, and the latter part is so directly in the day’s
+movement, that I am not without hope but some may read it; and if they
+don’t, a murrain on them!  Here is, for the first time, a tale of
+Greeks—Homeric Greeks—mingled with moderns, and all true; Odysseus
+alongside of Rajah Brooke, _proportion gardée_; and all true.  Here is
+for the first time since the Greeks (that I remember) the history of a
+handful of men, where all know each other in the eyes, and live close in
+a few acres, narrated at length, and with the seriousness of history.
+Talk of the modern novel; here is a modern history.  And if I had the
+misfortune to found a school, the legitimate historian might lie down and
+die, for he could never overtake his material.  Here is a little tale
+that has not ‘caret’-ed its ‘vates’; ‘sacer’ is another point.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+                                                   _December_ 7_th_, 1891.
+
+MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,—Thanks for yours; your former letter was lost; so it
+appears was my long and masterly treatise on the _Tragic Muse_.  I
+remember sending it very well, and there went by the same mail a long and
+masterly tractate to Gosse about his daddy’s life, for which I have been
+long expecting an acknowledgment, and which is plainly gone to the bottom
+with the other.  If you see Gosse, please mention it.  These gems of
+criticism are now lost literature, like the tomes of Alexandria.  I could
+not do ’em again.  And I must ask you to be content with a dull head, a
+weary hand, and short commons, for to-day, as I am physically tired with
+hard work of every kind, the labours of the planter and the author both
+piled upon me mountain deep.  I am delighted beyond expression by
+Bourget’s book: he has phrases which affect me almost like Montaigne; I
+had read ere this a masterly essay of his on Pascal; this book does it; I
+write for all his essays by this mail, and shall try to meet him when I
+come to Europe.  The proposal is to pass a summer in France, I think in
+Royat, where the faithful could come and visit me; they are now not many.
+I expect Henry James to come and break a crust or two with us.  I believe
+it will be only my wife and myself; and she will go over to England, but
+not I, or possibly incog. to Southampton, and then to Boscombe to see
+poor Lady Shelley.  I am writing—trying to write in a Babel fit for the
+bottomless pit; my wife, her daughter, her grandson and my mother, all
+shrieking at each other round the house—not in war, thank God! but the
+din is ultra martial, and the note of Lloyd joins in occasionally, and
+the cause of this to-do is simply cacao, whereof chocolate comes.  You
+may drink of our chocolate perhaps in five or six years from now, and not
+know it.  It makes a fine bustle, and gives us some hard work, out of
+which I have slunk for to-day.
+
+I have a story coming out: God knows when or how; it answers to the name
+of the _Beach of Falesà_, and I think well of it.  I was delighted with
+the _Tragic Muse_; I thought the Muse herself one of your best works; I
+was delighted also to hear of the success of your piece, as you know I am
+a dam failure, {245} and might have dined with the dinner club that
+Daudet and these parties frequented.
+
+                                                               _Next day_.
+
+I have just been breakfasting at Baiae and Brindisi, and the charm of
+Bourget hag-rides me.  I wonder if this exquisite fellow, all made of
+fiddle-strings and scent and intelligence, could bear any of my bald
+prose.  If you think he could, ask Colvin to send him a copy of these
+last essays of mine when they appear; and tell Bourget they go to him
+from a South Sea Island as literal homage.  I have read no new book for
+years that gave me the same literary thrill as his _Sensations d’Italie_.
+If (as I imagine) my cut-and-dry literature would be death to him, and
+worse than death—journalism—be silent on the point.  For I have a great
+curiosity to know him, and if he doesn’t know my work, I shall have the
+better chance of making his acquaintance.  I read _The Pupil_ the other
+day with great joy; your little boy is admirable; why is there no little
+boy like that unless he hails from the Great Republic?
+
+Here I broke off, and wrote Bourget a dedication; no use resisting; it’s
+a love affair.  O, he’s exquisite, I bless you for the gift of him.  I
+have really enjoyed this book as I—almost as I—used to enjoy books when I
+was going twenty—twenty-three; and these are the years for reading!
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+                                            [_Vailima_] _Jan._ 2_nd_, ’92.
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—Overjoyed you were pleased with _Wrecker_, and shall
+consider your protests.  There is perhaps more art than you think for in
+the peccant chapter, where I have succeeded in packing into one a
+dedication, an explanation, and a termination.  Surely you had not
+recognised the phrase about boodle?  It was a quotation from Jim
+Pinkerton, and seemed to me agreeably skittish.  However, all shall be
+prayerfully considered.
+
+To come to a more painful subject.  Herewith go three more chapters of
+the wretched _History_; as you see, I approach the climax.  I expect the
+book to be some 70,000 words, of which you have now 45.  Can I finish it
+for next mail?  I am going to try!  ’Tis a long piece of journalism, and
+full of difficulties here and there, of this kind and that, and will make
+me a power of friends to be sure.  There is one Becker who will probably
+put up a window to me in the church where he was baptized; and I expect a
+testimonial from Captain Hand.
+
+Sorry to let the mail go without the Scott; this has been a bad month
+with me, and I have been below myself.  I shall find a way to have it
+come by next, or know the reason why.  The mail after, anyway.
+
+A bit of a sketch map appears to me necessary for my _History_; perhaps
+two.  If I do not have any, ’tis impossible any one should follow; and I,
+even when not at all interested, demand that I shall be able to follow;
+even a tourist book without a map is a cross to me; and there must be
+others of my way of thinking.  I inclose the very artless one that I
+think needful.  Vailima, in case you are curious, is about as far again
+behind Tanugamanono as that is from the sea.
+
+M‘Clure is publishing a short story of mine, some 50,000 words, I think,
+_The Beach of Falesà_; when he’s done with it, I want you and Cassell to
+bring it out in a little volume; I shall send you a dedication for it; I
+believe it good; indeed, to be honest, very good.  Good gear that pleases
+the merchant.
+
+The other map that I half threaten is a chart for the hurricane.  Get me
+Kimberley’s report of the hurricane: not to be found here.  It is of most
+importance; I _must_ have it with my proofs of that part, if I cannot
+have it earlier, which now seems impossible.—Yours in hot haste,
+
+                                                          R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO J. M. BARRIE
+
+
+                                      _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _February_ 1892.
+
+DEAR MR. BARRIE,—This is at least the third letter I have written you,
+but my correspondence has a bad habit of not getting so far as the post.
+That which I possess of manhood turns pale before the business of the
+address and envelope.  But I hope to be more fortunate with this: for,
+besides the usual and often recurrent desire to thank you for your
+work-you are one of four that have come to the front since I was watching
+and had a corner of my own to watch, and there is no reason, unless it be
+in these mysterious tides that ebb and flow, and make and mar and murder
+the works of poor scribblers, why you should not do work of the best
+order.  The tides have borne away my sentence, of which I was weary at
+any rate, and between authors I may allow myself so much freedom as to
+leave it pending.  We are both Scots besides, and I suspect both rather
+Scotty Scots; my own Scotchness tends to intermittency, but is at times
+erisypelitous—if that be rightly spelt.  Lastly, I have gathered we had
+both made our stages in the metropolis of the winds: our Virgil’s ‘grey
+metropolis,’ and I count that a lasting bond.  No place so brands a man.
+
+Finally, I feel it a sort of duty to you to report progress.  This may be
+an error, but I believed I detected your hand in an article—it may be an
+illusion, it may have been by one of those industrious insects who catch
+up and reproduce the handling of each emergent man—but I’ll still hope it
+was yours—and hope it may please you to hear that the continuation of
+_Kidnapped_ is under way.  I have not yet got to Alan, so I do not know
+if he is still alive, but David seems to have a kick or two in his
+shanks.  I was pleased to see how the Anglo-Saxon theory fell into the
+trap: I gave my Lowlander a Gaelic name, and even commented on the fact
+in the text; yet almost all critics recognised in Alan and David a Saxon
+and a Celt.  I know not about England; in Scotland at least, where Gaelic
+was spoken in Fife little over the century ago, and in Galloway not much
+earlier, I deny that there exists such a thing as a pure Saxon, and I
+think it more than questionable if there be such a thing as a pure Celt.
+
+But what have you to do with this? and what have I?  Let us continue to
+inscribe our little bits of tales, and let the heathen rage!  Yours, with
+sincere interest in your career,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO WILLIAM MORRIS
+
+
+                                          _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _Feb._ 1892.
+
+MASTER,—A plea from a place so distant should have some weight, and from
+a heart so grateful should have some address.  I have been long in your
+debt, Master, and I did not think it could be so much increased as you
+have now increased it.  I was long in your debt and deep in your debt for
+many poems that I shall never forget, and for _Sigurd_ before all, and
+now you have plunged me beyond payment by the Saga Library.  And so now,
+true to human nature, being plunged beyond payment, I come and bark at
+your heels.
+
+For surely, Master, that tongue that we write, and that you have
+illustrated so nobly, is yet alive.  She has her rights and laws, and is
+our mother, our queen, and our instrument.  Now in that living tongue
+_where_ has one sense, _whereas_ another.  In the _Heathslayings Story_,
+p. 241, line 13, it bears one of its ordinary senses.  Elsewhere and
+usually through the two volumes, which is all that has yet reached me of
+this entrancing publication, _whereas_ is made to figure for _where_.
+
+For the love of God, my dear and honoured Morris, use _where_, and let us
+know _whereas_ we are, wherefore our gratitude shall grow, whereby you
+shall be the more honoured wherever men love clear language, whereas now,
+although we honour, we are troubled.
+
+Whereunder, please find inscribed to this very impudent but yet very
+anxious document, the name of one of the most distant but not the
+youngest or the coldest of those who honour you.
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO MRS. CHARLES FAIRCHILD
+
+
+                                                [_Vailima_, _March_ 1892.]
+
+MY DEAR MRS. FAIRCHILD,—I am guilty in your sight, but my affairs besiege
+me.     The chief-justiceship of a family of nineteen persons is in
+itself no sinecure, and sometimes occupies me for days: two weeks ago for
+four days almost entirely, and for two days entirely.  Besides which, I
+have in the last few months written all but one chapter of a _History of
+Samoa_ for the last eight or nine years; and while I was unavoidably
+delayed in the writing of this, awaiting material, put in one-half of
+_David Balfour_, the sequel to _Kidnapped_.  Add the ordinary impediments
+of life, and admire my busyness.  I am now an old, but healthy skeleton,
+and degenerate much towards the machine.  By six at work: stopped at
+half-past ten to give a history lesson to a step-grandson; eleven, lunch;
+after lunch we have a musical performance till two; then to work again;
+bath, 4.40, dinner, five; cards in the evening till eight; and then to
+bed—only I have no bed, only a chest with a mat and blankets—and read
+myself to sleep.  This is the routine, but often sadly interrupted.  Then
+you may see me sitting on the floor of my verandah haranguing and being
+harangued by squatting chiefs on a question of a road; or more privately
+holding an inquiry into some dispute among our familiars, myself on my
+bed, the boys on the floor—for when it comes to the judicial I play
+dignity—or else going down to Apia on some more or less unsatisfactory
+errand.  Altogether it is a life that suits me, but it absorbs me like an
+ocean.  That is what I have always envied and admired in Scott; with all
+that immensity of work and study, his mind kept flexible, glancing to all
+points of natural interest.  But the lean hot spirits, such as mine,
+become hypnotised with their bit occupations—if I may use Scotch to
+you—it is so far more scornful than any English idiom.  Well, I can’t
+help being a skeleton, and you are to take this devious passage for an
+apology.
+
+I thought _Aladdin_ capital fun; but why, in fortune, did he pretend it
+was moral at the end?  The so-called nineteenth century, _où va-t-il se
+nicher_?  ’Tis a trifle, but Pyle would do well to knock the passage out,
+and leave his boguey tale a boguey tale, and a good one at that.
+
+The arrival of your box was altogether a great success to the castaways.
+You have no idea where we live.  Do you know, in all these islands there
+are not five hundred whites, and no postal delivery, and only one
+village—it is no more—and would be a mean enough village in Europe?  We
+were asked the other day if Vailima were the name of our post town, and
+we laughed.  Do you know, though we are but three miles from the village
+metropolis, we have no road to it, and our goods are brought on the
+pack-saddle?  And do you know—or I should rather say, can you believe—or
+(in the famous old Tichborne trial phrase) would you be surprised to
+learn, that all you have read of Vailima—or Subpriorsford, as I call
+it—is entirely false, and we have no ice-machine, and no electric light,
+and no water supply but the cistern of the heavens, and but one public
+room, and scarce a bedroom apiece?  But, of course, it is well known that
+I have made enormous sums by my evanescent literature, and you will smile
+at my false humility.  The point, however, is much on our minds just now.
+We are expecting an invasion of Kiplings; very glad we shall be to see
+them; but two of the party are ladies, and I tell you we had to hold a
+council of war to stow them.  You European ladies are so particular; with
+all of mine, sleeping has long become a public function, as with natives
+and those who go down much into the sea in ships.
+
+Dear Mrs. Fairchild, I must go to my work.  I have but two words to say
+in conclusion.
+
+First, civilisation is rot.
+
+Second, console a savage with more of the milk of that over civilised
+being, your adorable schoolboy.
+
+As I wrote these remarkable words, I was called down to eight o’clock
+prayers, and have just worked through a chapter of Joshua and five
+verses, with five treble choruses of a Samoan hymn; but the music was
+good, our boys and precentress (’tis always a woman that leads) did
+better than I ever heard them, and to my great pleasure I understood it
+all except one verse.  This gave me the more time to try and identify
+what the parts were doing, and further convict my dull ear.  Beyond the
+fact that the soprano rose to the tonic above, on one occasion I could
+recognise nothing.  This is sickening, but I mean to teach my ear better
+before I am done with it or this vile carcase.
+
+I think it will amuse you (for a last word) to hear that our
+precentress—she is the washerwoman—is our shame.  She is a good, healthy,
+comely, strapping young wench, full of energy and seriousness, a splendid
+workwoman, delighting to train our chorus, delighting in the poetry of
+the hymns, which she reads aloud (on the least provocation) with a great
+sentiment of rhythm.  Well, then, what is curious?  Ah, we did not know!
+but it was told us in a whisper from the cook-house—she is not of good
+family.  Don’t let it get out, please; everybody knows it, of course,
+here; there is no reason why Europe and the States should have the
+advantage of me also.  And the rest of my housefolk are all chief-people,
+I assure you.  And my late overseer (far the best of his race) is a
+really serious chief with a good ‘name.’  Tina is the name; it is not in
+the Almanach de Gotha, it must have got dropped at press.  The odd thing
+is, we rather share the prejudice.  I have almost always—though not quite
+always—found the higher the chief the better the man through all the
+islands; or, at least, that the best man came always from a highish rank.
+I hope Helen will continue to prove a bright exception.
+
+With love to Fairchild and the Huge Schoolboy, I am, my dear Mrs.
+Fairchild, yours very sincerely,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+                                                [_Vailima_, _March_ 1892.]
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—Herewith Chapters IX. and X., and I am left face to
+face with the horrors and dilemmas of the present regimen: pray for those
+that go down to the sea in ships.  I have promised Henley shall have a
+chance to publish the hurricane chapter if he like, so please let the
+slips be sent _quam primum_ to C. Baxter, W.S., 11 S. Charlotte Street,
+Edinburgh.  I got on mighty quick with that chapter—about five days of
+the toughest kind of work.  God forbid I should ever have such another
+pirn to wind!  When I invent a language, there shall be a direct and an
+indirect pronoun differently declined—then writing would be some fun.
+
+DIRECT      INDIRECT
+  He          Tu
+  Him         Tum
+  His         Tus
+
+Ex.: _He_ seized _tum_ by _tus_ throat; but _tu_ at the same moment
+caught _him_ by _his_ hair.  A fellow could write hurricanes with an
+inflection like that!  Yet there would he difficulties too.
+
+Do what you please about _The Beach_; and I give you _carte blanche_ to
+write in the matter to Baxter—or telegraph if the time press—to delay the
+English contingent.  Herewith the two last slips of _The Wrecker_.  I
+cannot go beyond.  By the way, pray compliment the printers on the proofs
+of the Samoa racket, but hint to them that it is most unbusiness-like and
+unscholarly to clip the edges of the galleys; these proofs should really
+have been sent me on large paper; and I and my friends here are all put
+to a great deal of trouble and confusion by the mistake.  For, as you
+must conceive, in a matter so contested and complicated, the number of
+corrections and the length of explanations is considerable.
+
+Please add to my former orders—
+
+_Le Chevalier Des Touches_          by Barbey d’Aurévilly.
+_Les Diaboliques_
+_Correspondance de Henri Beyle_     (Stendahl).
+
+Yours sincerely,
+
+                                                          R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO T. W. DOVER
+
+
+              _Vailima Plantation_, _Upolu_, _Samoa_, _June_ 20_th_, 1892.
+
+SIR,—In reply to your very interesting letter, I cannot fairly say that I
+have ever been poor, or known what it was to want a meal.  I have been
+reduced, however, to a very small sum of money, with no apparent prospect
+of increasing it; and at that time I reduced myself to practically one
+meal a day, with the most disgusting consequences to my health.  At this
+time I lodged in the house of a working man, and associated much with
+others.  At the same time, from my youth up, I have always been a good
+deal and rather intimately thrown among the working-classes, partly as a
+civil engineer in out-of-the-way places, partly from a strong and, I
+hope, not ill-favoured sentiment of curiosity.  But the place where,
+perhaps, I was most struck with the fact upon which you comment was the
+house of a friend, who was exceedingly poor, in fact, I may say
+destitute, and who lived in the attic of a very tall house entirely
+inhabited by persons in varying stages of poverty.  As he was also in
+ill-health, I made a habit of passing my afternoon with him, and when
+there it was my part to answer the door.  The steady procession of people
+begging, and the expectant and confident manner in which they presented
+themselves, struck me more and more daily; and I could not but remember
+with surprise that though my father lived but a few streets away in a
+fine house, beggars scarce came to the door once a fortnight or a month.
+From that time forward I made it my business to inquire, and in the
+stories which I am very fond of hearing from all sorts and conditions of
+men, learned that in the time of their distress it was always from the
+poor they sought assistance, and almost always from the poor they got it.
+
+Trusting I have now satisfactorily answered your question, which I thank
+you for asking, I remain, with sincere compliments,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+                                                 _Vailima_, _Summer_ 1892.
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—First of all, _you have all the corrections on_ ‘_The
+Wrecker_.’  I found I had made what I meant and forgotten it, and was so
+careless as not to tell you.
+
+Second, of course, and by all means, charge corrections on the Samoa book
+to me; but there are not near so many as I feared.  The Lord hath dealt
+bountifully with me, and I believe all my advisers were amazed to see how
+nearly correct I had got the truck, at least I was.  With this you will
+receive the whole revise and a typewritten copy of the last chapter.  And
+the thing now is Speed, to catch a possible revision of the treaty.  I
+believe Cassells are to bring it out, but Baxter knows, and the thing has
+to be crammed through _prestissimo_, _à la chasseur_.
+
+You mention the belated Barbeys; what about the equally belated Pineros?
+And I hope you will keep your bookshop alive to supplying me continuously
+with the _Saga Library_.  I cannot get enough of _Sagas_; I wish there
+were nine thousand; talk about realism!
+
+All seems to flourish with you; I also prosper; none the less for being
+quit of that abhorred task, Samoa.  I could give a supper party here were
+there any one to sup.  Never was such a disagreeable task, but the thing
+had to be told. . . .
+
+There, I trust I am done with this cursed chapter of my career, bar the
+rotten eggs and broken bottles that may follow, of course.  Pray
+remember, speed is now all that can be asked, hoped, or wished.  I give
+up all hope of proofs, revises, proof of the map, or sic like; and you on
+your side will try to get it out as reasonably seemly as may be.
+
+Whole Samoa book herewith.  Glory be to God.—Yours very sincerely,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+      _Vailima Plantation_, _Upolu_, _Samoan Islands_, 18_th_ _July_ 1892.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—. . . I have been now for some time contending with
+powers and principalities, and I have never once seen one of my own
+letters to the _Times_.  So when you see something in the papers that you
+think might interest the exiles of Upolu, do not think twice, out with
+your saxpence, and send it flying to Vailima.  Of what you say of the
+past, eh, man, it was a queer time, and awful miserable, but there’s no
+sense in denying it was awful fun.  Do you mind the youth in Highland
+garb and the tableful of coppers?  Do you mind the SIGNAL of Waterloo
+Place?—Hey, how the blood stands to the heart at such a memory!—Hae ye
+the notes o’t?  Gie’s them.—Gude’s sake, man, gie’s the notes o’t; I mind
+ye made a tune o’t an’ played it on your pinanny; gie’s the notes.  Dear
+Lord, that past.
+
+Glad to hear Henley’s prospects are fair: his new volume is the work of a
+real poet.  He is one of those who can make a noise of his own with
+words, and in whom experience strikes an individual note.  There is
+perhaps no more genuine poet living, bar the Big Guns.  In case I cannot
+overtake an acknowledgment to himself by this mail, please let him hear
+of my pleasure and admiration.  How poorly—compares!  He is all smart
+journalism and cleverness: it is all bright and shallow and limpid, like
+a business paper—a good one, _s’entend_; but there is no blot of heart’s
+blood and the Old Night: there are no harmonics, there is scarce harmony
+to his music; and in Henley—all of these; a touch, a sense within sense,
+a sound outside the sound, the shadow of the inscrutable, eloquent beyond
+all definition.  The First London Voluntary knocked me wholly.—Ever yours
+affectionately, my dear Charles,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+Kind memories to your father and all friends.
+
+
+
+TO W. E. HENLEY
+
+
+             _Vailima Plantation_, _Upolu_, _Samoa_, _August_ 1_st_, 1892.
+
+MY DEAR HENLEY,—It is impossible to let your new volume pass in silence.
+I have not received the same thrill of poetry since G. M.’s _Joy of
+Earth_ volume and _Love in a Valley_; and I do not know that even that
+was so intimate and deep.  Again and again, I take the book down, and
+read, and my blood is fired as it used to be in youth.  _Andante con
+moto_ in the _Voluntaries_, and the thing about the trees at night (No.
+XXIV. I think) are up to date my favourites.  I did not guess you were so
+great a magician; these are new tunes, this is an undertone of the true
+Apollo; these are not verse, they are poetry—inventions, creations, in
+language.  I thank you for the joy you have given me, and remain your old
+friend and present huge admirer,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+The hand is really the hand of Esau, but under a course of threatened
+scrivener’s cramp.
+
+For the next edition of the Book of Verses, pray accept an emendation.
+Last three lines of Echoes No. XLIV. read—
+
+   ‘But life in act?  How should the grave
+   Be victor over these,
+   Mother, a mother of men?’
+
+The two vocatives scatter the effect of this inimitable close.  If you
+insist on the longer line, equip ‘grave’ with an epithet.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+                                  _Vailima_, _Upolu_, _August_ 1_st_, ’92.
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—Herewith _My Grandfather_.  I have had rather a bad
+time suppressing the old gentleman, who was really in a very garrulous
+stage; as for getting him _in order_, I could do but little towards that;
+however, there are one or two points of interest which may justify us in
+printing.  The swinging of his stick and not knowing the sailor of
+Coruiskin, in particular, and the account of how he wrote the lives in
+the Bell Book particularly please me. I hope my own little introduction
+is not egoistic; or rather I do not care if it is.  It was that old
+gentleman’s blood that brought me to Samoa.
+
+By the by, vols. vii., viii., and ix. of Adams’s _History_ have never
+come to hand; no more have the dictionaries.
+
+Please send me _Stonehenge on Horse_, _Stories and Interludes_ by Barry
+Pain, and _Edinburgh Sketches and Memoirs_ by David Masson.  _The
+Wrecker_ has turned up.  So far as I have seen, it is very satisfactory,
+but on pp. 548, 549, there has been a devil of a miscarriage.  The two
+Latin quotations instead of following each other being separated
+(doubtless for printing considerations) by a line of prose.  My
+compliments to the printers; there is doubtless such a thing as good
+printing, but there is such a thing as good sense.
+
+The sequel to _Kidnapped_, _David Balfour_ by name, is about
+three-quarters done and gone to press for serial publication.  By what I
+can find out it ought to be through hand with that and ready for volume
+form early next spring.—Yours very sincerely,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO ANDREW LANG
+
+
+                                               [_Vailima_, _August_ 1892.]
+
+MY DEAR LANG,—I knew you would prove a trusty purveyor.  The books you
+have sent are admirable.  I got the name of my hero out of Brown—Blair of
+Balmyle—Francie Blair.  But whether to call the story _Blair of Balmyle_,
+or whether to call it _The Young Chevalier_, I have not yet decided.  The
+admirable Cameronian tract—perhaps you will think this a cheat—is to be
+boned into _David Balfour_, where it will fit better, and really
+furnishes me with a desired foothold over a boggy place.
+
+_Later_; no, it won’t go in, and I fear I must give up ‘the idolatrous
+occupant upon the throne,’ a phrase that overjoyed me beyond expression.
+I am in a deuce of a flutter with politics, which I hate, and in which I
+certainly do not shine; but a fellow cannot stand aside and look on at
+such an exhibition as our government.  ’Taint decent; no gent can hold a
+candle to it.  But it’s a grind to be interrupted by midnight messengers
+and pass your days writing proclamations (which are never proclaimed) and
+petitions (which ain’t petited) and letters to the _Times_, which it
+makes my jaws yawn to re-read, and all your time have your heart with
+David Balfour: he has just left Glasgow this morning for Edinburgh, James
+More has escaped from the castle; it is far more real to me than the
+Behring Sea or the Baring brothers either—he got the news of James More’s
+escape from the Lord Advocate, and started off straight to comfort
+Catriona.  You don’t know her; she’s James More’s daughter, and a
+respectable young wumman; the Miss Grants think so—the Lord Advocate’s
+daughters—so there can’t be anything really wrong.  Pretty soon we all go
+to Holland, and be hanged; thence to Dunkirk, and be damned; and the tale
+concludes in Paris, and be Poll-parrotted.  This is the last authentic
+news.  You are not a real hard-working novelist; not a practical
+novelist; so you don’t know the temptation to let your characters
+maunder.  Dumas did it, and lived.  But it is not war; it ain’t
+sportsmanlike, and I have to be stopping their chatter all the time.
+Brown’s appendix is great reading.
+
+   My only grief is that I can’t
+   Use the idolatrous occupant.
+
+Yours ever,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+Blessing and praising you for a useful (though idolatrous) occupant of
+Kensington.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE COUNTESS OF JERSEY
+
+
+                                                        _August_ 14, 1745.
+
+TO MISS AMELIA BALFOUR—MY DEAR COUSIN,—We are going an expedition to
+leeward on Tuesday morning.  If a lady were perhaps to be encountered on
+horseback—say, towards the Gasi-gasi river—about six A.M., I think we
+should have an episode somewhat after the style of the ’45.  What a
+misfortune, my dear cousin, that you should have arrived while your
+cousin Graham was occupying my only guest-chamber—for Osterley Park is
+not so large in Samoa as it was at home—but happily our friend Haggard
+has found a corner for you!
+
+The King over the Water—the Gasi-gasi water—will be pleased to see the
+clan of Balfour mustering so thick around his standard.
+
+I have (one serious word) been so lucky as to get a really secret
+interpreter, so all is for the best in our little adventure into the
+_Waverley Novels_.—I am your affectionate cousin,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+Observe the stealth with which I have blotted my signature, but we must
+be political _à outrance_.
+
+
+
+TO THE COUNTESS OF JERSEY
+
+
+MY DEAR COUSIN,—I send for your information a copy of my last letter to
+the gentleman in question.  ’Tis thought more wise, in consideration of
+the difficulty and peril of the enterprise, that we should leave the town
+in the afternoon, and by several detachments.  If you would start for a
+ride with the Master of Haggard and Captain Lockhart of Lee, say at three
+o’clock of the afternoon, you would make some rencounters by the wayside
+which might be agreeable to your political opinions.  All present will be
+staunch.
+
+The Master of Haggard might extend his ride a little, and return through
+the marsh and by the nuns’ house (I trust that has the proper flavour),
+so as a little to diminish the effect of separation.—I remain, your
+affectionate cousin to command,
+
+                                                               O TUSITALA.
+
+_P.S._—It is to be thought this present year of grace will be historical.
+
+
+
+TO MRS. CHARLES FAIRCHILD
+
+
+                                               [_Vailima_, _August_ 1892.]
+
+MY DEAR MRS. FAIRCHILD,—Thank you a thousand times for your letter.  You
+are the Angel of (the sort of) Information (that I care about); I appoint
+you successor to the newspaper press; and I beg of you, whenever you wish
+to gird at the age, or think the bugs out of proportion to the roses, or
+despair, or enjoy any cosmic or epochal emotion, to sit down again and
+write to the Hermit of Samoa.  What do I think of it all?  Well, I love
+the romantic solemnity of youth; and even in this form, although not
+without laughter, I have to love it still.  They are such ducks!  But
+what are they made of?  We were just as solemn as that about atheism and
+the stars and humanity; but we were all for belief anyway—we held atheism
+and sociology (of which none of us, nor indeed anybody, knew anything)
+for a gospel and an iron rule of life; and it was lucky enough, or there
+would have been more windows broken.  What is apt to puzzle one at first
+sight in the New Youth is that, with such rickety and risky problems
+always at heart, they should not plunge down a Niagara of Dissolution.
+But let us remember the high practical timidity of youth.  I was a
+particularly brave boy—this I think of myself, looking back—and plunged
+into adventures and experiments, and ran risks that it still surprises me
+to recall.  But, dear me, what a fear I was in of that strange blind
+machinery in the midst of which I stood; and with what a compressed heart
+and what empty lungs I would touch a new crank and await developments!  I
+do not mean to say I do not fear life still; I do; and that terror (for
+an adventurer like myself) is still one of the chief joys of living.
+
+But it was different indeed while I was yet girt with the priceless robes
+of inexperience; then the fear was exquisite and infinite.  And so, when
+you see all these little Ibsens, who seem at once so dry and so
+excitable, and faint in swathes over a play (I suppose—for a wager) that
+would seem to me merely tedious, smile behind your hand, and remember the
+little dears are all in a blue funk.  It must be very funny, and to a
+spectator like yourself I almost envy it.  But never get desperate; human
+nature is human nature; and the Roman Empire, since the Romans founded it
+and made our European human nature what it is, bids fair to go on and to
+be true to itself.  These little bodies will all grow up and become men
+and women, and have heaps of fun; nay, and are having it now; and
+whatever happens to the fashion of the age, it makes no difference—there
+are always high and brave and amusing lives to be lived; and a change of
+key, however exotic, does not exclude melody.  Even Chinamen, hard as we
+find it to believe, enjoy being Chinese.  And the Chinaman stands alone
+to be unthinkable; natural enough, as the representative of the only
+other great civilisation.  Take my people here at my doors; their life is
+a very good one; it is quite thinkable, quite acceptable to us.  And the
+little dears will be soon skating on the other foot; sooner or later, in
+each generation, the one-half of them at least begin to remember all the
+material they had rejected when first they made and nailed up their
+little theory of life; and these become reactionaries or conservatives,
+and the ship of man begins to fill upon the other tack.
+
+Here is a sermon, by your leave!  It is your own fault, you have amused
+and interested me so much by your breath of the New Youth, which comes to
+me from so far away, where I live up here in my mountain, and secret
+messengers bring me letters from rebels, and the government sometimes
+seizes them, and generally grumbles in its beard that Stevenson should
+really be deported.  O, my life is the more lively, never fear!
+
+It has recently been most amusingly varied by a visit from Lady Jersey.
+I took her over mysteriously (under the pseudonym of my cousin, Miss
+Amelia Balfour) to visit Mataafa, our rebel; and we had great fun, and
+wrote a Ouida novel on our life here, in which every author had to
+describe himself in the Ouida glamour, and of which—for the Jerseys
+intend printing it—I must let you have a copy.  My wife’s chapter, and my
+description of myself, should, I think, amuse you.  But there were finer
+touches still; as when Belle and Lady Jersey came out to brush their
+teeth in front of the rebel King’s palace, and the night guard squatted
+opposite on the grass and watched the process; or when I and my
+interpreter, and the King with his secretary, mysteriously disappeared to
+conspire.—Ever yours sincerely,
+
+                                                          R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO GORDON BROWNE
+
+
+                                        _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _Autumn_ 1892.
+
+          _To the Artist who did the illustrations to_ ‘_Uma_.’
+
+DEAR SIR,—I only know you under the initials G. B., but you have done
+some exceedingly spirited and satisfactory illustrations to my story _The
+Beach of Falesà_, and I wish to write and thank you expressly for the
+care and talent shown.  Such numbers of people can do good black and
+whites!  So few can illustrate a story, or apparently read it.  You have
+shown that you can do both, and your creation of Wiltshire is a real
+illumination of the text.  It was exactly so that Wiltshire dressed and
+looked, and you have the line of his nose to a nicety.  His nose is an
+inspiration.  Nor should I forget to thank you for Case, particularly in
+his last appearance.  It is a singular fact—which seems to point still
+more directly to inspiration in your case—that your missionary actually
+resembles the flesh-and-blood person from whom Mr. Tarleton was drawn.
+The general effect of the islands is all that could be wished; indeed I
+have but one criticism to make, that in the background of Case taking the
+dollar from Mr. Tarleton’s head—head—not hand, as the fools have printed
+it—the natives have a little too much the look of Africans.
+
+But the great affair is that you have been to the pains to illustrate my
+story instead of making conscientious black and whites of people sitting
+talking.  I doubt if you have left unrepresented a single pictorial
+incident.  I am writing by this mail to the editor in the hopes that I
+may buy from him the originals, and I am, dear sir, your very much
+obliged,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO MISS MORSE
+
+
+                       _Vailima_, _Samoan Islands_, _October_ 7_th_, 1892.
+
+DEAR MADAM,—I have a great diffidence in answering your valued letter.
+It would be difficult for me to express the feelings with which I read
+it—and am now trying to re-read it as I dictate this.
+
+You ask me to forgive what you say ‘must seem a liberty,’ and I find that
+I cannot thank you sufficiently or even find a word with which to qualify
+your letter.  Dear Madam, such a communication even the vainest man would
+think a sufficient reward for a lifetime of labour.  That I should have
+been able to give so much help and pleasure to your sister is the subject
+of my grateful wonder.
+
+That she, being dead, and speaking with your pen, should be able to repay
+the debt with such a liberal interest, is one of those things that
+reconcile us with the world and make us take hope again.  I do not know
+what I have done to deserve so beautiful and touching a compliment; and I
+feel there is but one thing fit for me to say here, that I will try with
+renewed courage to go on in the same path, and to deserve, if not to
+receive, a similar return from others.
+
+You apologise for speaking so much about yourselves.  Dear Madam, I
+thought you did so too little.  I should have wished to have known more
+of those who were so sympathetic as to find a consolation in my work, and
+so graceful and so tactful as to acknowledge it in such a letter as was
+yours.
+
+Will you offer to your mother the expression of a sympathy which (coming
+from a stranger) must seem very airy, but which yet is genuine; and
+accept for yourself my gratitude for the thought which inspired you to
+write to me and the words which you found to express it.
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+              _Vailima Plantation_, _Samoan Islands_, _Oct._ 10_th_, 1892.
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—It is now, as you see, the 10th of October, and there
+has not reached the Island of Upolu one single copy, or rag of a copy, of
+the Samoa book.  I lie; there has come one, and that in the pocket of a
+missionary man who is at daggers drawn with me, who lends it to all my
+enemies, conceals it from all my friends, and is bringing a lawsuit
+against me on the strength of expressions in the same which I have
+forgotten, and now cannot see.  This is pretty tragic, I think you will
+allow; and I was inclined to fancy it was the fault of the Post Office.
+But I hear from my sister-in-law Mrs. Sanchez that she is in the same
+case, and has received no ‘Footnote.’  I have also to consider that I had
+no letter from you last mail, although you ought to have received by that
+time ‘My Grandfather and Scott,’ and ‘Me and my Grandfather.’  Taking one
+consideration with another, therefore, I prefer to conceive that No. 743
+Broadway has fallen upon gentle and continuous slumber, and is become an
+enchanted palace among publishing houses.  If it be not so, if the
+‘Footnotes’ were really sent, I hope you will fall upon the Post Office
+with all the vigour you possess.  How does _The Wrecker_ go in the
+States?  It seems to be doing exceptionally well in England.—Yours
+sincerely,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO J. M. BARRIE
+
+
+           _Vailima Plantation_, _Samoan Islands_, _November_ 1_st_, 1892.
+
+DEAR MR. BARRIE,—I can scarce thank you sufficiently for your extremely
+amusing letter.  No, _The Auld Licht Idyls_ never reached me—I wish it
+had, and I wonder extremely whether it would not be good for me to have a
+pennyworth of the Auld Licht pulpit.  It is a singular thing that I
+should live here in the South Seas under conditions so new and so
+striking, and yet my imagination so continually inhabit that cold old
+huddle of grey hills from which we come.  I have just finished _David
+Balfour_; I have another book on the stocks, _The Young Chevalier_, which
+is to be part in France and part in Scotland, and to deal with Prince
+Charlie about the year 1749; and now what have I done but begun a third
+which is to be all moorland together, and is to have for a centrepiece a
+figure that I think you will appreciate—that of the immortal
+Braxfield—Braxfield himself is my _grand premier_, or, since you are so
+much involved in the British drama, let me say my heavy lead. . . .
+
+Your descriptions of your dealings with Lord Rintoul are frightfully
+unconscientious.  You should never write about anybody until you persuade
+yourself at least for the moment that you love him, above all anybody on
+whom your plot revolves.  It will always make a hole in the book; and, if
+he has anything to do with the mechanism, prove a stick in your
+machinery.  But you know all this better than I do, and it is one of your
+most promising traits that you do not take your powers too seriously.
+The _Little Minister_ ought to have ended badly; we all know it did; and
+we are infinitely grateful to you for the grace and good feeling with
+which you lied about it.  If you had told the truth, I for one could
+never have forgiven you.  As you had conceived and written the earlier
+parts, the truth about the end, though indisputably true to fact, would
+have been a lie, or what is worse, a discord in art.  If you are going to
+make a book end badly, it must end badly from the beginning.  Now your
+book began to end well.  You let yourself fall in love with, and fondle,
+and smile at your puppets.  Once you had done that, your honour was
+committed—at the cost of truth to life you were bound to save them.  It
+is the blot on _Richard Feverel_, for instance, that it begins to end
+well; and then tricks you and ends ill.  But in that case there is worse
+behind, for the ill-ending does not inherently issue from the plot—the
+story _had_, in fact, _ended well_ after the great last interview between
+Richard and Lucy—and the blind, illogical bullet which smashes all has no
+more to do between the boards than a fly has to do with the room into
+whose open window it comes buzzing.  It _might_ have so happened; it
+needed not; and unless needs must, we have no right to pain our readers.
+I have had a heavy case of conscience of the same kind about my Braxfield
+story.  Braxfield—only his name is Hermiston—has a son who is condemned
+to death; plainly, there is a fine tempting fitness about this; and I
+meant he was to hang.  But now on considering my minor characters, I saw
+there were five people who would—in a sense who must—break prison and
+attempt his rescue.  They were capable, hardy folks, too, who might very
+well succeed.  Why should they not then?  Why should not young Hermiston
+escape clear out of the country? and be happy, if he could, with his—
+But soft!  I will not betray my secret of my heroine.  Suffice it to
+breathe in your ear that she was what Hardy calls (and others in their
+plain way don’t) a Pure Woman.  Much virtue in a capital letter, such as
+yours was.
+
+Write to me again in my infinite distance.  Tell me about your new book.
+No harm in telling _me_; I am too far off to be indiscreet; there are too
+few near me who would care to hear.  I am rushes by the riverside, and
+the stream is in Babylon: breathe your secrets to me fearlessly; and if
+the Trade Wind caught and carried them away, there are none to catch them
+nearer than Australia, unless it were the Tropic Birds.  In the
+unavoidable absence of my amanuensis, who is buying eels for dinner, I
+have thus concluded my despatch, like St. Paul, with my own hand.
+
+And in the inimitable words of Lord Kames, Faur ye weel, ye bitch.—Yours
+very truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+                                 _Vailima Plantation_, _Nov._ 2_nd_, 1892.
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—In the first place, I have to acknowledge receipt of
+your munificent cheque for three hundred and fifty dollars.  Glad you
+liked the Scott voyage; rather more than I did upon the whole.  As the
+proofs have not turned up at all, there can be no question of returning
+them, and I am therefore very much pleased to think you have arranged not
+to wait.  The volumes of Adams arrived along with yours of October 6th.
+One of the dictionaries has also blundered home, apparently from the
+Colonies; the other is still to seek.  I note and sympathise with your
+bewilderment as to _Falesà_.  My own direct correspondence with Mr.
+Baxter is now about three months in abeyance.  Altogether you see how
+well it would be if you could do anything to wake up the Post Office.
+Not a single copy of the ‘Footnote’ has yet reached Samoa, but I hear of
+one having come to its address in Hawaii.  Glad to hear good news of
+Stoddard.—Yours sincerely,
+
+                                                          R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+_P.S._—Since the above was written an aftermath of post matter came in,
+among which were the proofs of _My Grandfather_.  I shall correct and
+return them, but as I have lost all confidence in the Post Office, I
+shall mention here: first galley, 4th line from the bottom, for ‘AS’ read
+‘OR.’
+
+Should I ever again have to use my work without waiting for proofs, bear
+in mind this golden principle.  From a congenital defect, I must suppose,
+I am unable to write the word OR—wherever I write it the printer
+unerringly puts AS—and those who read for me had better, wherever it is
+possible, substitute _or_ for _as_.  This the more so since many writers
+have a habit of using _as_ which is death to my temper and confusion to
+my face.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO LIEUTENANT EELES
+
+
+ _Vailima Plantation_, _Upolu_, _Samoan Islands_, _November_ 15_th_, 1892.
+
+DEAR EELES,—In the first place, excuse me writing to you by another hand,
+as that is the way in which alone all my correspondence gets effected.
+Before I took to this method, or rather before I found a victim, it
+_simply_ didn’t get effected.
+
+Thank you again and again, first for your kind thought of writing to me,
+and second for your extremely amusing and interesting letter.  You can
+have no guess how immediately interesting it was to our family.  First of
+all, the poor soul at Nukufetau is an old friend of ours, and we have
+actually treated him ourselves on a former visit to the island.  I don’t
+know if Hoskin would approve of our treatment; it consisted, I believe,
+mostly in a present of stout and a recommendation to put nails in his
+water-tank.  We also (as you seem to have done) recommended him to leave
+the island; and I remember very well how wise and kind we thought his
+answer.  He had half-caste children (he said) who would suffer and
+perhaps be despised if he carried them elsewhere; if he left them there
+alone, they would almost certainly miscarry; and the best thing was that
+he should stay and die with them.  But the cream of the fun was your
+meeting with Burn.  We not only know him, but (as the French say) we
+don’t know anybody else; he is our intimate and adored original;
+and—prepare your mind—he was, is, and ever will be, TOMMY HADDON! {271}
+As I don’t believe you to be inspired, I suspect you to have suspected
+this.  At least it was a mighty happy suspicion.  You are quite right:
+Tommy is really ‘a good chap,’ though about as comic as they make them.
+
+I was extremely interested in your Fiji legend, and perhaps even more so
+in your capital account of the _Curaçoa’s_ misadventure.  Alas! we have
+nothing so thrilling to relate.  All hangs and fools on in this isle of
+misgovernment, without change, though not without novelty, but wholly
+without hope, unless perhaps you should consider it hopeful that I am
+still more immediately threatened with arrest.  The confounded thing is,
+that if it comes off, I shall be sent away in the Ringarooma instead of
+the _Curaçoa_.  The former ship burst upon by the run—she had been sent
+off by despatch and without orders—and to make me a little more easy in
+my mind she brought newspapers clamouring for my incarceration.  Since
+then I have had a conversation with the German Consul.  He said he had
+read a review of my Samoa book, and if the review were fair, must regard
+it as an insult, and one that would have to be resented.  At the same
+time, I learn that letters addressed to the German squadron lie for them
+here in the Post Office.  Reports are current of other English ships
+being on the way—I hope to goodness yours will be among the number.  And
+I gather from one thing and another that there must be a holy row going
+on between the powers at home, and that the issue (like all else
+connected with Samoa) is on the knees of the gods.  One thing, however,
+is pretty sure—if that issue prove to be a German Protectorate, I shall
+have to tramp.  Can you give us any advice as to a fresh field of energy?
+We have been searching the atlas, and it seems difficult to fill the
+bill.  How would Rarotonga do?  I forget if you have been there.  The
+best of it is that my new house is going up like winking, and I am
+dictating this letter to the accompaniment of saws and hammers.  A
+hundred black boys and about a score draught-oxen perished, or at least
+barely escaped with their lives, from the mud-holes on our road, bringing
+up the materials.  It will be a fine legacy to H.I.G.M.’s Protectorate,
+and doubtless the Governor will take it for his country-house.  The
+Ringarooma people, by the way, seem very nice.  I liked Stansfield
+particularly.
+
+Our middy {272} has gone up to San Francisco in pursuit of the phantom
+Education.  We have good word of him, and I hope he will not be in
+disgrace again, as he was when the hope of the British Navy—need I say
+that I refer to Admiral Burney?—honoured us last.  The next time you
+come, as the new house will be finished, we shall be able to offer you a
+bed.  Nares and Meiklejohn may like to hear that our new room is to be
+big enough to dance in.  It will be a very pleasant day for me to see the
+Curaçoa in port again and at least a proper contingent of her officers
+‘skipping in my ’all.’
+
+We have just had a feast on my birthday at which we had three of the
+Ringaromas, and I wish they had been three _Curaçoas_—say yourself,
+Hoskin, and Burney the ever Great.  (Consider this an invitation.)  Our
+boys had got the thing up regardless.  There were two huge sows—oh,
+brutes of animals that would have broken down a hansom cab—four smaller
+pigs, two barrels of beef, and a horror of vegetables and fowls.  We sat
+down between forty and fifty in a big new native house behind the kitchen
+that you have never seen, and ate and public spoke till all was blue.
+Then we had about half an hour’s holiday with some beer and sherry and
+brandy and soda to restrengthen the European heart, and then out to the
+old native house to see a siva.  Finally, all the guests were packed off
+in a trackless black night and down a road that was rather fitted for the
+_Curaçoa_ than any human pedestrian, though to be sure I do not know the
+draught of the _Curaçoa_.  My ladies one and all desire to be
+particularly remembered to our friends on board, and all look forward, as
+I do myself, in the hope of your return.—Yours sincerely,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+And let me hear from you again!
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                                                         1_st_ _Dec._ ’92.
+
+. . . I have a novel on the stocks to be called _The Justice-Clerk_.  It
+is pretty Scotch, the Grand Premier is taken from Braxfield—(Oh, by the
+by, send me Cockburn’s _Memorials_)—and some of the story is—well—queer.
+The heroine is seduced by one man, and finally disappears with the other
+man who shot him. . . . Mind you, I expect the _Justice-Clerk_ to be my
+masterpiece.  My Braxfield is already a thing of beauty and a joy for
+ever, and so far as he has gone _far_ my best character.
+
+                                                                [_Later_.]
+
+Second thought.  I wish Pitcairn’s _Criminal Trials quam primum_.  Also,
+an absolutely correct text of the Scots judiciary oath.
+
+Also, in case Pitcairn does not come down late enough, I wish as full a
+report as possible of a Scotch murder trial between 1790–1820.
+Understand, _the fullest possible_.
+
+Is there any book which would guide me as to the following facts?
+
+The Justice-Clerk tries some people capitally on circuit.  Certain
+evidence cropping up, the charge is transferred to the J.-C.’s own son.
+Of course, in the next trial the J.-C. is excluded, and the case is
+called before the Lord-Justice General.
+
+Where would this trial have to be?  I fear in Edinburgh, which would not
+suit my view.  Could it be again at the circuit town?
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO MRS. JENKIN
+
+
+                                                   _December_ 5_th_, 1892.
+
+MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN,—. . . So much said, I come with guilty speed to what
+more immediately concerns myself.  Spare us a month or two for old sake’s
+sake, and make my wife and me happy and proud.  We are only fourteen days
+from San Francisco, just about a month from Liverpool; we have our new
+house almost finished.  The thing _can_ be done; I believe we can make
+you almost comfortable.  It is the loveliest climate in the world, our
+political troubles seem near an end.  It can be done, it must!  Do,
+please, make a virtuous effort, come and take a glimpse of a new world I
+am sure you do not dream of, and some old friends who do often dream of
+your arrival.
+
+Alas, I was just beginning to get eloquent, and there goes the lunch
+bell, and after lunch I must make up the mail.
+
+Do come.  You must not come in February or March—bad months.  From April
+on it is delightful.—Your sincere friend,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+                                                   _December_ 5_th_, 1892.
+
+MY DEAR JAMES,—How comes it so great a silence has fallen?  The still
+small voice of self-approval whispers me it is not from me.  I have
+looked up my register, and find I have neither written to you nor heard
+from you since June 22nd, on which day of grace that invaluable work
+began.  This is not as it should be.  How to get back?  I remember
+acknowledging with rapture the — of the _Master_, and I remember
+receiving _Marbot_: was that our last relation?
+
+Hey, well! anyway, as you may have probably gathered from the papers, I
+have been in devilish hot water, and (what may be new to you) devilish
+hard at work.  In twelve calendar months I finished _The Wrecker_, wrote
+all of _Falesà_ but the first chapter (well, much of), the _History of
+Samoa_, did something here and there to my _Life of my Grandfather_, and
+began And Finished _David Balfour_.  What do you think of it for a year?
+Since then I may say I have done nothing beyond draft three chapters of
+another novel, _The Justice-Clerk_, which ought to be shorter and a
+blower—at least if it don’t make a spoon, it will spoil the horn of an
+Aurochs (if that’s how it should be spelt).
+
+On the hot water side it may entertain you to know that I have been
+actually sentenced to deportation by my friends on Mulinuu, C. J.
+Cedercrantz, and Baron Senfft von Pilsach.  The awful doom, however,
+declined to fall, owing to Circumstances over Which.  I only heard of it
+(so to speak) last night.  I mean officially, but I had walked among
+rumours.  The whole tale will be some day put into my hand, and I shall
+share it with humorous friends.
+
+It is likely, however, by my judgment, that this epoch of gaiety in Samoa
+will soon cease; and the fierce white light of history will beat no
+longer on Yours Sincerely and his fellows here on the beach.  We ask
+ourselves whether the reason will more rejoice over the end of a
+disgraceful business, or the unregenerate man more sorrow over the
+stoppage of the fun.  For, say what you please, it has been a deeply
+interesting time.  You don’t know what news is, nor what politics, nor
+what the life of man, till you see it on so small a scale and with your
+own liberty on the board for stake.  I would not have missed it for much.
+And anxious friends beg me to stay at home and study human nature in
+Brompton drawing-rooms!  _Farceurs_!  And anyway you know that such is
+not my talent.  I could never be induced to take the faintest interest in
+Brompton _qua_ Brompton or a drawing-room _qua_ a drawing-room.  I am an
+Epick Writer with a k to it, but without the necessary genius.
+
+Hurry up with another book of stories.  I am now reduced to two of my
+contemporaries, you and Barrie—O, and Kipling—you and Barrie and Kipling
+are now my Muses Three.  And with Kipling, as you know, there are
+reservations to be made.  And you and Barrie don’t write enough.  I
+should say I also read Anstey when he is serious, and can almost always
+get a happy day out of Marion Crawford—_ce n’est pas toujours la guerre_,
+but it’s got life to it and guts, and it moves.  Did you read the _Witch
+of Prague_?  Nobody could read it twice, of course; and the first time
+even it was necessary to skip.  _E pur si muove_.  But Barrie is a
+beauty, the _Little Minister_ and the _Window in Thrums_, eh?  Stuff in
+that young man; but he must see and not be too funny.  Genius in him, but
+there’s a journalist at his elbow—there’s the risk.  Look, what a page is
+the glove business in the _Window_! knocks a man flat; that’s guts, if
+you please.
+
+Why have I wasted the little time that is left with a sort of naked
+review article?  I don’t know, I’m sure.  I suppose a mere ebullition of
+congested literary talk I am beginning to think a visit from friends
+would be due.  Wish you could come!
+
+Let us have your news anyway, and forgive this silly stale
+effusion.—Yours ever,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO J. M. BARRIE
+
+
+                                             [_Vailima_, _December_ 1892.]
+
+DEAR J. M. BARRIE,—You will be sick of me soon; I cannot help it.  I have
+been off my work for some time, and re-read the _Edinburgh Eleven_, and
+had a great mind to write a parody and give you all your sauce back
+again, and see how you would like it yourself.  And then I read (for the
+first time—I know not how) the _Window in Thrums_; I don’t say that it is
+better than _The Minister_; it’s less of a tale—and there is a beauty, a
+material beauty, of the tale _ipse_, which clever critics nowadays long
+and love to forget; it has more real flaws; but somehow it is—well, I
+read it last anyway, and it’s by Barrie.  And he’s the man for my money.
+The glove is a great page; it is startlingly original, and as true as
+death and judgment.  Tibbie Birse in the Burial is great, but I think it
+was a journalist that got in the word ‘official.’  The same character
+plainly had a word to say to Thomas Haggard.  Thomas affects me as a
+lie—I beg your pardon; doubtless he was somebody you knew, that leads
+people so far astray.  The actual is not the true.
+
+I am proud to think you are a Scotchman—though to be sure I know nothing
+of that country, being only an English tourist, quo’ Gavin Ogilvy.  I
+commend the hard case of Mr. Gavin Ogilvy to J. M. Barrie, whose work is
+to me a source of living pleasure and heartfelt national pride.  There
+are two of us now that the Shirra might have patted on the head.  And
+please do not think when I thus seem to bracket myself with you, that I
+am wholly blinded with vanity.  Jess is beyond my frontier line; I could
+not touch her skirt; I have no such glamour of twilight on my pen.  I am
+a capable artist; but it begins to look to me as if you were a man of
+genius.  Take care of yourself, for my sake.  It’s a devilish hard thing
+for a man who writes so many novels as I do, that I should get so few to
+read.  And I can read yours, and I love them.
+
+A pity for you that my amanuensis is not on stock to-day, and my own hand
+perceptibly worse than usual.—Yours,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+                                                   _December_ 5_th_, 1892.
+
+_P.S._—They tell me your health is not strong.  Man, come out here and
+try the Prophet’s chamber.  There’s only one bad point to us—we do rise
+early.  The Amanuensis states that you are a lover of silence—and that
+ours is a noisy house—and she is a chatterbox—I am not answerable for
+these statements, though I do think there is a touch of garrulity about
+my premises.  We have so little to talk about, you see.  The house is
+three miles from town, in the midst of great silent forests.  There is a
+burn close by, and when we are not talking you can hear the burn, and the
+birds, and the sea breaking on the coast three miles away and six hundred
+feet below us, and about three times a month a bell—I don’t know where
+the bell is, nor who rings it; it may be the bell in Hans Andersen’s
+story for all I know.  It is never hot here—86 in the shade is about our
+hottest—and it is never cold except just in the early mornings.  Take it
+for all in all, I suppose this island climate to be by far the healthiest
+in the world—even the influenza entirely lost its sting.  Only two
+patients died, and one was a man nearly eighty, and the other a child
+below four months.  I won’t tell you if it is beautiful, for I want you
+to come here and see for yourself.  Everybody on the premises except my
+wife has some Scotch blood in their veins—I beg your pardon—except the
+natives—and then my wife is a Dutchwoman—and the natives are the next
+thing conceivable to Highlanders before the forty-five.  We would have
+some grand cracks!
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+COME, it will broaden your mind, and be the making of me.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+LIFE IN SAMOA,
+_Continued_
+JANUARY 1893–DECEMBER 1894
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                                                          [_April_, 1893.]
+
+. . . About _The Justice-Clerk_, I long to go at it, but will first try
+to get a short story done.  Since January I have had two severe
+illnesses, my boy, and some heart-breaking anxiety over Fanny; and am
+only now convalescing.  I came down to dinner last night for the first
+time, and that only because the service had broken down, and to relieve
+an inexperienced servant.  Nearly four months now I have rested my
+brains; and if it be true that rest is good for brains, I ought to be
+able to pitch in like a giant refreshed.  Before the autumn, I hope to
+send you some _Justice-Clerk_, or _Weir of Hermiston_, as Colvin seems to
+prefer; I own to indecision.  Received _Syntax_, _Dance of Death_, and
+_Pitcairn_, which last I have read from end to end since its arrival,
+with vast improvement.  What a pity it stops so soon!  I wonder is there
+nothing that seems to prolong the series?  Why doesn’t some young man
+take it up?  How about my old friend Fountainhall’s _Decisions_?  I
+remember as a boy that there was some good reading there.  Perhaps you
+could borrow me that, and send it on loan; and perhaps Laing’s
+_Memorials_ therewith; and a work I’m ashamed to say I have never read,
+_Balfour’s Letters_. . . . I have come by accident, through a
+correspondent, on one very curious and interesting fact—namely, that
+Stevenson was one of the names adopted by the MacGregors at the
+proscription.  The details supplied by my correspondent are both
+convincing and amusing; but it would be highly interesting to find out
+more of this.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO A. CONAN DOYLE
+
+
+                          _Vailima_, _Apia_, _Samoa_, _April_ 5_th_, 1893.
+
+DEAR SIR,—You have taken many occasions to make yourself very agreeable
+to me, for which I might in decency have thanked you earlier.  It is now
+my turn; and I hope you will allow me to offer you my compliments on your
+very ingenious and very interesting adventures of Sherlock Holmes.  That
+is the class of literature that I like when I have the toothache.  As a
+matter of fact, it was a pleurisy I was enjoying when I took the volume
+up; and it will interest you as a medical man to know that the cure was
+for the moment effectual.  Only the one thing troubles me: can this be my
+old friend Joe Bell?—I am, yours very truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+_P.S._—And lo, here is your address supplied me here in Samoa!  But do
+not take mine, O frolic fellow Spookist, from the same source; mine is
+wrong.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO S. R. CROCKETT
+
+
+                                   _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _May_ 17_th_, 1893.
+
+DEAR MR. CROCKETT,—I do not owe you two letters, nor yet nearly one, sir!
+The last time I heard of you, you wrote about an accident, and I sent you
+a letter to my lawyer, Charles Baxter, which does not seem to have been
+presented, as I see nothing of it in his accounts.  Query, was that lost?
+I should not like you to think I had been so unmannerly and so inhuman.
+If you have written since, your letter also has miscarried, as is much
+the rule in this part of the world, unless you register.
+
+Your book is not yet to hand, but will probably follow next month.  I
+detected you early in the _Bookman_, which I usually see, and noted you
+in particular as displaying a monstrous ingratitude about the footnote.
+Well, mankind is ungrateful; ‘Man’s ingratitude to man makes countless
+thousands mourn,’ quo’ Rab—or words to that effect.  By the way, an
+anecdote of a cautious sailor: ‘Bill, Bill,’ says I to him, ‘_or words to
+that effect_.’
+
+I shall never take that walk by the Fisher’s Tryst and Glencorse.  I
+shall never see Auld Reekie.  I shall never set my foot again upon the
+heather.  Here I am until I die, and here will I be buried.  The word is
+out and the doom written.  Or, if I do come, it will be a voyage to a
+further goal, and in fact a suicide; which, however, if I could get my
+family all fixed up in the money way, I might, perhaps, perform, or
+attempt.  But there is a plaguey risk of breaking down by the way; and I
+believe I shall stay here until the end comes like a good boy, as I am.
+If I did it, I should put upon my trunks: ‘Passenger to—Hades.’  How
+strangely wrong your information is!  In the first place, I should never
+carry a novel to Sydney; I should post it from here.  In the second
+place, _Weir of Hermiston_ is as yet scarce begun.  It’s going to be
+excellent, no doubt; but it consists of about twenty pages.  I have a
+tale, a shortish tale in length, but it has proved long to do, _The Ebb
+Tide_, some part of which goes home this mail.  It is by me and Mr.
+Osbourne, and is really a singular work.  There are only four characters,
+and three of them are bandits—well, two of them are, and the third is
+their comrade and accomplice.  It sounds cheering, doesn’t it?  Barratry,
+and drunkenness, and vitriol, and I cannot tell you all what, are the
+beams of the roof.  And yet—I don’t know—I sort of think there’s
+something in it.  You’ll see (which is more than I ever can) whether
+Davis and Attwater come off or not.
+
+_Weir of Hermiston_ is a much greater undertaking, and the plot is not
+good, I fear; but Lord Justice-Clerk Hermiston ought to be a plum.  Of
+other schemes, more or less executed, it skills not to speak.
+
+I am glad to hear so good an account of your activity and interests, and
+shall always hear from you with pleasure; though I am, and must continue,
+a mere sprite of the inkbottle, unseen in the flesh.  Please remember me
+to your wife and to the four-year-old sweetheart, if she be not too
+engrossed with higher matters.  Do you know where the road crosses the
+burn under Glencorse Church?  Go there, and say a prayer for me:
+_moriturus salutat_.  See that it’s a sunny day; I would like it to be a
+Sunday, but that’s not possible in the premises; and stand on the
+right-hand bank just where the road goes down into the water, and shut
+your eyes, and if I don’t appear to you! well, it can’t be helped, and
+will be extremely funny.
+
+I have no concern here but to work and to keep an eye on this distracted
+people.  I live just now wholly alone in an upper room of my house,
+because the whole family are down with influenza, bar my wife and myself.
+I get my horse up sometimes in the afternoon and have a ride in the
+woods; and I sit here and smoke and write, and rewrite, and destroy, and
+rage at my own impotence, from six in the morning till eight at night,
+with trifling and not always agreeable intervals for meals.
+
+I am sure you chose wisely to keep your country charge.  There a minister
+can be something, not in a town.  In a town, the most of them are empty
+houses—and public speakers.  Why should you suppose your book will be
+slated because you have no friends?  A new writer, if he is any good,
+will be acclaimed generally with more noise than he deserves.  But by
+this time you will know for certain.—I am, yours sincerely,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+_P.S._—Be it known to this fluent generation that I R. L. S., in the
+forty-third of my age and the twentieth of my professional life, wrote
+twenty-four pages in twenty-one days, working from six to eleven, and
+again in the afternoon from two to four or so, without fail or
+interruption.  Such are the gifts the gods have endowed us withal: such
+was the facility of this prolific writer!
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO AUGUSTUS ST. GAUDENS
+
+
+                                    _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _May_ 29_th_, 1893
+
+MY DEAR GOD-LIKE SCULPTOR,—I wish in the most delicate manner in the
+world to insinuate a few commissions:—
+
+No. 1. Is for a couple of copies of my medallion, as gilt-edged and
+high-toned as it is possible to make them.  One is for our house here,
+and should be addressed as above.  The other is for my friend Sidney
+Colvin, and should be addressed—Sidney Colvin, Esq., Keeper of the Print
+Room, British Museum, London.
+
+No. 2. This is a rather large order, and demands some explanation.  Our
+house is lined with varnished wood of a dark ruddy colour, very beautiful
+to see; at the same time, it calls very much for gold; there is a limit
+to picture frames, and really you know there has to be a limit to the
+pictures you put inside of them.  Accordingly, we have had an idea of a
+certain kind of decoration, which, I think, you might help us to make
+practical.  What we want is an alphabet of gilt letters (very much such
+as people play with), and all mounted on spikes like drawing-pins; say
+two spikes to each letter, one at top, and one at bottom.  Say that they
+were this height, [Picture: large letter capital I about 4 times bigger
+than normal size] and that you chose a model of some really exquisitely
+fine, clear type from some Roman monument, and that they were made either
+of metal or some composition gilt—the point is, could not you, in your
+land of wooden houses, get a manufacturer to take the idea and
+manufacture them at a venture, so that I could get two or three hundred
+pieces or so at a moderate figure?  You see, suppose you entertain an
+honoured guest, when he goes he leaves his name in gilt letters on your
+walls; an infinity of fun and decoration can be got out of hospitable and
+festive mottoes; and the doors of every room can be beautified by the
+legend of their names.  I really think there is something in the idea,
+and you might be able to push it with the brutal and licentious
+manufacturer, using my name if necessary, though I should think the name
+of the god-like sculptor would be more germane.  In case you should get
+it started, I should tell you that we should require commas in order to
+write the Samoan language, which is full of words written thus: la’u,
+ti’e ti’e.  As the Samoan language uses but a very small proportion of
+the consonants, we should require a double or treble stock of all vowels
+and of F, G, L, U, N, P, S, T, and V.
+
+The other day in Sydney, I think you might be interested to hear, I was
+sculpt a second time by a man called —, as well as I can remember and
+read.  I mustn’t criticise a present, and he had very little time to do
+it in.  It is thought by my family to be an excellent likeness of Mark
+Twain.  This poor fellow, by the by, met with the devil of an accident.
+A model of a statue which he had just finished with a desperate effort
+was smashed to smithereens on its way to exhibition.
+
+Please be sure and let me know if anything is likely to come of this
+letter business, and the exact cost of each letter, so that I may count
+the cost before ordering.—Yours sincerely,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO EDMUND GOSSE
+
+
+                                                      _June_ 10_th_, 1893.
+
+MY DEAR GOSSE,—My mother tells me you never received the very long and
+careful letter that I sent you more than a year ago; or is it two years?
+
+I was indeed so much surprised at your silence that I wrote to Henry
+James and begged him to inquire if you had received it; his reply was an
+(if possible) higher power of the same silence; whereupon I bowed my head
+and acquiesced.  But there is no doubt the letter was written and sent;
+and I am sorry it was lost, for it contained, among other things, an
+irrecoverable criticism of your father’s _Life_, with a number of
+suggestions for another edition, which struck me at the time as
+excellent.
+
+Well, suppose we call that cried off, and begin as before?  It is
+fortunate indeed that we can do so, being both for a while longer in the
+day.  But, alas! when I see ‘works of the late J. A. S.,’ {292}  I can
+see no help and no reconciliation possible.  I wrote him a letter, I
+think, three years ago, heard in some roundabout way that he had received
+it, waited in vain for an answer (which had probably miscarried), and in
+a humour between frowns and smiles wrote to him no more.  And now the
+strange, poignant, pathetic, brilliant creature is gone into the night,
+and the voice is silent that uttered so much excellent discourse; and I
+am sorry that I did not write to him again.  Yet I am glad for him; light
+lie the turf!  The _Saturday_ is the only obituary I have seen, and I
+thought it very good upon the whole.  I should be half tempted to write
+an _In Memoriam_, but I am submerged with other work.  Are you going to
+do it?  I very much admire your efforts that way; you are our only
+academician.
+
+So you have tried fiction?  I will tell you the truth: when I saw it
+announced, I was so sure you would send it to me, that I did not order
+it!  But the order goes this mail, and I will give you news of it.  Yes,
+honestly, fiction is very difficult; it is a terrible strain to _carry_
+your characters all that time.  And the difficulty of according the
+narrative and the dialogue (in a work in the third person) is extreme.
+That is one reason out of half a dozen why I so often prefer the first.
+It is much in my mind just now, because of my last work, just off the
+stocks three days ago, _The Ebb Tide_: a dreadful, grimy business in the
+third person, where the strain between a vilely realistic dialogue and a
+narrative style pitched about (in phrase) ‘four notes higher’ than it
+should have been, has sown my head with grey hairs; or I believe so—if my
+head escaped, my heart has them.
+
+The truth is, I have a little lost my way, and stand bemused at the
+cross-roads.  A subject?  Ay, I have dozens; I have at least four novels
+begun, they are none good enough; and the mill waits, and I’ll have to
+take second best.  _The Ebb Tide_ I make the world a present of; I
+expect, and, I suppose, deserve to be torn to pieces; but there was all
+that good work lying useless, and I had to finish it!
+
+All your news of your family is pleasant to hear.  My wife has been very
+ill, but is now better; I may say I am ditto, _The Ebb Tide_ having left
+me high and dry, which is a good example of the mixed metaphor.  Our
+home, and estate, and our boys, and the politics of the island, keep us
+perpetually amused and busy; and I grind away with an odd, dogged, down
+sensation—and an idea _in petto_ that the game is about played out.  I
+have got too realistic, and I must break the trammels—I mean I would if I
+could; but the yoke is heavy.  I saw with amusement that Zola says the
+same thing; and truly the _Débâcle_ was a mighty big book, I have no need
+for a bigger, though the last part is a mere mistake in my opinion.  But
+the Emperor, and Sedan, and the doctor at the ambulance, and the horses
+in the field of battle, Lord, how gripped it is!  What an epical
+performance!  According to my usual opinion, I believe I could go over
+that book and leave a masterpiece by blotting and no ulterior art.  But
+that is an old story, ever new with me.  Taine gone, and Renan, and
+Symonds, and Tennyson, and Browning; the suns go swiftly out, and I see
+no suns to follow, nothing but a universal twilight of the
+demi-divinities, with parties like you and me and Lang beating on toy
+drums and playing on penny whistles about glow-worms.  But Zola is big
+anyway; he has plenty in his belly; too much, that is all; he wrote the
+_Débâcle_ and he wrote _La Bête humaine_, perhaps the most excruciatingly
+silly book that I ever read to an end.  And why did I read it to an end,
+W. E. G.?  Because the animal in me was interested in the lewdness.  Not
+sincerely, of course, my mind refusing to partake in it; but the flesh
+was slightly pleased.  And when it was done, I cast it from me with a
+peal of laughter, and forgot it, as I would forget a Montépin.  Taine is
+to me perhaps the chief of these losses; I did luxuriate in his
+_Origines_; it was something beyond literature, not quite so good, if you
+please, but so much more systematic, and the pages that had to be
+‘written’ always so adequate.  Robespierre, Napoleon, were both excellent
+good.
+
+                                                        _June_ 18_th_, ’93
+
+Well, I have left fiction wholly, and gone to my _Grandfather_, and on
+the whole found peace.  By next month my _Grandfather_ will begin to be
+quite grown up.  I have already three chapters about as good as done; by
+which, of course, as you know, I mean till further notice or the next
+discovery.  I like biography far better than fiction myself: fiction is
+too free.  In biography you have your little handful of facts, little
+bits of a puzzle, and you sit and think, and fit ’em together this way
+and that, and get up and throw ’em down, and say damn, and go out for a
+walk.  And it’s real soothing; and when done, gives an idea of finish to
+the writer that is very peaceful.  Of course, it’s not really so finished
+as quite a rotten novel; it always has and always must have the incurable
+illogicalities of life about it, the fathoms of slack and the miles of
+tedium.  Still, that’s where the fun comes in; and when you have at last
+managed to shut up the castle spectre (dulness), the very outside of his
+door looks beautiful by contrast.  There are pages in these books that
+may seem nothing to the reader; but you _remember what they were_, _you
+know what they might have been_, and they seem to you witty beyond
+comparison.  In my _Grandfather_ I’ve had (for instance) to give up the
+temporal order almost entirely; doubtless the temporal order is the great
+foe of the biographer; it is so tempting, so easy, and lo! there you are
+in the bog!—Ever yours,
+
+                                                          R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+With all kind messages from self and wife to you and yours.  My wife is
+very much better, having been the early part of this year alarmingly ill.
+She is now all right, only complaining of trifles, annoying to her, but
+happily not interesting to her friends.  I am in a hideous state, having
+stopped drink and smoking; yes, both.  No wine, no tobacco; and the
+dreadful part of it is that—looking forward—I have—what shall I
+say?—nauseating intimations that it ought to be for ever.
+
+
+
+TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+              _Vailima Plantation_, _Samoan Islands_, _June_ 17_th_, 1893.
+
+MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,—I believe I have neglected a mail in answering
+yours.  You will be very sorry to hear that my wife was exceedingly ill,
+and very glad to hear that she is better.  I cannot say that I feel any
+more anxiety about her.  We shall send you a photograph of her taken in
+Sydney in her customary island habit as she walks and gardens and shrilly
+drills her brown assistants.  She was very ill when she sat for it, which
+may a little explain the appearance of the photograph.  It reminds me of
+a friend of my grandmother’s who used to say when talking to younger
+women, ‘Aweel, when I was young, I wasnae just exactly what ye wad call
+_bonny_, but I was pale, penetratin’, and interestin’.’  I would not
+venture to hint that Fanny is ‘no bonny,’ but there is no doubt but that
+in this presentment she is ‘pale, penetratin’, and interesting.’
+
+As you are aware, I have been wading deep waters and contending with the
+great ones of the earth, not wholly without success.  It is, you may be
+interested to hear, a dreary and infuriating business.  If you can get
+the fools to admit one thing, they will always save their face by denying
+another.  If you can induce them to take a step to the right hand, they
+generally indemnify themselves by cutting a caper to the left.  I always
+held (upon no evidence whatever, from a mere sentiment or intuition) that
+politics was the dirtiest, the most foolish, and the most random of human
+employments.  I always held, but now I know it!  Fortunately, you have
+nothing to do with anything of the kind, and I may spare you the horror
+of further details.
+
+I received from you a book by a man by the name of Anatole France.  Why
+should I disguise it?  I have no use for Anatole.  He writes very
+prettily, and then afterwards?  Baron Marbot was a different pair of
+shoes.  So likewise is the Baron de Vitrolles, whom I am now perusing
+with delight.  His escape in 1814 is one of the best pages I remember
+anywhere to have read.  But Marbot and Vitrolles are dead, and what has
+become of the living?  It seems as if literature were coming to a stand.
+I am sure it is with me; and I am sure everybody will say so when they
+have the privilege of reading _The Ebb Tide_.  My dear man, the grimness
+of that story is not to be depicted in words.  There are only four
+characters, to be sure, but they are such a troop of swine!  And their
+behaviour is really so deeply beneath any possible standard, that on a
+retrospect I wonder I have been able to endure them myself until the yarn
+was finished.  Well, there is always one thing; it will serve as a
+touchstone.  If the admirers of Zola admire him for his pertinent
+ugliness and pessimism, I think they should admire this; but if, as I
+have long suspected, they neither admire nor understand the man’s art,
+and only wallow in his rancidness like a hound in offal, then they will
+certainly be disappointed in _The Ebb Tide_.  _Alas_! poor little tale,
+it is not _even_ rancid.
+
+By way of an antidote or febrifuge, I am going on at a great rate with my
+_History of the Stevensons_, which I hope may prove rather amusing, in
+some parts at least.  The excess of materials weighs upon me.  My
+grandfather is a delightful comedy part; and I have to treat him besides
+as a serious and (in his way) a heroic figure, and at times I lose my
+way, and I fear in the end will blur the effect.  However, _à la grâce de
+Dieu_!  I’ll make a spoon or spoil a horn.  You see, I have to do the
+Building of the Bell Rock by cutting down and packing my grandsire’s
+book, which I rather hope I have done, but do not know.  And it makes a
+huge chunk of a very different style and quality between Chapters II. and
+IV.  And it can’t be helped!  It is just a delightful and exasperating
+necessity.  You know, the stuff is really excellent narrative: only,
+perhaps there’s too much of it!  There is the rub.  Well, well, it will
+be plain to you that my mind is affected; it might be with less.  _The
+Ebb Tide_ and _Northern Lights_ are a full meal for any plain man.
+
+I have written and ordered your last book, _The Real Thing_, so be sure
+and don’t send it.  What else are you doing or thinking of doing?  News I
+have none, and don’t want any.  I have had to stop all strong drink and
+all tobacco, and am now in a transition state between the two, which
+seems to be near madness.  You never smoked, I think, so you can never
+taste the joys of stopping it.  But at least you have drunk, and you can
+enter perhaps into my annoyance when I suddenly find a glass of claret or
+a brandy-and-water give me a splitting headache the next morning.  No
+mistake about it; drink anything, and there’s your headache.  Tobacco
+just as bad for me.  If I live through this breach of habit, I shall be a
+white-livered puppy indeed.  Actually I am so made, or so twisted, that I
+do not like to think of a life without the red wine on the table and the
+tobacco with its lovely little coal of fire.  It doesn’t amuse me from a
+distance.  I may find it the Garden of Eden when I go in, but I don’t
+like the colour of the gate-posts.  Suppose somebody said to you, you are
+to leave your home, and your books, and your clubs, and go out and camp
+in mid-Africa, and command an expedition, you would howl, and kick, and
+flee.  I think the same of a life without wine and tobacco; and if this
+goes on, I’ve got to go and do it, sir, in the living flesh!
+
+I thought Bourget was a friend of yours?  And I thought the French were a
+polite race?  He has taken my dedication with a stately silence that has
+surprised me into apoplexy.  Did I go and dedicate my book {298a} to the
+nasty alien, and the ’norrid Frenchman, and the Bloody Furrineer?  Well,
+I wouldn’t do it again; and unless his case is susceptible of
+explanation, you might perhaps tell him so over the walnuts and the wine,
+by way of speeding the gay hours.  Sincerely, I thought my dedication
+worth a letter.
+
+If anything be worth anything here below!  Do you know the story of the
+man who found a button in his hash, and called the waiter?  ‘What do you
+call that?’ says he.  ‘Well,’ said the waiter, ‘what d’you expect?
+Expect to find a gold watch and chain?’  Heavenly apologue, is it not?  I
+expected (rather) to find a gold watch and chain; I expected to be able
+to smoke to excess and drink to comfort all the days of my life; and I am
+still indignantly staring on this button!  It’s not even a button; it’s a
+teetotal badge!—Ever yours,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+                                                      _Apia_, _July_ 1893.
+
+MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,—Yes.  _Les Trophées_, on the whole, a book. {298b}
+It is excellent; but is it a life’s work?  I always suspect _you_ of a
+volume of sonnets up your sleeve; when is it coming down?  I am in one of
+my moods of wholesale impatience with all fiction and all verging on it,
+reading instead, with rapture, _Fountainhall’s Decisions_.  You never
+read it: well, it hasn’t much form, and is inexpressibly dreary, I should
+suppose, to others—and even to me for pages.  It’s like walking in a mine
+underground, and with a damned bad lantern, and picking out pieces of
+ore.  This, and war, will be my excuse for not having read your
+(doubtless) charming work of fiction.  The revolving year will bring me
+round to it; and I know, when fiction shall begin to feel a little
+_solid_ to me again, that I shall love it, because it’s James.  Do you
+know, when I am in this mood, I would rather try to read a bad book?
+It’s not so disappointing, anyway.  And _Fountainhall_ is prime, two big
+folio volumes, and all dreary, and all true, and all as terse as an
+obituary; and about one interesting fact on an average in twenty pages,
+and ten of them unintelligible for technicalities.  There’s literature,
+if you like!  It feeds; it falls about you genuine like rain.  Rain:
+nobody has done justice to rain in literature yet: surely a subject for a
+Scot.  But then you can’t do rain in that ledger-book style that I am
+trying for—or between a ledger-book and an old ballad.  How to get over,
+how to escape from, the besotting _particularity_ of fiction.  ‘Roland
+approached the house; it had green doors and window blinds; and there was
+a scraper on the upper step.’  To hell with Roland and the scraper!—Yours
+ever,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO A. CONAN DOYLE
+
+
+                                               _Vailima_, _July_ 12, 1893.
+
+MY DEAR DR. CONAN DOYLE,—The _White Company_ has not yet turned up; but
+when it does—which I suppose will be next mail—you shall hear news of me.
+I have a great talent for compliment, accompanied by a hateful, even a
+diabolic frankness.
+
+Delighted to hear I have a chance of seeing you and Mrs. Doyle; Mrs.
+Stevenson bids me say (what is too true) that our rations are often
+spare.  Are you Great Eaters?  Please reply.
+
+As to ways and means, here is what you will have to do.  Leave San
+Francisco by the down mail, get off at Samoa, and twelve days or a
+fortnight later, you can continue your journey to Auckland per Upolu,
+which will give you a look at Tonga and possibly Fiji by the way.  Make
+this a _first part of your plans_.  A fortnight, even of Vailima diet,
+could kill nobody.
+
+We are in the midst of war here; rather a nasty business, with the
+head-taking; and there seem signs of other trouble.  But I believe you
+need make no change in your design to visit us.  All should be well over;
+and if it were not, why! you need not leave the steamer.—Yours very
+truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                                                        19_th_ _July_ ’93.
+
+. . . We are in the thick of war—see _Illustrated London News_—we have
+only two outside boys left to us.  Nothing is doing, and _per contra_
+little paying. . .  My life here is dear; but I can live within my income
+for a time at least—so long as my prices keep up—and it seems a clear
+duty to waste none of it on gadding about. . . .  My life of my family
+fills up intervals, and should be an excellent book when it is done, but
+big, damnably big.
+
+My dear old man, I perceive by a thousand signs that we grow old, and are
+soon to pass away!  I hope with dignity; if not, with courage at least.
+I am myself very ready; or would be—will be—when I have made a little
+money for my folks.  The blows that have fallen upon you are truly
+terrifying; I wish you strength to bear them.  It is strange, I must seem
+to you to blaze in a Birmingham prosperity and happiness; and to myself I
+seem a failure.  The truth is, I have never got over the last influenza
+yet, and am miserably out of heart and out of kilter.  Lungs pretty
+right, stomach nowhere, spirits a good deal overshadowed; but we’ll come
+through it yet, and cock our bonnets.  (I confess with sorrow that I am
+not yet quite sure about the _intellects_; but I hope it is only one of
+my usual periods of non-work.  They are more unbearable now, because I
+cannot rest.  _No rest but the grave for Sir Walter_!  O the words ring
+in a man’s head.)
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO A. CONAN DOYLE
+
+
+                                         _Vailima_, _August_ 23_rd_, 1893.
+
+MY DEAR DR. CONAN DOYLE,—I am reposing after a somewhat severe experience
+upon which I think it my duty to report to you.  Immediately after dinner
+this evening it occurred to me to re-narrate to my native overseer Simelè
+your story of _The Engineer’s Thumb_.  And, sir, I have done it.  It was
+necessary, I need hardly say, to go somewhat farther afield than you have
+done.  To explain (for instance) what a railway is, what a steam hammer,
+what a coach and horse, what coining, what a criminal, and what the
+police.  I pass over other and no less necessary explanations.  But I did
+actually succeed; and if you could have seen the drawn, anxious features
+and the bright, feverish eyes of Simelè, you would have (for the moment
+at least) tasted glory.  You might perhaps think that, were you to come
+to Samoa, you might be introduced as the Author of _The Engineer’s
+Thumb_.  Disabuse yourself.  They do not know what it is to make up a
+story.  _The Engineer’s Thumb_ (God forgive me) was narrated as a piece
+of actual and factual history.  Nay, and more, I who write to you have
+had the indiscretion to perpetrate a trifling piece of fiction entitled
+_The Bottle Imp_.  Parties who come up to visit my unpretentious mansion,
+after having admired the ceilings by Vanderputty and the tapestry by
+Gobbling, manifest towards the end a certain uneasiness which proves them
+to be fellows of an infinite delicacy.  They may be seen to shrug a brown
+shoulder, to roll up a speaking eye, and at last secret bursts from them:
+‘Where is the bottle?’  Alas, my friends (I feel tempted to say), you
+will find it by the Engineer’s Thumb!  Talofa-soifuia.
+
+Oa’u, O lau no moni, O Tusitala.
+
+More commonly known as,
+
+                                                          R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+Have read the _Refugees_; Condé and old P. Murat very good; Louis XIV.
+and Louvois with the letter bag very rich.  You have reached a trifle
+wide perhaps; too _many_ celebrities?  Though I was delighted to
+re-encounter my old friend Du Chaylu.  Old Murat is perhaps your high
+water mark; ’tis excellently human, cheerful and real.  Do it again.
+Madame de Maintenon struck me as quite good.  Have you any document for
+the decapitation?  It sounds steepish.  The devil of all that first part
+is that you see old Dumas; yet your Louis XIV. is _distinctly good_.  I
+am much interested with this book, which fulfils a good deal, and
+promises more.  Question: How far a Historical Novel should be wholly
+episodic?  I incline to that view, with trembling.  I shake hands with
+you on old Murat.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO GEORGE MEREDITH
+
+
+              _Sept._ 5_th_, 1893, _Vailima Plantation_, _Upolu_, _Samoa_.
+
+MY DEAR MEREDITH,—I have again and again taken up the pen to write to
+you, and many beginnings have gone into the waste paper basket (I have
+one now—for the second time in my life—and feel a big man on the strength
+of it).  And no doubt it requires some decision to break so long a
+silence.  My health is vastly restored, and I am now living patriarchally
+in this place six hundred feet above the sea on the shoulder of a
+mountain of 1500.  Behind me, the unbroken bush slopes up to the backbone
+of the island (3 to 4000) without a house, with no inhabitants save a few
+runaway black boys, wild pigs and cattle, and wild doves and flying
+foxes, and many parti-coloured birds, and many black, and many white: a
+very eerie, dim, strange place and hard to travel.  I am the head of a
+household of five whites, and of twelve Samoans, to all of whom I am the
+chief and father: my cook comes to me and asks leave to marry—and his
+mother, a fine old chief woman, who has never lived here, does the same.
+You may be sure I granted the petition.  It is a life of great interest,
+complicated by the Tower of Babel, that old enemy.  And I have all the
+time on my hands for literary work.  My house is a great place; we have a
+hall fifty feet long with a great red-wood stair ascending from it, where
+we dine in state—myself usually dressed in a singlet and a pair of
+trousers—and attended on by servants in a single garment, a kind of
+kilt—also flowers and leaves—and their hair often powdered with lime.
+The European who came upon it suddenly would think it was a dream.  We
+have prayers on Sunday night—I am a perfect pariah in the island not to
+have them oftener, but the spirit is unwilling and the flesh proud, and I
+cannot go it more.  It is strange to see the long line of the brown folk
+crouched along the wall with lanterns at intervals before them in the big
+shadowy hall, with an oak cabinet at one end of it and a group of Rodin’s
+(which native taste regards as _prodigieusement leste_) presiding over
+all from the top—and to hear the long rambling Samoan hymn rolling up
+(God bless me, what style!  But I am off business to-day, and this is not
+meant to be literature.).
+
+I have asked Colvin to send you a copy of _Catriona_, which I am
+sometimes tempted to think is about my best work.  I hear word
+occasionally of the _Amazing Marriage_.  It will be a brave day for me
+when I get hold of it.  Gower Woodseer is now an ancient, lean, grim,
+exiled Scot, living and labouring as for a wager in the tropics; still
+active, still with lots of fire in him, but the youth—ah, the youth where
+is it?  For years after I came here, the critics (those genial gentlemen)
+used to deplore the relaxation of my fibre and the idleness to which I
+had succumbed.  I hear less of this now; the next thing is they will tell
+me I am writing myself out! and that my unconscientious conduct is
+bringing their grey hairs with sorrow to the dust.  I do not know—I mean
+I do know one thing.  For fourteen years I have not had a day’s real
+health; I have wakened sick and gone to bed weary; and I have done my
+work unflinchingly.  I have written in bed, and written out of it,
+written in hemorrhages, written in sickness, written torn by coughing,
+written when my head swam for weakness; and for so long, it seems to me I
+have won my wager and recovered my glove.  I am better now, have been
+rightly speaking since first I came to the Pacific; and still, few are
+the days when I am not in some physical distress.  And the battle goes
+on—ill or well, is a trifle; so as it goes.  I was made for a contest,
+and the Powers have so willed that my battlefield should be this dingy,
+inglorious one of the bed and the physic bottle.  At least I have not
+failed, but I would have preferred a place of trumpetings and the open
+air over my head.
+
+This is a devilish egotistical yarn.  Will you try to imitate me in that
+if the spirit ever moves you to reply?  And meantime be sure that away in
+the midst of the Pacific there is a house on a wooded island where the
+name of George Meredith is very dear, and his memory (since it must be no
+more) is continually honoured.—Ever your friend,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+Remember me to Mariette, if you please; and my wife sends her most kind
+remembrances to yourself.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO AUGUSTUS ST. GAUDENS
+
+
+                                              _Vailima_, _September_ 1893.
+
+MY DEAR ST. GAUDENS,—I had determined not to write to you till I had seen
+the medallion, but it looks as if that might mean the Greek Kalends or
+the day after to-morrow.  Reassure yourself, your part is done, it is
+ours that halts—the consideration of conveyance over our sweet little
+road on boys’ backs, for we cannot very well apply the horses to this
+work; there is only one; you cannot put it in a panier; to put it on the
+horse’s back we have not the heart.  Beneath the beauty of R. L. S., to
+say nothing of his verses, which the publishers find heavy enough, and
+the genius of the god-like sculptor, the spine would snap and the
+well-knit limbs of the (ahem) cart-horse would be loosed by death.  So
+you are to conceive me, sitting in my house, dubitative, and the
+medallion chuckling in the warehouse of the German firm, for some days
+longer; and hear me meanwhile on the golden letters.
+
+Alas! they are all my fancy painted, but the price is prohibitive.  I
+cannot do it.  It is another day-dream burst.  Another gable of
+Abbotsford has gone down, fortunately before it was builded, so there’s
+nobody injured—except me.  I had a strong conviction that I was a great
+hand at writing inscriptions, and meant to exhibit and test my genius on
+the walls of my house; and now I see I can’t.  It is generally thus.  The
+Battle of the Golden Letters will never be delivered.  On making
+preparation to open the campaign, the King found himself face to face
+with invincible difficulties, in which the rapacity of a mercenary
+soldiery and the complaints of an impoverished treasury played an equal
+part.—Ever yours,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+I enclose a bill for the medallion; have been trying to find your letter,
+quite in vain, and therefore must request you to pay for the bronze
+letters yourself and let me know the damage.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO J. HORNE STEVENSON
+
+
+                               _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _November_ 5_th_, 1893.
+
+MY DEAR STEVENSON,—A thousand thanks for your voluminous and delightful
+collections.  Baxter—so soon as it is ready—will let you see a proof of
+my introduction, which is only sent out as a sprat to catch whales.  And
+you will find I have a good deal of what you have, only mine in a
+perfectly desultory manner, as is necessary to an exile.  My uncle’s
+pedigree is wrong; there was never a Stevenson of Caldwell, of course,
+but they were tenants of the Muirs; the farm held by them is in my
+introduction; and I have already written to Charles Baxter to have a
+search made in the Register House.  I hope he will have had the
+inspiration to put it under your surveillance.  Your information as to
+your own family is intensely interesting, and I should not wonder but
+what you and we and old John Stevenson, ‘land labourer in the parish of
+Dailly,’ came all of the same stock.  Ayrshire—and probably
+Cunningham—seems to be the home of the race—our part of it.  From the
+distribution of the name—which your collections have so much extended
+without essentially changing my knowledge of—we seem rather pointed to a
+British origin.  What you say of the Engineers is fresh to me, and must
+be well thrashed out.  This introduction of it will take a long while to
+walk about!—as perhaps I may be tempted to let it become long; after all,
+I am writing _this_ for my own pleasure solely.  Greetings to you and
+other Speculatives of our date, long bygone, alas!—Yours very sincerely,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+_P.S._—I have a different version of my grandfather’s arms—or my father
+had if I could find it.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+
+TO JOHN P—N
+
+
+                               _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _December_ 3_rd_, 1893.
+
+DEAR JOHNNIE,—Well, I must say you seem to be a tremendous fellow!
+Before I was eight I used to write stories—or dictate them at least—and I
+had produced an excellent history of Moses, for which I got £1 from an
+uncle; but I had never gone the length of a play, so you have beaten me
+fairly on my own ground.  I hope you may continue to do so, and thanking
+you heartily for your nice letter, I shall beg you to believe me yours
+truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO RUSSELL P—N
+
+
+                               _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _December_ 3_rd_, 1893.
+
+DEAR RUSSELL,—I have to thank you very much for your capital letter,
+which came to hand here in Samoa along with your mother’s.  When you
+‘grow up and write stories like me,’ you will be able to understand that
+there is scarce anything more painful than for an author to hold a pen;
+he has to do it so much that his heart sickens and his fingers ache at
+the sight or touch of it; so that you will excuse me if I do not write
+much, but remain (with compliments and greetings from one Scot to
+another—though I was not born in Ceylon—you’re ahead of me there).—Yours
+very truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
+
+
+                                            _Vailima_, _December_ 5, 1893.
+
+MY DEAREST CUMMY,—This goes to you with a Merry Christmas and a Happy New
+Year.  The Happy New Year anyway, for I think it should reach you about
+_Noor’s Day_.  I dare say it may be cold and frosty.  Do you remember
+when you used to take me out of bed in the early morning, carry me to the
+back windows, show me the hills of Fife, and quote to me.
+
+   ‘A’ the hills are covered wi’ snaw,
+      An’ winter’s noo come fairly’?
+
+There is not much chance of that here!  I wonder how my mother is going
+to stand the winter.  If she can, it will be a very good thing for her.
+We are in that part of the year which I like the best—the Rainy or
+Hurricane Season.  ‘When it is good, it is very, very good; and when it
+is bad, it is horrid,’ and our fine days are certainly fine like heaven;
+such a blue of the sea, such green of the trees, and such crimson of the
+hibiscus flowers, you never saw; and the air as mild and gentle as a
+baby’s breath, and yet not hot!
+
+The mail is on the move, and I must let up.—With much love, I am, your
+laddie,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                                                    6_th_ _December_ 1893.
+
+    ‘_October_ 25, 1685.—At Privy Council, George Murray, Lieutenant of
+    the King’s Guard, and others, did, on the 21st of September last,
+    obtain a clandestine order of Privy Council to apprehend the person
+    of Janet Pringle, daughter to the late Clifton, and she having
+    retired out of the way upon information, he got an order against
+    Andrew Pringle, her uncle, to produce her. . . . But she having
+    married Andrew Pringle, her uncle’s son (to disappoint all their
+    designs of selling her), a boy of thirteen years old.’  But my boy is
+    to be fourteen, so I extract no further.—FOUNTAINHALL, i. 320.
+
+    ‘_May_ 6, 1685.—Wappus Pringle of Clifton was still alive after all,
+    and in prison for debt, and transacts with Lieutenant Murray, giving
+    security for 7000 marks.’—i. 372.
+
+No, it seems to have been _her_ brother who had succeeded.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—The above is my story, and I wonder if any light can be
+thrown on it.  I prefer the girl’s father dead; and the question is, How
+in that case could Lieutenant George Murray get his order to ‘apprehend’
+and his power to ‘sell’ her in marriage?
+
+Or—might Lieutenant G. be her tutor, and she fugitive to the Pringles,
+and on the discovery of her whereabouts hastily married?
+
+A good legal note on these points is very ardently desired by me; it will
+be the corner-stone of my novel.
+
+This is for—I am quite wrong to tell you—for you will tell others—and
+nothing will teach you that all my schemes are in the air, and vanish and
+reappear again like shapes in the clouds—it is for _Heathercat_: whereof
+the first volume will be called _The Killing Time_, and I believe I have
+authorities ample for that.  But the second volume is to be called (I
+believe) _Darien_, and for that I want, I fear, a good deal of truck:—
+
+  _Darien Papers_,
+  _Carstairs Papers_,
+  _Marchmont Papers_,
+  _Jerviswoode Correspondence_,
+
+I hope may do me.  Some sort of general history of the Darien affair (if
+there is a decent one, which I misdoubt), it would also be well to
+have—the one with most details, if possible.  It is singular how obscure
+to me this decade of Scots history remains, 1690–1700—a deuce of a want
+of light and grouping to it!  However, I believe I shall be mostly out of
+Scotland in my tale; first in Carolina, next in Darien.  I want also—I am
+the daughter of the horse-leech truly—‘Black’s new large map of
+Scotland,’ sheets 3, 4, and 5, a 7s. 6d. touch.  I believe, if you can
+get the
+
+                            _Caldwell Papers_,
+
+they had better come also; and if there be any reasonable work—but no, I
+must call a halt. . . .
+
+I fear the song looks doubtful, but I’ll consider of it, and I can
+promise you some reminiscences which it will amuse me to write, whether
+or not it will amuse the public to read of them.  But it’s an unco
+business to _supply_ deid-heid coapy.
+
+
+
+TO J. M. BARRIE
+
+
+                               _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _December_ 7_th_, 1893.
+
+MY DEAR BARRIE,—I have received duly the _magnum opus_, and it really is
+a _magnum opus_. {311}  It is a beautiful specimen of Clark’s printing,
+paper sufficient, and the illustrations all my fancy painted.  But the
+particular flower of the flock to whom I have hopelessly lost my heart is
+Tibby Birse.  I must have known Tibby Birse when she was a servant’s
+mantua-maker in Edinburgh and answered to the name of Miss _Broddie_.
+She used to come and sew with my nurse, sitting with her legs crossed in
+a masculine manner; and swinging her foot emphatically, she used to pour
+forth a perfectly unbroken stream of gossip.  I didn’t hear it, I was
+immersed in far more important business with a box of bricks, but the
+recollection of that thin, perpetual, shrill sound of a voice has echoed
+in my ears sinsyne.  I am bound to say she was younger than Tibbie, but
+there is no mistaking that and the indescribable and eminently Scottish
+expression.
+
+I have been very much prevented of late, having carried out thoroughly to
+my own satisfaction two considerable illnesses, had a birthday, and
+visited Honolulu, where politics are (if possible) a shade more
+exasperating than they are with us.  I am told that it was just when I
+was on the point of leaving that I received your superlative epistle
+about the cricket eleven.  In that case it is impossible I should have
+answered it, which is inconsistent with my own recollection of the fact.
+What I remember is, that I sat down under your immediate inspiration and
+wrote an answer in every way worthy.  If I didn’t, as it seems proved
+that I couldn’t, it will never be done now.  However, I did the next best
+thing, I equipped my cousin Graham Balfour with a letter of introduction,
+and from him, if you know how—for he is rather of the Scottish
+character—you may elicit all the information you can possibly wish to
+have as to us and ours.  Do not be bluffed off by the somewhat stern and
+monumental first impression that he may make upon you.  He is one of the
+best fellows in the world, and the same sort of fool that we are, only
+better-looking, with all the faults of Vailimans and some of his own—I
+say nothing about virtues.
+
+I have lately been returning to my wallowing in the mire.  When I was a
+child, and indeed until I was nearly a man, I consistently read
+Covenanting books.  Now that I am a grey-beard—or would be, if I could
+raise the beard—I have returned, and for weeks back have read little else
+but Wodrow, Walker, Shields, etc.  Of course this is with an idea of a
+novel, but in the course of it I made a very curious discovery.  I have
+been accustomed to hear refined and intelligent critics—those who know so
+much better what we are than we do ourselves,—trace down my literary
+descent from all sorts of people, including Addison, of whom I could
+never read a word.  Well, laigh i’ your lug, sir—the clue was found.  My
+style is from the Covenanting writers.  Take a particular case—the
+fondness for rhymes.  I don’t know of any English prose-writer who rhymes
+except by accident, and then a stone had better be tied around his neck
+and himself cast into the sea.  But my Covenanting buckies rhyme all the
+time—a beautiful example of the unconscious rhyme above referred to.
+
+Do you know, and have you really tasted, these delightful works?  If not,
+it should be remedied; there is enough of the Auld Licht in you to be
+ravished.
+
+I suppose you know that success has so far attended my banners—my
+political banners I mean, and not my literary.  In conjunction with the
+Three Great Powers I have succeeded in getting rid of My President and My
+Chief-Justice.  They’ve gone home, the one to Germany, the other to
+Souwegia.  I hear little echoes of footfalls of their departing footsteps
+through the medium of the newspapers. . . .
+
+Whereupon I make you my salute with the firm remark that it is time to be
+done with trifling and give us a great book, and my ladies fall into line
+with me to pay you a most respectful courtesy, and we all join in the
+cry, ‘Come to Vailima!’
+
+My dear sir, your soul’s health is in it—you will never do the great
+book, you will never cease to work in L., etc., till you come to Vailima.
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO R. LE GALLIENNE
+
+
+                              _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _December_ 28_th_, 1893.
+
+DEAR MR. LE GALLIENNE,—I have received some time ago, through our friend
+Miss Taylor, a book of yours.  But that was by no means my first
+introduction to your name.  The same book had stood already on my
+shelves; I had read articles of yours in the _Academy_; and by a piece of
+constructive criticism (which I trust was sound) had arrived at the
+conclusion that you were ‘Log-roller.’  Since then I have seen your
+beautiful verses to your wife.  You are to conceive me, then, as only too
+ready to make the acquaintance of a man who loved good literature and
+could make it.  I had to thank you, besides, for a triumphant exposure of
+a paradox of my own: the literary-prostitute disappeared from view at a
+phrase of yours—‘The essence is not in the pleasure but the sale.’  True:
+you are right, I was wrong; the author is not the whore, but the
+libertine; and yet I shall let the passage stand.  It is an error, but it
+illustrated the truth for which I was contending, that
+literature—painting—all art, are no other than pleasures, which we turn
+into trades.
+
+And more than all this, I had, and I have to thank you for the intimate
+loyalty you have shown to myself; for the eager welcome you give to what
+is good—for the courtly tenderness with which you touch on my defects.  I
+begin to grow old; I have given my top note, I fancy;—and I have written
+too many books.  The world begins to be weary of the old booth; and if
+not weary, familiar with the familiarity that breeds contempt.  I do not
+know that I am sensitive to criticism, if it be hostile; I am sensitive
+indeed, when it is friendly; and when I read such criticism as yours, I
+am emboldened to go on and praise God.
+
+You are still young, and you may live to do much.  The little, artificial
+popularity of style in England tends, I think, to die out; the British
+pig returns to his true love, the love of the styleless, of the
+shapeless, of the slapdash and the disorderly.  There is trouble coming,
+I think; and you may have to hold the fort for us in evil days.
+
+Lastly, let me apologise for the crucifixion that I am inflicting on you
+(_bien à contre-cœur_) by my bad writing.  I was once the best of
+writers; landladies, puzzled as to my ‘trade,’ used to have their honest
+bosoms set at rest by a sight of a page of manuscript.—‘Ah,’ they would
+say, ‘no wonder they pay you for that’;—and when I sent it in to the
+printers, it was given to the boys!  I was about thirty-nine, I think,
+when I had a turn of scrivener’s palsy; my hand got worse; and for the
+first time, I received clean proofs.  But it has gone beyond that now, I
+know I am like my old friend James Payn, a terror to correspondents; and
+you would not believe the care with which this has been written.—Believe
+me to be, very sincerely yours,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO MRS. A. BAKER
+
+
+                                                          _December_ 1893.
+
+DEAR MADAM,—There is no trouble, and I wish I could help instead.  As it
+is, I fear I am only going to put you to trouble and vexation.  This
+Braille writing is a kind of consecration, and I would like if I could to
+have your copy perfect.  The two volumes are to be published as Vols. I.
+and II. of _The Adventures of David Balfour_.  1st, _Kidnapped_; 2nd,
+_Catriona_.  I am just sending home a corrected _Kidnapped_ for this
+purpose to Messrs. Cassell, and in order that I may if possible be in
+time, I send it to you first of all.  Please, as soon as you have noted
+the changes, forward the same to Cassell and Co., La Belle Sauvage Yard,
+Ludgate Hill.
+
+I am writing to them by this mail to send you _Catriona_.
+
+You say, dear madam, you are good enough to say, it is ‘a keen pleasure’
+to you to bring my book within the reach of the blind.
+
+Conceive then what it is to me! and believe me, sincerely yours,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+   I was a barren tree before,
+      I blew a quenchèd coal,
+   I could not, on their midnight shore,
+      The lonely blind console.
+
+   A moment, lend your hand, I bring
+      My sheaf for you to bind,
+   And you can teach my words to sing
+      In the darkness of the blind.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+                                                  _Apia_, _December_ 1893.
+
+MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,—The mail has come upon me like an armed man three
+days earlier than was expected; and the Lord help me!  It is impossible I
+should answer anybody the way they should be.  Your jubilation over
+_Catriona_ did me good, and still more the subtlety and truth of your
+remark on the starving of the visual sense in that book.  ’Tis true, and
+unless I make the greater effort—and am, as a step to that, convinced of
+its necessity—it will be more true I fear in the future.  I _hear_ people
+talking, and I _feel_ them acting, and that seems to me to be fiction.
+My two aims may be described as—
+
+  1_st_.  War to the adjective.
+
+  2_nd_.  Death to the optic nerve.
+
+Admitted we live in an age of the optic nerve in literature.  For how
+many centuries did literature get along without a sign of it?  However,
+I’ll consider your letter.
+
+How exquisite is your character of the critic in _Essays in London_!  I
+doubt if you have done any single thing so satisfying as a piece of style
+and of insight.—Yours ever,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                                                      1_st_ _January_ ’94.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—I am delighted with your idea, and first, I will here
+give an amended plan and afterwards give you a note of some of the
+difficulties.
+
+                 [Plan of the Edinburgh edition—14 vols.]
+
+. . . It may be a question whether my _Times_ letters might not be
+appended to the ‘Footnote’ with a note of the dates of discharge of
+Cedercrantz and Pilsach.
+
+I am particularly pleased with this idea of yours, because I am come to a
+dead stop.  I never can remember how bad I have been before, but at any
+rate I am bad enough just now, I mean as to literature; in health I am
+well and strong.  I take it I shall be six months before I’m heard of
+again, and this time I could put in to some advantage in revising the
+text and (if it were thought desirable) writing prefaces.  I do not know
+how many of them might be thought desirable.  I have written a paper on
+_Treasure Island_, which is to appear shortly.  _Master of Ballantrae_—I
+have one drafted.  _The Wrecker_ is quite sufficiently done already with
+the last chapter, but I suppose an historic introduction to _David
+Balfour_ is quite unavoidable.  _Prince Otto_ I don’t think I could say
+anything about, and _Black Arrow_ don’t want to.  But it is probable I
+could say something to the volume of _Travels_.  In the verse business I
+can do just what I like better than anything else, and extend
+_Underwoods_ with a lot of unpublished stuff.  _Apropos_, if I were to
+get printed off a very few poems which are somewhat too intimate for the
+public, could you get them run up in some luxuous manner, so that fools
+might be induced to buy them in just a sufficient quantity to pay
+expenses and the thing remain still in a manner private?  We could supply
+photographs of the illustrations—and the poems are of Vailima and the
+family—I should much like to get this done as a surprise for Fanny.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO H. B. BAILDON
+
+
+                                        _Vailima_, _January_ 15_th_, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR BAILDON,—Last mail brought your book and its Dedication.
+‘Frederick Street and the gardens, and the short-lived Jack o’ Lantern,’
+are again with me—and the note of the east wind, and Froebel’s voice, and
+the smell of soup in Thomson’s stair.  Truly, you had no need to put
+yourself under the protection of any other saint, were that saint our
+Tamate himself!  Yourself were enough, and yourself coming with so rich a
+sheaf.
+
+For what is this that you say about the Muses?  They have certainly never
+better inspired you than in ‘Jael and Sisera,’ and ‘Herodias and John the
+Baptist,’ good stout poems, fiery and sound.  ‘’Tis but a mask and behind
+it chuckles the God of the Garden,’ I shall never forget.  By the by, an
+error of the press, page 49, line 4, ‘No infant’s lesson are the ways of
+God.’  _The_ is dropped.
+
+And this reminds me you have a bad habit which is to be comminated in my
+theory of letters.  Same page, two lines lower: ‘But the vulture’s track’
+is surely as fine to the ear as ‘But vulture’s track,’ and this latter
+version has a dreadful baldness.  The reader goes on with a sense of
+impoverishment, of unnecessary sacrifice; he has been robbed by footpads,
+and goes scouting for his lost article!  Again, in the second Epode,
+these fine verses would surely sound much finer if they began, ‘As a
+hardy climber who has set his heart,’ than with the jejune ‘As hardy
+climber.’  I do not know why you permit yourself this license with
+grammar; you show, in so many pages, that you are superior to the paltry
+sense of rhythm which usually dictates it—as though some poetaster had
+been suffered to correct the poet’s text.  By the way, I confess to a
+heartfelt weakness for _Auriculas_.—Believe me the very grateful and
+characteristic pick-thank, but still sincere and affectionate,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO W. H. LOW.
+
+
+                                          _Vailima_, _January_ 15th, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR LOW,—. . . Pray you, stoop your proud head, and sell yourself to
+some Jew magazine, and make the visit out.  I assure you, this is the
+spot for a sculptor or painter.  This, and no other—I don’t say to stay
+there, but to come once and get the living colour into them.  I am used
+to it; I do not notice it; rather prefer my grey, freezing recollections
+of Scotland; but there it is, and every morning is a thing to give thanks
+for, and every night another—bar when it rains, of course.
+
+About _The Wrecker_—rather late days, and I still suspect I had somehow
+offended you; however, all’s well that ends well, and I am glad I am
+forgiven—did you not fail to appreciate the attitude of Dodd?  He was a
+fizzle and a stick, he knew it, he knew nothing else, and there is an
+undercurrent of bitterness in him.  And then the problem that Pinkerton
+laid down: why the artist can _do nothing else_? is one that continually
+exercises myself.  He cannot: granted.  But Scott could.  And Montaigne.
+And Julius Cæsar.  And many more.  And why can’t R. L. S.?  Does it not
+amaze you?  It does me.  I think of the Renaissance fellows, and their
+all-round human sufficiency, and compare it with the ineffable smallness
+of the field in which we labour and in which we do so little.  I think
+_David Balfour_ a nice little book, and very artistic, and just the thing
+to occupy the leisure of a busy man; but for the top flower of a man’s
+life it seems to me inadequate.  Small is the word; it is a small age,
+and I am of it.  I could have wished to be otherwise busy in this world.
+I ought to have been able to build lighthouses and write _David Balfours_
+too.  _Hinc illae lacrymae_.  I take my own case as most handy, but it is
+as illustrative of my quarrel with the age.  We take all these pains, and
+we don’t do as well as Michael Angelo or Leonardo, or even Fielding, who
+was an active magistrate, or Richardson, who was a busy bookseller.
+_J’ai honte pour nous_; my ears burn.
+
+I am amazed at the effect which this Chicago exhibition has produced upon
+you and others.  It set Mrs. Fairchild literally mad—to judge by her
+letters.  And I wish I had seen anything so influential.  I suppose there
+was an aura, a halo, some sort of effulgency about the place; for here I
+find you louder than the rest.  Well, it may be there is a time coming;
+and I wonder, when it comes, whether it will be a time of little,
+exclusive, one-eyed rascals like you and me, or parties of the old stamp
+who can paint and fight, and write and keep books of double entry, and
+sculp, and scalp.  It might be.  You have a lot of stuff in the kettle,
+and a great deal of it Celtic.  I have changed my mind progressively
+about England, practically the whole of Scotland is Celtic, and the
+western half of England, and all Ireland, and the Celtic blood makes a
+rare blend for art.  If it is stiffened up with Latin blood, you get the
+French.  We were less lucky: we had only Scandinavians, themselves
+decidedly artistic, and the Low-German lot.  However, that is a good
+starting-point, and with all the other elements in your crucible, it may
+come to something great very easily.  I wish you would hurry up and let
+me see it.  Here is a long while I have been waiting for something _good_
+in art; and what have I seen?  Zola’s _Débâcle_ and a few of Kipling’s
+tales.  Are you a reader of Barbey d’Aurevilly?  He is a never-failing
+source of pleasure to me, for my sins, I suppose.  What a work is the
+_Rideau Cramoisi_! and _L’Ensorcelée_! and _Le Chevalier Des Touches_!
+
+This is degenerating into mere twaddle.  So please remember us all most
+kindly to Mrs. Low, and believe me ever yours,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+_P.S._—Were all your privateers voiceless in the war of 1812?  Did _no
+one_ of them write memoirs?  I shall have to do my privateer from chic,
+if you can’t help me. {320}  My application to Scribner has been quite in
+vain.  See if you can get hold of some historic sharp in the club, and
+tap him; they must some of them have written memoirs or notes of some
+sort; perhaps still unprinted; if that be so, get them copied for me.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO H. B. BAILDON
+
+
+                                        _Vailima_, _January_ 30_th_, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR BAILDON,—‘Call not blessed.’—Yes, if I could die just now, or say
+in half a year, I should have had a splendid time of it on the whole.
+But it gets a little stale, and my work will begin to senesce; and
+parties to shy bricks at me; and now it begins to look as if I should
+survive to see myself impotent and forgotten.  It’s a pity suicide is not
+thought the ticket in the best circles.
+
+But your letter goes on to congratulate me on having done the one thing I
+am a little sorry for; a little—not much—for my father himself lived to
+think that I had been wiser than he.  But the cream of the jest is that I
+have lived to change my mind; and think that he was wiser than I.  Had I
+been an engineer, and literature my amusement, it would have been better
+perhaps.  I pulled it off, of course, I won the wager, and it is pleasant
+while it lasts; but how long will it last?  I don’t know, say the Bells
+of Old Bow.
+
+All of which goes to show that nobody is quite sane in judging himself.
+Truly, had I given way and gone in for engineering, I should be dead by
+now.  Well, the gods know best.
+
+. . . I hope you got my letter about the _Rescue_.—Adieu,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+True for you about the benefit: except by kisses, jests, song, _et hoc
+genus omne_, man _cannot_ convey benefit to another.  The universal
+benefactor has been there before him.
+
+
+
+TO J. H. BATES
+
+
+                                 _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _March_ 25_th_, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR MR. JOE H. BATES,—I shall have the greatest pleasure in acceding
+to your complimentary request.  I shall think it an honour to be
+associated with your chapter, and I need not remind you (for you have
+said it yourself) how much depends upon your own exertions whether to
+make it to me a real honour or only a derision.  This is to let you know
+that I accept the position that you have seriously offered to me in a
+quite serious spirit.  I need scarce tell you that I shall always be
+pleased to receive reports of your proceedings; and if I do not always
+acknowledge them, you are to remember that I am a man very much occupied
+otherwise, and not at all to suppose that I have lost interest in my
+chapter.
+
+In this world, which (as you justly say) is so full of sorrow and
+suffering, it will always please me to remember that my name is connected
+with some efforts after alleviation, nor less so with purposes of
+innocent recreation which, after all, are the only certain means at our
+disposal for bettering human life.
+
+With kind regards, to yourself, to Mr. L. C. Congdon, to E. M. G. Bates,
+and to Mr. Edward Hugh Higlee Bates, and the heartiest wishes for the
+future success of the chapter, believe me, yours cordially,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO WILLIAM ARCHER
+
+
+                                 _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _March_ 27_th_, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR ARCHER,—Many thanks for your _Theatrical World_.  Do you know, it
+strikes me as being really very good?  I have not yet read much of it,
+but so far as I have looked, there is not a dull and not an empty page in
+it.  Hazlitt, whom you must often have thought of, would have been
+pleased.  Come to think of it, I shall put this book upon the Hazlitt
+shelf.  You have acquired a manner that I can only call august;
+otherwise, I should have to call it such amazing impudence.  The _Bauble
+Shop_ and _Becket_ are examples of what I mean.  But it ‘sets you weel.’
+
+Marjorie Fleming I have known, as you surmise, for long.  She was
+possibly—no, I take back possibly—she was one of the greatest works of
+God.  Your note about the resemblance of her verses to mine gave me great
+joy, though it only proved me a plagiarist.  By the by, was it not over
+_The Child’s Garden of Verses_ that we first scraped acquaintance?  I am
+sorry indeed to hear that my esteemed correspondent Tomarcher has such
+poor taste in literature. {323}  I fear he cannot have inherited this
+trait from his dear papa.  Indeed, I may say I know it, for I remember
+the energy of papa’s disapproval when the work passed through his hands
+on its way to a second birth, which none regrets more than myself.  It is
+an odd fact, or perhaps a very natural one; I find few greater pleasures
+than reading my own works, but I never, O I never read _The Black Arrow_.
+In that country Tomarcher reigns supreme.  Well, and after all, if
+Tomarcher likes it, it has not been written in vain.
+
+We have just now a curious breath from Europe.  A young fellow just
+beginning letters, and no fool, turned up here with a letter of
+introduction in the well-known blue ink and decorative hieroglyphs of
+George Meredith.  His name may be known to you.  It is Sidney Lysaght.
+He is staying with us but a day or two, and it is strange to me and not
+unpleasant to hear all the names, old and new, come up again.  But oddly
+the new are so much more in number.  If I revisited the glimpses of the
+moon on your side of the ocean, I should know comparatively few of them.
+
+My amanuensis deserts me—I should have said you, for yours is the loss,
+my script having lost all bond with humanity.  One touch of nature makes
+the whole world kin: that nobody can read my hand.  It is a humiliating
+circumstance that thus evens us with printers!
+
+You must sometimes think it strange—or perhaps it is only I that should
+so think it—to be following the old round, in the gas lamps and the
+crowded theatres, when I am away here in the tropical forest and the vast
+silences!
+
+My dear Archer, my wife joins me in the best wishes to yourself and Mrs.
+Archer, not forgetting Tom; and I am yours very cordially,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO W. B. YEATS
+
+
+                                     _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _April_ 14, 1894.
+
+DEAR SIR,—Long since when I was a boy I remember the emotions with which
+I repeated Swinburne’s poems and ballads.  Some ten years ago, a similar
+spell was cast upon me by Meredith’s _Love in the Valley_; the stanzas
+beginning ‘When her mother tends her’ haunted me and made me drunk like
+wine; and I remember waking with them all the echoes of the hills about
+Hyères.  It may interest you to hear that I have a third time fallen in
+slavery: this is to your poem called the _Lake Isle of Innisfrae_.  It is
+so quaint and airy, simple, artful, and eloquent to the heart—but I seek
+words in vain.  Enough that ‘always night and day I hear lake water
+lapping with low sounds on the shore,’ and am, yours gratefully,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO GEORGE MEREDITH
+
+
+                                 _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _April_ 17_th_, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR MEREDITH,—Many good things have the gods sent to me of late.
+First of all there was a letter from you by the kind hand of Mariette, if
+she is not too great a lady to be remembered in such a style; and then
+there came one Lysaght with a charming note of introduction in the
+well-known hand itself.  We had but a few days of him, and liked him
+well.  There was a sort of geniality and inward fire about him at which I
+warmed my hands.  It is long since I have seen a young man who has left
+in me such a favourable impression; and I find myself telling myself, ‘O,
+I must tell this to Lysaght,’ or, ‘This will interest him,’ in a manner
+very unusual after so brief an acquaintance.  The whole of my family
+shared in this favourable impression, and my halls have re-echoed ever
+since, I am sure he will be amused to know, with _Widdicombe Fair_.
+
+He will have told you doubtless more of my news than I could tell you
+myself; he has your European perspective, a thing long lost to me.  I
+heard with a great deal of interest the news of Box Hill.  And so I
+understand it is to be enclosed!  Allow me to remark, that seems a far
+more barbaric trait of manners than the most barbarous of ours.  We
+content ourselves with cutting off an occasional head.
+
+I hear we may soon expect the _Amazing Marriage_.  You know how long, and
+with how much curiosity, I have looked forward to the book.  Now, in so
+far as you have adhered to your intention, Gower Woodsere will be a
+family portrait, age twenty-five, of the highly respectable and slightly
+influential and fairly aged _Tusitala_.  You have not known that
+gentleman; console yourself, he is not worth knowing.  At the same time,
+my dear Meredith, he is very sincerely yours—for what he is worth, for
+the memories of old times, and in the expectation of many pleasures still
+to come.  I suppose we shall never see each other again; flitting youths
+of the Lysaght species may occasionally cover these unconscionable
+leagues and bear greetings to and fro.  But we ourselves must be content
+to converse on an occasional sheet of notepaper, and I shall never see
+whether you have grown older, and you shall never deplore that Gower
+Woodsere should have declined into the pantaloon _Tusitala_.  It is
+perhaps better so.  Let us continue to see each other as we were, and
+accept, my dear Meredith, my love and respect.
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+_P.S._—My wife joins me in the kindest messages to yourself and Mariette.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                                             [_Vailima_], _April_ 17, ’94.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—_St. Ives_ is now well on its way into the second
+volume.  There remains no mortal doubt that it will reach the three
+volume standard.
+
+I am very anxious that you should send me—
+
+1_st_.  _Tom and Jerry_, a cheap edition.
+
+2nd.  The book by Ashton—the _Dawn of the Century_, I think it was
+called—which Colvin sent me, and which has miscarried, and
+
+3rd.  If it is possible, a file of the _Edinburgh Courant_ for the years
+1811, 1812, 1813, or 1814.  I should not care for a whole year.  If it
+were possible to find me three months, winter months by preference, it
+would do my business not only for _St. Ives_, but for the _Justice-Clerk_
+as well.  Suppose this to be impossible, perhaps I could get the loan of
+it from somebody; or perhaps it would be possible to have some one read a
+file for me and make notes.  This would be extremely bad, as unhappily
+one man’s food is another man’s poison, and the reader would probably
+leave out everything I should choose.  But if you are reduced to that,
+you might mention to the man who is to read for me that balloon
+ascensions are in the order of the day.
+
+4th.  It might be as well to get a book on balloon ascension,
+particularly in the early part of the century.
+
+                                . . . . .
+
+III.  At last this book has come from Scribner, and, alas!  I have the
+first six or seven chapters of _St. Ives_ to recast entirely.  Who could
+foresee that they clothed the French prisoners in yellow?  But that one
+fatal fact—and also that they shaved them twice a week—damns the whole
+beginning.  If it had been sent in time, it would have saved me a deal of
+trouble. . . .
+
+I have had a long letter from Dr. Scott Dalgleish, 25 Mayfield Terrace,
+asking me to put my name down to the Ballantyne Memorial Committee.  I
+have sent him a pretty sharp answer in favour of cutting down the
+memorial and giving more to the widow and children.  If there is to be
+any foolery in the way of statues or other trash, please send them a
+guinea; but if they are going to take my advice and put up a simple
+tablet with a few heartfelt words, and really devote the bulk of the
+subscriptions to the wife and family, I will go to the length of twenty
+pounds, if you will allow me (and if the case of the family be at all
+urgent), and at least I direct you to send ten pounds.  I suppose you had
+better see Scott Dalgleish himself on the matter.  I take the opportunity
+here to warn you that my head is simply spinning with a multitude of
+affairs, and I shall probably forget a half of my business at last.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO MRS. SITWELL
+
+
+                                                  _Vailima_, _April_ 1894.
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND,—I have at last got some photographs, and hasten to send
+you, as you asked, a portrait of Tusitala.  He is a strange person; not
+so lean, say experts, but infinitely battered; mighty active again on the
+whole; going up and down our break-neck road at all hours of the day and
+night on horseback; holding meetings with all manner of chiefs; quite a
+political personage—God save the mark!—in a small way, but at heart very
+conscious of the inevitable flat failure that awaits every one.  I shall
+never do a better book than _Catriona_, that is my high-water mark, and
+the trouble of production increases on me at a great rate—and mighty
+anxious about how I am to leave my family: an elderly man, with elderly
+preoccupations, whom I should be ashamed to show you for your old friend;
+but not a hope of my dying soon and cleanly, and ‘winning off the stage.’
+Rather I am daily better in physical health.  I shall have to see this
+business out, after all; and I think, in that case, they should have—they
+might have—spared me all my ill-health this decade past, if it were not
+to unbar the doors.  I have no taste for old age, and my nose is to be
+rubbed in it in spite of my face.  I was meant to die young, and the gods
+do not love me.
+
+This is very like an epitaph, bar the handwriting, which is anything but
+monumental, and I dare say I had better stop.  Fanny is down at her own
+cottage planting or deplanting or replanting, I know not which, and she
+will not be home till dinner, by which time the mail will be all closed,
+else she would join me in all good messages and remembrances of love.  I
+hope you will congratulate Burne Jones from me on his baronetcy.  I
+cannot make out to be anything but raspingly, harrowingly sad; so I will
+close, and not affect levity which I cannot feel.  Do not altogether
+forget me; keep a corner of your memory for the exile
+
+                                                                    LOUIS.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                                                  [_Vailima_, _May_ 1894.]
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—My dear fellow, I wish to assure you of the greatness of
+the pleasure that this Edinburgh Edition gives me.  I suppose it was your
+idea to give it that name.  No other would have affected me in the same
+manner.  Do you remember, how many years ago—I would be afraid to hazard
+a guess—one night when I communicated to you certain intimations of early
+death and aspirations after fame?  I was particularly maudlin; and my
+remorse the next morning on a review of my folly has written the matter
+very deeply in my mind; from yours it may easily have fled.  If any one
+at that moment could have shown me the Edinburgh Edition, I suppose I
+should have died.  It is with gratitude and wonder that I consider ‘the
+way in which I have been led.’  Could a more preposterous idea have
+occurred to us in those days when we used to search our pockets for
+coppers, too often in vain, and combine forces to produce the threepence
+necessary for two glasses of beer, or wander down the Lothian Road
+without any, than that I should be strong and well at the age of
+forty-three in the island of Upolu, and that you should be at home
+bringing out the Edinburgh Edition?  If it had been possible, I should
+almost have preferred the Lothian Road Edition, say, with a picture of
+the old Dutch smuggler on the covers.  I have now something heavy on my
+mind.  I had always a great sense of kinship with poor Robert
+Fergusson—so clever a boy, so wild, of such a mixed strain, so
+unfortunate, born in the same town with me, and, as I always felt, rather
+by express intimation than from evidence, so like myself.  Now the
+injustice with which the one Robert is rewarded and the other left out in
+the cold sits heavy on me, and I wish you could think of some way in
+which I could do honour to my unfortunate namesake.  Do you think it
+would look like affectation to dedicate the whole edition to his memory?
+I think it would.  The sentiment which would dictate it to me is too
+abstruse; and besides, I think my wife is the proper person to receive
+the dedication of my life’s work.  At the same time, it is very odd—it
+really looks like the transmigration of souls—I feel that I must do
+something for Fergusson; Burns has been before me with the gravestone.
+It occurs to me you might take a walk down the Canongate and see in what
+condition the stone is.  If it be at all uncared for, we might repair it,
+and perhaps add a few words of inscription.
+
+I must tell you, what I just remembered in a flash as I was walking about
+dictating this letter—there was in the original plan of the _Master of
+Ballantrae_ a sort of introduction describing my arrival in Edinburgh on
+a visit to yourself and your placing in my hands the papers of the story.
+I actually wrote it, and then condemned the idea—as being a little too
+like Scott, I suppose.  Now I must really find the MS. and try to finish
+it for the E. E.  It will give you, what I should so much like you to
+have, another corner of your own in that lofty monument.
+
+Suppose we do what I have proposed about Fergusson’s monument, I wonder
+if an inscription like this would look arrogant—
+
+  This stone originally erected
+  by Robert Burns has been
+  repaired at the
+  charges of Robert Louis Stevenson,
+  and is by him re-dedicated to
+  the memory of Robert Fergusson,
+  as the gift of one Edinburgh
+  lad to another.
+
+In spacing this inscription I would detach the names of Fergusson and
+Burns, but leave mine in the text.
+
+Or would that look like sham modesty, and is it better to bring out the
+three Roberts?
+
+
+
+TO R. A. M. STEVENSON
+
+
+                                                   _Vailima_, _June_ 1894.
+
+MY DEAR BOB,—I must make out a letter this mail or perish in the attempt.
+All the same, I am deeply stupid, in bed with a cold, deprived of my
+amanuensis, and conscious of the wish but not the furnished will.  You
+may be interested to hear how the family inquiries go.  It is now quite
+certain that we are a second-rate lot, and came out of Cunningham or
+Clydesdale, therefore _British_ folk; so that you are Cymry on both
+sides, and I Cymry and Pict.  We may have fought with King Arthur and
+known Merlin.  The first of the family, Stevenson of Stevenson, was quite
+a great party, and dates back to the wars of Edward First.  The last male
+heir of Stevenson of Stevenson died 1670, £220, 10s. to the bad, from
+drink.  About the same time the Stevensons, who were mostly in Cunningham
+before, crop up suddenly in the parish of Neilston, over the border in
+Renfrewshire.  Of course, they may have been there before, but there is
+no word of them in that parish till 1675 in any extracts I have.  Our
+first traceable ancestor was a tenant farmer of Muir of Cauldwells—James
+in Nether-Carsewell.  Presently two families of maltmen are found in
+Glasgow, both, by re-duplicated proofs, related to James (the son of
+James) in Nether Carsewell.  We descend by his second marriage from
+Robert; one of these died 1733.  It is not very romantic up to now, but
+has interested me surprisingly to fish out, always hoping for more—and
+occasionally getting at least a little clearness and confirmation.  But
+the earliest date, 1655, apparently the marriage of James in Nether
+Carsewell, cannot as yet be pushed back.  From which of any number of
+dozen little families in Cunningham we should derive, God knows!  Of
+course, it doesn’t matter a hundred years hence, an argument fatal to all
+human enterprise, industry, or pleasure.  And to me it will be a deadly
+disappointment if I cannot roll this stone away!  One generation further
+might be nothing, but it is my present object of desire, and we are so
+near it!  There is a man in the same parish called Constantine; if I
+could only trace to him, I could take you far afield by that one talisman
+of the strange Christian name of Constantine.  But no such luck!  And I
+kind of fear we shall stick at James.
+
+So much, though all inchoate, I trouble you with, knowing that you, at
+least, must take an interest in it.  So much is certain of that strange
+Celtic descent, that the past has an interest for it apparently
+gratuitous, but fiercely strong.  I wish to trace my ancestors a thousand
+years, if I trace them by gallowses.  It is not love, not pride, not
+admiration; it is an expansion of the identity, intimately pleasing, and
+wholly uncritical; I can expend myself in the person of an inglorious
+ancestor with perfect comfort; or a disgraced, if I could find one.  I
+suppose, perhaps, it is more to me who am childless, and refrain with a
+certain shock from looking forwards.  But, I am sure, in the solid
+grounds of race, that you have it also in some degree. {332}
+
+  I.  JAMES, a tenant of the Muirs, in Nether-Carsewell, Neilston,
+  married (1665?) Jean Keir.
+
+  II.  ROBERT (Maltman in Glasgow), died 1733, married 1st; married
+  second, Elizabeth Cumming.
+
+  [Of ROBERT and 1st marriage: William (Maltman in Glasgow), of him:
+  ROBERT, MARION and ELIZABETH]
+
+  III. ROBERT [of Robert and Elizabeth Cumming] (Maltman in Glasgow),
+  married Margaret Fulton (had a large family).
+
+  IV. ALAN, West India merchant, married Jean Lillie.
+
+  V.  ROBERT, married Jean Smith.
+
+  VI.  ALAN.—Margaret Jones.
+
+  VII.  R. A. M. S.
+
+  NOTE.—Between 1730–1766 flourished in Glasgow Alan the Coppersmith, who
+  acts as a kind of a pin to the whole Stevenson system there.  He was
+  caution to Robert the Second’s will, and to William’s will, and to the
+  will of a John, another maltman.
+
+Enough genealogy.  I do not know if you will be able to read my hand.
+Unhappily, Belle, who is my amanuensis, is out of the way on other
+affairs, and I have to make the unwelcome effort.  (O this is beautiful,
+I am quite pleased with myself.)  Graham has just arrived last night (my
+mother is coming by the other steamer in three days), and has told me of
+your meeting, and he said you looked a little older than I did; so that I
+suppose we keep step fairly on the downward side of the hill.  He thought
+you looked harassed, and I could imagine that too.  I sometimes feel
+harassed.  I have a great family here about me, a great anxiety.  The
+loss (to use my grandfather’s expression), the ‘loss’ of our family is
+that we are disbelievers in the morrow—perhaps I should say, rather, in
+next year.  The future is _always_ black to us; it was to Robert
+Stevenson; to Thomas; I suspect to Alan; to R. A. M. S. it was so almost
+to his ruin in youth; to R. L. S., who had a hard hopeful strain in him
+from his mother, it was not so much so once, but becomes daily more so.
+Daily so much more so, that I have a painful difficulty in believing I
+can ever finish another book, or that the public will ever read it.
+
+I have so huge a desire to know exactly what you are doing, that I
+suppose I should tell you what I am doing by way of an example.  I have a
+room now, a part of the twelve-foot verandah sparred in, at the most
+inaccessible end of the house.  Daily I see the sunrise out of my bed,
+which I still value as a tonic, a perpetual tuning fork, a look of God’s
+face once in the day.  At six my breakfast comes up to me here, and I
+work till eleven.  If I am quite well, I sometimes go out and bathe in
+the river before lunch, twelve.  In the afternoon I generally work again,
+now alone drafting, now with Belle dictating.  Dinner is at six, and I am
+often in bed by eight.  This is supposing me to stay at home.  But I must
+often be away, sometimes all day long, sometimes till twelve, one, or two
+at night, when you might see me coming home to the sleeping house,
+sometimes in a trackless darkness, sometimes with a glorious tropic moon,
+everything drenched with dew—unsaddling and creeping to bed; and you
+would no longer be surprised that I live out in this country, and not in
+Bournemouth—in bed.
+
+My great recent interruptions have (as you know) come from politics; not
+much in my line, you will say.  But it is impossible to live here and not
+feel very sorely the consequences of the horrid white mismanagement.  I
+tried standing by and looking on, and it became too much for me.  They
+are such illogical fools; a logical fool in an office, with a lot of red
+tape, is conceivable.  Furthermore, he is as much as we have any reason
+to expect of officials—a thoroughly common-place, unintellectual lot.
+But these people are wholly on wires; laying their ears down, skimming
+away, pausing as though shot, and presto! full spread on the other tack.
+I observe in the official class mostly an insane jealousy of the smallest
+kind, as compared to which the artist’s is of a grave, modest
+character—the actor’s, even; a desire to extend his little authority, and
+to relish it like a glass of wine, that is _impayable_.  Sometimes, when
+I see one of these little kings strutting over one of his
+victories—wholly illegal, perhaps, and certain to be reversed to his
+shame if his superiors ever heard of it—I could weep.  The strange thing
+is that they _have nothing else_.  I auscultate them in vain; no real
+sense of duty, no real comprehension, no real attempt to comprehend, no
+wish for information—you cannot offend one of them more bitterly than by
+offering information, though it is certain that you have _more_, and
+obvious that you have _other_, information than they have; and talking of
+policy, they could not play a better stroke than by listening to you, and
+it need by no means influence their action.  _Tenez_, you know what a
+French post office or railway official is?  That is the diplomatic card
+to the life.  Dickens is not in it; caricature fails.
+
+All this keeps me from my work, and gives me the unpleasant side of the
+world.  When your letters are disbelieved it makes you angry, and that is
+rot; and I wish I could keep out of it with all my soul.  But I have just
+got into it again, and farewell peace!
+
+My work goes along but slowly.  I have got to a crossing place, I
+suppose; the present book, _Saint Ives_, is nothing; it is in no style in
+particular, a tissue of adventures, the central character not very well
+done, no philosophic pith under the yarn; and, in short, if people will
+read it, that’s all I ask; and if they won’t, damn them!  I like doing it
+though; and if you ask me why!—after that I am on _Weir of Hermiston_ and
+_Heathercat_, two Scotch stories, which will either be something
+different, or I shall have failed.  The first is generally designed, and
+is a private story of two or three characters in a very grim vein.  The
+second—alas! the thought—is an attempt at a real historical novel, to
+present a whole field of time; the race—our own race—the west land and
+Clydesdale blue bonnets, under the influence of their last trial, when
+they got to a pitch of organisation in madness that no other peasantry
+has ever made an offer at.  I was going to call it _The Killing Time_,
+but this man Crockett has forestalled me in that.  Well, it’ll be a big
+smash if I fail in it; but a gallant attempt.  All my weary reading as a
+boy, which you remember well enough, will come to bear on it; and if my
+mind will keep up to the point it was in a while back, perhaps I can pull
+it through.
+
+For two months past, Fanny, Belle, Austin (her child), and I have been
+alone; but yesterday, as I mentioned, Graham Balfour arrived, and on
+Wednesday my mother and Lloyd will make up the party to its full
+strength.  I wish you could drop in for a month or a week, or two hours.
+That is my chief want.  On the whole, it is an unexpectedly pleasant
+corner I have dropped into for an end of it, which I could scarcely have
+foreseen from Wilson’s shop, or the Princes Street Gardens, or the
+Portobello Road.  Still, I would like to hear what my _alter ego_ thought
+of it; and I would sometimes like to have my old _maître ès arts_ express
+an opinion on what I do.  I put this very tamely, being on the whole a
+quiet elderly man; but it is a strong passion with me, though
+intermittent.  Now, try to follow my example and tell me something about
+yourself, Louisa, the Bab, and your work; and kindly send me some
+specimens of what you’re about.  I have only seen one thing by you, about
+Notre Dame in the _Westminster_ or _St. James’s_, since I left England,
+now I suppose six years ago.
+
+I have looked this trash over, and it is not at all the letter I wanted
+to write—not truck about officials, ancestors, and the like
+rancidness—but you have to let your pen go in its own broken-down gait,
+like an old butcher’s pony, stop when it pleases, and go on again as it
+will.—Ever, my dear Bob, your affectionate cousin,
+
+                                                          R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+                                            _Vailima_, _July_ 7_th_, 1894.
+
+DEAR HENRY JAMES,—I am going to try and dictate to you a letter or a
+note, and begin the same without any spark of hope, my mind being
+entirely in abeyance.  This malady is very bitter on the literary man.  I
+have had it now coming on for a month, and it seems to get worse instead
+of better.  If it should prove to be softening of the brain, a melancholy
+interest will attach to the present document.  I heard a great deal about
+you from my mother and Graham Balfour; the latter declares that you could
+take a First in any Samoan subject.  If that be so, I should like to hear
+you on the theory of the constitution.  Also to consult you on the force
+of the particles _o lo ’o_ and _ua_, which are the subject of a dispute
+among local pundits.  You might, if you ever answer this, give me your
+opinion on the origin of the Samoan race, just to complete the favour.
+
+They both say that you are looking well, and I suppose I may conclude
+from that that you are feeling passably.  I wish I was.  Do not suppose
+from this that I am ill in body; it is the numskull that I complain of.
+And when that is wrong, as you must be very keenly aware, you begin every
+day with a smarting disappointment, which is not good for the temper.  I
+am in one of the humours when a man wonders how any one can be such an
+ass as to embrace the profession of letters, and not get apprenticed to a
+barber or keep a baked-potato stall.  But I have no doubt in the course
+of a week, or perhaps to-morrow, things will look better.
+
+We have at present in port the model warship of Great Britain.  She is
+called the _Curaçoa_, and has the nicest set of officers and men
+conceivable.  They, the officers, are all very intimate with us, and the
+front verandah is known as the Curaçoa Club, and the road up to Vailima
+is known as the Curaçoa Track.  It was rather a surprise to me; many
+naval officers have I known, and somehow had not learned to think
+entirely well of them, and perhaps sometimes ask myself a little uneasily
+how that kind of men could do great actions? and behold! the answer comes
+to me, and I see a ship that I would guarantee to go anywhere it was
+possible for men to go, and accomplish anything it was permitted man to
+attempt.  I had a cruise on board of her not long ago to Manu’a, and was
+delighted.  The goodwill of all on board; the grim playfulness of — {337}
+quarters, with the wounded falling down at the word; the ambulances
+hastening up and carrying them away; the Captain suddenly crying, ‘Fire
+in the ward-room!’ and the squad hastening forward with the hose; and,
+last and most curious spectacle of all, all the men in their
+dust-coloured fatigue clothes, at a note of the bugle, falling
+simultaneously flat on deck, and the ship proceeding with its prostrate
+crew—_quasi_ to ram an enemy; our dinner at night in a wild open
+anchorage, the ship rolling almost to her gunwales, and showing us
+alternately her bulwarks up in the sky, and then the wild broken cliffy
+palm-crested shores of the island with the surf thundering and leaping
+close aboard.  We had the ward-room mess on deck, lit by pink wax tapers,
+everybody, of course, in uniform but myself, and the first lieutenant
+(who is a rheumaticky body) wrapped in a boat cloak.  Gradually the
+sunset faded out, the island disappeared from the eye, though it remained
+menacingly present to the ear with the voice of the surf; and then the
+captain turned on the searchlight and gave us the coast, the beach, the
+trees, the native houses, and the cliffs by glimpses of daylight, a kind
+of deliberate lightning.  About which time, I suppose, we must have come
+as far as the dessert, and were probably drinking our first glass of port
+to Her Majesty.  We stayed two days at the island, and had, in addition,
+a very picturesque snapshot at the native life.  The three islands of
+Manu’a are independent, and are ruled over by a little slip of a
+half-caste girl about twenty, who sits all day in a pink gown, in a
+little white European house with about a quarter of an acre of roses in
+front of it, looking at the palm-trees on the village street, and
+listening to the surf.  This, so far as I could discover, was all she had
+to do.  ‘This is a very dull place,’ she said.  It appears she could go
+to no other village for fear of raising the jealousy of her own people in
+the capital.  And as for going about ‘tafatafaoing,’ as we say here, its
+cost was too enormous.  A strong able-bodied native must walk in front of
+her and blow the conch shell continuously from the moment she leaves one
+house until the moment she enters another.  Did you ever blow the conch
+shell?  I presume not; but the sweat literally hailed off that man, and I
+expected every moment to see him burst a blood-vessel.  We were
+entertained to kava in the guest-house with some very original features.
+The young men who run for the _kava_ have a right to misconduct
+themselves _ad libitum_ on the way back; and though they were told to
+restrain themselves on the occasion of our visit, there was a strange
+hurly-burly at their return, when they came beating the trees and the
+posts of the houses, leaping, shouting, and yelling like Bacchants.
+
+I tasted on that occasion what it is to be great.  My name was called
+next after the captain’s, and several chiefs (a thing quite new to me,
+and not at all Samoan practice) drank to me by name.
+
+And now, if you are not sick of the _Curaçoa_ and Manu’a, I am, at least
+on paper.  And I decline any longer to give you examples of how not to
+write.
+
+By the by, you sent me long ago a work by Anatole France, which I confess
+I did not _taste_.  Since then I have made the acquaintance of the _Abbé
+Coignard_, and have become a faithful adorer.  I don’t think a better
+book was ever written.
+
+And I have no idea what I have said, and I have no idea what I ought to
+have said, and I am a total ass, but my heart is in the right place, and
+I am, my dear Henry James, yours,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO MR. MARCEL SCHWOB
+
+
+                              _Vailima_, _Upolu_, _Samoa_, _July_ 7, 1894.
+
+DEAR MR. MARCEL SCHWOB,—Thank you for having remembered me in my exile.
+I have read _Mimes_ twice as a whole; and now, as I write, I am reading
+it again as it were by accident, and a piece at a time, my eye catching a
+word and travelling obediently on through the whole number.  It is a
+graceful book, essentially graceful, with its haunting agreeable
+melancholy, its pleasing savour of antiquity.  At the same time, by its
+merits, it shows itself rather as the promise of something else to come
+than a thing final in itself.  You have yet to give us—and I am expecting
+it with impatience—something of a larger gait; something daylit, not
+twilit; something with the colours of life, not the flat tints of a
+temple illumination; something that shall be _said_ with all the
+clearnesses and the trivialities of speech, not _sung_ like a
+semi-articulate lullaby.  It will not please yourself as well, when you
+come to give it us, but it will please others better.  It will be more of
+a whole, more worldly, more nourished, more commonplace—and not so
+pretty, perhaps not even so beautiful.  No man knows better than I that,
+as we go on in life, we must part from prettiness and the graces.  We but
+attain qualities to lose them; life is a series of farewells, even in
+art; even our proficiencies are deciduous and evanescent.  So here with
+these exquisite pieces the XVIIth, XVIIIth, and IVth of the present
+collection.  You will perhaps never excel them; I should think the
+‘Hermes,’ never.  Well, you will do something else, and of that I am in
+expectation.—Yours cordially,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO A. ST. GAUDENS
+
+
+                                       _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _July_ 8, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR ST. GAUDENS,—This is to tell you that the medallion has been at
+last triumphantly transported up the hill and placed over my smoking-room
+mantelpiece.  It is considered by everybody a first-rate but flattering
+portrait.  We have it in a very good light, which brings out the artistic
+merits of the god-like sculptor to great advantage.  As for my own
+opinion, I believe it to be a speaking likeness, and not flattered at
+all; possibly a little the reverse.  The verses (curse the rhyme) look
+remarkably well.
+
+Please do not longer delay, but send me an account for the expense of the
+gilt letters.  I was sorry indeed that they proved beyond the means of a
+small farmer.—Yours very sincerely,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
+
+
+                                               _Vailima_, _July_ 14, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR ADELAIDE,—. . . So, at last, you are going into mission work?
+where I think your heart always was.  You will like it in a way, but
+remember it is dreary long.  Do you know the story of the American tramp
+who was offered meals and a day’s wage to chop with the back of an axe on
+a fallen trunk.  ‘Damned if I can go on chopping when I can’t see the
+chips fly!’  You will never see the chips fly in mission work, never; and
+be sure you know it beforehand.  The work is one long dull
+disappointment, varied by acute revulsions; and those who are by nature
+courageous and cheerful and have grown old in experience, learn to rub
+their hands over infinitesimal successes.  However, as I really believe
+there is some good done in the long run—_gutta cavat lapidem non vi_ in
+this business—it is a useful and honourable career in which no one should
+be ashamed to embark.  Always remember the fable of the sun, the storm,
+and the traveller’s cloak.  Forget wholly and for ever all small
+pruderies, and remember that _you cannot change ancestral feelings of
+right and wrong without what is practically soul-murder_.  Barbarous as
+the customs may seem, always hear them with patience, always judge them
+with gentleness, always find in them some seed of good; see that you
+always develop them; remember that all you can do is to civilise the man
+in the line of his own civilisation, such as it is.  And never expect,
+never believe in, thaumaturgic conversions.  They may do very well for
+St. Paul; in the case of an Andaman islander they mean less than nothing.
+In fact, what you have to do is to teach the parents in the interests of
+their great-grandchildren.
+
+Now, my dear Adelaide, dismiss from your mind the least idea of fault
+upon your side; nothing is further from the fact.  I cannot forgive you,
+for I do not know your fault.  My own is plain enough, and the name of it
+is cold-hearted neglect; and you may busy yourself more usefully in
+trying to forgive me.  But ugly as my fault is, you must not suppose it
+to mean more than it does; it does not mean that we have at all forgotten
+you, that we have become at all indifferent to the thought of you.  See,
+in my life of Jenkin, a remark of his, very well expressed, on the
+friendships of men who do not write to each other.  I can honestly say
+that I have not changed to you in any way; though I have behaved thus
+ill, thus cruelly.  Evil is done by want of—well, principally by want of
+industry.  You can imagine what I would say (in a novel) of any one who
+had behaved as I have done.  _Deteriora sequor_.  And you must somehow
+manage to forgive your old friend; and if you will be so very good,
+continue to give us news of you, and let us share the knowledge of your
+adventures, sure that it will be always followed with interest—even if it
+is answered with the silence of ingratitude.  For I am not a fool; I know
+my faults, I know they are ineluctable, I know they are growing on me.  I
+know I may offend again, and I warn you of it.  But the next time I
+offend, tell me so plainly and frankly like a lady, and don’t lacerate my
+heart and bludgeon my vanity with imaginary faults of your own and purely
+gratuitous penitence.  I might suspect you of irony!
+
+We are all fairly well, though I have been off work and off—as you know
+very well—letter-writing.  Yet I have sometimes more than twenty letters,
+and sometimes more than thirty, going out each mail.  And Fanny has had a
+most distressing bronchitis for some time, which she is only now
+beginning to get over.  I have just been to see her; she is lying—though
+she had breakfast an hour ago, about seven—in her big cool,
+mosquito-proof room, ingloriously asleep.  As for me, you see that a doom
+has come upon me: I cannot make marks with a pen—witness ‘ingloriously’
+above; and my amanuensis not appearing so early in the day, for she is
+then immersed in household affairs, and I can hear her ‘steering the
+boys’ up and down the verandahs—you must decipher this unhappy letter for
+yourself and, I fully admit, with everything against you.  A letter
+should be always well written; how much more a letter of apology!
+Legibility is the politeness of men of letters, as punctuality of kings
+and beggars.  By the punctuality of my replies, and the beauty of my
+hand-writing, judge what a fine conscience I must have!
+
+Now, my dear gamekeeper, I must really draw to a close.  For I have much
+else to write before the mail goes out three days hence.  Fanny being
+asleep, it would not be conscientious to invent a message from her, so
+you must just imagine her sentiments.  I find I have not the heart to
+speak of your recent loss.  You remember perhaps, when my father died,
+you told me those ugly images of sickness, decline, and impaired reason,
+which then haunted me day and night, would pass away and be succeeded by
+things more happily characteristic.  I have found it so.  He now haunts
+me, strangely enough, in two guises; as a man of fifty, lying on a
+hillside and carving mottoes on a stick, strong and well; and as a
+younger man, running down the sands into the sea near North Berwick,
+myself—_ætat_. 11—somewhat horrified at finding him so beautiful when
+stripped!  I hand on your own advice to you in case you have forgotten
+it, as I know one is apt to do in seasons of bereavement.—Ever yours,
+with much love and sympathy,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO MRS. BAKER
+
+
+                                      _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _July_ 16, 1894.
+
+DEAR MRS. BAKER,—I am very much obliged to you for your letter and the
+enclosure from Mr. Skinner.  Mr. Skinner says he ‘thinks Mr. Stevenson
+must be a very kind man’; he little knows me.  But I am very sure of one
+thing, that you are a very kind woman.  I envy you—my amanuensis being
+called away, I continue in my own hand, or what is left of it—unusually
+legible, I am thankful to see—I envy you your beautiful choice of an
+employment.  There must be no regrets at least for a day so spent; and
+when the night falls you need ask no blessing on your work.
+
+‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these.’—Yours truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO J. M. BARRIE
+
+
+                                               _Vailima_, _July_ 13, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR BARRIE,—This is the last effort of an ulcerated conscience.  I
+have been so long owing you a letter, I have heard so much of you, fresh
+from the press, from my mother and Graham Balfour, that I have to write a
+letter no later than to-day, or perish in my shame.  But the deuce of it
+is, my dear fellow, that you write such a very good letter that I am
+ashamed to exhibit myself before my junior (which you are, after all) in
+the light of the dreary idiot I feel.  Understand that there will be
+nothing funny in the following pages.  If I can manage to be rationally
+coherent, I shall be more than satisfied.
+
+In the first place, I have had the extreme satisfaction to be shown that
+photograph of your mother.  It bears evident traces of the hand of an
+amateur.  How is it that amateurs invariably take better photographs than
+professionals?  I must qualify invariably.  My own negatives have always
+represented a province of chaos and old night in which you might dimly
+perceive fleecy spots of twilight, representing nothing; so that, if I am
+right in supposing the portrait of your mother to be yours, I must salute
+you as my superior.  Is that your mother’s breakfast?  Or is it only
+afternoon tea?  If the first, do let me recommend to Mrs. Barrie to add
+an egg to her ordinary.  Which, if you please, I will ask her to eat to
+the honour of her son, and I am sure she will live much longer for it, to
+enjoy his fresh successes.  I never in my life saw anything more
+deliciously characteristic.  I declare I can hear her speak.  I wonder my
+mother could resist the temptation of your proposed visit to Kirriemuir,
+which it was like your kindness to propose.  By the way, I was twice in
+Kirriemuir, I believe in the year ’71, when I was going on a visit to
+Glenogil.  It was Kirriemuir, was it not?  I have a distinct recollection
+of an inn at the end—I think the upper end—of an irregular open place or
+square, in which I always see your characters evolve.  But, indeed, I did
+not pay much attention; being all bent upon my visit to a shooting-box,
+where I should fish a real trout-stream, and I believe preserved.  I did,
+too, and it was a charming stream, clear as crystal, without a trace of
+peat—a strange thing in Scotland—and alive with trout; the name of it I
+cannot remember, it was something like the Queen’s River, and in some
+hazy way connected with memories of Mary Queen of Scots.  It formed an
+epoch in my life, being the end of all my trout-fishing.  I had always
+been accustomed to pause and very laboriously to kill every fish as I
+took it.  But in the Queen’s River I took so good a basket that I forgot
+these niceties; and when I sat down, in a hard rain shower, under a bank,
+to take my sandwiches and sherry, lo! and behold, there was the basketful
+of trouts still kicking in their agony.  I had a very unpleasant
+conversation with my conscience.  All that afternoon I persevered in
+fishing, brought home my basket in triumph, and sometime that night, ‘in
+the wee sma’ hours ayont the twal,’ I finally forswore the gentle craft
+of fishing.  I dare say your local knowledge may identify this historic
+river; I wish it could go farther and identify also that particular Free
+kirk in which I sat and groaned on Sunday.  While my hand is in I must
+tell you a story.  At that antique epoch you must not fall into the
+vulgar error that I was myself ancient.  I was, on the contrary, very
+young, very green, and (what you will appreciate, Mr. Barrie) very shy.
+There came one day to lunch at the house two very formidable old
+ladies—or one very formidable, and the other what you please—answering to
+the honoured and historic name of the Miss C— A—’s of Balnamoon.  At
+table I was exceedingly funny, and entertained the company with tales of
+geese and bubbly-jocks.  I was great in the expression of my terror for
+these bipeds, and suddenly this horrid, severe, and eminently matronly
+old lady put up a pair of gold eye-glasses, looked at me awhile in
+silence, and pronounced in a clangorous voice her verdict.  ‘You give me
+very much the effect of a coward, Mr. Stevenson!’  I had very nearly left
+two vices behind me at Glenogil—fishing and jesting at table.  And of one
+thing you may be very sure, my lips were no more opened at that meal.
+
+                                                             _July_ 29_th_
+
+No, Barrie, ’tis in vain they try to alarm me with their bulletins.  No
+doubt, you’re ill, and unco ill, I believe; but I have been so often in
+the same case that I know pleurisy and pneumonia are in vain against
+Scotsmen who can write, (I once could.)  You cannot imagine probably how
+near me this common calamity brings you.  _Ce que j’ai toussé dans ma
+vie_!  How often and how long have I been on the rack at night and
+learned to appreciate that noble passage in the Psalms when somebody or
+other is said to be more set on something than they ‘who dig for hid
+treasures—yea, than those who long for the morning’—for all the world, as
+you have been racked and you have longed.  Keep your heart up, and you’ll
+do.  Tell that to your mother, if you are still in any danger or
+suffering.  And by the way, if you are at all like me—and I tell myself
+you are very like me—be sure there is only one thing good for you, and
+that is the sea in hot climates.  Mount, sir, into ‘a little frigot’ of
+5000 tons or so, and steer peremptorily for the tropics; and what if the
+ancient mariner, who guides your frigot, should startle the silence of
+the ocean with the cry of land ho!—say, when the day is dawning—and you
+should see the turquoise mountain tops of Upolu coming hand over fist
+above the horizon?  Mr. Barrie, sir, ’tis then there would be larks!  And
+though I cannot be certain that our climate would suit you (for it does
+not suit some), I am sure as death the voyage would do you good—would do
+you _Best_—and if Samoa didn’t do, you needn’t stay beyond the month, and
+I should have had another pleasure in my life, which is a serious
+consideration for me.  I take this as the hand of the Lord preparing your
+way to Vailima—in the desert, certainly—in the desert of Cough and by the
+ghoul-haunted woodland of Fever—but whither that way points there can be
+no question—and there will be a meeting of the twa Hoasting Scots Makers
+in spite of fate, fortune, and the Devil.  _Absit omen_!
+
+My dear Barrie, I am a little in the dark about this new work of yours
+{347}: what is to become of me afterwards?  You say carefully—methought
+anxiously—that I was no longer me when I grew up?  I cannot bear this
+suspense: what is it?  It’s no forgery?  And AM I HANGIT?  These are the
+elements of a very pretty lawsuit which you had better come to Samoa to
+compromise.  I am enjoying a great pleasure that I had long looked
+forward to, reading Orme’s _History of Indostan_; I had been looking out
+for it everywhere; but at last, in four volumes, large quarto, beautiful
+type and page, and with a delectable set of maps and plans, and all the
+names of the places wrongly spelled—it came to Samoa, little Barrie.  I
+tell you frankly, you had better come soon.  I am sair failed a’ready;
+and what I may be if you continue to dally, I dread to conceive.  I may
+be speechless; already, or at least for a month or so, I’m little better
+than a teetoller—I beg pardon, a teetotaller.  It is not exactly
+physical, for I am in good health, working four or five hours a day in my
+plantation, and intending to ride a paper-chase next Sunday—ay, man,
+that’s a fact, and I havena had the hert to breathe it to my mother
+yet—the obligation’s poleetical, for I am trying every means to live well
+with my German neighbours—and, O Barrie, but it’s no easy!  To be sure,
+there are many exceptions.  And the whole of the above must be regarded
+as private—strictly private.  Breathe it not in Kirriemuir: tell it not
+to the daughters of Dundee!  What a nice extract this would make for the
+daily papers! and how it would facilitate my position here! . . .
+
+                                                           _August_ 5_th_.
+
+This is Sunday, the Lord’s Day.  ‘The hour of attack approaches.’  And it
+is a singular consideration what I risk; I may yet be the subject of a
+tract, and a good tract too—such as one which I remember reading with
+recreant awe and rising hair in my youth, of a boy who was a very good
+boy, and went to Sunday Schule, and one day kipped from it, and went and
+actually bathed, and was dashed over a waterfall, and he was the only son
+of his mother, and she was a widow.  A dangerous trade, that, and one
+that I have to practise.  I’ll put in a word when I get home again, to
+tell you whether I’m killed or not.  ‘Accident in the (Paper) Hunting
+Field: death of a notorious author.  We deeply regret to announce the
+death of the most unpopular man in Samoa, who broke his neck at the
+descent of Magagi, from the misconduct of his little raving lunatic of an
+old beast of a pony.  It is proposed to commemorate the incident by the
+erection of a suitable pile.  The design (by our local architect, Mr.
+Walker) is highly artificial, with a rich and voluminous Crockett at each
+corner, a small but impervious Barrièer at the entrance, an arch at the
+top, an Archer of a pleasing but solid character at the bottom; the
+colour will be genuine William-Black; and Lang, lang may the ladies sit
+wi’ their fans in their hands.’  Well, well, they may sit as they sat for
+me, and little they’ll reck, the ungrateful jauds!  Muckle they cared
+about Tusitala when they had him!  But now ye can see the difference;
+now, leddies, ye can repent, when ower late, o’ your former cauldness and
+what ye’ll perhaps allow me to ca’ your _tepeedity_!  He was beautiful as
+the day, but his day is done!  And perhaps, as he was maybe gettin’ a wee
+thing fly-blawn, it’s nane too shüne.
+
+                                                 _Monday_, _August_ 6_th_.
+
+Well, sir, I have escaped the dangerous conjunction of the widow’s only
+son and the Sabbath Day.  We had a most enjoyable time, and Lloyd and I
+were 3 and 4 to arrive; I will not tell here what interval had elapsed
+between our arrival and the arrival of 1 and 2; the question, sir, is
+otiose and malign; it deserves, it shall have no answer.  And now without
+further delay to the main purpose of this hasty note.  We received and we
+have already in fact distributed the gorgeous fahbrics of Kirriemuir.
+Whether from the splendour of the robes themselves, or from the direct
+nature of the compliments with which you had directed us to accompany the
+presentations, one young lady blushed as she received the proofs of your
+munificence. . . . Bad ink, and the dregs of it at that, but the heart in
+the right place.  Still very cordially interested in my Barrie and
+wishing him well through his sickness, which is of the body, and long
+defended from mine, which is of the head, and by the impolite might be
+described as idiocy.  The whole head is useless, and the whole sitting
+part painful: reason, the recent Paper Chase.
+
+   There was racing and chasing in Vailile plantation,
+         And vastly we enjoyed it,
+   But, alas! for the state of my foundation,
+         For it wholly has destroyed it.
+
+Come, my mind is looking up.  The above is wholly impromptu.—On oath,
+
+                                                                 TUSITALA.
+
+                                                         _August_ 12, 1894
+
+And here, Mr. Barrie, is news with a vengeance.  Mother Hubbard’s dog is
+well again—what did I tell you?  Pleurisy, pneumonia, and all that kind
+of truck is quite unavailing against a Scotchman who can write—and not
+only that, but it appears the perfidious dog is married.  This incident,
+so far as I remember, is omitted from the original epic—
+
+   She went to the graveyard
+   To see him get him buried,
+   And when she came back
+   The Deil had got merried.
+
+It now remains to inform you that I have taken what we call here ‘German
+offence’ at not receiving cards, and that the only reparation I will
+accept is that Mrs. Barrie shall incontinently upon the receipt of this
+Take and Bring you to Vailima in order to apologise and be pardoned for
+this offence.  The commentary of Tamaitai upon the event was brief but
+pregnant: ‘Well, it’s a comfort our guest-room is furnished for two.’
+
+This letter, about nothing, has already endured too long.  I shall just
+present the family to Mrs. Barrie—Tamaitai, Tamaitai Matua, Teuila,
+Palema, Loia, and with an extra low bow, Yours,
+
+                                                                 TUSITALA.
+
+
+
+TO DR. BAKEWELL
+
+
+                                              _Vailima_, _August_ 7, 1894.
+
+DEAR DR. BAKEWELL,—I am not more than human.  I am more human than is
+wholly convenient, and your anecdote was welcome.  What you say about
+_unwilling work_, my dear sir, is a consideration always present with me,
+and yet not easy to give its due weight to.  You grow gradually into a
+certain income; without spending a penny more, with the same sense of
+restriction as before when you painfully scraped two hundred a year
+together, you find you have spent, and you cannot well stop spending, a
+far larger sum; and this expense can only be supported by a certain
+production.  However, I am off work this month, and occupy myself instead
+in weeding my cacao, paper chases, and the like.  I may tell you, my
+average of work in favourable circumstances is far greater than you
+suppose: from six o’clock till eleven at latest, {350} and often till
+twelve, and again in the afternoon from two to four.  My hand is quite
+destroyed, as you may perceive, to-day to a really unusual extent.  I can
+sometimes write a decent fist still; but I have just returned with my
+arms all stung from three hours’ work in the cacao.—Yours, etc.,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO JAMES PAYN
+
+
+                          _Vailima_, _Upolu_, _Samoa_ [_August_ 11, 1894].
+
+MY DEAR JAMES PAYN,—I hear from Lang that you are unwell, and it reminds
+me of two circumstances: First, that it is a very long time since you had
+the exquisite pleasure of hearing from me; and second, that I have been
+very often unwell myself, and sometimes had to thank you for a grateful
+anodyne.
+
+They are not good, the circumstances, to write an anodyne letter.  The
+hills and my house at less than (boom) a minute’s interval quake with
+thunder; and though I cannot hear that part of it, shells are falling
+thick into the fort of Luatuanu’u (boom).  It is my friends of the
+_Curaçoa_, the _Falke_, and the _Bussard_ bombarding (after all
+these—boom—months) the rebels of Atua.  (Boom-boom.)  It is most
+distracting in itself; and the thought of the poor devils in their fort
+(boom) with their bits of rifles far from pleasant.  (Boom-boom.)  You
+can see how quick it goes, and I’ll say no more about Mr. Bow-wow, only
+you must understand the perpetual accompaniment of this discomfortable
+sound, and make allowances for the value of my copy.  It is odd, though,
+I can well remember, when the Franco-Prussian war began, and I was in
+Eilean Earraid, far enough from the sound of the loudest cannonade, I
+could _hear_ the shots fired, and I felt the pang in my breast of a man
+struck.  It was sometimes so distressing, so instant, that I lay in the
+heather on the top of the island, with my face hid, kicking my heels for
+agony.  And now, when I can hear the actual concussion of the air and
+hills, when I _know_ personally the people who stand exposed to it, I am
+able to go on _tant bien que mal_ with a letter to James Payn!  The
+blessings of age, though mighty small, are tangible.  I have heard a
+great deal of them since I came into the world, and now that I begin to
+taste of them—Well!  But this is one, that people do get cured of the
+excess of sensibility; and I had as lief these people were shot at as
+myself—or almost, for then I should have some of the fun, such as it is.
+
+You are to conceive me, then, sitting in my little gallery room, shaken
+by these continual spasms of cannon, and with my eye more or less singly
+fixed on the imaginary figure of my dear James Payn.  I try to see him in
+bed; no go.  I see him instead jumping up in his room in Waterloo Place
+(where _ex hypothesi_ he is not), sitting on the table, drawing out a
+very black briar-root pipe, and beginning to talk to a slim and
+ill-dressed visitor in a voice that is good to hear and with a smile that
+is pleasant to see.  (After a little more than half an hour, the voice
+that was ill to hear has ceased, the cannonade is over.)  And I am
+thinking how I can get an answering smile wafted over so many leagues of
+land and water, and can find no way.
+
+I have always been a great visitor of the sick; and one of the sick I
+visited was W. E. Henley, which did not make very tedious visits, so I’ll
+not get off much purgatory for them.  That was in the Edinburgh
+Infirmary, the old one, the true one, with Georgius Secundus standing and
+pointing his toe in a niche of the façade; and a mighty fine building it
+was!  And I remember one winter’s afternoon, in that place of misery,
+that Henley and I chanced to fall in talk about James Payn himself.  I am
+wishing you could have heard that talk!  I think that would make you
+smile.  We had mixed you up with John Payne, for one thing, and stood
+amazed at your extraordinary, even painful, versatility; and for another,
+we found ourselves each students so well prepared for examinations on the
+novels of the real Mackay.  Perhaps, after all, this is worth something
+in life—to have given so much pleasure to a pair so different in every
+way as were Henley and I, and to be talked of with so much interest by
+two such (beg pardon) clever lads!
+
+The cheerful Lang has neglected to tell me what is the matter with you;
+so, I’m sorry to say, I am cut off from all the customary consolations.
+I can’t say, ‘Think how much worse it would be if you had a broken leg!’
+when you may have the crushing repartee up your sleeve, ‘But it is my leg
+that is broken.’  This is a pity.  But there are consolations.  You are
+an Englishman (I believe); you are a man of letters; you have never been
+made C.B.; your hair was not red; you have played cribbage and whist; you
+did not play either the fiddle or the banjo; you were never an æsthete;
+you never contributed to —_’s Journal_; your name is not Jabez Balfour;
+you are totally unconnected with the Army and Navy departments; I
+understand you to have lived within your income—why, cheer up! here are
+many legitimate causes of congratulation.  I seem to be writing an
+obituary notice.  _Absit omen_!  But I feel very sure that these
+considerations will have done you more good than medicine.
+
+By the by, did you ever play piquet?  I have fallen a victim to this
+debilitating game.  It is supposed to be scientific; God save the mark,
+what self-deceivers men are!  It is distinctly less so than cribbage.
+But how fascinating!  There is such material opulence about it, such vast
+ambitions may be realised—and are not; it may be called the Monte Cristo
+of games.  And the thrill with which you take five cards partakes of the
+nature of lust—and you draw four sevens and a nine, and the seven and
+nine of a suit that you discarded, and O! but the world is a desert!  You
+may see traces of discouragement in my letter: all due to piquet!  There
+has been a disastrous turn of the luck against me; a month or two ago I
+was two thousand ahead; now, and for a week back, I have been anything
+from four thousand eight hundred to five thousand two hundred astern.  If
+I have a sixième, my beast of a partner has a septième; and if I have
+three aces, three kings, three queens, and three knaves (excuse the
+slight exaggeration), the devil holds quatorze of tens!—I remain, my dear
+James Payn, your sincere and obliged friend—old friend let me say,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO MISS MIDDLETON
+
+
+                                  _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _September_ 9, 1894.
+
+DEAR MISS MIDDLETON,—Your letter has been like the drawing up of a
+curtain.  Of course I remember you very well, and the Skye terrier to
+which you refer—a heavy, dull, fatted, graceless creature he grew up to
+be—was my own particular pet.  It may amuse you, perhaps, as much as ‘The
+Inn’ amused me, if I tell you what made this dog particularly mine.  My
+father was the natural god of all the dogs in our house, and poor Jura
+took to him of course.  Jura was stolen, and kept in prison somewhere for
+more than a week, as I remember.  When he came back Smeoroch had come and
+taken my father’s heart from him.  He took his stand like a man, and
+positively never spoke to my father again from that day until the day of
+his death.  It was the only sign of character he ever showed.  I took him
+up to my room and to be my dog in consequence, partly because I was sorry
+for him, and partly because I admired his dignity in misfortune.
+
+With best regards and thanks for having reminded me of so many pleasant
+days, old acquaintances, dead friends, and—what is perhaps as pathetic as
+any of them—dead dogs, I remain, yours truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO A. CONAN DOYLE
+
+
+                                  _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _September_ 9, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR CONAN DOYLE,—If you found anything to entertain you in my
+_Treasure Island_ article, it may amuse you to know that you owe it
+entirely to yourself.  _Your_ ‘First Book’ was by some accident read
+aloud one night in my Baronial ’All.  I was consumedly amused by it, so
+was the whole family, and we proceeded to hunt up back _Idlers_ and read
+the whole series.  It is a rattling good series, even people whom you
+would not expect came in quite the proper tone—Miss Braddon, for
+instance, who was really one of the best where all are good—or all but
+one! . . .  In short, I fell in love with ‘The First Book’ series, and
+determined that it should be all our first books, and that I could not
+hold back where the white plume of Conan Doyle waved gallantly in the
+front.  I hope they will republish them, though it’s a grievous thought
+to me that that effigy in the German cap—likewise the other effigy of the
+noisome old man with the long hair, telling indelicate stories to a
+couple of deformed negresses in a rancid shanty full of wreckage—should
+be perpetuated.  I may seem to speak in pleasantry—it is only a
+seeming—that German cap, sir, would be found, when I come to die,
+imprinted on my heart.  Enough—my heart is too full.  Adieu.—Yours very
+truly,
+
+                                                    ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+                                              (in a German cap, damn ’em!)
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+                                            [_Vailima_, _September_ 1894.]
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,—. . . Well, there is no more Edmund Baxter now; and I
+think I may say I know how you feel.  He was one of the best, the
+kindest, and the most genial men I ever knew.  I shall always remember
+his brisk, cordial ways and the essential goodness which he showed me
+whenever we met with gratitude.  And the always is such a little while
+now!  He is another of the landmarks gone; when it comes to my own turn
+to lay my weapons down, I shall do so with thankfulness and fatigue; and
+whatever be my destiny afterward, I shall be glad to lie down with my
+fathers in honour.  It is human at least, if not divine.  And these
+deaths make me think of it with an ever greater readiness.  Strange that
+you should be beginning a new life, when I, who am a little your junior,
+am thinking of the end of mine.  But I have had hard lines; I have been
+so long waiting for death, I have unwrapped my thoughts from about life
+so long, that I have not a filament left to hold by; I have done my
+fiddling so long under Vesuvius, that I have almost forgotten to play,
+and can only wait for the eruption, and think it long of coming.
+Literally, no man has more wholly outlived life than I.  And still it’s
+good fun.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO R. A. M. STEVENSON
+
+
+                                            [_Vailima_, _September_ 1894.]
+
+DEAR BOB,—You are in error about the Picts.  They were a Gaelic race,
+spoke a Celtic tongue, and we have no evidence that I know of that they
+were blacker than other Celts.  The Balfours, I take it, were plainly
+Celts; their name shows it—the ‘cold croft,’ it means; so does their
+country.  Where the _black_ Scotch come from nobody knows; but I
+recognise with you the fact that the whole of Britain is rapidly and
+progressively becoming more pigmented; already in one man’s life I can
+decidedly trace a difference in the children about a school door.  But
+colour is not an essential part of a man or a race.  Take my Polynesians,
+an Asiatic people probably from the neighbourhood of the Persian gulf.
+They range through any amount of shades, from the burnt hue of the Low
+Archipelago islander, which seems half negro, to the ‘bleached’ pretty
+women of the Marquesas (close by on the map), who come out for a festival
+no darker than an Italian; their colour seems to vary directly with the
+degree of exposure to the sun.  And, as with negroes, the babes are born
+white; only it should seem a _little sack_ of pigment at the lower part
+of the spine, which presently spreads over the whole field.  Very
+puzzling.  But to return.  The Picts furnish to-day perhaps a third of
+the population of Scotland, say another third for Scots and Britons, and
+the third for Norse and Angles is a bad third.  Edinburgh was a Pictish
+place.  But the fact is, we don’t know their frontiers.  Tell some of
+your journalist friends with a good style to popularise old Skene; or say
+your prayers, and read him for yourself; he was a Great Historian, and I
+was his blessed clerk, and did not know it; and you will not be in a
+state of grace about the Picts till you have studied him.  J. Horne
+Stevenson (do you know him?) is working this up with me, and the fact
+is—it’s not interesting to the public—but it’s interesting, and very
+interesting, in itself, and just now very embarrassing—this rural parish
+supplied Glasgow with such a quantity of Stevensons in the beginning of
+last century!  There is just a link wanting; and we might be able to go
+back to the eleventh century, always undistinguished, but clearly
+traceable.  When I say just a link, I guess I may be taken to mean a
+dozen.  What a singular thing is this undistinguished perpetuation of a
+family throughout the centuries, and the sudden bursting forth of
+character and capacity that began with our grandfather!  But as I go on
+in life, day by day, I become more of a bewildered child; I cannot get
+used to this world, to procreation, to heredity, to sight, to hearing;
+the commonest things are a burthen.  The prim obliterated polite face of
+life, and the broad, bawdy, and orgiastic—or mænadic—foundations, form a
+spectacle to which no habit reconciles me; and ‘I could wish my days to
+be bound each to each’ by the same open-mouthed wonder.  They _are_
+anyway, and whether I wish it or not.
+
+I remember very well your attitude to life, this conventional surface of
+it.  You had none of that curiosity for the social stage directions, the
+trivial _ficelles_ of the business; it is simian, but that is how the
+wild youth of man is captured; you wouldn’t imitate, hence you kept
+free—a wild dog, outside the kennel—and came dam’ near starving for your
+pains.  The key to the business is of course the belly; difficult as it
+is to keep that in view in the zone of three miraculous meals a day in
+which we were brought up.  Civilisation has become reflex with us; you
+might think that hunger was the name of the best sauce; but hunger to the
+cold solitary under a bush of a rainy night is the name of something
+quite different.  I defend civilisation for the thing it is, for the
+thing it has _come_ to be, the standpoint of a real old Tory.  My ideal
+would be the Female Clan.  But how can you turn these crowding dumb
+multitudes _back_?  They don’t do anything _because_; they do things,
+write able articles, stitch shoes, dig, from the purely simian impulse.
+Go and reason with monkeys!
+
+No, I am right about Jean Lillie.  Jean Lillie, our double
+great-grandmother, the daughter of David Lillie, sometime Deacon of the
+Wrights, married, first, Alan Stevenson, who died May 26, 1774, ‘at Santt
+Kittes of a fiver,’ by whom she had Robert Stevenson, born 8th June 1772;
+and, second, in May or June 1787, Thomas Smith, a widower, and already
+the father of our grandmother.  This improbable double connection always
+tends to confuse a student of the family, Thomas Smith being doubly our
+great-grandfather.
+
+I looked on the perpetuation of our honoured name with veneration.  My
+mother collared one of the photos, of course; the other is stuck up on my
+wall as the chief of our sept.  Do you know any of the Gaelic-Celtic
+sharps? you might ask what the name means.  It puzzles me.  I find a
+_M‘Stein_ and a _MacStephane_; and our own great-grandfather always
+called himself Steenson, though he wrote it Stevenson.  There are at
+least three _places_ called Stevenson—_Stevenson_ in Cunningham,
+_Stevenson_ in Peebles, and _Stevenson_ in Haddington.  And it was not
+the Celtic trick, I understand, to call places after people.  I am going
+to write to Sir Herbert Maxwell about the name, but you might find some
+one.
+
+Get the Anglo-Saxon heresy out of your head; they superimposed their
+language, they scarce modified the race; only in Berwickshire and
+Roxburgh have they very largely affected the place names.  The
+Scandinavians did much more to Scotland than the Angles.  The Saxons
+didn’t come.
+
+Enough of this sham antiquarianism.  Yes, it is in the matter of the
+book, {359} of course, that collaboration shows; as for the manner, it is
+superficially all mine, in the sense that the last copy is all in my
+hand.  Lloyd did not even put pen to paper in the Paris scenes or the
+Barbizon scene; it was no good; he wrote and often rewrote all the rest;
+I had the best service from him on the character of Nares.  You see, we
+had been just meeting the man, and his memory was full of the man’s words
+and ways.  And Lloyd is an impressionist, pure and simple.  The great
+difficulty of collaboration is that you can’t explain what you mean.  I
+know what kind of effect I mean a character to give—what kind of _tache_
+he is to make; but how am I to tell my collaborator in words?  Hence it
+was necessary to say, ‘Make him So-and-so’; and this was all right for
+Nares and Pinkerton and Loudon Dodd, whom we both knew, but for Bellairs,
+for instance—a man with whom I passed ten minutes fifteen years ago—what
+was I to say? and what could Lloyd do?  I, as a personal artist, can
+begin a character with only a haze in my head, but how if I have to
+translate the haze into words before I begin?  In our manner of
+collaboration (which I think the only possible—I mean that of one person
+being responsible, and giving the _coup de pouce_ to every part of the
+work) I was spared the obviously hopeless business of trying to explain
+to my collaborator what _style_ I wished a passage to be treated in.
+These are the times that illustrate to a man the inadequacy of spoken
+language.  Now—to be just to written language—I can (or could) find a
+language for my every mood, but how could I _tell_ any one beforehand
+what this effect was to be, which it would take every art that I
+possessed, and hours and hours of deliberate labour and selection and
+rejection, to produce?  These are the impossibilities of collaboration.
+Its immediate advantage is to focus two minds together on the stuff, and
+to produce in consequence an extraordinarily greater richness of purview,
+consideration, and invention.  The hardest chapter of all was ‘Cross
+Questions and Crooked Answers.’  You would not believe what that cost us
+before it assumed the least unity and colour.  Lloyd wrote it at least
+thrice, and I at least five times—this is from memory.  And was that last
+chapter worth the trouble it cost?  Alas, that I should ask the question!
+Two classes of men—the artist and the educationalist—are sworn, on soul
+and conscience, not to ask it.  You get an ordinary, grinning, red-headed
+boy, and you have to educate him.  Faith supports you; you give your
+valuable hours, the boy does not seem to profit, but that way your duty
+lies, for which you are paid, and you must persevere.  Education has
+always seemed to me one of the few possible and dignified ways of life.
+A sailor, a shepherd, a schoolmaster—to a less degree, a soldier—and (I
+don’t know why, upon my soul, except as a sort of schoolmaster’s
+unofficial assistant, and a kind of acrobat in tights) an artist, almost
+exhaust the category.
+
+If I had to begin again—I know not—_si jeunesse savait_, _si vieillesse
+pouvait_ . . . I know not at all—I believe I should try to honour Sex
+more religiously.  The worst of our education is that Christianity does
+not recognise and hallow Sex.  It looks askance at it, over its shoulder,
+oppressed as it is by reminiscences of hermits and Asiatic self-tortures.
+It is a terrible hiatus in our modern religions that they cannot see and
+make venerable that which they ought to see first and hallow most.  Well,
+it is so; I cannot be wiser than my generation.
+
+But no doubt there is something great in the half-success that has
+attended the effort of turning into an emotional religion, Bald Conduct,
+without any appeal, or almost none, to the figurative, mysterious, and
+constitutive facts of life.  Not that conduct is not constitutive, but
+dear! it’s dreary!  On the whole, conduct is better dealt with on the
+cast-iron ‘gentleman’ and duty formula, with as little fervour and poetry
+as possible; stoical and short.
+
+. . . There is a new something or other in the wind, which exercises me
+hugely: anarchy,—I mean, anarchism.  People who (for pity’s sake) commit
+dastardly murders very basely, die like saints, and leave beautiful
+letters behind ’em (did you see Vaillant to his daughter? it was the New
+Testament over again); people whose conduct is inexplicable to me, and
+yet their spiritual life higher than that of most.  This is just what the
+early Christians must have seemed to the Romans.  Is this, then, a new
+_drive_ {361} among the monkeys?  Mind you, Bob, if they go on being
+martyred a few years more, the gross, dull, not unkindly bourgeois may
+get tired or ashamed or afraid of going on martyring; and the anarchists
+come out at the top just like the early Christians.  That is, of course,
+they will step into power as a _personnel_, but God knows what they may
+believe when they come to do so; it can’t be stranger or more improbable
+than what Christianity had come to be by the same time.
+
+Your letter was easily read, the pagination presented no difficulty, and
+I read it with much edification and gusto.  To look back, and to
+stereotype one bygone humour—what a hopeless thing!  The mind runs ever
+in a thousand eddies like a river between cliffs.  You (the ego) are
+always spinning round in it, east, west, north, and south.  You are
+twenty years old, and forty, and five, and the next moment you are
+freezing at an imaginary eighty; you are never the plain forty-four that
+you should be by dates.  (The most philosophical language is the Gaelic,
+which has _no present tense_—and the most useless.)  How, then, to choose
+some former age, and stick there?
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO SIR HERBERT MAXWELL
+
+
+                                 _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _September_ 10, 1894.
+
+DEAR SIR HERBERT MAXWELL,—I am emboldened by reading your very
+interesting Rhind Lectures to put to you a question: What is my name,
+Stevenson?
+
+I find it in the forms Stevinetoun, Stevensoune, Stevensonne, Stenesone,
+Stewinsoune, M’Stein, and MacStephane.  My family, and (as far as I can
+gather) the majority of the inglorious clan, hailed from the borders of
+Cunningham and Renfrew, and the upper waters of the Clyde.  In the Barony
+of Bothwell was the seat of the laird Stevenson of Stevenson; but, as of
+course you know, there is a parish in Cunningham and places in Peebles
+and Haddington bearing the same name.
+
+If you can at all help me, you will render me a real service which I wish
+I could think of some manner to repay.—Believe me, yours truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+_P.S._—I should have added that I have perfect evidence before me that
+(for some obscure reason) Stevenson was a favourite alias with the
+M‘Gregors.
+
+
+
+TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
+
+
+                                        [_Vailima_], _October_ 8_th_ 1894.
+
+MY DEAR CUMMY,—So I hear you are ailing?  Think shame to yourself!  So
+you think there is nothing better to be done with time than that? and be
+sure we can all do much ourselves to decide whether we are to be ill or
+well! like a man on the gymnastic bars.  We are all pretty well.  As for
+me, there is nothing the matter with me in the world, beyond the
+disgusting circumstance that I am not so young as once I was.  Lloyd has
+a gymnastic machine, and practises upon it every morning for an hour: he
+is beginning to be a kind of young Samson.  Austin grows fat and brown,
+and gets on not so ill with his lessons, and my mother is in great price.
+We are having knock-me-down weather for heat; I never remember it so hot
+before, and I fancy it means we are to have a hurricane again this year,
+I think; since we came here, we have not had a single gale of wind!  The
+Pacific is but a child to the North Sea; but when she does get excited,
+and gets up and girds herself, she can do something good.  We have had a
+very interesting business here.  I helped the chiefs who were in prison;
+and when they were set free, what should they do but offer to make a part
+of my road for me out of gratitude?  Well, I was ashamed to refuse, and
+the trumps dug my road for me, and put up this inscription on a board:—
+
+‘_Considering the great love of His Excellency Tusitala in his loving
+care of us in our tribulation in the prison we have made this great
+gift_; _it shall never be muddy_, _it shall go on for ever_, _this road
+that we have dug_!’  We had a great feast when it was done, and I read
+them a kind of lecture, which I dare say Auntie will have, and can let
+you see.  Weel, guid bye to ye, and joy be wi’ ye!  I hae nae time to say
+mair.  They say I’m gettin’ _fat_—a fact!—Your laddie, with all love,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO JAMES PAYN
+
+
+                                       _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _Nov._ 4, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR JAMES PAYN,—I am asked to relate to you a little incident of
+domestic life at Vailima.  I had read your _Gleams of Memory_, No. 1; it
+then went to my wife, to Osbourne, to the cousin that is within my gates,
+and to my respected amanuensis, Mrs. Strong.  Sunday approached.  In the
+course of the afternoon I was attracted to the great ’all—the winders is
+by Vanderputty, which upon entering I beheld a memorable scene.  The
+floor was bestrewn with the forms of midshipmen from the
+_Curaçoa_—‘boldly say a wilderness of gunroom’—and in the midst of this
+sat Mrs. Strong throned on the sofa and reading aloud _Gleams of Memory_.
+They had just come the length of your immortal definition of boyhood in
+the concrete, and I had the pleasure to see the whole party dissolve
+under its influence with inextinguishable laughter.  I thought this was
+not half bad for arthritic gout!  Depend upon it, sir, when I go into the
+arthritic gout business, I shall be done with literature, or at least
+with the funny business.  It is quite true I have my battlefields behind
+me.  I have done perhaps as much work as anybody else under the most
+deplorable conditions.  But two things fall to be noticed: In the first
+place, I never was in actual pain; and in the second, I was never funny.
+I’ll tell you the worst day that I remember.  I had a hæmorrhage, and was
+not allowed to speak; then, induced by the devil, or an errant doctor, I
+was led to partake of that bowl which neither cheers nor inebriates—the
+castor-oil bowl.  Now, when castor-oil goes right, it is one thing; but
+when it goes wrong, it is another.  And it went _wrong_ with me that day.
+The waves of faintness and nausea succeeded each other for twelve hours,
+and I do feel a legitimate pride in thinking that I stuck to my work all
+through and wrote a good deal of Admiral Guinea (which I might just as
+well not have written for all the reward it ever brought me) in spite of
+the barbarous bad conditions.  I think that is my great boast; and it
+seems a little thing alongside of your _Gleams of Memory_ illustrated by
+spasms of arthritic gout.  We really should have an order of merit in the
+trade of letters.  For valour, Scott would have had it; Pope too; myself
+on the strength of that castor-oil; and James Payn would be a Knight
+Commander.  The worst of it is, though Lang tells me you exhibit the
+courage of Huish, that not even an order can alleviate the wretched
+annoyance of the business.  I have always said that there is nothing like
+pain; toothache, dumb-ague, arthritic gout, it does not matter what you
+call it, if the screw is put upon the nerves sufficiently strong, there
+is nothing left in heaven or in earth that can interest the sufferer.
+Still, even to this there is the consolation that it cannot last for
+ever.  Either you will be relieved and have a good hour again before the
+sun goes down, or else you will be liberated.  It is something after all
+(although not much) to think that you are leaving a brave example; that
+other literary men love to remember, as I am sure they will love to
+remember, everything about you—your sweetness, your brightness, your
+helpfulness to all of us, and in particular those one or two really
+adequate and noble papers which you have been privileged to write during
+these last years.—With the heartiest and kindest good-will, I remain,
+yours ever,
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+TO LIEUTENANT EELES
+
+
+                                  _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _November_ 24, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR EELES,—The hand, as you will perceive (and also the spelling!),
+is Teuila’s, but the scrannel voice is what remains of Tusitala’s.  First
+of all, for business.  When you go to London you are to charter a hansom
+cab and proceed to the Museum.  It is particular fun to do this on
+Sundays when the Monument is shut up.  Your cabman expostulates with you,
+you persist.  The cabman drives up in front of the closed gates and says,
+‘I told you so, sir.’  You breathe in the porter’s ears the mystic name
+of _Colvin_, and he immediately unfolds the iron barrier.  You drive in,
+and doesn’t your cabman think you’re a swell.  A lord mayor is nothing to
+it.  Colvin’s door is the only one in the eastern gable of the building.
+Send in your card to him with ‘From R. L. S.’ in the corner, and the
+machinery will do the rest.  Henry James’s address is 34 De Vere Mansions
+West.  I cannot remember where the place is; I cannot even remember on
+which side of the park.  But it’s one of those big Cromwell Road-looking
+deserted thoroughfares out west in Kensington or Bayswater, or between
+the two; and anyway, Colvin will be able to put you on the direct track
+for Henry James.  I do not send formal introductions, as I have taken the
+liberty to prepare both of them for seeing you already.
+
+Hoskyn is staying with us.
+
+It is raining dismally.  The Curaçoa track is hardly passable, but it
+must be trod to-morrow by the degenerate feet of their successor the
+Wallaroos.  I think it a very good account of these last that we don’t
+think them either deformed or habitual criminals—they seem to be a kindly
+lot.
+
+The doctor will give you all the gossip.  I have preferred in this letter
+to stick to the strictly solid and necessary.  With kind messages from
+all in the house to all in the wardroom, all in the gunroom, and (may we
+dare to breathe it) to him who walks abaft, believe me, my dear Eeles,
+yours ever,
+
+                                                          R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO SIR HERBERT MAXWELL
+
+
+                                   _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _December_ 1, 1894.
+
+DEAR SIR HERBERT,—Thank you very much for your long and kind letter.  I
+shall certainly take your advice and call my cousin, the Lyon King, into
+council.  It is certainly a very interesting subject, though I don’t
+suppose it can possibly lead to anything, this connection between the
+Stevensons and M’Gregors.  Alas! your invitation is to me a mere
+derision.  My chances of visiting Heaven are about as valid as my chances
+of visiting Monreith.  Though I should like well to see you, shrunken
+into a cottage, a literary Lord of Ravenscraig.  I suppose it is the
+inevitable doom of all those who dabble in Scotch soil; but really your
+fate is the more blessed.  I cannot conceive anything more grateful to
+me, or more amusing or more picturesque, than to live in a cottage
+outside your own park-walls.—With renewed thanks, believe me, dear Sir
+Herbert, yours very truly,
+
+                                                   ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO ANDREW LANG
+
+
+                                   _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _December_ 1, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR LANG,—For the portrait of Braxfield, much thanks!  It is engraved
+from the same Raeburn portrait that I saw in ’76 or ’77 with so extreme a
+gusto that I have ever since been Braxfield’s humble servant, and am now
+trying, as you know, to stick him into a novel.  Alas! one might as well
+try to stick in Napoleon.  The picture shall be framed and hung up in my
+study.  Not only as a memento of you, but as a perpetual encouragement to
+do better with his Lordship.  I have not yet received the transcripts.
+They must be very interesting.  Do you know, I picked up the other day an
+old _Longman’s_, where I found an article of yours that I had missed,
+about Christie’s?  I read it with great delight.  The year ends with us
+pretty much as it began, among wars and rumours of wars, and a vast and
+splendid exhibition of official incompetence.—Yours ever,
+
+                                                          R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+TO EDMUND GOSSE
+
+
+                                   _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _December_ 1, 1894.
+
+I AM afraid, MY DEAR WEG, that this must be the result of bribery and
+corruption!  The volume to which the dedication stands as preface seems
+to me to stand alone in your work; it is so natural, so personal, so
+sincere, so articulate in substance, and what you always were sure of—so
+rich in adornment.
+
+Let me speak first of the dedication.  I thank you for it from the heart.
+It is beautifully said, beautifully and kindly felt; and I should be a
+churl indeed if I were not grateful, and an ass if I were not proud.  I
+remember when Symonds dedicated a book to me; I wrote and told him of
+‘the pang of gratified vanity’ with which I had read it.  The pang was
+present again, but how much more sober and autumnal—like your volume.
+Let me tell you a story, or remind you of a story.  In the year of grace
+something or other, anything between ’76 and ’78 I mentioned to you in my
+usual autobiographical and inconsiderate manner that I was hard up.  You
+said promptly that you had a balance at your banker’s, and could make it
+convenient to let me have a cheque, and I accepted and got the money—how
+much was it?—twenty or perhaps thirty pounds?  I know not—but it was a
+great convenience.  The same evening, or the next day, I fell in
+conversation (in my usual autobiographical and . . . see above) with a
+denizen of the Savile Club, name now gone from me, only his figure and a
+dim three-quarter view of his face remaining.  To him I mentioned that
+you had given me a loan, remarking easily that of course it didn’t matter
+to you.  Whereupon he read me a lecture, and told me how it really stood
+with you financially.  He was pretty serious; fearing, as I could not
+help perceiving, that I should take too light a view of the
+responsibility and the service (I was always thought too light—the
+irresponsible jester—you remember.  O, _quantum mutatus ab illo_!)  If I
+remember rightly, the money was repaid before the end of the week—or, to
+be more exact and a trifle pedantic, the sennight—but the service has
+never been forgotten; and I send you back this piece of ancient history,
+_consule Planco_, as a salute for your dedication, and propose that we
+should drink the health of the nameless one, who opened my eyes as to the
+true nature of what you did for me on that occasion.
+
+But here comes my Amanuensis, so we’ll get on more swimmingly now.  You
+will understand perhaps that what so particularly pleased me in the new
+volume, what seems to me to have so personal and original a note, are the
+middle-aged pieces in the beginning.  The whole of them, I may say,
+though I must own an especial liking to—
+
+   ‘I yearn not for the fighting fate,
+      That holds and hath achieved;
+   I live to watch and meditate
+      And dream—and be deceived.’
+
+You take the change gallantly.  Not I, I must confess.  It is all very
+well to talk of renunciation, and of course it has to be done.  But, for
+my part, give me a roaring toothache!  I do like to be deceived and to
+dream, but I have very little use for either watching or meditation.  I
+was not born for age.  And, curiously enough, I seem to see a contrary
+drift in my work from that which is so remarkable in yours.  You are
+going on sedately travelling through your ages, decently changing with
+the years to the proper tune.  And here am I, quite out of my true
+course, and with nothing in my foolish elderly head but love-stories.
+This must repose upon some curious distinction of temperaments.  I gather
+from a phrase, boldly autobiographical, that you are—well, not precisely
+growing thin.  Can that be the difference?
+
+It is rather funny that this matter should come up just now, as I am at
+present engaged in treating a severe case of middle age in one of my
+stories—‘The Justice-Clerk.’  The case is that of a woman, and I think
+that I am doing her justice.  You will be interested, I believe, to see
+the difference in our treatments.  _Secreta Vitæ_, comes nearer to the
+case of my poor Kirstie.  Come to think of it, Gosse, I believe the main
+distinction is that you have a family growing up around you, and I am a
+childless, rather bitter, very clear-eyed, blighted youth.  I have, in
+fact, lost the path that makes it easy and natural for you to descend the
+hill.  I am going at it straight.  And where I have to go down it is a
+precipice.
+
+I must not forget to give you a word of thanks for _An English Village_.
+It reminds me strongly of Keats, which is enough to say; and I was
+particularly pleased with the petulant sincerity of the concluding
+sentiment.
+
+Well, my dear Gosse, here’s wishing you all health and prosperity, as
+well as to the mistress and the bairns.  May you live long, since it
+seems as if you would continue to enjoy life.  May you write many more
+books as good as this one—only there’s one thing impossible, you can
+never write another dedication that can give the same pleasure to the
+vanished
+
+                                                                 TUSITALA.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+
+{11}  In _Underwoods_ the lines thus queried stand with the change: ‘Life
+is over; life was gay.’
+
+{12}  _Prince Otto_.
+
+{20}  The name of the hero in Dostoieffsky’s _Le Crime et le Châtiment_.
+
+{37}  _Suite anglaise_.
+
+{48a}  _The Merry Men_.
+
+{48b}  _Memories and Portraits_.
+
+{48c}  _Underwoods_.
+
+{66}  The sum was really £700.
+
+{70}  ‘But she was more than usual calm,
+She did not give a single dam.’—_Marjorie Fleming_.
+
+{83}  The secretary was really, I believe, Lord Pollington.
+
+{86}  ‘Smith opens out his cauld harangues
+On practice and on morals.’
+
+The Rev. George Smith of Galston, the minister thus referred to by Burns
+(in the _Holy Fair_), was a great-grandfather of Stevenson on the
+mother’s side; and against Stevenson himself, in his didactic moods, the
+passage was often quoted by his friends when they wished to tease him.
+
+{114}  The French; the Marquesas, Paumotus, and Tahiti being all
+dependencies of France.
+
+{132}  King Kalakaua.
+
+{133}  This is the Canadian poet Mr. Archibald Lampman, the news of whose
+death reaches England as these sheets are preparing for the press.
+
+{137}  Stevenson’s stepdaughter, Mrs. Strong, who was at this time living
+at Honolulu, and joined his party and family for good when they continued
+their voyage from thence in the following June.
+
+{141}  The following is the letter in question:—
+
+    ‘I make you to know my great affection.  At the hour when you left
+    us, I was filled with tears; my wife, Rui Telime, also, and all of my
+    household.  When you embarked I felt a great sorrow.  It is for this
+    that I went upon the road, and you looked from that ship, and I
+    looked at you on the ship with great grief until you had raised the
+    anchor and hoisted the sails.  When the ship started I ran along the
+    beach to see you still; and when you were on the open sea I cried out
+    to you, “Farewell Louis”; and when I was coming back to my house I
+    seemed to hear your voice crying “Rui farewell.”  Afterwards I
+    watched the ship as long as I could until the night fell; and when it
+    was dark I said to myself, “If I had wings I should fly to the ship
+    to meet you, and to sleep amongst you, so that I might be able to
+    come back to shore and to tell Rui Telime, ‘I have slept upon the
+    ship of Teriitera.’”  After that we passed that night in the
+    impatience of grief.  Towards eight o’clock I seemed to hear your
+    voice, “Teriitera—Rui—here is the hour for _putter_ and _tiro_”
+    (cheese and syrup).  I did not sleep that night, thinking continually
+    of you, my very dear friend, until the morning; being then still
+    awake, I went to see Tapina Tutu on her bed, and alas, she was not
+    there.  Afterwards I looked into your rooms; they did not please me
+    as they used to do. I did not hear your voice saying, “Hail Rui”; I
+    thought then that you had gone, and that you had left me.  Rising up,
+    I went to the beach to see your ship, and I could not see it.  I
+    wept, then, until the night, telling myself continually, “Teriitera
+    returns into his own country and leaves his dear Rui in grief, so
+    that I suffer for him, and weep for him.”  I will not forget you in
+    my memory.  Here is the thought: I desire to meet you again.  It is
+    my dear Teriitera makes the only riches I desire in this world.  It
+    is your eyes that I desire to see again.  It must be that your body
+    and my body shall eat together at one table: there is what would make
+    my heart content.  But now we are separated.  May God be with you
+    all.  May His word and His mercy go with you, so that you may be well
+    and we also, according to the words of Paul.
+
+    ORI A ORI, that is to say, RUI.’
+
+{152}  The Polynesian name for white men.
+
+{170}  Table of chapter headings follows.
+
+{187}  French _bâtons rompus_: disconnected thoughts or studies.
+
+{190}  The Rev. Dr. Hyde, of Honolulu: in reference to Stevenson’s letter
+on Father Damien.
+
+{198}  Afterwards re-named _The Ebb Tide_.
+
+{201}  His letters.
+
+{220}  _The Misadventures of John Nicholson_.
+
+{245}  _i.e._ On the stage.
+
+{271}  A character in _The Wrecker_.
+
+{272}  The lad Austin Strong.
+
+{292}  John Addington Symonds.
+
+{298a}  _Across the Plains_.
+
+{298b}  Volume of Sonnets by José Maria de Hérédia.
+
+{311}  _The Window in Thrums_, with illustrations by W. Hole, R.S.A.
+Hodder and Stoughton. 1892.
+
+{320}  This question is with a view to the adventures of the hero in _St.
+Ives_, who, according to Stevenson’s original plan, was to have been
+picked up from his foundered balloon by an American privateer.
+
+{323}  As to admire _The Black Arrow_.
+
+{332}  In the book the genealogy is given as a diagram.  It has been
+converted to text for this transcription so it’s available for everyone,
+with the original diagram below.—DP.
+
+                         [Picture: The Genealogy]
+
+{337}  Word omitted in MS.
+
+{347}  _Sentimental Tommy_: whose chief likeness to R. L. S. was meant to
+be in the literary temperament and passion for the _mot propre_.
+
+{350}  _Sic_: query ‘least’?
+
+{359}  Of _The Wrecker_.
+
+{361}  _Trieb_, impulse
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LETTERS OF ROBERT LOUIS
+STEVENSON TO HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS - VOLUME 2 [OF 2]***
+
+
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diff --git a/637-0.zip b/637-0.zip
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+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" />
+<title>The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson to his Family and Friends - Volume 2 [of 2], by Robert Louis Stevenson</title>
+    <style type="text/css">
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson to his
+Family and Friends - Volume 2 [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 2 [of 2]
+
+
+Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+Editor: Sidney Colvin
+
+Release Date: August 27, 2019  [eBook #637]
+[This file was first posted on July 11, 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>THE LETTERS OF<br />
+<span style='color: #ff0000'>ROBERT LOUIS</span><br />
+<span style='color: #ff0000'>STEVENSON</span></h1>
+<p style="text-align: center">TO HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">SELECTED AND EDITED WITH<br />
+NOTES AND INTRODUCTION BY</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">SIDNEY COLVIN</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">VOLUME
+II</span></p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span
+class="GutSmall">LONDON</span><br />
+<span style='color: #ff0000'>METHUEN AND CO.</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">36 ESSEX STREET</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Seventh Edition</i></p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p><i>First Published</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p><i>November 1899</i></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><i>Second Edition</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p><i>November 1899</i></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><i>Third Edition</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p><i>April 1900</i></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><i>Fourth Edition</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p><i>November 1900</i></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><i>Fifth Edition</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p><i>January 1901</i></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><i>Sixth Edition</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p><i>October 1902</i></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><i>Seventh Edition</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p><i>December 1906</i></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p style="text-align: center">VIII<br />
+LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH&mdash;<i>Continued</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page6">6</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p style="text-align: center">IX<br />
+THE UNITED STATES AGAIN<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">WINTER IN THE ADIRONDACKS</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page59">59</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p style="text-align: center">X<br />
+PACIFIC VOYAGES</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page114">114</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p style="text-align: center">XI<br />
+LIFE IN SAMOA</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page209">209</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p style="text-align: center">XII<br />
+LIFE IN SAMOA&mdash;<i>continued</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page285">285</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<h2><a name="page6"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 6</span>VIII<br
+/>
+LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH,<br />
+<i>Continued</i>,<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">JANUARY 1886-JULY 1887.</span></h2>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. de Mattos</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>], <i>January</i> 1<i>st</i>, 1886.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAREST KATHARINE</span>,&mdash;Here,
+on a very little book and accompanied with lame verses, I have
+put your name.&nbsp; Our kindness is now getting well on in
+years; it must be nearly of age; and it gets more valuable to me
+with every time I see you.&nbsp; It is not possible to express
+any sentiment, and it is not necessary to try, at least between
+us.&nbsp; You know very well that I love you dearly, and that I
+always will.&nbsp; I only wish the verses were better, but at
+least you like the story; and it is sent to you by the one that
+loves you&mdash;Jekyll, and not Hyde.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Ave</i>!</p>
+<p class="poetry">Bells upon the city are ringing in the
+night;<br />
+High above the gardens are the houses full of light;<br />
+On the heathy Pentlands is the curlew flying free;<br />
+And the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie.</p>
+<p class="poetry">We cannae break the bonds that God decreed to
+bind,<br />
+Still we&rsquo;ll be the children of the heather and the wind;<br
+/>
+Far away from home, O, it&rsquo;s still for you and me<br />
+That the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie!</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><a name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span><span
+class="smcap">to Alison Cunningham</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>], 1<i>st</i>, 1886.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR KINNICUM</span>,&mdash;I am a
+very bad dog, but not for the first time.&nbsp; Your book, which
+is very interesting, came duly; and I immediately got a very bad
+cold indeed, and have been fit for nothing whatever.&nbsp; I am a
+bit better now, and aye on the mend; so I write to tell you, I
+thought of you on New Year&rsquo;s Day; though, I own, it would
+have been more decent if I had thought in time for you to get my
+letter then.&nbsp; Well, what can&rsquo;t be cured must be
+endured, Mr. Lawrie; and you must be content with what I
+give.&nbsp; If I wrote all the letters I ought to write, and at
+the proper time, I should be very good and very happy; but I
+doubt if I should do anything else.</p>
+<p>I suppose you will be in town for the New Year; and I hope
+your health is pretty good.&nbsp; What you want is diet; but it
+is as much use to tell you that as it is to tell my father.&nbsp;
+And I quite admit a diet is a beastly thing.&nbsp; I doubt,
+however, if it be as bad as not being allowed to speak, which I
+have tried fully, and do not like.&nbsp; When, at the same time,
+I was not allowed to read, it passed a joke.&nbsp; But these are
+troubles of the past, and on this day, at least, it is proper to
+suppose they won&rsquo;t return.&nbsp; But we are not put here to
+enjoy ourselves: it was not God&rsquo;s purpose; and I am
+prepared to argue, it is not our sincere wish.&nbsp; As for our
+deserts, the less said of them the better, for somebody might
+hear, and nobody cares to be laughed at.&nbsp; A good man is a
+very noble thing to see, but not to himself; what he seems to God
+is, fortunately, not our business; that is the domain of faith;
+and whether on the first of January or the thirty-first of
+December, faith is a good word to end on.</p>
+<p>My dear Cummy, many happy returns to you and my best
+love.&mdash;The worst correspondent in the world,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><a name="page8"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 8</span><span
+class="smcap">to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>], <i>January</i> 1<i>st</i>, 1886.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR PEOPLE</span>,&mdash;Many happy
+returns of the day to you all; I am fairly well and in good
+spirits; and much and hopefully occupied with dear Jenkin&rsquo;s
+life.&nbsp; The inquiry in every detail, every letter that I
+read, makes me think of him more nobly.&nbsp; I cannot imagine
+how I got his friendship; I did not deserve it.&nbsp; I believe
+the notice will be interesting and useful.</p>
+<p>My father&rsquo;s last letter, owing to the use of a quill pen
+and the neglect of blotting-paper, was hopelessly
+illegible.&nbsp; Every one tried, and every one failed to
+decipher an important word on which the interest of one whole
+clause (and the letter consisted of two) depended.</p>
+<p>I find I can make little more of this; but I&rsquo;ll spare
+the blots.&mdash;Dear people, ever your loving son,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p>I will try again, being a giant refreshed by the house being
+empty.&nbsp; The presence of people is the great obstacle to
+letter-writing.&nbsp; I deny 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.&nbsp; When the house is empty, the mind is
+seized with a desire&mdash;no, that is too strong&mdash;a
+willingness to pour forth unmitigated rot, which constitutes (in
+me) the true spirit of correspondence.&nbsp; When I have no
+remarks to offer (and nobody to offer them to), my pen flies, and
+you see the remarkable consequence of a page literally covered
+with words and genuinely devoid of sense.&nbsp; I can always do
+that, if quite alone, and I like doing it; but I have yet to
+learn that it is beloved by correspondents.&nbsp; The deuce of it
+is, that there is no end possible but the end of the paper; and
+as there is very little left of that&mdash;if I cannot stop
+writing&mdash;suppose you give up reading.&nbsp; It would all
+come to the same thing; and I think we should all be happier . .
+.</p>
+<h3><a name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 9</span><span
+class="smcap">to W. H. Low</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>], <i>Jan.</i> 2<i>nd</i>, 1886.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LOW</span>,&mdash;<i>Lamia</i>
+has come, and I do not know how to thank you, not only for the
+beautiful art of the designs, but for the handsome and apt words
+of the dedication.&nbsp; My favourite is &lsquo;Bathes
+unseen,&rsquo; which is a masterpiece; and the next, &lsquo;Into
+the green recessed woods,&rsquo; is perhaps more remarkable,
+though it does not take my fancy so imperiously.&nbsp; The night
+scene at Corinth pleases me also.&nbsp; The second part offers
+fewer opportunities.&nbsp; I own I should like to see both
+<i>Isabella</i> and the <i>Eve</i> thus illustrated; and then
+there&rsquo;s <i>Hyperion</i>&mdash;O, yes, and
+<i>Endymion</i>!&nbsp; I should like to see the lot: beautiful
+pictures dance before me by hundreds: I believe <i>Endymion</i>
+would suit you best.&nbsp; It also is in faery-land; and I see a
+hundred opportunities, cloudy and flowery glories, things as
+delicate as the cobweb in the bush; actions, not in themselves of
+any mighty purport, but made for the pencil: the feast of Pan,
+Peona&rsquo;s isle, the &lsquo;slabbed margin of a well,&rsquo;
+the chase of the butterfly, the nymph, Glaucus, Cybele, Sleep on
+his couch, a farrago of unconnected beauties.&nbsp; But I
+divagate; and all this sits in the bosom of the publisher.</p>
+<p>What is more important, I accept the terms of the dedication
+with a frank heart, and the terms of your Latin legend
+fairly.&nbsp; The sight of your pictures has once more awakened
+me to my right mind; something may <a name="page10"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 10</span>come of it; yet one more bold push to
+get free of this prisonyard of the abominably ugly, where I take
+my daily exercise with my contemporaries.&nbsp; I do not know, I
+have a feeling in my bones, a sentiment which may take on the
+forms of imagination, or may not.&nbsp; If it does, I shall owe
+it to you; and the thing will thus descend from Keats even if on
+the wrong side of the blanket.&nbsp; If it can be done in
+prose&mdash;that is the puzzle&mdash;I divagate again.&nbsp;
+Thank you again: you can draw and yet you do not love the ugly:
+what are you doing in this age?&nbsp; Flee, while it is yet time;
+they will have your four limbs pinned upon a stable door to scare
+witches.&nbsp; The ugly, my unhappy friend, is <i>de rigueur</i>:
+it is the only wear!&nbsp; What a chance you threw away with the
+serpent!&nbsp; Why had Apollonius no pimples?&nbsp; Heavens, my
+dear Low, you do not know your business. . . .</p>
+<p>I send you herewith a Gothic gnome for your Greek nymph; but
+the gnome is interesting, I think, and he came out of a deep
+mine, where he guards the fountain of tears.&nbsp; It is not
+always the time to rejoice.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p>The gnome&rsquo;s name is <i>Jekyll &amp; Hyde</i>; I believe
+you will find he is likewise quite willing to answer to the name
+of Low or Stevenson.</p>
+<p><i>Same day</i>.&mdash;I have copied out on the other sheet
+some bad verses, which somehow your picture suggested; as a kind
+of image of things that I pursue and cannot reach, and that you
+seem&mdash;no, not to have reached&mdash;but to have come a
+thought nearer to than I.&nbsp; This is the life we have chosen:
+well, the choice was mad, but I should make it again.</p>
+<p>What occurs to me is this: perhaps they might be printed in
+(say) the <i>Century</i> for the sake of my name; and if that
+were possible, they might advertise your book.&nbsp; It might be
+headed as sent in acknowledgment of your <i>Lamia</i>.&nbsp; Or
+perhaps it might be introduced by the phrases I have marked
+above.&nbsp; I dare say they would stick it in: <a
+name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 11</span>I want no
+payment, being well paid by <i>Lamia</i>.&nbsp; If they are not,
+keep them to yourself.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Will H. Low</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Damned bad lines in return for a
+beautiful book</i></p>
+<p class="poetry">Youth now flees on feathered foot.<br />
+Faint and fainter sounds the flute;<br />
+Rarer songs of Gods.<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+And still,<br />
+Somewhere on the sunny hill,<br />
+Or along the winding stream,<br />
+Through the willows, flits a dream;<br />
+Flits, but shows a smiling face,<br />
+Flees, but with so quaint a grace,<br />
+None can choose to stay at home,<br />
+All must follow&mdash;all must roam.<br />
+This is unborn beauty: she<br />
+Now in air floats high and free,<br />
+Takes the sun, and breaks the blue;&mdash;<br />
+Late, with stooping pinion flew<br />
+Raking hedgerow trees, and wet<br />
+Her wing in silver streams, and set<br />
+Shining foot on temple roof.<br />
+Now again she flies aloof,<br />
+Coasting mountain clouds, and kissed<br />
+By the evening&rsquo;s amethyst.<br />
+In wet wood and miry lane<br />
+Still we pound and pant in vain;<br />
+Still with earthy foot we chase<br />
+Waning pinion, fainting face;<br />
+Still, with grey hair, we stumble on<br />
+Till&mdash;behold!&mdash;the vision gone!<br />
+Where has fleeting beauty led?<br />
+To the doorway of the dead!<br />
+qy. omit? [Life is gone, but life was gay:<br />
+We have come the primrose way!] <a name="citation11"></a><a
+href="#footnote11" class="citation">[11]</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><a name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 12</span><span
+class="smcap">to Edmund Gosse</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>Jan.</i> 2<i>nd</i>, 1886.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR GOSSE</span>,&mdash;Thank you
+for your letter, so interesting to my vanity.&nbsp; There is a
+review in the St. James&rsquo;s, which, as it seems to hold
+somewhat of your opinions, and is besides written with a pen and
+not a poker, we think may possibly be yours.&nbsp; The
+<i>Prince</i> <a name="citation12"></a><a href="#footnote12"
+class="citation">[12]</a> has done fairly well in spite of the
+reviews, which have been bad: he was, as you doubtless saw, well
+slated in the <i>Saturday</i>; one paper received it as a
+child&rsquo;s story; another (picture my agony) described it as a
+&lsquo;Gilbert comedy.&rsquo;&nbsp; It was amusing to see the
+race between me and Justin M&rsquo;Carthy: the Milesian has won
+by a length.</p>
+<p>That is the hard part of literature.&nbsp; You aim high, and
+you take longer over your work, and it will not be so successful
+as if you had aimed low and rushed it.&nbsp; What the public
+likes is work (of any kind) a little loosely executed; so long as
+it is a little wordy, a little slack, a little dim and knotless,
+the dear public likes it; it should (if possible) be a little
+dull into the bargain.&nbsp; I know that good work sometimes
+hits; but, with my hand on my heart, I think it is by an
+accident.&nbsp; And I know also that good work must succeed at
+last; but that is not the doing of the public; they are only
+shamed into silence or affectation.&nbsp; I do not write for the
+public; I do write for money, a nobler deity; and most of all for
+myself, not perhaps any more noble, but both more intelligent and
+nearer home.</p>
+<p>Let us tell each other sad stories of the bestiality of the
+beast whom we feed.&nbsp; What he likes is the newspaper; and to
+me the press is the mouth of a sewer, where lying is professed as
+from an university chair, and everything prurient, and ignoble,
+and essentially dull, finds its abode and pulpit.&nbsp; I do not
+like mankind; but men, and not all <a name="page13"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 13</span>of these&mdash;and fewer women.&nbsp;
+As for respecting the race, and, above all, that fatuous rabble
+of burgesses called &lsquo;the public,&rsquo; God save me from
+such irreligion!&mdash;that way lies disgrace and
+dishonour.&nbsp; There must be something wrong in me, or I would
+not be popular.</p>
+<p>This is perhaps a trifle stronger than my sedate and permanent
+opinion.&nbsp; Not much, I think.&nbsp; As for the art that we
+practise, I have never been able to see why its professors should
+be respected.&nbsp; They chose the primrose path; when they found
+it was not all primroses, but some of it brambly, and much of it
+uphill, they began to think and to speak of themselves as holy
+martyrs.&nbsp; But a man is never martyred in any honest sense in
+the pursuit of his pleasure; and <i>delirium tremens</i> has more
+of the honour of the cross.&nbsp; We were full of the pride of
+life, and chose, like prostitutes, to live by a pleasure.&nbsp;
+We should be paid if we give the pleasure we pretend to give; but
+why should we be honoured?</p>
+<p>I hope some day you and Mrs. Gosse will come for a Sunday; but
+we must wait till I am able to see people.&nbsp; I am very full
+of Jenkin&rsquo;s life; it is painful, yet very pleasant, to dig
+into the past of a dead friend, and find him, at every spadeful,
+shine brighter.&nbsp; I own, as I read, I wonder more and more
+why he should have taken me to be a friend.&nbsp; He had many and
+obvious faults upon the face of him; the heart was pure
+gold.&nbsp; I feel it little pain to have lost him, for it is a
+loss in which I cannot believe; I take it, against reason, for an
+absence; if not to-day, then to-morrow, I still fancy I shall see
+him in the door; and then, now when I know him better, how glad a
+meeting!&nbsp; Yes, if I could believe in the immortality
+business, the world would indeed be too good to be true; but we
+were put here to do what service we can, for honour and not for
+hire: the sods cover us, and the worm that never dies, the
+conscience, sleeps well at last; these are the wages, besides
+what we receive so lavishly day by day; and they are enough for
+<a name="page14"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 14</span>a man who
+knows his own frailty and sees all things in the proportion of
+reality.&nbsp; The soul of piety was killed long ago by that idea
+of reward.&nbsp; Nor is happiness, whether eternal or temporal,
+the reward that mankind seeks.&nbsp; Happinesses are but his
+wayside campings; his soul is in the journey; he was born for the
+struggle, and only tastes his life in effort and on the condition
+that he is opposed.&nbsp; How, then, is such a creature, so
+fiery, so pugnacious, so made up of discontent and aspiration,
+and such noble and uneasy passions&mdash;how can he be rewarded
+but by rest?&nbsp; I would not say it aloud; for man&rsquo;s
+cherished belief is that he loves that happiness which he
+continually spurns and passes by; and this belief in some
+ulterior happiness exactly fits him.&nbsp; He does not require to
+stop and taste it; he can be about the rugged and bitter business
+where his heart lies; and yet he can tell himself this fairy tale
+of an eternal tea-party, and enjoy the notion that he is both
+himself and something else; and that his friends will yet meet
+him, all ironed out and emasculate, and still be
+lovable,&mdash;as if love did not live in the faults of the
+beloved only, and draw its breath in an unbroken round of
+forgiveness!&nbsp; But the truth is, we must fight until we die;
+and when we die there can be no quiet for mankind but complete
+resumption into&mdash;what?&mdash;God, let us say&mdash;when all
+these desperate tricks will lie spellbound at last.</p>
+<p>Here came my dinner and cut this sermon
+short&mdash;<i>excusez</i>.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to James Payn</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>Jan.</i> 2<i>nd</i>, 1886.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR JAMES PAYN</span>,&mdash;Your very
+kind letter came very welcome; and still more welcome the news
+that you see <a name="page15"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+15</span>&mdash;&rsquo;s tale.&nbsp; I will now tell you (and it
+was very good and very wise of me not to tell it before) that he
+is one of the most unlucky men I know, having put all his money
+into a pharmacy at Hy&egrave;res, when the cholera (certainly not
+his fault) swept away his customers in a body.&nbsp; Thus you can
+imagine the pleasure I have to announce to him a spark of hope,
+for he sits to-day in his pharmacy, doing nothing and taking
+nothing, and watching his debts inexorably mount up.</p>
+<p>To pass to other matters: your hand, you are perhaps aware, is
+not one of those that can be read running; and the name of your
+daughter remains for me undecipherable.&nbsp; I call her, then,
+your daughter&mdash;and a very good name too&mdash;and I beg to
+explain how it came about that I took her house.&nbsp; The
+hospital was a point in my tale; but there is a house on each
+side.&nbsp; Now the true house is the one before the hospital: is
+that No. 11?&nbsp; If not, what do you complain of?&nbsp; If it
+is, how can I help what is true?&nbsp; Everything in the
+<i>Dynamiter</i> is not true; but the story of the Brown Box is,
+in almost every particular; I lay my hand on my heart and swear
+to it.&nbsp; It took place in that house in 1884; and if your
+daughter was in that house at the time, all I can say is she must
+have kept very bad society.</p>
+<p>But I see you coming.&nbsp; Perhaps your daughter&rsquo;s
+house has not a balcony at the back?&nbsp; I cannot answer for
+that; I only know that side of Queen Square from the pavement and
+the back windows of Brunswick Row.&nbsp; Thence I saw plenty of
+balconies (terraces rather); and if there is none to the
+particular house in question, it must have been so arranged to
+spite me.</p>
+<p>I now come to the conclusion of this matter.&nbsp; I address
+three questions to your daughter:&mdash;</p>
+<p class="gutindent">1st.&nbsp;&nbsp; Has her house the proper
+terrace?</p>
+<p class="gutindent">2nd.&nbsp; Is it on the proper side of the
+hospital?</p>
+<p class="gutindent">3rd.&nbsp; Was she there in the summer of
+1884?</p>
+<p>You see, I begin to fear that Mrs. Desborough may <a
+name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 16</span>have deceived
+me on some trifling points, for she is not a lady of peddling
+exactitude.&nbsp; If this should prove to be so, I will give your
+daughter a proper certificate, and her house property will return
+to its original value.</p>
+<p>Can man say more?&mdash;Yours very truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p>I saw the other day that the Eternal had plagiarised from
+<i>Lost Sir Massingberd</i>: good again, sir!&nbsp; I wish he
+would plagiarise the death of Zero.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to W. H. Low</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>Jan. Somethingorother-th</i>, 1886.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LOW</span>,&mdash;I send you
+two photographs: they are both done by Sir Percy Shelley, the
+poet&rsquo;s son, which may interest.&nbsp; The sitting down one
+is, I think, the best; but if they choose that, see that the
+little reflected light on the nose does not give me a turn-up;
+that would be tragic.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t forget
+&lsquo;Baronet&rsquo; to Sir Percy&rsquo;s name.</p>
+<p>We all think a heap of your book; and I am well pleased with
+my dedication.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
+class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;<i>Apropos</i> of the odd controversy about
+Shelley&rsquo;s nose: I have before me four photographs of
+myself, done by Shelley&rsquo;s son: my nose is hooked, not like
+the eagle, indeed, but like the accipitrine family in man: well,
+out of these four, only one marks the bend, one makes it
+straight, and one suggests a turn-up.&nbsp; This throws a flood
+of light on calumnious man&mdash;and the scandal-mongering
+sun.&nbsp; For personally I cling to my curve.&nbsp; To continue
+the Shelley controversy: I have a look of him, <a
+name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 17</span>all his
+sisters had noses like mine; Sir Percy has a marked hook; all the
+family had high cheek-bones like mine; what doubt, then, but that
+this turn-up (of which Jeaffreson accuses the poet, along with
+much other <i>fatras</i>) is the result of some accident similar
+to what has happened in my photographs by his son?</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>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>January</i> 25, 1886.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR FATHER</span>,&mdash;Many
+thanks for a letter quite like yourself.&nbsp; I quite agree with
+you, and had already planned a scene of religion in
+<i>Balfour</i>; the Society for the Propagation of Christian
+Knowledge furnishes me with a catechist whom I shall try to make
+the man.&nbsp; I have another catechist, the blind,
+pistol-carrying highway robber, whom I have transferred from the
+Long Island to Mull.&nbsp; I find it a most picturesque period,
+and wonder Scott let it escape.&nbsp; The <i>Covenant</i> is lost
+on one of the Tarrans, and David is cast on Earraid, where (being
+from inland) he is nearly starved before he finds out the island
+is tidal; then he crosses Mull to Toronsay, meeting the blind
+catechist by the way; then crosses Morven from Kinlochaline to
+Kingairloch, where he stays the night with the good catechist;
+that is where I am; next day he is to be put ashore in Appin, and
+be present at Colin Campbell&rsquo;s death.&nbsp; To-day I rest,
+being a little run down.&nbsp; Strange how liable we are to brain
+fag in this scooty family!&nbsp; But as far as I have got, all
+but the last chapter, I think David is on his feet, and (to my
+mind) a far better story and far sounder at heart than
+<i>Treasure Island</i>.</p>
+<p>I have no earthly news, living entirely in my story, and only
+coming out of it to play patience.&nbsp; The Shelleys are gone;
+the Taylors kinder than can be imagined.&nbsp; The other day,
+Lady Taylor drove over and called on me; she is a delightful old
+lady, and great fun.&nbsp; I mentioned a <a
+name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>story about
+the Duchess of Wellington which I had heard Sir Henry tell; and
+though he was very tired, he looked it up and copied it out for
+me in his own hand.&mdash;Your most affectionate son,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to C. W. Stoddard</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>Feb.</i> 13<i>th</i>, 1886.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR STODDARD</span>,&mdash;I am a
+dreadful character; but, you see, I have at last taken pen in
+hand; how long I may hold it, God knows.&nbsp; This is already my
+sixth letter to-day, and I have many more waiting; and my wrist
+gives me a jog on the subject of scrivener&rsquo;s cramp, which
+is not encouraging.</p>
+<p>I gather you were a little down in the jaw when you wrote your
+last.&nbsp; I am as usual pretty cheerful, but not very
+strong.&nbsp; I stay in the house all winter, which is base; but,
+as you continue to see, the pen goes from time to time, though
+neither fast enough nor constantly enough to please me.</p>
+<p>My wife is at Bath with my father and mother, and the interval
+of widowery explains my writing.&nbsp; Another person writing for
+you when you have done work is a great enemy to
+correspondence.&nbsp; To-day I feel out of health, and
+shan&rsquo;t work; and hence this so much overdue reply.</p>
+<p>I was re-reading some of your South Sea Idyls the other day:
+some of the chapters are very good indeed; some pages as good as
+they can be.</p>
+<p>How does your class get along?&nbsp; If you like to touch on
+<i>Otto</i>, any day in a by-hour, you may tell them&mdash;as the
+author&rsquo;s last dying confession&mdash;that it is a strange
+example of the difficulty of being ideal in an age of realism;
+that the unpleasant giddy-mindedness, which spoils the book and
+often gives it a wanton air of unreality and juggling with
+air-bells, comes from unsteadiness of key; from the <a
+name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 19</span>too great
+realism of some chapters and passages&mdash;some of which I have
+now spotted, others I dare say I shall never spot&mdash;which
+disprepares the imagination for the cast of the remainder.</p>
+<p>Any story can be made <i>true</i> in its own key; any story
+can be made <i>false</i> by the choice of a wrong key of detail
+or style: Otto is made to reel like a drunken&mdash;I was going
+to say man, but let us substitute cipher&mdash;by the variations
+of the key.&nbsp; Have you observed that the famous problem of
+realism and idealism is one purely of detail?&nbsp; Have you seen
+my &lsquo;Note on Realism&rsquo; in Cassell&rsquo;s <i>Magazine
+of Art</i>; and &lsquo;Elements of Style&rsquo; in the
+<i>Contemporary</i>; and &lsquo;Romance&rsquo; and &lsquo;Humble
+Apology&rsquo; in <i>Longman&rsquo;s</i>?&nbsp; They are all in
+your line of business; let me know what you have not seen and
+I&rsquo;ll send &rsquo;em.</p>
+<p>I am glad I brought the old house up to you.&nbsp; It was a
+pleasant old spot, and I remember you there, though still more
+dearly in your own strange den upon a hill in San Francisco; and
+one of the most San Francisco-y parts of San Francisco.</p>
+<p>Good-bye, my dear fellow, and believe me your friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to J. A. Symonds</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i> [<i>Spring</i> 1886].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR SYMONDS</span>,&mdash;If we
+have lost touch, it is (I think) only in a material sense; a
+question of letters, not hearts.&nbsp; You will find a warm
+welcome at Skerryvore from both the lightkeepers; and, indeed, we
+never tell ourselves one of our financial fairy tales, but a run
+to Davos is a prime feature.&nbsp; I am not changeable in
+friendship; and I think I can promise you you have a pair of
+trusty well-wishers and friends in Bournemouth: whether they
+write or not is but a small thing; the flag may not be waved, but
+it is there.</p>
+<p><a name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 20</span>Jekyll
+is a dreadful thing, I own; but the only thing I feel dreadful
+about is that damned old business of the war in the
+members.&nbsp; This time it came out; I hope it will stay in, in
+future.</p>
+<p>Raskolnikoff <a name="citation20"></a><a href="#footnote20"
+class="citation">[20]</a> is easily the greatest book I have read
+in ten years; I am glad you took to it.&nbsp; Many find it dull:
+Henry James could not finish it: all I can say is, it nearly
+finished me.&nbsp; It was like having an illness.&nbsp; James did
+not care for it because the character of Raskolnikoff was not
+objective; and at that I divined a great gulf between us, and, on
+further reflection, the existence of a certain impotence in many
+minds of to-day, which prevents them from living <i>in</i> a book
+or a character, and keeps them standing afar off, spectators of a
+puppet show.&nbsp; To such I suppose the book may seem empty in
+the centre; to the others it is a room, a house of life, into
+which they themselves enter, and are tortured and purified.&nbsp;
+The Juge d&rsquo;Instruction I thought a wonderful, weird,
+touching, ingenious creation: the drunken father, and Sonia, and
+the student friend, and the uncircumscribed, protaplasmic
+humanity of Raskolnikoff, all upon a level that filled me with
+wonder: the execution also, superb in places.&nbsp; Another has
+been translated&mdash;<i>Humili&eacute;s et
+Offens&eacute;s</i>.&nbsp; It is even more incoherent than <i>Le
+Crime et le Ch&acirc;timent</i>, but breathes much of the same
+lovely goodness, and has passages of power.&nbsp; Dostoieffsky is
+a devil of a swell, to be sure.&nbsp; Have you heard that he
+became a stout, imperialist conservative?&nbsp; It is interesting
+to know.&nbsp; To something of that side, the balance leans with
+me also in view of the incoherency and incapacity of all.&nbsp;
+The old boyish idea of the march on Paradise being now out of
+season, and all plans and ideas that I hear debated being built
+on a superb indifference to the first principles of human
+character, a helpless desire to acquiesce in anything of which I
+know the worst assails me.&nbsp; Fundamental errors in human <a
+name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 21</span>nature of two
+sorts stand on the skyline of all this modern world of
+aspirations.&nbsp; First, that it is happiness that men want; and
+second, that happiness consists of anything but an internal
+harmony.&nbsp; Men do not want, and I do not think they would
+accept, happiness; what they live for is rivalry, effort,
+success&mdash;the elements our friends wish to eliminate.&nbsp;
+And, on the other hand, happiness is a question of
+morality&mdash;or of immorality, there is no difference&mdash;and
+conviction.&nbsp; Gordon was happy in Khartoum, in his worst
+hours of danger and fatigue; Marat was happy, I suppose, in his
+ugliest frenzy; Marcus Aurelius was happy in the detested camp;
+Pepys was pretty happy, and I am pretty happy on the whole,
+because we both somewhat crowingly accepted a <i>via media</i>,
+both liked to attend to our affairs, and both had some success in
+managing the same.&nbsp; It is quite an open question whether
+Pepys and I ought to be happy; on the other hand, there is no
+doubt that Marat had better be unhappy.&nbsp; He was right (if he
+said it) that he was <i>la mis&egrave;re humaine</i>, cureless
+misery&mdash;unless perhaps by the gallows.&nbsp; Death is a
+great and gentle solvent; it has never had justice done it, no,
+not by Whitman.&nbsp; As for those crockery chimney-piece
+ornaments, the bourgeois (<i>quorum pars</i>), and their cowardly
+dislike of dying and killing, it is merely one symptom of a
+thousand how utterly they have got out of touch of life.&nbsp;
+Their dislike of capital punishment and their treatment of their
+domestic servants are for me the two flaunting emblems of their
+hollowness.</p>
+<p>God knows where I am driving to.&nbsp; But here comes my
+lunch.</p>
+<p>Which interruption, happily for you, seems to have stayed the
+issue.&nbsp; I have now nothing to say, that had formerly such a
+pressure of twaddle.&nbsp; Pray don&rsquo;t fail to come this
+summer.&nbsp; It will be a great disappointment, now it has been
+spoken of, if you do.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span></p>
+<h2><a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 22</span><span
+class="smcap">to W. H. Low</span></h2>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>March</i> 1886.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LOW</span>,&mdash;This is the
+most enchanting picture.&nbsp; Now understand my state: I am
+really an invalid, but of a mysterious order.&nbsp; I might be a
+<i>malade imaginaire</i>, but for one too tangible symptom, my
+tendency to bleed from the lungs.&nbsp; If we could go,
+(1<i>st</i>)&nbsp; We must have money enough to travel with
+<i>leisure and comfort</i>&mdash;especially the first.&nbsp;
+(<i>2nd</i>)&nbsp; You must be prepared for a comrade who would
+go to bed some part of every day and often stay silent
+(3<i>rd</i>)&nbsp; You would have to play the part of a
+thoughtful courier, sparing me fatigue, looking out that my bed
+was warmed, etc. (4<i>th</i>)&nbsp; If you are very nervous, you
+must recollect a bad h&aelig;morrhage is always on the cards,
+with its concomitants of anxiety and horror for those who are
+beside me.</p>
+<p>Do you blench?&nbsp; If so, let us say no more about it.</p>
+<p>If you are still unafraid, and the money were forthcoming, I
+believe the trip might do me good, and I feel sure that, working
+together, we might produce a fine book.&nbsp; The Rhone is the
+river of Angels.&nbsp; I adore it: have adored it since I was
+twelve, and first saw it from the train.</p>
+<p>Lastly, it would depend on how I keep from now on.&nbsp; I
+have stood the winter hitherto with some credit, but the dreadful
+weather still continues, and I cannot holloa till I am through
+the wood.</p>
+<p>Subject to these numerous and gloomy provisos, I embrace the
+prospect with glorious feelings.</p>
+<p><a name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 23</span>I write
+this from bed, snow pouring without, and no circumstance of
+pleasure except your letter.&nbsp; That, however, counts for
+much.&nbsp; I am glad you liked the doggerel: I have already had
+a liberal cheque, over which I licked my fingers with a sound
+conscience.&nbsp; I had not meant to make money by these
+stumbling feet, but if it comes, it is only too welcome in my
+handsome but impecunious house.</p>
+<p>Let me know soon what is to be expected&mdash;as far as it
+does not hang by that inconstant quantity, my want of
+health.&nbsp; Remember me to Madam with the best thanks and
+wishes; and believe me your friend,</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>April</i> 1886.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN</span>,&mdash;I try
+to tell myself it is good nature, but I know it is vanity that
+makes me write.</p>
+<p>I have drafted the first part of Chapter <span
+class="GutSmall">VI</span>., Fleeming and his friends, his
+influence on me, his views on religion and literature, his part
+at the Savile; it should boil down to about ten pages, and I
+really do think it admirably good.&nbsp; It has so much evoked
+Fleeming for myself that I found my conscience stirred just as it
+used to be after a serious talk with him: surely that means it is
+good?&nbsp; I had to write and tell you, being alone.</p>
+<p>I have excellent news of Fanny, who is much better for the
+change.&nbsp; My father is still very yellow, and very old, and
+very weak, but yesterday he seemed happier, and smiled, and
+followed what was said; even laughed, I think.&nbsp; When he came
+away, he said to me, &lsquo;Take care of yourself, my
+dearie,&rsquo; which had a strange sound of childish days, and
+will not leave my mind.</p>
+<p>You must get Litolf&rsquo;s <i>Gavottes
+C&eacute;l&egrave;bres</i>: I have made another trover there: a
+musette of Lully&rsquo;s.&nbsp; The second part of it I have not
+yet got the hang of; but the first&mdash;<a
+name="page24"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 24</span>only a few
+bars!&nbsp; The gavotte is beautiful and pretty hard, I think,
+and very much of the period; and at the end of it, this musette
+enters with the most really thrilling effect of simple
+beauty.&nbsp; O&mdash;it&rsquo;s first-rate.&nbsp; I am quite mad
+over it.&nbsp; If you find other books containing Lully, Rameau,
+Martini, please let me know; also you might tell me, you who know
+Bach, where the easiest is to be found.&nbsp; I write all
+morning, come down, and never leave the piano till about five;
+write letters, dine, get down again about eight, and never leave
+the piano till I go to bed.&nbsp; This is a fine
+life.&mdash;Yours most sincerely,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p>If you get the musette (Lully&rsquo;s), please tell me if I am
+right, and it was probably written for strings.&nbsp; Anyway, it
+is as neat as&mdash;as neat as Bach&mdash;on the piano; or seems
+so to my ignorance.</p>
+<p>I play much of the Rigadoon but it is strange, it don&rsquo;t
+come off <i>quite</i> so well with me!</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p24ab.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Music store"
+title=
+"Music store"
+ src="images/p24as.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>There is the first part of the musette copied (from memory, so
+I hope there&rsquo;s nothing wrong).&nbsp; Is it not
+angelic?&nbsp; But it ought, of course, to have the gavotte
+before.&nbsp; The gavotte is in G, and ends on the keynote thus
+(if I remember):&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p24bb.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Music store"
+title=
+"Music store"
+ src="images/p24bs.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>staccato, I think.&nbsp; Then you sail into the musette.</p>
+<p><i>N.B.</i>&mdash;Where I have put an &lsquo;A,&rsquo; is that
+a dominant <a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+25</span>eleventh, or what? or just a seventh on the D? and if
+the latter, is that allowed?&nbsp; It sounds very funny.&nbsp;
+Never mind all my questions; if I begin about music (which is my
+leading ignorance and curiosity), I have always to babble
+questions: all my friends know me now, and take no notice
+whatever.&nbsp; The whole piece is marked allegro; but surely
+could easily be played too fast?&nbsp; The dignity must not be
+lost; the periwig feeling.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>March</i> 1886.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR FATHER</span>,&mdash;The David
+problem has to-day been decided.&nbsp; I am to leave the door
+open for a sequel if the public take to it, and this will save me
+from butchering a lot of good material to no purpose.&nbsp; Your
+letter from Carlisle was pretty like yourself, sir, as I was
+pleased to see; the hand of Jekyll, not the hand of Hyde.&nbsp; I
+am for action quite unfit, and even a letter is beyond me; so
+pray take these scraps at a vast deal more than their intrinsic
+worth.&nbsp; I am in great spirits about David, Colvin agreeing
+with Henley, Fanny, and myself in thinking it far the most human
+of my labours hitherto.&nbsp; As to whether the long-eared
+British public may take to it, all think it more than doubtful; I
+wish they would, for I could do a second volume with ease and
+pleasure, and Colvin thinks it sin and folly to throw away David
+and Alan Breck upon so small a field as this one.&mdash;Ever your
+affectionate son,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><a name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 26</span><span
+class="smcap">to Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>], <i>April</i> 15 <i>or</i> 16 (<i>the hour
+not being known</i>), 1886.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN</span>,&mdash;It is
+I know not what hour of the night; but I cannot sleep, have lit
+the gas, and here goes.</p>
+<p>First, all your packet arrived: I have dipped into the
+Schumann already with great pleasure.&nbsp; Surely, in what
+concerns us there is a sweet little chirrup; the <i>Good
+Words</i> arrived in the morning just when I needed it, and the
+famous notes that I had lost were recovered also in the nick of
+time.</p>
+<p>And now I am going to bother you with my affairs: premising,
+first, that this is <i>private</i>; second, that whatever I do
+the <i>Life</i> shall be done first, and I am getting on with it
+well; and third, that I do not quite know why I consult you, but
+something tells me you will hear with fairness.</p>
+<p>Here is my problem.&nbsp; The Curtin women are still miserable
+prisoners; no one dare buy their farm of them, all the manhood of
+England and the world stands aghast before a threat of
+murder.&nbsp; (1) Now, my work can be done anywhere; hence I can
+take up without loss a back-going Irish farm, and live on, though
+not (as I had originally written) in it: First Reason.&nbsp; (2)
+If I should be killed, there are a good many who would feel it:
+writers are so much in the public eye, that a writer being
+murdered would attract attention, throw a bull&rsquo;s-eye light
+upon this cowardly business: Second Reason.&nbsp; (3) I am not
+unknown in the States, from which the funds come that pay for
+these brutalities: to some faint extent, my <a
+name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 27</span>death (if I
+should be killed) would tell there: Third Reason.&nbsp; (4)
+<i>Nobody else is taking up this obvious and crying duly</i>:
+Fourth Reason.&nbsp; (5) I have a crazy health and may die at any
+moment, my life is of no purchase in an insurance office, it is
+the less account to husband it, and the business of husbanding a
+life is dreary and demoralising: Fifth Reason.</p>
+<p>I state these in no order, but as they occur to me.&nbsp; And
+I shall do the like with the objections.</p>
+<p>First Objection: It will do no good; you have seen Gordon die
+and nobody minded; nobody will mind if you die.&nbsp; This is
+plainly of the devil.&nbsp; Second Objection: You will not even
+be murdered, the climate will miserably kill you, you will
+strangle out in a rotten damp heat, in congestion, etc.&nbsp;
+Well, what then?&nbsp; It changes nothing: the purpose is to
+brave crime; let me brave it, for such time and to such an extent
+as God allows.&nbsp; Third Objection: The Curtin women are
+probably highly uninteresting females.&nbsp; I haven&rsquo;t a
+doubt of it.&nbsp; But the Government cannot, men will not,
+protect them.&nbsp; If I am the only one to see this public duty,
+it is to the public and the Right I should perform it&mdash;not
+to Mesdames Curtin.&nbsp; Fourth Objection: I am married.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I have married a wife!&rsquo;&nbsp; I seem to have heard
+it before.&nbsp; It smells ancient! what was the context?&nbsp;
+Fifth Objection: My wife has had a mean life (1), loves me (2),
+could not bear to lose me (3).&nbsp; (1) I admit: I am
+sorry.&nbsp; (2) But what does she love me for? and (3) she must
+lose me soon or late.&nbsp; And after all, because we run this
+risk, it does not follow we should fail.&nbsp; Sixth Objection:
+My wife wouldn&rsquo;t like it.&nbsp; No, she
+wouldn&rsquo;t.&nbsp; Who would?&nbsp; But the Curtins
+don&rsquo;t like it.&nbsp; And all those who are to suffer if
+this goes on, won&rsquo;t like it.&nbsp; And if there is a great
+wrong, somebody must suffer.&nbsp; Seventh Objection: I
+won&rsquo;t like it.&nbsp; No, I will not; I have thought it
+through, and I will not.&nbsp; But what of that?&nbsp; And both
+she and I may like it more than we suppose.&nbsp; We shall lose
+friends, all comforts, <a name="page28"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 28</span>all society: so has everybody who has
+ever done anything; but we shall have some excitement, and
+that&rsquo;s a fine thing; and we shall be trying to do the
+right, and that&rsquo;s not to be despised.&nbsp; Eighth
+Objection: I am an author with my work before me.&nbsp; See
+Second Reason.&nbsp; Ninth Objection: But am I not taken with the
+hope of excitement?&nbsp; I was at first.&nbsp; I am not much
+now.&nbsp; I see what a dreary, friendless, miserable,
+God-forgotten business it will be.&nbsp; And anyway, is not
+excitement the proper reward of doing anything both right and a
+little dangerous?&nbsp; Tenth Objection: But am I not taken with
+a notion of glory?&nbsp; I dare say I am.&nbsp; Yet I see quite
+clearly how all points to nothing coming, to a quite inglorious
+death by disease and from the lack of attendance; or even if I
+should be knocked on the head, as these poor Irish promise, how
+little any one will care.&nbsp; It will be a smile at a thousand
+breakfast-tables.&nbsp; I am nearly forty now; I have not many
+illusions.&nbsp; And if I had?&nbsp; I do not love this
+health-tending, housekeeping life of mine.&nbsp; I have a taste
+for danger, which is human, like the fear of it.&nbsp; Here is a
+fair cause; a just cause; no knight ever set lance in rest for a
+juster.&nbsp; Yet it needs not the strength I have not, only the
+passive courage that I hope I could muster, and the watchfulness
+that I am sure I could learn.</p>
+<p>Here is a long midnight dissertation; with myself; with
+you.&nbsp; Please let me hear.&nbsp; But I charge you this: if
+you see in this idea of mine the finger of duty, do not dissuade
+me.&nbsp; I am nearing forty, I begin to love my ease and my home
+and my habits, I never knew how much till this arose; do not
+falsely counsel me to put my head under the bed-clothes.&nbsp;
+And I will say this to you: my wife, who hates the idea, does not
+refuse.&nbsp; &lsquo;It is nonsense,&rsquo; says she, &lsquo;but
+if you go, I will go.&rsquo;&nbsp; Poor girl, and her home and
+her garden that she was so proud of!&nbsp; I feel her garden most
+of all, because it is a pleasure (I suppose) that I do not feel
+myself to share.</p>
+<p class="gutindent"><a name="page29"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 29</span>1.&nbsp; Here is a great wrong.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">2.&nbsp; ,, growing wrong.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">3.&nbsp; ,, wrong founded on crime.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">4.&nbsp; ,, crime that the Government cannot
+prevent.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">5.&nbsp; ,, crime that it occurs to no man
+to defy.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">6.&nbsp; But it has occurred to me.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">7.&nbsp; Being a known person, some will
+notice my defiance.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">8.&nbsp; Being a writer, I can <i>make</i>
+people notice it.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">9.&nbsp; And, I think, <i>make</i> people
+imitate me.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">10.&nbsp; Which would destroy in time this
+whole scaffolding of oppression.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">11.&nbsp; And if I fail, however
+ignominiously, that is not my concern.&nbsp; It is, with an odd
+mixture of reverence and humorous remembrances of Dickens, be it
+said&mdash;it is A-nother&rsquo;s.</p>
+<p>And here, at I cannot think what hour of the morning, I shall
+dry up, and remain,&mdash;Yours, really in want of a little
+help,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L S.</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Sleepless at midnight&rsquo;s</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>dewy hour.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;,,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+,,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>witching ,,</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;,,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+,,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>maudlin ,,</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;,,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+,,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>etc.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p><i>Next morning</i>.&mdash;Eleventh Objection: I have a father
+and mother.&nbsp; And who has not?&nbsp; Macduff&rsquo;s was a
+rare case; if we must wait for a Macduff.&nbsp; Besides, my
+father will not perhaps be long here.&nbsp; Twelfth Objection:
+The cause of England in Ireland is not worth supporting.&nbsp;
+<i>&Agrave; qui le dites-vous</i>?&nbsp; And I am not supporting
+that.&nbsp; Home Rule, if you like.&nbsp; Cause of decency, the
+idea that populations should not be taught to gain public ends by
+private crime, the idea that for all men to bow before a threat
+of crime is to loosen and degrade beyond redemption the whole
+fabric of man&rsquo;s decency.</p>
+<h3><a name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 30</span><span
+class="smcap">to Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>April</i> 1886.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN</span>,&mdash;The
+Book&mdash;It is all drafted: I hope soon to send you for
+comments Chapters <span class="GutSmall">III</span>., <span
+class="GutSmall">IV</span>., and <span
+class="GutSmall">V</span>.&nbsp; Chapter <span
+class="GutSmall">VII</span>. is roughly but satisfactorily
+drafted: a very little work should put that to rights.&nbsp; But
+Chapter <span class="GutSmall">VI</span>. is no joke; it is a
+<i>mare magnum</i>: I swim and drown and come up again; and it is
+all broken ends and mystification: moreover, I perceive I am in
+want of more matter.&nbsp; I must have, first of all, a little
+letter from Mr. Ewing about the phonograph work: <i>If</i> you
+think he would understand it is quite a matter of chance whether
+I use a word or a fact out of it.&nbsp; If you think he would
+not: I will go without.&nbsp; Also, could I have a look at
+Ewing&rsquo;s <i>pr&eacute;cis</i>?&nbsp; And lastly, I perceive
+I must interview you again about a few points; they are very few,
+and might come to little; and I propose to go on getting things
+as well together as I can in the meanwhile, and rather have a
+final time when all is ready and only to be criticised.&nbsp; I
+do still think it will be good.&nbsp; I wonder if Tr&eacute;lat
+would let me cut?&nbsp; But no, I think I wouldn&rsquo;t after
+all; &rsquo;tis so quaint and pretty and clever and simple and
+French, and gives such a good sight of Fleeming: the plum of the
+book, I think.</p>
+<p>You misunderstood me in one point: I always hoped to found
+such a society; that was the outside of my dream, and would mean
+entire success.&nbsp; <i>But</i>&mdash;I cannot play Peter the
+Hermit.&nbsp; In these days of the Fleet Street journalist, I
+cannot send out better men than myself, with <a
+name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 31</span>wives or
+mothers just as good as mine, and sisters (I may at least say)
+better, to a danger and a long-drawn dreariness that I do not
+share.&nbsp; My wife says it&rsquo;s cowardice; what brave men
+are the leader-writers!&nbsp; Call it cowardice; it is
+mine.&nbsp; Mind you, I may end by trying to do it by the pen
+only: I shall not love myself if I do; and is it ever a good
+thing to do a thing for which you despise yourself?&mdash;even in
+the doing?&nbsp; And if the thing you do is to call upon others
+to do the thing you neglect?&nbsp; I have never dared to say what
+I feel about men&rsquo;s lives, because my own was in the wrong:
+shall I dare to send them to death?&nbsp; The physician must heal
+himself; he must honestly <i>try</i> the path he recommends: if
+he does not even try, should he not be silent?</p>
+<p>I thank you very heartily for your letter, and for the
+seriousness you brought to it.&nbsp; You know, I think when a
+serious thing is your own, you keep a saner man by laughing at it
+and yourself as you go.&nbsp; So I do not write possibly with all
+the really somewhat sickened gravity I feel.&nbsp; And indeed,
+what with the book, and this business to which I referred, and
+Ireland, I am scarcely in an enviable state.&nbsp; Well, I ought
+to be glad, after ten years of the worst training on
+earth&mdash;valetudinarianism&mdash;that I can still be troubled
+by a duty.&nbsp; You shall hear more in time; so far, I am at
+least decided: I will go and see Balfour when I get to
+London.</p>
+<p>We have all had a great pleasure: a Mrs. Rawlinson came and
+brought with her a nineteen-year-old daughter, simple, human, as
+beautiful as&mdash;herself; I never admired a girl before, you
+know it was my weakness: we are all three dead in love with
+her.&nbsp; How nice to be able to do so much good to harassed
+people by&mdash;yourself!&nbsp; Ever yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><a name="page32"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 32</span><span
+class="smcap">to Miss Rawlinson</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>April</i> 1886.]</p>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Of</span> the many flowers
+you brought me,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Only some were meant to stay,<br />
+And the flower I thought the sweetest<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Was the flower that went away.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Of the many flowers you brought me,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; All were fair and fresh and gay,<br />
+But the flower I thought the sweetest<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Was the blossom of the May.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Miss Monroe</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>May</i> 25<i>th</i>, 1886.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MISS MONROE</span>,&mdash;(I hope
+I have this rightly) I must lose no time in thanking you for a
+letter singularly pleasant to receive.&nbsp; It may interest you
+to know that I read to the signature without suspecting my
+correspondent was a woman; though in one point (a reference to
+the Countess) I might have found a hint of the truth.&nbsp; You
+are not pleased with Otto; since I judge you do not like
+weakness; and no more do I.&nbsp; And yet I have more than
+tolerance for Otto, whose faults are the faults of weakness, but
+never of ignoble weakness, and who seeks before all to be both
+kind and just.&nbsp; Seeks, not succeeds.&nbsp; But what is
+man?&nbsp; So much of cynicism to recognise that nobody does
+right is the best equipment for those who do not wish to be
+cynics in good earnest.&nbsp; Think better of Otto, if my plea
+can influence you; and this I mean for your own sake&mdash;not
+his, poor fellow, as he will never learn your opinion; but for
+yours, because, as <a name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+33</span>men go in this world (and women too), you will not go
+far wrong if you light upon so fine a fellow; and to light upon
+one and not perceive his merits is a calamity.&nbsp; In the
+flesh, of course, I mean; in the book the fault, of course, is
+with my stumbling pen.&nbsp; Seraphina made a mistake about her
+Otto; it begins to swim before me dimly that you may have some
+traits of Seraphina?</p>
+<p>With true ingratitude you see me pitch upon your exception;
+but it is easier to defend oneself gracefully than to acknowledge
+praise.&nbsp; I am truly glad that you should like my books; for
+I think I see from what you write that you are a reader worth
+convincing.&nbsp; Your name, if I have properly deciphered it,
+suggests that you may be also something of my countrywoman; for
+it is hard to see where Monroe came from, if not from
+Scotland.&nbsp; I seem to have here a double claim on your good
+nature: being myself pure Scotch and having appreciated your
+letter, make up two undeniable merits which, perhaps, if it
+should be quite without trouble, you might reward with your
+photograph.&mdash;Yours truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Miss Monroe</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>June</i> 1886.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MISS MONROE</span>,&mdash;I am
+ill in bed and stupid, incoherently stupid; yet I have to answer
+your letter, and if the answer is incomprehensible you must
+forgive me.&nbsp; You say my letter caused you pleasure; I am
+sure, as it fell out, not near so much as yours has brought to
+me.&nbsp; The interest taken in an author is fragile: his next
+book, or your next year of culture, might see the interest
+frosted or outgrown; and himself, in spite of all, you might
+probably find the most distasteful person upon earth.&nbsp; My
+case is different.&nbsp; I have bad health, am often condemned <a
+name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 34</span>to silence
+for days together&mdash;was so once for six weeks, so that my
+voice was awful to hear when I first used it, like the whisper of
+a shadow&mdash;have outlived all my chief pleasures, which were
+active and adventurous, and ran in the open air: and being a
+person who prefers life to art, and who knows it is a far finer
+thing to be in love, or to risk a danger, than to paint the
+finest picture or write the noblest book, I begin to regard what
+remains to me of my life as very shadowy.&nbsp; From a variety of
+reasons, I am ashamed to confess I was much in this humour when
+your letter came.&nbsp; I had a good many troubles; was
+regretting a high average of sins; had been recently reminded
+that I had outlived some friends, and wondering if I had not
+outlived some friendships; and had just, while boasting of better
+health, been struck down again by my haunting enemy, an enemy who
+was exciting at first, but has now, by the iteration of his
+strokes, become merely annoying and inexpressibly irksome.&nbsp;
+Can you fancy that to a person drawing towards the elderly this
+sort of conjunction of circumstances brings a rather aching sense
+of the past and the future?&nbsp; Well, it was just then that
+your letter and your photograph were brought to me in bed; and
+there came to me at once the most agreeable sense of
+triumph.&nbsp; My books were still young; my words had their good
+health and could go about the world and make themselves welcome;
+and even (in a shadowy and distant sense) make something in the
+nature of friends for the sheer hulk that stays at home and bites
+his pen over the manuscripts.&nbsp; It amused me very much to
+remember that I had been in Chicago, not so many years ago, in my
+proper person; where I had failed to awaken much remark, except
+from the ticket collector; and to think how much more gallant and
+persuasive were the fellows that I now send instead of me, and
+how these are welcome in that quarter to the sitter of Herr
+Platz, while their author was not very welcome even in the
+villainous restaurant where he tried to eat a meal and rather
+failed.</p>
+<p><a name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 35</span>And
+this leads me directly to a confession.&nbsp; The photograph
+which shall accompany this is not chosen as the most like, but
+the best-looking.&nbsp; Put yourself in my place, and you will
+call this pardonable.&nbsp; Even as it is, even putting forth a
+flattered presentment, I am a little pained; and very glad it is
+a photograph and not myself that has to go; for in this case, if
+it please you, you can tell yourself it is my image&mdash;and if
+it displeased you, you can lay the blame on the photographer; but
+in that, there were no help, and the poor author might belie his
+labours.</p>
+<p><i>Kidnapped</i> should soon appear; I am afraid you may not
+like it, as it is very unlike <i>Prince Otto</i> in every way;
+but I am myself a great admirer of the two chief characters, Alan
+and David.&nbsp; <i>Virginibus Puerisque</i> has never been
+issued in the States.&nbsp; I do not think it is a book that has
+much charm for publishers in any land; but I am to bring out a
+new edition in England shortly, a copy of which I must try to
+remember to send you.&nbsp; I say try to remember, because I have
+some superficial acquaintance with myself: and I have determined,
+after a galling discipline, to promise nothing more until the day
+of my death: at least, in this way, I shall no more break my
+word, and I must now try being churlish instead of being
+false.</p>
+<p>I do not believe you to be the least like Seraphina.&nbsp;
+Your photograph has no trace of her, which somewhat relieves me,
+as I am a good deal afraid of Seraphinas&mdash;they do not always
+go into the woods and see the sunrise, and some are so
+well-mailed that even that experience would leave them unaffected
+and unsoftened.&nbsp; The &lsquo;hair and eyes of several
+complexions&rsquo; was a trait taken from myself; and I do not
+bind myself to the opinions of Sir John.&nbsp; In this case,
+perhaps&mdash;but no, if the peculiarity is shared by two such
+pleasant persons as you and I (as you and me&mdash;the
+grammatical nut is hard), it must be a very good thing indeed,
+and Sir John must be an ass.</p>
+<p><a name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 36</span>The
+<i>Book Reader</i> notice was a strange jumble of fact and
+fancy.&nbsp; I wish you could have seen my father&rsquo;s old
+assistant and present partner when he heard my father described
+as an &lsquo;inspector of lighthouses,&rsquo; for we are all very
+proud of the family achievements, and the name of my house here
+in Bournemouth is stolen from one of the sea-towers of the
+Hebrides which are our pyramids and monuments.&nbsp; I was never
+at Cambridge, again; but neglected a considerable succession of
+classes at Edinburgh.&nbsp; But to correct that friendly
+blunderer were to write an autobiography.&mdash;And so now, with
+many thanks, believe me yours sincerely,</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>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>July</i> 1886.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">SIR</span>,&mdash;Your foolish letter
+was unduly received.&nbsp; There may be hidden fifths, and if
+there are, it shows how dam spontaneous the thing was.&nbsp; I
+could tinker and tic-tac-toe on a piece of paper, but scorned the
+act with a Threnody, which was poured forth like blood and water
+on the groaning organ.&nbsp; If your heart (which was what I
+addressed) remained unmoved, let us refer to the affair no more:
+crystallised emotion, the statement and the reconciliation of the
+sorrows of the race and the individual, is obviously no more to
+you than supping sawdust.&nbsp; Well, well.&nbsp; If ever I write
+another Threnody!&nbsp; My next op. will probably be a Passepied
+and fugue in G (or D).</p>
+<p><a name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 37</span>The
+mind is in my case shrunk to the size and sp. gr. of an aged
+Spanish filbert.&nbsp; O, I am so jolly silly.&nbsp; I now pickle
+with some freedom (1) the refrain of <i>Martini&rsquo;s
+Moutons</i>; (2) <i>Sul margine d&rsquo;un rio</i>, arranged for
+the infant school by the Aged Statesman; (3) the first phrase of
+Bach&rsquo;s musette (Sweet Englishwoman, No. 3), <a
+name="citation37"></a><a href="#footnote37"
+class="citation">[37]</a> the rest of the musette being one
+prolonged cropper, which I take daily for the benefit of my
+health.&nbsp; All my other works (of which there are many) are
+either arranged (by R. L. Stevenson) for the manly and melodious
+forefinger, or else prolonged and melancholy croppers. . . . I
+find one can get a notion of music very nicely.&nbsp; I have been
+pickling deeply in the Magic Flute; and have arranged <i>La dove
+prende</i>, almost to the end, for two melodious
+forefingers.&nbsp; I am next going to score the really nobler
+<i>Colomba o tortorella</i> for the same instruments.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">This day is published<br />
+The works of Ludwig van Beethoven<br />
+arranged<br />
+and wiederdurchgearbeiteted<br />
+for two melodious forefingers<br />
+by,<br />
+Sir,&mdash;Your obedient servant,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Pimperly
+Stipple</span>.</p>
+<p>That&rsquo;s a good idea?&nbsp; There&rsquo;s a person called
+Lenz who actually does it&mdash;beware his den; I lost
+eighteenpennies on him, and found the bleeding corpses of pieces
+of music divorced from their keys, despoiled of their graces, and
+even changed in time; I do not wish to regard music (nor to be
+regarded) through that bony Lenz.&nbsp; You say you are &lsquo;a
+spumfed idiot&rsquo;; but how about Lenz?&nbsp; And how about me,
+sir, me?</p>
+<p>I yesterday sent Lloyd by parcel post, at great expense, an
+empty matchbox and empty cigarette-paper book, a bell from a
+cat&rsquo;s collar, an iron kitchen spoon, and a piece <a
+name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 38</span>of coal more
+than half the superficies of this sheet of paper.&nbsp; They are
+now (appropriately enough) speeding towards the Silly Isles; I
+hope he will find them useful.&nbsp; By that, and my telegram
+with prepaid answer to yourself, you may judge of my spiritual
+state.&nbsp; The finances have much brightened; and if
+<i>Kidnapped</i> keeps on as it has begun, I may be
+solvent.&mdash;Yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Threnodi&aelig;
+Avctor</span><br />
+(The authour of ane Threnodie).</p>
+<p>Op. 2: Scherzo (in G Major) expressive of the Sense of favours
+to come.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to R. A. M. Stevenson</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Skerryvore</i>
+[<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>July</i> 1886].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR BOB</span>,&mdash;Herewith another
+shy; more melancholy than before, but I think not so abjectly
+idiotic.&nbsp; The musical terms seem to be as good as in
+Beethoven, and that, after all, is the great affair.&nbsp; Bar
+the dam bareness of the base, it looks like a piece of real music
+from a distance.&nbsp; I am proud to say it was not made one hand
+at a time; the base was of synchronous birth with the treble;
+they are of the same age, sir, and may God have mercy on their
+souls!&mdash;Yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">The
+Maestro</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas
+Stevenson</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>July</i> 7<i>th</i>, 1886.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR PEOPLE</span>,&mdash;It is
+probably my fault, and not yours, that I did not
+understand.&nbsp; I think it would be <a name="page39"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 39</span>well worth trying the winter in
+Bournemouth; but I would only take the house by the
+month&mdash;this after mature discussion.&nbsp; My leakage still
+pursues its course; if I were only well, I have a notion to go
+north and get in (if I could) at the inn at Kirkmichael, which
+has always smiled upon me much.&nbsp; If I did well there, we
+might then meet and do what should most smile at the time.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, of course, I must not move, and am in a rancid box
+here, feeling the heat a great deal, and pretty tired of
+things.&nbsp; Alexander did a good thing of me at last; it looks
+like a mixture of an aztec idol, a lion, an Indian Rajah, and a
+woman; and certainly represents a mighty comic figure.&nbsp; F.
+and Lloyd both think it is the best thing that has been done of
+me up to now.</p>
+<p>You should hear Lloyd on the penny whistle, and me on the
+piano!&nbsp; Dear powers, what a concerto!&nbsp; I now live
+entirely for the piano, he for the whistle; the neighbours, in a
+radius of a furlong and a half, are packing up in quest of
+brighter climes.&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;Please say if you can afford to let us have
+money for this trip, and if so, how much.&nbsp; I can see the
+year through without help, I believe, and supposing my health to
+keep up; but can scarce make this change on my own metal.</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>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>July</i> 1886].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;Doubtless,
+if all goes well, towards the 1st of August we shall be begging
+at your door.&nbsp; Thanks for a sight of the papers, which I
+return (you see) at once, fearing further responsibility.</p>
+<p>Glad you like Dauvit; but eh, man, yon&rsquo;s terrible
+strange conduc&rsquo; o&rsquo; thon man Rankeillor.&nbsp;
+Ca&rsquo; him a legal <a name="page40"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 40</span>adviser!&nbsp; It would make a bonny
+law-shuit, the Shaws case; and yon paper they signed, I&rsquo;m
+thinking, wouldnae be muckle thought o&rsquo; by Puggy
+Deas.&mdash;Yours ever,</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>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>], <i>July</i> 28, 1886.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR FATHER</span>,&mdash;We have
+decided not to come to Scotland, but just to do as Dobell wished,
+and take an outing.&nbsp; I believe this is wiser in all ways;
+but I own it is a disappointment.&nbsp; I am weary of England;
+like Alan, &lsquo;I weary for the heather,&rsquo; if not for the
+deer.&nbsp; Lloyd has gone to Scilly with Katharine and C., where
+and with whom he should have a good time.&nbsp; David seems
+really to be going to succeed, which is a pleasant prospect on
+all sides.&nbsp; I am, I believe, floated financially; a book
+that sells will be a pleasant novelty.&nbsp; I enclose another
+review; mighty complimentary, and calculated to sell the book
+too.</p>
+<p>Coolin&rsquo;s tombstone has been got out, honest man! and it
+is to be polished, for it has got scratched, and have a touch of
+gilding in the letters, and be sunk in the front of the
+house.&nbsp; Worthy man, he, too, will maybe weary for the
+heather, and the bents of Gullane, where (as I dare say you
+remember) he gaed clean gyte, and jumped on to his crown from a
+gig, in hot and hopeless chase of many thousand rabbits.&nbsp; I
+can still hear the little cries of the honest fellow as he
+disappeared; and my mother will correct me, but I believe it was
+two days before he turned up again at North Berwick: to judge by
+his belly, he had caught not one out of these thousands, but he
+had had some exercise.</p>
+<p>I keep well.&mdash;Ever your affectionate son,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><a name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 41</span><span
+class="smcap">to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>British Museum</i> [<i>August</i>
+10<i>th</i>, 1886].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MOTHER</span>,&mdash;We are
+having a capital holiday, and I am much better, and enjoying
+myself to the nines.&nbsp; Richmond is painting my
+portrait.&nbsp; To-day I lunch with him, and meet Burne-Jones;
+to-night Browning dines with us.&nbsp; That sounds rather lofty
+work, does it not?&nbsp; His path was paved with
+celebrities.&nbsp; To-morrow we leave for Paris, and next week, I
+suppose, or the week after, come home.&nbsp; Address here, as we
+may not reach Paris.&nbsp; I am really very well.&mdash;Ever your
+affectionate son,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to T. Watts-Dunton</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i> [<i>September</i> 1886].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MR. WATTS</span>, The sight of the
+last <i>Athen&aelig;um</i> reminds me of you, and of my debt, now
+too long due.&nbsp; I wish to thank you for your notice of
+<i>Kidnapped</i>; and that not because it was kind, though for
+that also I valued it, but in the same sense as I have thanked
+you before now for a hundred articles on a hundred different
+writers.&nbsp; A critic like you is one who fights the good
+fight, contending with stupidity, and I would fain hope not all
+in vain; in my own case, for instance, surely not in vain.</p>
+<p>What you say of the two parts in <i>Kidnapped</i> was felt by
+no one more painfully than by myself.&nbsp; I began it partly as
+a lark, partly as a pot-boiler; and suddenly it <a
+name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 42</span>moved, David
+and Alan stepped out from the canvas, and I found I was in
+another world.&nbsp; But there was the cursed beginning, and a
+cursed end must be appended; and our old friend Byles the butcher
+was plainly audible tapping at the back door.&nbsp; So it had to
+go into the world, one part (as it does seem to me) alive, one
+part merely galvanised: no work, only an essay.&nbsp; For a man
+of tentative method, and weak health, and a scarcity of private
+means, and not too much of that frugality which is the
+artist&rsquo;s proper virtue, the days of sinecures and patrons
+look very golden: the days of professional literature very
+hard.&nbsp; Yet I do not so far deceive myself as to think I
+should change my character by changing my epoch; the sum of
+virtue in our books is in a relation of equality to the sum of
+virtues in ourselves; and my <i>Kidnapped</i> was doomed, while
+still in the womb and while I was yet in the cradle, to be the
+thing it is.</p>
+<p>And now to the more genial business of defence.&nbsp; You
+attack my fight on board the <i>Covenant</i>: I think it
+literal.&nbsp; David and Alan had every advantage on their
+side&mdash;position, arms, training, a good conscience; a handful
+of merchant sailors, not well led in the first attack, not led at
+all in the second, could only by an accident have taken the
+round-house by attack; and since the defenders had firearms and
+food, it is even doubtful if they could have been starved
+out.&nbsp; The only doubtful point with me is whether the seamen
+would have ever ventured on the second onslaught; I half believe
+they would not; still the illusion of numbers and the authority
+of Hoseason would perhaps stretch far enough to justify the
+extremity.&mdash;I am, dear Mr. Watts, your very sincere
+admirer,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><a name="page43"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 43</span><span
+class="smcap">to Frederick Locker-Lampson</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Skerryvore</i>, <i>September</i>
+4, 1886.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Not</span> roses to the
+rose, I trow,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The thistle sends, nor to the bee<br />
+Do wasps bring honey.&nbsp; Wherefore now<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Should Locker ask a verse from me?</p>
+<p class="poetry">Martial, perchance,&mdash;but he is dead,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And Herrick now must rhyme no more;<br />
+Still burning with the muse, they tread<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; (And arm in arm) the shadowy shore.</p>
+<p class="poetry">They, if they lived, with dainty hand,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To music as of mountain brooks,<br />
+Might bring you worthy words to stand<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Unshamed, dear Locker, in your books.</p>
+<p class="poetry">But tho&rsquo; these fathers of your race<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Be gone before, yourself a sire,<br />
+To-day you see before your face<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Your stalwart youngsters touch the lyre&mdash;</p>
+<p class="poetry">On these&mdash;on Lang, or
+Dobson&mdash;call,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Long leaders of the songful feast.<br />
+They lend a verse your laughing fall&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A verse they owe you at the least.</p>
+<h3><a name="page44"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 44</span><span
+class="smcap">to Frederick Locker-Lampson</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Skerryvore</i>],
+<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>September</i> 1886.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR LOCKER</span>,&mdash;You take my
+verses too kindly, but you will admit, for such a bluebottle of a
+versifier to enter the house of Gertrude, where her necklace
+hangs, was not a little brave.&nbsp; Your kind invitation, I
+fear, must remain unaccented; and yet&mdash;if I am very
+well&mdash;perhaps next spring&mdash;(for I mean to be very
+well)&mdash;my wife might. . . .&nbsp; But all that is in the
+clouds with my better health.&nbsp; And now look here: you are a
+rich man and know many people, therefore perhaps some of the
+Governors of Christ&rsquo;s Hospital.&nbsp; If you do, I know a
+most deserving case, in which I would (if I could) do
+anything.&nbsp; To approach you, in this way, is not decent; and
+you may therefore judge by my doing it, how near this matter lies
+to my heart.&nbsp; I enclose you a list of the Governors, which I
+beg you to return, whether or not you shall be able to do
+anything to help me.</p>
+<p>The boy&rsquo;s name is &mdash;; he and his mother are very
+poor.&nbsp; It may interest you in her cause if I tell you this:
+that when I was dangerously ill at Hy&egrave;res, this brave
+lady, who had then a sick husband of her own (since dead) and a
+house to keep and a family of four to cook for, all with her own
+hands, for they could afford no servant, yet took watch-about
+with my wife, and contributed not only to my comfort, but to my
+recovery in a degree that I am not able to limit.&nbsp; You can
+conceive how much I suffer from my impotence to help her, and
+indeed I have already shown myself a thankless friend.&nbsp; Let
+not my cry go up before you in vain!&mdash;Yours in hope,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><a name="page45"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 45</span><span
+class="smcap">to Frederick Locker-Lampson</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>September</i> 1886.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LOCKER</span>,&mdash;That I
+should call myself a man of letters, and land myself in such
+unfathomable ambiguities!&nbsp; No, my dear Locker, I did not
+want a cheque; and in my ignorance of business, which is greater
+even than my ignorance of literature, I have taken the liberty of
+drawing a pen through the document and returning it; should this
+be against the laws of God or man, forgive me.&nbsp; All that I
+meant by my excessively disgusting reference to your material
+well-being was the vague notion that a man who is well off was
+sure to know a Governor of Christ&rsquo;s Hospital; though how I
+quite arrived at this conclusion I do not see.&nbsp; A man with a
+cold in the head does not necessarily know a ratcatcher; and the
+connection is equally close&mdash;as it now appears to my
+awakened and somewhat humbled spirit.&nbsp; For all that, let me
+thank you in the warmest manner for your friendly readiness to
+contribute.&nbsp; You say you have hopes of becoming a miser: I
+wish I had; but indeed I believe you deceive yourself, and are as
+far from it as ever.&nbsp; I wish I had any excuse to keep your
+cheque, for it is much more elegant to receive than to return;
+but I have my way of making it up to you, and I do sincerely beg
+you to write to the two Governors.&nbsp; This extraordinary
+outpouring of correspondence would (if you knew my habits)
+convince you of my great eagerness in this matter.&nbsp; I would
+promise gratitude; but I have made a promise to myself to make no
+more promises to anybody else, having broken such a host already,
+and come near breaking my heart in consequence; and as for
+gratitude, I am by nature a thankless dog, and was spoiled from a
+child up.&nbsp; But if you can help this lady in the matter of
+the Hospital, you will have <a name="page46"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 46</span>helped the worthy.&nbsp; Let me
+continue to hope that I shall make out my visit in the spring,
+and believe me, yours very truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p>It may amuse you to know that a very long while ago, I broke
+my heart to try to imitate your verses, and failed
+hopelessly.&nbsp; I saw some of the evidences the other day among
+my papers, and blushed to the heels.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p>I give up finding out your name in the meantime, and keep to
+that by which you will be known&mdash;Frederick Locker.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">To Frederick Locker-Lampson</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>], 24<i>th</i> <i>September</i> 1886.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LOCKER</span>,&mdash;You are
+simply an angel of light, and your two letters have gone to the
+post; I trust they will reach the hearts of the
+recipients&mdash;at least, that could not be more handsomely
+expressed.&nbsp; About the cheque: well now, I am going to keep
+it; but I assure you Mrs. &mdash; has never asked me for money,
+and I would not dare to offer any till she did.&nbsp; For all
+that I shall stick to the cheque now, and act to that amount as
+your almoner.&nbsp; In this way I reward myself for the ambiguity
+of my epistolary style.</p>
+<p>I suppose, if you please, you may say your verses are thin
+(would you so describe an arrow, by the way, and one that struck
+the gold?&nbsp; It scarce strikes me as exhaustively
+descriptive), and, thin or not, they are (and I have found them)
+inimitably elegant.&nbsp; I thank you again very sincerely for
+the generous trouble you have taken in this matter which was so
+near my heart, and you may be very certain it will be the fault
+of my health and not my inclination, if I do not see you before
+very long; for all that has past has made me in more than the
+official sense sincerely yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><a name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 47</span><span
+class="smcap">To Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Skerryvore</i>, <i>Dec.</i> 14,
+1886.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;This is
+first-rate of you, the Lord love you for it!&nbsp; I am truly
+much obliged.&nbsp; He&mdash;my father&mdash;is very changeable;
+at times, he seems only a slow quiet edition of himself; again,
+he will be very heavy and blank; but never so violent as last
+spring; and therefore, to my mind, better on the whole.</p>
+<p>Fanny is pretty peepy; I am splendid.&nbsp; I have been
+writing much verse&mdash;quite the bard, in fact; and also a dam
+tale to order, which will be what it will be: I don&rsquo;t love
+it, but some of it is passable in its mouldy way, <i>The
+Misadventures of John Nicholson</i>.&nbsp; All my bardly
+exercises are in Scotch; I have struck my somewhat ponderous
+guitar in that tongue to no small extent: with what success, I
+know not, but I think it&rsquo;s better than my English verse;
+more marrow and fatness, and more ruggedness.</p>
+<p>How goes <i>Keats</i>?&nbsp; Pray remark, if he (Keats) hung
+back from Shelley, it was not to be wondered at, <i>when so many
+of his friends were Shelley&rsquo;s pensioners</i>.&nbsp; I
+forget if you have made this point; it has been borne in upon me
+reading Dowden and the <i>Shelley Papers</i>; and it will do no
+harm if you have made it.&nbsp; I finished a poem to-day, and
+writ 3000 words of a story, <i>tant bien que mal</i>; and have a
+right to be sleepy, and (what is far nobler and rarer) am
+so.&mdash;My dear Colvin, ever yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">The Real
+Mackay</span>.</p>
+<h3><a name="page48"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 48</span><span
+class="smcap">To Frederick Locker-Lampson</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>February</i> 5<i>th</i>, 1887.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LOCKER</span>,&mdash;Here I am
+in my bed as usual, and it is indeed a long while since I went
+out to dinner.&nbsp; You do not know what a crazy fellow this
+is.&nbsp; My winter has not so far been luckily passed, and all
+hope of paying visits at Easter has vanished for twelve calendar
+months.&nbsp; But because I am a beastly and indurated invalid, I
+am not dead to human feelings; and I neither have forgotten you
+nor will forget you.&nbsp; Some day the wind may round to the
+right quarter and we may meet; till then I am still truly
+yours,</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>February</i> 1887.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR JAMES</span>,&mdash;My health
+has played me it in once more in the absurdest fashion, and the
+creature who now addresses you is but a stringy and white-faced
+<i>bouilli</i> out of the pot of fever, with the devil to pay in
+every corner of his economy.&nbsp; I suppose (to judge by your
+letter) I need not send you these sheets, which came during my
+collapse by the rush.&nbsp; I am on the start with three volumes,
+that one of tales, <a name="citation48a"></a><a
+href="#footnote48a" class="citation">[48a]</a> a second one of
+essays, <a name="citation48b"></a><a href="#footnote48b"
+class="citation">[48b]</a> and one of&mdash;ahem&mdash;verse. <a
+name="citation48c"></a><a href="#footnote48c"
+class="citation">[48c]</a>&nbsp; This is a great order, is it
+not?&nbsp; After that I shall have empty lockers.&nbsp; All new
+work stands still; I was getting on well with Jenkin when this
+blessed malady unhorsed me, and sent me back to the
+dung-collecting trade of the republisher.&nbsp; I shall re-issue
+<a name="page49"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 49</span><i>Virg.
+Puer.</i> as Vol. <span class="GutSmall">I</span>. of
+<i>Essays</i>, and the new vol. as Vol. <span
+class="GutSmall">II</span>. of ditto; to be sold, however,
+separately.&nbsp; This is but a dry maundering; however, I am
+quite unfit&mdash;&lsquo;I am for action quite unfit Either of
+exercise or wit.&rsquo;&nbsp; My father is in a variable state;
+many sorrows and perplexities environ the house of Stevenson; my
+mother shoots north at this hour on business of a distinctly
+rancid character; my father (under my wife&rsquo;s tutorage)
+proceeds to-morrow to Salisbury; I remain here in my bed and
+whistle; in no quarter of heaven is anything encouraging
+apparent, except that the good Colvin comes to the hotel here on
+a visit.&nbsp; This dreary view of life is somewhat blackened by
+the fact that my head aches, which I always regard as a liberty
+on the part of the powers that be.&nbsp; This is also my first
+letter since my recovery.&nbsp; God speed your laudatory pen!</p>
+<p>My wife joins in all warm messages.&mdash;Yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to W. H. Low</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">(<i>April</i> 1887.)</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LOW</span>,&mdash;The fares to
+London may be found in any continental Bradshaw or sich; from
+London to Bournemouth impoverished parties who can stoop to the
+third class get their ticket for the matter of 10s., or, as my
+wife loves to phrase it, &lsquo;a half a pound.&rsquo;&nbsp; You
+will also be involved in a 3s. fare to get to Skerryvore; but
+this, I dare say, friends could help you in on your arrival; so
+that you may reserve your energies for the two
+tickets&mdash;costing the matter of a pound&mdash;and the usual
+gratuities to porters.&nbsp; This does not seem to me much:
+considering the intellectual pleasures that await you here, I
+call it dirt cheap.&nbsp; I <i>believe</i> the third class from
+Paris to London <a name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+50</span>(<i>vi&acirc;</i> Dover) is <i>about</i> forty francs,
+but I cannot swear.&nbsp; Suppose it to be fifty.</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>50 &times; 2=100</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">100</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The expense of spirit or spontaneous lapse of coin on the
+journey, at 5 frcs. a head, 5 &times; 2=10</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">10</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Victuals on ditto, at 5 frcs. a head, 5 &times; 2 = 10</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">10</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Gratuity to stewardess, in case of severe prostration, at
+3 francs</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">3</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>One night in London, on a modest footing, say 20</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">20</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Two tickets to Bournemouth at 12.50, 12.50 &times;
+2=25</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">25</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Porters and general devilment, say 5</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">5</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Cabs in London, say 2 shillings, and in Bournemouth, 3
+shillings=5 shillings, 6 frcs. 25</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">6.25</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>frcs.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">179.25</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Or, the same in pounds,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">&pound;7, 3s. 6&frac12;d.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Or, the same in dollars,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">$35.45</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>if there be any arithmetical virtue in me.&nbsp; I have left
+out dinner in London in case you want to blow out, which would
+come extry, and with the aid of <i>vangs fangs</i> might easily
+double the whole amount&mdash;above all if you have a few friends
+to meet you.</p>
+<p>In making this valuable project, or budget, I discovered for
+the first time a reason (frequently overlooked) for the singular
+costliness of travelling with your wife.&nbsp; Anybody would
+count the tickets double; but how few would have
+remembered&mdash;or indeed has any one ever remembered?&mdash;to
+count the spontaneous lapse of coin double also?&nbsp; Yet there
+are two of you, each must do his daily leakage, and it must be
+done out of your travelling fund.&nbsp; You will tell me,
+perhaps, that you carry the coin yourself: my dear sir, do you
+think you can fool your Maker?&nbsp; Your wife has to lose her
+quota; and by God she will&mdash;if you kept the <a
+name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 51</span>coin in a
+belt.&nbsp; One thing I have omitted: you will lose a certain
+amount on the exchange, but this even I cannot foresee, as it is
+one of the few things that vary with the way a man has.&mdash;I
+am, dear sir, yours financially,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Samuel
+Budgett</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Alison Cunningham</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Skerryvore</i>, <i>April</i>
+16<i>th</i>, 1887.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAREST CUMMY</span>,&mdash;As
+usual, I have been a dreary bad fellow and not written for ages;
+but you must just try to forgive me, to believe (what is the
+truth) that the number of my letters is no measure of the number
+of times I think of you, and to remember how much writing I have
+to do.&nbsp; The weather is bright, but still cold; and my
+father, I&rsquo;m afraid, feels it sharply.&nbsp; He has
+had&mdash;still has, rather&mdash;a most obstinate jaundice,
+which has reduced him cruelly in strength, and really upset him
+altogether.&nbsp; I hope, or think, he is perhaps a little
+better; but he suffers much, cannot sleep at night, and gives
+John and my mother a severe life of it to wait upon him.&nbsp; My
+wife is, I think, a little better, but no great shakes.&nbsp; I
+keep mightily respectable myself.</p>
+<p>Coolin&rsquo;s Tombstone is now built into the front wall of
+Skerryvore, and poor Bogie&rsquo;s (with a Latin inscription
+also) is set just above it.&nbsp; Poor, unhappy wee man, he died,
+as you must have heard, in fight, which was what he would have
+chosen; for military glory was more in his line than the domestic
+virtues.&nbsp; I believe this is about all my news, except that,
+as I write, there is a blackbird singing in our garden trees, as
+it were at Swanston.&nbsp; I would like fine to go up the
+burnside a bit, and sit by the pool and be young again&mdash;or
+no, be what I am still, only there instead of here, for just a
+little.&nbsp; Did you see that I had written about John
+Todd?&nbsp; In this month&rsquo;s <i>Longman</i> it was; if you
+have not seen it, I will try and send it you.&nbsp; Some day
+climb as high as <a name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+52</span>Halkerside for me (I am never likely to do it for
+myself), and sprinkle some of the well water on the turf.&nbsp; I
+am afraid it is a pagan rite, but quite harmless, and <i>ye can
+sain it wi&rsquo; a bit prayer</i>.&nbsp; Tell the Peewies that I
+mind their forbears well.&nbsp; My heart is sometimes heavy, and
+sometimes glad to mind it all.&nbsp; But for what we have
+received, the Lord make us truly thankful.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t
+forget to sprinkle the water, and do it in my name; I feel a
+childish eagerness in this.</p>
+<p>Remember me most kindly to James, and with all sorts of love
+to yourself, believe me, your laddie,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;I suppose Mrs. Todd ought to see the paper
+about her man; judge of that, and if you think she would not
+dislike it, buy her one from me, and let me know.&nbsp; The
+article is called &lsquo;Pastoral,&rsquo; in <i>Longman&rsquo;s
+Magazine</i> for April.&nbsp; I will send you the money; I would
+to-day, but it&rsquo;s the Sabbie day, and I cannae.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p>Remembrances from all here.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>June</i>
+1887.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR S. C.</span>,&mdash;At last I
+can write a word to you.&nbsp; Your little note in the <i>P. M.
+G.</i> was charming.&nbsp; I have written four pages in the
+<i>Contemporary</i>, which Bunting found room for: they are not
+very good, but I shall do more for his memory in time.</p>
+<p>About the death, I have long hesitated, I was long before I
+could tell my mind; and now I know it, and can but say that I am
+glad.&nbsp; If we could have had my father, <a
+name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 53</span>that would
+have been a different thing.&nbsp; But to keep that
+changeling&mdash;suffering changeling&mdash;any longer, could
+better none and nothing.&nbsp; Now he rests; it is more
+significant, it is more like himself.&nbsp; He will begin to
+return to us in the course of time, as he was and as we loved
+him.</p>
+<p>My favourite words in literature, my favourite
+scene&mdash;&lsquo;O let him pass,&rsquo; Kent and Lear&mdash;was
+played for me here in the first moment of my return.&nbsp; I
+believe Shakespeare saw it with his own father.&nbsp; I had no
+words; but it was shocking to see.&nbsp; He died on his feet, you
+know; was on his feet the last day, knowing nobody&mdash;still he
+would be up.&nbsp; This was his constant wish; also that he might
+smoke a pipe on his last day.&nbsp; The funeral would have
+pleased him; it was the largest private funeral in man&rsquo;s
+memory here.</p>
+<p>We have no plans, and it is possible we may go home without
+going through town.&nbsp; I do not know; I have no views yet
+whatever; nor can have any at this stage of my cold and my
+business.&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h2><a name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span>IX<br
+/>
+THE UNITED STATES AGAIN:<br />
+WINTER IN THE ADIRONDACKS<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">AUGUST 1887-OCTOBER 1888</span></h2>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>], <i>August</i> 1887.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR LAD</span>,&mdash;I write to
+inform you that Mr. Stevenson&rsquo;s well-known work,
+<i>Virginibus Puerisque</i>, is about to be reprinted.&nbsp; At
+the same time a second volume called <i>Memories and
+Portraits</i> will issue from the roaring loom.&nbsp; Its
+interest will be largely autobiographical, Mr. S. having sketched
+there the lineaments of many departed friends, and dwelt fondly,
+and with a m&rsquo;istened eye, upon byegone pleasures.&nbsp; The
+two will be issued under the common title of <i>Familiar
+Essays</i>; but the volumes will be vended separately to those
+who are mean enough not to hawk at both.</p>
+<p><a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 60</span>The
+blood is at last stopped: only yesterday.&nbsp; I began to think
+I should not get away.&nbsp; However, I hope&mdash;I
+hope&mdash;remark the word&mdash;no boasting&mdash;I hope I may
+luff up a bit now.&nbsp; Dobell, whom I saw, gave as usual a good
+account of my lungs, and expressed himself, like his neighbours,
+hopefully about the trip.&nbsp; He says, my uncle says, Scott
+says, Brown says&mdash;they all say&mdash;You ought not to be in
+such a state of health; you should recover.&nbsp; Well, then, I
+mean to.&nbsp; My spirits are rising again after three months of
+black depression: I almost begin to feel as if I should care to
+live: I would, by God!&nbsp; And so I believe I
+shall.&mdash;Yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Bulletin
+M&lsquo;Gurder</span>.</p>
+<p>How has the Deacon gone?</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to W. H. Low</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Skerryvore</i>,
+<i>Bournemouth</i>], August 6<i>th</i>, 1887.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LOW</span>,&mdash;We&mdash;my
+mother, my wife, my stepson, my maidservant, and myself, five
+souls&mdash;leave, if all is well, Aug. 20th, per Wilson line
+<span class="GutSmall">SS</span>. <i>Ludgate Hill</i>.&nbsp;
+Shall probably evade N. Y. at first, cutting straight to a
+watering-place: Newport, I believe, its name.&nbsp; Afterwards we
+shall steal incognito into <i>la bonne villa</i>, and see no one
+but you and the Scribners, if it may be so managed.&nbsp; You
+must understand I have been very seedy indeed, quite a dead body;
+and unless the voyage does miracles, I shall have to draw it dam
+fine.&nbsp; Alas, &lsquo;The Canoe Speaks&rsquo; is now out of
+date; it will figure in my volume of verses now imminent.&nbsp;
+However, I may find some inspiration some day.&mdash;Till very
+soon, yours ever,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Miss Adelaide Boodle</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><a name="page61"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 61</span><i>Bournemouth</i>, <i>August</i>
+19<i>th</i>, 1887.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MISS BOODLE</span>,&mdash;I
+promise you the paper-knife shall go to sea with me; and if it
+were in my disposal, I should promise it should return with me
+too.&nbsp; All that you say, I thank you for very much; I thank
+you for all the pleasantness that you have brought about our
+house; and I hope the day may come when I shall see you again in
+poor old Skerryvore, now left to the natives of Canada, or to
+worse barbarians, if such exist.&nbsp; I am afraid my attempt to
+jest is rather <i>&agrave; contre-c&oelig;ur</i>.&nbsp;
+Good-bye&mdash;<i>au revoir</i>&mdash;and do not forget your
+friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Messrs. Chatto and Windus</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Bournemouth</i> [<i>August</i>
+1887].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR SIRS</span>,&mdash;I here enclose
+the two titles.&nbsp; Had you not better send me the bargains to
+sign?&nbsp; I shall be here till Saturday; and shall have an
+address in London (which I shall send you) till Monday, when I
+shall sail.&nbsp; Even if the proofs do not reach you till Monday
+morning, you could send a clerk from Fenchurch Street Station at
+10.23 <span class="GutSmall">A.M.</span> for Galleons Station,
+and he would find me embarking on board the <i>Ludgate Hill</i>,
+Island Berth, Royal Albert Dock.&nbsp; Pray keep this in case it
+should be necessary to catch this last chance.&nbsp; I am most
+anxious to have the proofs with me on the voyage.&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="page62"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 62</span><i>H.M.S.</i>
+&lsquo;<i>Vulgarium</i>,&rsquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Off Havre de Grace</i>,
+<i>this</i> 22<i>nd</i> <i>day of August</i> [1887].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">SIR</span>,&mdash;The weather has been
+hitherto inimitable.&nbsp; Inimitable is the only word that I can
+apply to our fellow-voyagers, whom a categorist, possibly
+premature, has been already led to divide into two
+classes&mdash;the better sort consisting of the baser kind of
+Bagman, and the worser of undisguised Beasts of the Field.&nbsp;
+The berths are excellent, the pasture swallowable, the champagne
+of H. James (to recur to my favourite adjective)
+inimitable.&nbsp; As for the Commodore, he slept awhile in the
+evening, tossed off a cup of Henry James with his plain meal,
+walked the deck till eight, among sands and floating lights and
+buoys and wrecked brigantines, came down (to his regret) a minute
+too soon to see Margate lit up, turned in about nine, slept, with
+some interruptions, but on the whole sweetly, until six, and has
+already walked a mile or so of deck, among a fleet of other
+steamers waiting for the tide, within view of Havre, and
+pleasantly entertained by passing fishing-boats, hovering
+sea-gulls, and Vulgarians pairing on deck with endearments of
+primitive simplicity.&nbsp; There, sir, can be viewed the sham
+quarrel, the sham desire for information, and every device of
+these two poor ancient sexes (who might, you might think, have
+learned in the course of the ages something new) down to the
+exchange of head-gear.&mdash;I am, sir, yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Bold Bob
+Boltsprit</span>.</p>
+<p><a name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 63</span>B. B.
+B. (<i>alias</i> the Commodore) will now turn to his
+proofs.&nbsp; Havre de Grace is a city of some show.&nbsp; It is
+for-ti-fied; and, so far as I can see, is a place of some
+trade.&nbsp; It is situ-ated in France, a country of
+Europe.&nbsp; You always complain there are no facts in my
+letters.</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>Newport</i>, <i>R. I. U.S.A.</i>
+[<i>September</i> 1887].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;So long it
+went excellent well, and I had a time I am glad to have had;
+really enjoying my life.&nbsp; There is nothing like being at
+sea, after all.&nbsp; And O, why have I allowed myself to rot so
+long on land?&nbsp; But on the Banks I caught a cold, and I have
+not yet got over it.&nbsp; My reception here was idiotic to the
+last degree. . . .&nbsp; It is very silly, and not pleasant,
+except where humour enters; and I confess the poor interviewer
+lads pleased me.&nbsp; They are too good for their trade; avoided
+anything I asked them to avoid, and were no more vulgar in their
+reports than they could help.&nbsp; I liked the lads.</p>
+<p>O, it was lovely on our stable-ship, chock full of
+stallions.&nbsp; She rolled heartily, rolled some of the fittings
+out of our state-room, and I think a more dangerous cruise
+(except that it was summer) it would be hard to imagine.&nbsp;
+But we enjoyed it to the masthead, all but Fanny; and even she
+perhaps a little.&nbsp; When we got in, we had run out of beer,
+stout, cocoa, soda-water, water, fresh meat, and (almost) of
+biscuit.&nbsp; But it was a thousandfold pleasanter than a great
+big Birmingham liner like a new hotel; and we liked the officers,
+and made friends with the quartermasters, and I (at least) made a
+friend of a baboon (for we carried a cargo of apes), whose
+embraces have pretty near cost me a coat.&nbsp; The passengers
+improved, and were a very good specimen lot, with no drunkard, no
+gambling that I saw, and less grumbling and backbiting than one
+would have asked of poor human nature.&nbsp; Apes, stallions,
+cows, matches, hay, <a name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+64</span>and poor men-folk, all, or almost all, came successfully
+to land.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Henry James</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Newport</i>, <i>U.S.A.</i>,
+<i>September</i> 1887.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR JAMES</span>,&mdash;Here we are
+at Newport in the house of the good Fairchilds; and a sad burthen
+we have laid upon their shoulders.&nbsp; I have been in bed
+practically ever since I came.&nbsp; I caught a cold on the Banks
+after having had the finest time conceivable, and enjoyed myself
+more than I could have hoped on board our strange floating
+menagerie: stallions and monkeys and matches made our cargo; and
+the vast continent of these incongruities rolled the while like a
+haystack; and the stallions stood hypnotised by the motion,
+looking through the ports at our dinner-table, and winked when
+the crockery was broken; and the little monkeys stared at each
+other in their cages, and were thrown overboard like little
+bluish babies; and the big monkey, Jacko, scoured about the ship
+and rested willingly in my arms, to the ruin of my clothing; and
+the man of the stallions made a bower of the black tarpaulin, and
+sat therein at the feet of a raddled divinity, like a picture on
+a box of chocolates; and the other passengers, when they were not
+sick, looked on and laughed.&nbsp; Take all this picture, and
+make it roll till the bell shall sound unexpected notes and the
+fittings shall break lose in our state-room, and you have the
+voyage of the <i>Ludgate Hill</i>.&nbsp; She arrived in the port
+of New York, without beer, porter, soda-water, cura&ccedil;oa,
+fresh meat, or fresh water; and yet we lived, and we regret
+her.</p>
+<p>My wife is a good deal run down, and I am no great shakes.</p>
+<p>America is, as I remarked, a fine place to eat in, and a great
+place for kindness; but, Lord, what a silly thing is
+popularity!&nbsp; I envy the cool obscurity of Skerryvore.&nbsp;
+If it even paid, said Meanness! and was abashed at
+himself.&mdash;Yours most sincerely,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L S.</p>
+<h3><a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 65</span><span
+class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>New York</i>: <i>end of
+September</i> 1887.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR S. C.</span>,&mdash;Your
+delightful letter has just come, and finds me in a New York
+hotel, waiting the arrival of a sculptor (St. Gaudens) who is
+making a medallion of yours truly and who is (to boot) one of the
+handsomest and nicest fellows I have seen.&nbsp; I caught a cold
+on the Banks; fog is not for me; nearly died of interviewers and
+visitors, during twenty-four hours in New York; cut for Newport
+with Lloyd and Valentine, a journey like fairy-land for the most
+engaging beauties, one little rocky and pine-shaded cove after
+another, each with a house and a boat at anchor, so that I left
+my heart in each and marvelled why American authors had been so
+unjust to their country; caught another cold on the train;
+arrived at Newport to go to bed and to grow worse, and to stay in
+bed until I left again; the Fairchilds proving during this time
+kindness itself; Mr. Fairchild simply one of the most engaging
+men in the world, and one of the children, Blair, <i>aet.</i>
+ten, a great joy and amusement in his solemn adoring attitude to
+the author of <i>Treasure Island</i>.</p>
+<p>Here I was interrupted by the arrival of my sculptor.&nbsp; I
+have begged him to make a medallion of himself and give me a
+copy.&nbsp; I will not take up the sentence in which I was
+wandering so long, but begin fresh.&nbsp; I was ten or twelve
+days at Newport; then came back convalescent to New York.&nbsp;
+Fanny and Lloyd are off to the Adirondacks to see if that will
+suit; and the rest of us leave Monday (this is Saturday) to
+follow them up.&nbsp; I hope we may manage to stay there all
+winter.&nbsp; I have a splendid appetite and have on the whole
+recovered well after a mighty sharp attack.&nbsp; I am now on a
+salary of &pound;500 a year for twelve articles in
+<i>Scribner&rsquo;s Magazine</i> on what I like; it is more than
+&pound;500, but I cannot calculate more precisely.&nbsp; You have
+no idea how much is made of me <a name="page66"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 66</span>here; I was offered &pound;2000 for a
+weekly article&mdash;eh heh! how is that? but I refused that
+lucrative job.&nbsp; The success of <i>Underwoods</i> is
+gratifying.&nbsp; You see, the verses are sane; that is their
+strong point, and it seems it is strong enough to carry them.</p>
+<p>A thousand thanks for your grand letter, 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>New York</i> [<i>September</i>
+1887]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LAD</span>,&mdash;Herewith
+verses for Dr. Hake, which please communicate.&nbsp; I did my
+best with the interviewers; I don&rsquo;t know if Lloyd sent you
+the result; my heart was too sick: you can do nothing with them;
+and yet&mdash;literally sweated with anxiety to please, and took
+me down in long hand!</p>
+<p>I have been quite ill, but go better.&nbsp; I am being not
+busted, but medallioned, by St. Gaudens, who is a first-rate,
+plain, high-minded artist and honest fellow; you would like him
+down to the ground.&nbsp; I believe sculptors are fine fellows
+when they are not demons.&nbsp; O, I am now a salaried person,
+&pound;600 a year, <a name="citation66"></a><a href="#footnote66"
+class="citation">[66]</a> to write twelve articles in
+<i>Scribner&rsquo;s Magazine</i>; it remains to be seen if it
+really pays, huge as the sum is, but the slavery may overweigh
+me.&nbsp; I hope you will like my answer to Hake, and specially
+that he will.</p>
+<p>Love to all.&mdash;Yours affectionately,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.<br />
+(<i>le salarie</i>).</p>
+<h3><a name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 67</span><span
+class="smcap">to R. A. M. Stevenson</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Saranac Lake</i>,
+<i>Adirondacks</i>,<br />
+<i>New York</i>, <i>U.S.A.</i> [<i>October</i> 1887].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BOB</span>,&mdash;The cold [of
+Colorado] was too rigorous for me; I could not risk the long
+railway voyage, and the season was too late to risk the Eastern,
+Cape Hatteras side of the steamer one; so here we stuck and
+stick.&nbsp; We have a wooden house on a hill-top, overlooking a
+river, and a village about a quarter of a mile away, and very
+wooded hills; the whole scene is very Highland, bar want of
+heather and the wooden houses.</p>
+<p>I have got one good thing of my sea voyage: it is proved the
+sea agrees heartily with me, and my mother likes it; so if I get
+any better, or no worse, my mother will likely hire a yacht for a
+month or so in summer.&nbsp; Good Lord!&nbsp; What fun!&nbsp;
+Wealth is only useful for two things: a yacht and a string
+quartette.&nbsp; For these two I will sell my soul.&nbsp; Except
+for these I hold that &pound;700 a year is as much as anybody can
+possibly want; and I have had more, so I know, for the extry
+coins were for no use, excepting for illness, which damns
+everything.</p>
+<p>I was so happy on board that ship, I could not have believed
+it possible.&nbsp; We had the beastliest weather, and many
+discomforts; but the mere fact of its being a tramp-ship gave us
+many comforts; we could cut about with the men and officers, stay
+in the wheel-house, discuss all manner of things, and really be a
+little at sea.&nbsp; And truly there is nothing else.&nbsp; I had
+literally forgotten what happiness was, and the full
+mind&mdash;full of external and physical things, not full of
+cares and labours and rot about a fellow&rsquo;s behaviour.&nbsp;
+My heart literally sang; I truly care for nothing so much as for
+that.&nbsp; We took so north a course, that we saw Newfoundland;
+no one in the ship had ever seen it before.</p>
+<p>It was beyond belief to me how she rolled; in seemingly smooth
+water, the bell striking, the fittings bounding <a
+name="page68"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 68</span>out of our
+state-room.&nbsp; It is worth having lived these last years,
+partly because I have written some better books, which is always
+pleasant, but chiefly to have had the joy of this voyage.&nbsp; I
+have been made a lot of here, and it is sometimes pleasant,
+sometimes the reverse; but I could give it all up, and agree
+that&mdash;was the author of my works, for a good seventy ton
+schooner and the coins to keep her on.&nbsp; And to think there
+are parties with yachts who would make the exchange!&nbsp; I know
+a little about fame now; it is no good compared to a yacht; and
+anyway there is more fame in a yacht, more genuine fame; to cross
+the Atlantic and come to anchor in Newport (say) with the Union
+Jack, and go ashore for your letters and hang about the pier,
+among the holiday yachtsmen&mdash;that&rsquo;s fame, that&rsquo;s
+glory, and nobody can take it away; they can&rsquo;t say your
+book is bad; you <i>have</i> crossed the Atlantic.&nbsp; I should
+do it south by the West Indies, to avoid the damned Banks; and
+probably come home by steamer, and leave the skipper to bring the
+yacht home.</p>
+<p>Well, if all goes well, we shall maybe sail out of Southampton
+water some of these days and take a run to Havre, and try the
+Baltic, or somewhere.</p>
+<p>Love to you all.&mdash;Ever your afft.,</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>Saranac Lake</i>, <i>Oct.</i>
+8<i>th</i>, 1887.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR GOSSE</span>,&mdash;I have just
+read your article twice, with cheers of approving laughter.&nbsp;
+I do not believe you ever wrote anything so funny:
+Tyndall&rsquo;s &lsquo;shell,&rsquo; the passage on the Davos
+press and its invaluable issues, and that on V. Hugo and
+Swinburne, are exquisite; so, I say <a name="page69"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 69</span>it more ruefully, is the touch about
+the doctors.&nbsp; For the rest, I am very glad you like my
+verses so well; and the qualities you ascribe to them seem to me
+well found and well named.&nbsp; I own to that kind of candour
+you attribute to me: when I am frankly interested, I suppose I
+fancy the public will be so too; and when I am moved, I am sure
+of it.&nbsp; It has been my luck hitherto to meet with no
+staggering disillusion.&nbsp; &lsquo;Before&rsquo; and
+&lsquo;After&rsquo; may be two; and yet I believe the habit is
+now too thoroughly ingrained to be altered.&nbsp; About the
+doctors, you were right, that dedication has been the subject of
+some pleasantries that made me grind, and of your happily touched
+reproof which made me blush.&nbsp; And to miscarry in a
+dedication is an abominable form of book-wreck; I am a good
+captain, I would rather lose the tent and save my dedication.</p>
+<p>I am at Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks, I suppose for the
+winter: it seems a first-rate place; we have a house in the eye
+of many winds, with a view of a piece of running
+water&mdash;Highland, all but the dear hue of peat&mdash;and of
+many hills&mdash;Highland also, but for the lack of
+heather.&nbsp; Soon the snow will close on us; we are here some
+twenty miles&mdash;twenty-seven, they say, but this I profoundly
+disbelieve&mdash;in the woods; communication by letter is slow
+and (let me be consistent) aleatory; by telegram is as near as
+may be impossible.</p>
+<p>I had some experience of American appreciation; I liked a
+little of it, but there is too much; a little of that would go a
+long way to spoil a man; and I like myself better in the
+woods.&nbsp; I am so damned candid and ingenuous (for a cynic),
+and so much of a &lsquo;cweatu&rsquo; of impulse&mdash;aw&rsquo;
+(if you remember that admirable Leech), that I begin to shirk any
+more taffy; I think I begin to like it too well.&nbsp; But let us
+trust the Gods; they have a rod in pickle; reverently I doff my
+trousers, and with screwed eyes await the <i>amari aliquid</i> of
+the great God Busby.</p>
+<p>I thank you for the article in all ways, and remain yours
+affectionately,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><a name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 70</span><span
+class="smcap">to W. H. Low</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Saranac</i>, <i>October</i>
+1887.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">SIR</span>,&mdash;I have to trouble you
+with the following <i>paroles bien senties</i>.&nbsp; We are here
+at a first-rate place.&nbsp; &lsquo;Baker&rsquo;s&rsquo; is the
+name of our house, but we don&rsquo;t address there; we prefer
+the tender care of the Post-Office, as more aristocratic (it is
+no use to telegraph even to the care of the Post-Office who does
+not give a single damn <a name="citation70"></a><a
+href="#footnote70" class="citation">[70]</a>).&nbsp;
+Baker&rsquo;s has a prophet&rsquo;s chamber, which the
+hypercritical might describe as a garret with a hole in the
+floor: in that garret, sir, I have to trouble you and your wife
+to come and slumber.&nbsp; Not now, however: with manly
+hospitality, I choke off any sudden impulse.&nbsp; Because first,
+my wife and my mother are gone (a note for the latter, strongly
+suspected to be in the hand of your talented wife, now sits
+silent on the mantel shelf), one to Niagara and t&rsquo;other to
+Indianapolis.&nbsp; Because, second, we are not yet
+installed.&nbsp; And because third, I won&rsquo;t have you till I
+have a buffalo robe and leggings, lest you should want to paint
+me as a plain man, which I am not, but a rank Saranacker and wild
+man of the woods.&mdash;Yours,</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>Saranac Lake</i>, <i>October</i>
+1887.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR ARCHER</span>,&mdash;Many thanks
+for the Wondrous Tale.&nbsp; It is scarcely a work of genius, as
+I believe you felt.&nbsp; Thanks also for your pencillings;
+though I defend &lsquo;shrew,&rsquo; or at least many of the
+shrews.</p>
+<p>We are here (I suppose) for the winter in the Adirondacks, <a
+name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 71</span>a hill and
+forest country on the Canadian border of New York State, very
+unsettled and primitive and cold, and healthful, or we are the
+more bitterly deceived.&nbsp; I believe it will do well for me;
+but must not boast.</p>
+<p>My wife is away to Indiana to see her family; my mother,
+Lloyd, and I remain here in the cold, which has been exceeding
+sharp, and the hill air, which is inimitably fine.&nbsp; We all
+eat bravely, and sleep well, and make great fires, and get along
+like one o&rsquo;clock.</p>
+<p>I am now a salaried party; I am a <i>bourgeois</i> now; I am
+to write a weekly paper for Scribner&rsquo;s, at a scale of
+payment which makes my teeth ache for shame and diffidence.&nbsp;
+The editor is, I believe, to apply to you; for we were talking
+over likely men, and when I instanced you, he said he had had his
+eye upon you from the first.&nbsp; It is worth while, perhaps, to
+get in tow with the Scribners; they are such thorough gentlefolk
+in all ways that it is always a pleasure to deal with them.&nbsp;
+I am like to be a millionaire if this goes on, and be publicly
+hanged at the social revolution: well, I would prefer that to
+dying in my bed; and it would be a godsend to my biographer, if
+ever I have one.&nbsp; What are you about?&nbsp; I hope you are
+all well and in good case and spirits, as I am now, after a most
+nefast experience of despondency before I left; but indeed I was
+quite run down.&nbsp; Remember me to Mrs. Archer, and give my
+respects to Tom.&mdash;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"><a name="page72"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 72</span>[<i>Saranac Lake</i>, <i>October</i>
+1887.]<br />
+I know not the day; but the month it<br />
+is the drear October by the<br />
+ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENRY JAMES</span>,&mdash;This
+is to say <i>First</i>, the voyage was a huge success.&nbsp; We
+all enjoyed it (bar my wife) to the ground: sixteen days at sea
+with a cargo of hay, matches, stallions, and monkeys, and in a
+ship with no style on, and plenty of sailors to talk to, and the
+endless pleasures of the sea&mdash;the romance of it, the sport
+of the scratch dinner and the smashing crockery, the
+pleasure&mdash;an endless pleasure&mdash;of balancing to the
+swell: well, it&rsquo;s over.</p>
+<p><i>Second</i>, I had a fine time, rather a troubled one, at
+Newport and New York; saw much of and liked hugely the
+Fairchilds, St. Gaudens the sculptor, Gilder of the
+<i>Century</i>&mdash;just saw the dear Alexander&mdash;saw a lot
+of my old and admirable friend Will Low, whom I wish you knew and
+appreciated&mdash;was medallioned by St. Gaudens, and at last
+escaped to</p>
+<p><i>Third</i>, Saranac Lake, where we now are, and which I
+believe we mean to like and pass the winter at.&nbsp; Our
+house&mdash;emphatically &lsquo;Baker&rsquo;s&rsquo;&mdash;is on
+a hill, and has a sight of a stream turning a corner in the
+valley&mdash;bless the face of running water!&mdash;and sees some
+hills too, and the paganly prosaic roofs of Saranac itself; the
+Lake it does not see, nor do I regret that; I like water (fresh
+water I mean) either running swiftly among stones, or else
+largely qualified with whisky.&nbsp; As I write, the sun (which
+has been long a stranger) shines in at my shoulder; from the next
+room, the bell of Lloyd&rsquo;s typewriter makes an agreeable
+music as it patters off (at a rate which astonishes this
+experienced novelist) the early chapters of a humorous romance;
+from still further off&mdash;the walls of Baker&rsquo;s are
+neither ancient nor massive&mdash;rumours of Valentine about the
+kitchen stove come to my ears; of my mother and <a
+name="page73"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 73</span>Fanny I hear
+nothing, for the excellent reason that they have gone sparking
+off, one to Niagara, one to Indianapolis.&nbsp; People complain
+that I never give news in my letters.&nbsp; I have wiped out that
+reproach.</p>
+<p>But now, <i>Fourth</i>, I have seen the article; and it may be
+from natural partiality, I think it the best you have
+written.&nbsp; O&mdash;I remember the Gautier, which was an
+excellent performance; and the Balzac, which was good; and the
+Daudet, over which I licked my chops; but the R. L. S. is better
+yet.&nbsp; It is so humorous, and it hits my little frailties
+with so neat (and so friendly) a touch; and Alan is the occasion
+for so much happy talk, and the quarrel is so generously
+praised.&nbsp; I read it twice, though it was only some hours in
+my possession; and Low, who got it for me from the
+<i>Century</i>, sat up to finish it ere he returned it; and, sir,
+we were all delighted.&nbsp; Here is the paper out, nor will
+anything, not even friendship, not even gratitude for the
+article, induce me to begin a second sheet; so here with the
+kindest remembrances and the warmest good wishes, I remain, yours
+affectionately,</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>Saranac</i>, 18<i>th</i>
+<i>November</i> 1887.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;No likely
+I&rsquo;m going to waste a sheet of paper. . . .&nbsp; I am
+offered &pound;1600 ($8000) for the American serial rights on my
+next story!&nbsp; As you say, times are changed since the Lothian
+Road.&nbsp; Well, the Lothian Road was grand fun too; I could
+take an afternoon of it with great delight.&nbsp; But I&rsquo;m
+awfu&rsquo; grand noo, and long may it last!</p>
+<p>Remember me to any of the faithful&mdash;if there are any
+left.&nbsp; I wish I could have a crack with you.&mdash;Yours
+ever affectionately,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p>I find I have forgotten more than I remembered of business. .
+. .&nbsp; Please let us know (if you know) for how much
+Skerryvore is let; you will here detect the female mind; <a
+name="page74"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 74</span>I let it for
+what I could get; nor shall the possession of this knowledge
+(which I am happy to have forgot) increase the amount by so much
+as the shadow of a sixpenny piece; but my females are
+agog.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Charles Scribner</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Saranac</i>, <i>November</i> 20
+<i>or</i> 21, 1887.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MR.
+SCRIBNER</span>,&mdash;Heaven help me, I am under a curse just
+now.&nbsp; I have played fast and loose with what I said to you;
+and that, I beg you to believe, in the purest innocence of
+mind.&nbsp; I told you you should have the power over all my work
+in this country; and about a fortnight ago, when M&rsquo;Clure
+was here, I calmly signed a bargain for the serial publication of
+a story.&nbsp; You will scarce believe that I did this in mere
+oblivion; but I did; and all that I can say is that I will do so
+no more, and ask you to forgive me.&nbsp; Please write to me soon
+as to this.</p>
+<p>Will you oblige me by paying in for three articles, as already
+sent, to my account with John Paton &amp; Co., 52 William
+Street?&nbsp; This will be most convenient for us.</p>
+<p>The fourth article is nearly done; and I am the more deceived,
+or it is <i>A Buster</i>.</p>
+<p>Now as to the first thing in this letter, I do wish to hear
+from you soon; and I am prepared to hear any reproach, or (what
+is harder to hear) any forgiveness; for I have deserved the
+worst.&mdash;Yours sincerely,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><a name="page75"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 75</span><span
+class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Saranac</i>, <i>November</i>
+1887.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MR. BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;I
+enclose corrected proof of <i>Beggars</i>, which seems
+good.&nbsp; I mean to make a second sermon, which, if it is about
+the same length as <i>Pulvis et Umbra</i>, might go in along with
+it as two sermons, in which case I should call the first
+&lsquo;The Whole Creation,&rsquo; and the second &lsquo;Any
+Good.&rsquo;&nbsp; We shall see; but you might say how you like
+the notion.</p>
+<p>One word: if you have heard from Mr. Scribner of my unhappy
+oversight in the matter of a story, you will make me ashamed to
+write to you, and yet I wish to beg you to help me into quieter
+waters.&nbsp; The oversight committed&mdash;and I do think it was
+not so bad as Mr. Scribner seems to think it-and discovered, I
+was in a miserable position.&nbsp; I need not tell you that my
+first impulse was to offer to share or to surrender the price
+agreed upon when it should fall due; and it is almost to my
+credit that I arranged to refrain.&nbsp; It is one of these
+positions from which there is no escape; I cannot undo what I
+have done.&nbsp; And I wish to beg you&mdash;should Mr. Scribner
+speak to you in the matter&mdash;to try to get him to see this
+neglect of mine for no worse than it is: unpardonable enough,
+because a breach of an agreement; but still pardonable, because a
+piece of sheer carelessness and want of memory, done, God knows,
+without design and since most sincerely regretted.&nbsp; I have
+no memory.&nbsp; You have seen how I omitted to reserve the
+American rights in <i>Jekyll</i>: last winter I wrote and
+demanded, as an increase, a less sum than had already been agreed
+upon for a story that I gave to Cassell&rsquo;s.&nbsp; For once
+that my forgetfulness has, by a cursed fortune, seemed to gain,
+instead of lose, me money, it is painful indeed that I should
+produce so poor an impression on the mind of Mr. Scribner.&nbsp;
+But I beg you to believe, and if possible to make him believe,
+that I am in no degree or sense a <i>faiseur</i>, and that in
+matters of <a name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+76</span>business my design, at least, is honest.&nbsp; Nor
+(bating bad memory and self-deception) am I untruthful in such
+affairs.</p>
+<p>If Mr. Scribner shall have said nothing to you in the matter,
+please regard the above as unwritten, and believe me, yours very
+truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Saranac</i>, <i>November</i>
+1887.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MR. BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;The
+revise seemed all right, so I did not trouble you with it;
+indeed, my demand for one was theatrical, to impress that
+obdurate dog, your reader.&nbsp; Herewith a third paper: it has
+been a cruel long time upon the road, but here it is, and not bad
+at last, I fondly hope.&nbsp; I was glad you liked the <i>Lantern
+Bearers</i>; I did, too.&nbsp; I thought it was a good paper,
+really contained some excellent sense, and was ingeniously put
+together.&nbsp; I have not often had more trouble than I have
+with these papers; thirty or forty pages of foul copy, twenty is
+the very least I have had.&nbsp; Well, you pay high; it is fit
+that I should have to work hard, it somewhat quiets my
+conscience.&mdash;Yours very truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to J. A. Symonds</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Saranac Lake</i>, <i>Adirondack
+Mountains</i>,<br />
+<i>New York</i>, <i>U.S.A.</i>, <i>November</i> 21, 1887.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR SYMONDS</span>,&mdash;I think
+we have both meant and wanted to write to you any time these
+months; but we have been much tossed about, among new faces and
+old, and new scenes and old, and scenes (like this of Saranac)
+which are neither one nor other.&nbsp; To give you some clue to
+our affairs, I had best begin pretty well back.&nbsp; We sailed
+from the Thames in a vast bucket of iron that took seventeen days
+from shore to shore.&nbsp; I cannot describe how I enjoyed the
+voyage, nor what good it did me; but on the Banks I caught friend
+catarrh.&nbsp; In New York and <a name="page77"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 77</span>then in Newport I was pretty ill; but
+on my return to New York, lying in bed most of the time, with St.
+Gaudens the sculptor sculping me, and my old friend Low around, I
+began to pick up once more.&nbsp; Now here we are in a kind of
+wilderness of hills and firwoods and boulders and snow and wooden
+houses.&nbsp; So far as we have gone the climate is grey and
+harsh, but hungry and somnolent; and although not charming like
+that of Davos, essentially bracing and briskening.&nbsp; The
+country is a kind of insane mixture of Scotland and a touch of
+Switzerland and a dash of America, and a thought of the British
+Channel in the skies.&nbsp; We have a decent house&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>December</i> 6<i>th</i>.</p>
+<p>&mdash;A decent house, as I was saying, sir, on a hill-top,
+with a look down a Scottish river in front, and on one hand a
+Perthshire hill; on the other, the beginnings and skirts of the
+village play hide and seek among other hills.&nbsp; We have been
+below zero, I know not how far (10 at 8 <span
+class="GutSmall">A.M.</span> once), and when it is cold it is
+delightful; but hitherto the cold has not held, and we have
+chopped in and out from frost to thaw, from snow to rain, from
+quiet air to the most disastrous north-westerly curdlers of the
+blood.&nbsp; After a week of practical thaw, the ice still bears
+in favoured places.&nbsp; So there is hope.</p>
+<p>I wonder if you saw my book of verses?&nbsp; It went into a
+second edition, because of my name, I suppose, and its
+<i>prose</i> merits.&nbsp; I do not set up to be a poet.&nbsp;
+Only an all-round literary man: a man who talks, not one who
+sings.&nbsp; But I believe the very fact that it was only speech
+served the book with the public.&nbsp; Horace is much a speaker,
+and see how popular! most of Martial is only speech, and I cannot
+conceive a person who does not love his Martial; most of Burns,
+also, such as &lsquo;The Louse,&rsquo; &lsquo;The
+Toothache,&rsquo; &lsquo;The Haggis,&rsquo; and lots more of his
+best.&nbsp; Excuse this little apology for my house; but I
+don&rsquo;t like to come before people who have a note of song,
+and let it be supposed I do not know the difference.</p>
+<p><a name="page78"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 78</span>To
+return to the more important&mdash;news.&nbsp; My wife again
+suffers in high and cold places; I again profit.&nbsp; She is off
+to-day to New York for a change, as heretofore to Berne, but I am
+glad to say in better case than then.&nbsp; Still it is
+undeniable she suffers, and you must excuse her (at least) if we
+both prove bad correspondents.&nbsp; I am decidedly better, but I
+have been terribly cut up with business complications: one
+disagreeable, as threatening loss; one, of the most intolerable
+complexion, as involving me in dishonour.&nbsp; The burthen of
+consistent carelessness: I have lost much by it in the past; and
+for once (to my damnation) I have gained.&nbsp; I am sure you
+will sympathise.&nbsp; It is hard work to sleep; it is hard to be
+told you are a liar, and have to hold your peace, and think,
+&lsquo;Yes, by God, and a thief too!&rsquo;&nbsp; You remember my
+lectures on Ajax, or the Unintentional Sin?&nbsp; Well, I know
+all about that now.&nbsp; Nothing seems so unjust to the
+sufferer: or is more just in essence.&nbsp; <i>Laissez passer la
+justice de Dieu</i>.</p>
+<p>Lloyd has learned to use the typewriter, and has most
+gallantly completed upon that the draft of a tale, which seems to
+me not without merit and promise, it is so silly, so gay, so
+absurd, in spots (to my partial eyes) so genuinely
+humorous.&nbsp; It is true, he would not have written it but for
+the New Arabian Nights; but it is strange to find a young writer
+funny.&nbsp; Heavens, but I was depressing when I took the pen in
+hand!&nbsp; And now I doubt if I am sadder than my
+neighbours.&nbsp; Will this beginner move in the inverse
+direction?</p>
+<p>Let me have your news, and believe me, my dear Symonds, with
+genuine affection, yours,</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="page79"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 79</span><i>Saranac</i> [<i>December</i>
+1887].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LAD</span>,&mdash;I was indeed
+overjoyed to hear of the Dumas.&nbsp; In the matter of the
+dedication, are not cross dedications a little awkward?&nbsp;
+Lang and Rider Haggard did it, to be sure.&nbsp; Perpend.&nbsp;
+And if you should conclude against a dedication, there is a
+passage in <i>Memories and Portraits</i> written <i>at</i> you,
+when I was most desperate (to stir you up a bit), which might be
+quoted: something about Dumas still waiting his biographer.&nbsp;
+I have a decent time when the weather is fine; when it is grey,
+or windy, or wet (as it too often is), I am merely degraded to
+the dirt.&nbsp; I get some work done every day with a devil of a
+heave; not extra good ever; and I regret my engagement.&nbsp;
+Whiles I have had the most deplorable business annoyances too;
+have been threatened with having to refund money; got over that;
+and found myself in the worse scrape of being a kind of
+unintentional swindler.&nbsp; These have worried me a great deal;
+also old age with his stealing steps seems to have clawed me in
+his clutch to some tune.</p>
+<p>Do you play All Fours?&nbsp; We are trying it; it is still all
+haze to me.&nbsp; Can the elder hand <i>beg</i> more than
+once?&nbsp; The Port Admiral is at Boston mingling with
+millionaires.&nbsp; I am but a weed on Lethe wharf.&nbsp; The
+wife is only so-so.&nbsp; The Lord lead us all: if I can only get
+off the stage with clean hands, I shall sing Hosanna.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Put&rsquo; is described quite differently from your
+version in a book I have; what are your rules?&nbsp; The Port
+Admiral is using a game of put in a tale of his, the first copy
+of which was gloriously finished about a fortnight ago, and the
+revise gallantly begun: <i>The Finsbury Tontine</i> it is named,
+and might fill two volumes, and is quite incredibly silly, and in
+parts (it seems to me) pretty humorous.&mdash;Love to all
+from</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">An Old</span>,
+<span class="smcap">Old Man</span>.</p>
+<p>I say, Taine&rsquo;s <i>Origines de la France
+Contemporaine</i> is no end; it would turn the dead body of
+Charles Fox into a living Tory.</p>
+<h3><a name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 80</span><span
+class="smcap">to Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Saranac Lake</i>,
+<i>December</i> 1887.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN</span>,&mdash;The
+Opal is very well; it is fed with glycerine when it seems
+hungry.&nbsp; I am very well, and get about much more than I
+could have hoped.&nbsp; My wife is not very well; there is no
+doubt the high level does not agree with her, and she is on the
+move for a holiday to New York.&nbsp; Lloyd is at Boston on a
+visit, and I hope has a good time.&nbsp; My mother is really
+first-rate; she and I, despairing of other games for two, now
+play All Fours out of a gamebook, and have not yet discovered its
+niceties, if any.</p>
+<p>You will have heard, I dare say, that they made a great row
+over me here.&nbsp; They also offered me much money, a great deal
+more than my works are worth: I took some of it, and was greedy
+and hasty, and am now very sorry.&nbsp; I have done with big
+prices from now out.&nbsp; Wealth and self-respect seem, in my
+case, to be strangers.</p>
+<p>We were talking the other day of how well Fleeming managed to
+grow rich.&nbsp; Ah, that is a rare art; something more
+intellectual than a virtue.&nbsp; The book has not yet made its
+appearance here; the life alone, with a little preface, is to
+appear in the States; and the Scribners are to send you half the
+royalties.&nbsp; I should like it to do well, for
+Fleeming&rsquo;s sake.</p>
+<p>Will you please send me the Greek water-carrier&rsquo;s
+song?&nbsp; I have a particular use for it.</p>
+<p>Have I any more news, I wonder?&mdash;and echo wonders along
+with me.&nbsp; I am strangely disquieted on all political
+matters; and I do not know if it is &lsquo;the signs of the
+times&rsquo; or the sign of my own time of life.&nbsp; But to me
+the sky seems black both in France and England, and only partly
+clear in America.&nbsp; I have not seen it so dark in my time; of
+that I am sure.</p>
+<p>Please let us have some news; and, excuse me, for the sake of
+my well-known idleness; and pardon Fanny, who <a
+name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 81</span>is really not
+very well, for this long silence.&mdash;Very sincerely your
+friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Miss Adelaide Boodle</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Saranac Lake</i>,
+<i>December</i> 1887.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MISS BOODLE</span>,&mdash;I am
+so much afraid, our gamekeeper may weary of unacknowledged
+reports!&nbsp; Hence, in the midst of a perfect horror of
+detestable weathers of a quite incongruous strain, and with less
+desire for correspondence than&mdash;well, than&mdash;well, with
+no desire for correspondence, behold me dash into the
+breach.&nbsp; Do keep up your letters.&nbsp; They are most
+delightful to this exiled backwoods family; and in your next, we
+shall hope somehow or other to hear better news of you and
+yours&mdash;that in the first place&mdash;and to hear more news
+of our beasts and birds and kindly fruits of earth and those
+human tenants who are (truly) too much with us.</p>
+<p>I am very well; better than for years: that is for good.&nbsp;
+But then my wife is no great shakes; the place does not suit
+her&mdash;it is my private opinion that no place does&mdash;and
+she is now away down to New York for a change, which (as Lloyd is
+in Boston) leaves my mother and me and Valentine alone in our
+wind-beleaguered hilltop hatbox of a house.&nbsp; You should hear
+the cows butt against the walls in the early morning while they
+feed; you should also see our back log when the thermometer goes
+(as it does go) away&mdash;away below zero, till it can be seen
+no more by the eye of man&mdash;not the thermometer, which is
+still perfectly visible, but the mercury, which curls up into the
+bulb like a hibernating bear; you should also see the lad who
+&lsquo;does <a name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+82</span>chores&rsquo; for us, with his red stockings and his
+thirteen year old face, and his highly manly tramp into the room;
+and his two alternative answers to all questions about the
+weather: either &lsquo;Cold,&rsquo; or with a really lyrical
+movement of the voice,
+&lsquo;<i>Lovely</i>&mdash;raining!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Will you take this miserable scarp for what it is worth?&nbsp;
+Will you also understand that I am the man to blame, and my wife
+is really almost too much out of health to write, or at least
+doesn&rsquo;t write?&mdash;And believe me, with kind remembrance
+to Mrs. Boodle and your sisters, very sincerely yours,</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>Saranac</i>, 12<i>th</i>
+<i>December</i> &rsquo;87.</p>
+<p>Give us news of all your folk.&nbsp; A Merry Christmas from
+all of us.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;Will you
+please send &pound;20 to &mdash; for a Christmas gift from
+&mdash;?&nbsp; Moreover, I cannot remember what I told you to
+send to &mdash;; but as God has dealt so providentially with me
+this year, I now propose to make it &pound;20.</p>
+<p>I beg of you also to consider my strange position.&nbsp; I
+jined a club which it was said was to defend the Union; and had a
+letter from the secretary, which his name I believe was Lord
+Warmingpan (or words to that effect), to say I am elected, and
+had better pay up a certain sum of money, I forget what.&nbsp;
+Now I cannae verra weel draw a blank cheque and send
+to&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">Lord
+Warmingpan</span> (or words to that effect),<br />
+London, England.</p>
+<p>And, man, if it was possible, I would be dooms glad to be out
+o&rsquo; this bit scrapie.&nbsp; Mebbe the club was ca&rsquo;d
+&lsquo;The Union,&rsquo; but I wouldnae like to sweir; and mebbe
+it wasnae, or mebbe only words to that effec&rsquo;&mdash;but I
+wouldnae care just exac&rsquo;ly about sweirin&rsquo;.&nbsp; Do
+ye no think Henley, or Pollick, or some o&rsquo; they London
+fellies, micht mebbe <a name="page83"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 83</span>perhaps find out for me? and just
+what the soom was?&nbsp; And that you would aiblins pay for
+me?&nbsp; For I thocht I was sae dam patriotic jinin&rsquo;, and
+it would be a kind o&rsquo; a come-doun to be turned out
+again.&nbsp; Mebbe Lang would ken; or mebbe Rider Haggyard:
+they&rsquo;re kind o&rsquo; Union folks.&nbsp; But it&rsquo;s my
+belief his name was Warmingpan whatever. Yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">Thomson</span>,<br />
+<i>alias</i> <span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p>Could it be Warminster? <a name="citation83"></a><a
+href="#footnote83" class="citation">[83]</a></p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Miss Monroe</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Saranac Lake</i>, <i>New York</i>
+[<i>December</i> 19, 1887].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MISS MONROE</span>,&mdash;Many
+thanks for your letter and your good wishes.&nbsp; It was much my
+desire to get to Chicago: had I done&mdash;or if I yet
+do&mdash;so, I shall hope to see the original of my photograph,
+which is one of my show possessions; but the fates are rather
+contrary.&nbsp; My wife is far from well; I myself dread worse
+than almost any other imaginable peril, that miraculous and
+really insane invention the American Railroad Car.&nbsp; Heaven
+help the man&mdash;may I add the woman&mdash;that sets foot in
+one!&nbsp; Ah, if it were only an ocean to cross, it would be a
+matter of small thought to me&mdash;and great pleasure.&nbsp; But
+the railroad car&mdash;every man has his weak point; and I fear
+the railroad car as abjectly as I do an earwig, and, on the
+whole, on better grounds.&nbsp; You do not know how bitter it is
+to have to make such a confession; for you have not the
+pretension nor the weakness of a man.&nbsp; If I do get to
+Chicago, you will hear of me: so much can be said.&nbsp; And do
+you never come east?</p>
+<p>I was pleased to recognise a word of my poor old Deacon in
+your letter.&nbsp; It would interest me very much <a
+name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 84</span>to hear how
+it went and what you thought of piece and actors; and my
+collaborator, who knows and respects the photograph, would be
+pleased too.&mdash;Still in the hope of seeing you, I am, 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>Saranac Lake</i>, <i>Winter</i>
+1887&ndash;8.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENRY JAMES</span>,&mdash;It
+may please you to know how our family has been employed.&nbsp; In
+the silence of the snow the afternoon lamp has lighted an eager
+fireside group: my mother reading, Fanny, Lloyd, and I devoted
+listeners; and the work was really one of the best works I ever
+heard; and its author is to be praised and honoured; and what do
+you suppose is the name of it? and have you ever read it
+yourself? and (I am bound I will get to the bottom of the page
+before I blow the gaff, if I have to fight it out on this line
+all summer; for if you have not to turn a leaf, there can be no
+suspense, the conspectory eye being swift to pick out proper
+names; and without suspense, there can be little pleasure in this
+world, to my mind at least)&mdash;and, in short, the name of it
+is <i>Roderick Hudson</i>, if you please.&nbsp; My dear James, it
+is very spirited, and very sound, and very noble too.&nbsp;
+Hudson, Mrs. Hudson, Rowland, O, all first-rate: Rowland a very
+fine fellow; Hudson as good as he can stick (did you know
+Hudson?&nbsp; I suspect you did), Mrs. H. his real born mother, a
+thing rarely managed in fiction.</p>
+<p>We are all keeping pretty fit and pretty hearty; but this
+letter is not from me to you, it is from a reader of <i>R. H.</i>
+to the author of the same, and it says nothing, and has nothing
+to say, but thank you.</p>
+<p>We are going to re-read <i>Casamassima</i> as a proper
+pendant.&nbsp; Sir, I think these two are your best, and care not
+who knows it.</p>
+<p>May I beg you, the next time <i>Roderick</i> is printed off,
+<a name="page85"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 85</span>to go over
+the sheets of the last few chapters, and strike out
+&lsquo;immense&rsquo; and &lsquo;tremendous&rsquo;?&nbsp; You
+have simply dropped them there like your pocket-handkerchief; all
+you have to do is to pick them up and pouch them, and your
+room&mdash;what do I say?&mdash;your cathedral!&mdash;will be
+swept and garnished.&mdash;I am, dear sir, your delighted
+reader,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;Perhaps it is a pang of causeless honesty,
+perhaps.&nbsp; I hope it will set a value on my praise of
+<i>Roderick</i>, perhaps it&rsquo;s a burst of the diabolic, but
+I must break out with the news that I can&rsquo;t bear the
+<i>Portrait of a Lady</i>.&nbsp; I read it all, and I wept too;
+but I can&rsquo;t stand your having written it; and I beg you
+will write no more of the like.&nbsp; <i>Infra</i>, sir; Below
+you: I can&rsquo;t help it&mdash;it may be your favourite work,
+but in my eyes it&rsquo;s <span class="GutSmall">BELOW YOU</span>
+to write and me to read.&nbsp; I thought <i>Roderick</i> was
+going to be another such at the beginning; and I cannot describe
+my pleasure as I found it taking bones and blood, and looking out
+at me with a moved and human countenance, whose lineaments are
+written in my memory until my last of days.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p>My wife begs your forgiveness; I believe for her silence.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p84ab.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Manuscript of letter"
+title=
+"Manuscript of letter"
+ src="images/p84as.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p84bb.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Manuscript of letter"
+title=
+"Manuscript of letter"
+ src="images/p84bs.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Saranac Lake</i> [<i>December</i>
+1887].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;This goes
+to say that we are all fit, and the place is very bleak and
+wintry, and up to now has shown no such charms of climate as
+Davos, but is a place where men eat and where the cattarh,
+catarrh (cattarrh, or cattarrhh) appears to be unknown.&nbsp; I
+walk in my verandy in the snaw, sir, looking down over one of
+those dabbled wintry landscapes that are (to be frank) so chilly
+to the human bosom, and up at a grey, English&mdash;nay,
+<i>mehercle</i>, Scottish&mdash;heaven; and I think it pretty
+bleak; and the wind swoops at me round the corner, like a lion,
+and fluffs the snow in my face; and I could aspire to be <a
+name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 86</span>elsewhere;
+but yet I do not catch cold, and yet, when I come in, I
+eat.&nbsp; So that hitherto Saranac, if not deliriously
+delectable, has not been a failure; nay, from the mere point of
+view of the wicked body, it has proved a success.&nbsp; But I
+wish I could still get to the woods; alas, <i>nous n&rsquo;irons
+plus au bois</i> is my poor song; the paths are buried, the
+dingles drifted full, a little walk is grown a long one; till
+spring comes, I fear the burthen will hold good.</p>
+<p>I get along with my papers for <i>Scribner</i> not fast, nor
+so far specially well; only this last, the fourth one (which
+makes a third part of my whole task), I do believe is pulled off
+after a fashion.&nbsp; It is a mere sermon: &lsquo;Smith opens
+out&rsquo;; <a name="citation86"></a><a href="#footnote86"
+class="citation">[86]</a> but it is true, and I find it touching
+and beneficial, to me at least; and I think there is some fine
+writing in it, some very apt and pregnant phrases.&nbsp;
+<i>Pulvis et Umbra</i>, I call it; I might have called it a
+Darwinian Sermon, if I had wanted.&nbsp; Its sentiments, although
+parsonic, will not offend even you, I believe.&nbsp; The other
+three papers, I fear, bear many traces of effort, and the
+ungenuine inspiration of an income at so much per essay, and the
+honest desire of the incomer to give good measure for his
+money.&nbsp; Well, I did my damndest anyway.</p>
+<p>We have been reading H. James&rsquo;s <i>Roderick Hudson</i>,
+which I eagerly press you to get at once: it is a book of a high
+order&mdash;the last volume in particular.&nbsp; I wish Meredith
+would read it.&nbsp; It took my breath away.</p>
+<p>I am at the seventh book of the <i>&AElig;neid</i>, and quite
+amazed at its merits (also very often floored by its
+difficulties).&nbsp; The Circe passage at the beginning, and the
+sublime business of Amata with the simile of the boy&rsquo;s
+top&mdash;O Lord, what a happy thought!&mdash;have specially
+delighted me.&mdash;I am, dear sir, your respected friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">John Gregg
+Gillson</span>, J.P., M.R.I.A., etc.</p>
+<h3><a name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 87</span><span
+class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Saranac</i>, <i>December</i> 24,
+1887.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;Thank you
+for your explanations.&nbsp; I have done no more Virgil since I
+finished the seventh book, for I have, first been eaten up with
+Taine, and next have fallen head over heels into a new tale,
+<i>The Master of Ballantrae</i>.&nbsp; No thought have I now
+apart from it, and I have got along up to page ninety-two of the
+draft with great interest.&nbsp; It is to me a most seizing tale:
+there are some fantastic elements; the most is a dead genuine
+human problem&mdash;human tragedy, I should say rather.&nbsp; It
+will be about as long, I imagine, as <i>Kidnapped</i>.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">DRAMATIS PERSONAE:</p>
+<p class="gutindent">(1) My old Lord Durrisdeer.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">(2) The Master of Ballantrae, <i>and</i></p>
+<p class="gutindent">(3) Henry Durie, <i>his sons</i>.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">(4) Clementina, <i>engaged to the first</i>,
+<i>married to the second</i>.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">(5) Ephraim Mackellar, <i>land steward at
+Durrisdeer and narrator of the most of the book</i>.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">(6) Francis Burke, Chevalier de St. Louis,
+<i>one of Prince Charlie&rsquo;s Irishmen and narrator of the
+rest</i>.</p>
+<p>Besides these, many instant figures, most of them dumb or
+nearly so: Jessie Brown the whore, Captain Crail, Captain
+MacCombie, our old friend Alan Breck, our old friend Riach (both
+only for an instant), Teach the pirate (vulgarly Blackbeard),
+John Paul and Macconochie, servants at Durrisdeer.&nbsp; The date
+is from 1745 to &rsquo;65 (about).&nbsp; The scene, near
+Kirkcudbright, in the States, and for a little moment in the
+French East Indies.&nbsp; I <a name="page88"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 88</span>have done most of the big work, the
+quarrel, duel between the brothers, and announcement of the death
+to Clementina and my Lord&mdash;Clementina, Henry, and Mackellar
+(nicknamed Squaretoes) are really very fine fellows; the Master
+is all I know of the devil.&nbsp; I have known hints of him, in
+the world, but always cowards; he is as bold as a lion, but with
+the same deadly, causeless duplicity I have watched with so much
+surprise in my two cowards.&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis true, I saw a hint
+of the same nature in another man who was not a coward; but he
+had other things to attend to; the Master has nothing else but
+his devilry.&nbsp; Here come my visitors&mdash;and have now gone,
+or the first relay of them; and I hope no more may come.&nbsp;
+For mark you, sir, this is our &lsquo;day&rsquo;&mdash;Saturday,
+as ever was, and here we sit, my mother and I, before a large
+wood fire and await the enemy with the most steadfast courage;
+and without snow and greyness: and the woman Fanny in New York
+for her health, which is far from good; and the lad Lloyd at the
+inn in the village because he has a cold; and the handmaid
+Valentine abroad in a sleigh upon her messages; and to-morrow
+Christmas and no mistake.&nbsp; Such is human life: <i>la
+carri&egrave;re humaine</i>.&nbsp; I will enclose, if I remember,
+the required autograph.</p>
+<p>I will do better, put it on the back of this page.&nbsp; Love
+to all, and mostly, my very dear Colvin, to yourself.&nbsp; For
+whatever I say or do, or don&rsquo;t say or do, you may be very
+sure I am,&mdash;Yours always affectionately,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Miss Adelaide Boodle</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Saranac Lake</i>,
+<i>Adirondacks</i>, <i>N.Y.</i>, <i>U.S.A.</i>, <i>Christmas</i>
+1887.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MISS BOODLE</span>,&mdash;And a
+very good Christmas to you all; and better fortune; and if worse,
+the more courage to support it&mdash;which I think is the kinder
+wish in all human affairs.&nbsp; Somewhile&mdash;I fear a good
+while&mdash;after this, you should receive our Christmas gift; we
+have <a name="page89"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 89</span>no
+tact and no taste, only a welcome and (often) tonic brutality;
+and I dare say the present, even after my friend Baxter has acted
+on and reviewed my hints, may prove a White Elephant.&nbsp; That
+is why I dread presents.&nbsp; And therefore pray understand if
+any element of that hamper prove unwelcome, <i>it is to be
+exchanged</i>.&nbsp; I will not sit down under the name of a
+giver of White Elephants.&nbsp; I never had any elephant but one,
+and his initials were R. L. S.; and he trod on my foot at a very
+early age.&nbsp; But this is a fable, and not in the least to the
+point: which is that if, for once in my life, I have wished to
+make things nicer for anybody but the Elephant (see fable), do
+not suffer me to have made them ineffably more embarrassing, and
+exchange&mdash;ruthlessly exchange!</p>
+<p>For my part, I am the most cockered up of any mortal being;
+and one of the healthiest, or thereabout, at some modest distance
+from the bull&rsquo;s eye.&nbsp; I am condemned to write twelve
+articles in <i>Scribner&rsquo;s Magazine</i> for the love of
+gain; I think I had better send you them; what is far more to the
+purpose, I am on the jump with a new story which has bewitched
+me&mdash;I doubt it may bewitch no one else.&nbsp; It is called
+<i>The Master of Ballantrae</i>&mdash;pronounce
+B&auml;ll&auml;n-tray.&nbsp; If it is not good, well, mine will
+be the fault; for I believe it is a good tale.</p>
+<p>The greetings of the season to you, and your mother, and your
+sisters.&nbsp; My wife heartily joins.&mdash;And I am, yours very
+sincerely,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;You will think me an illiterate dog: I am,
+for the first time, reading <i>Robertson&rsquo;s
+Sermons</i>.&nbsp; I do not know how to express how much I think
+of them.&nbsp; If by any chance you should be as illiterate as I,
+and not know them, it is worth while curing the defect.</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="page90"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 90</span><i>Saranac Lake</i>, <i>January</i>
+&rsquo;88.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;You are the
+flower of Doers. . . . Will my doer collaborate thus much in my
+new novel?&nbsp; In the year 1794 or 5, Mr. Ephraim Mackellar,
+A.M., late steward on the Durrisdeer estates, completed a set of
+memoranda (as long as a novel) with regard to the death of the
+(then) late Lord Durrisdeer, and as to that of his attainted
+elder brother, called by the family courtesy title the Master of
+Ballantrae.&nbsp; These he placed in the hands of John
+Macbrair.&nbsp; W.S., the family agent, on the understanding they
+were to be sealed until 1862, when a century would have elapsed
+since the affair in the wilderness (my lord&rsquo;s death).&nbsp;
+You succeeded Mr. Macbrair&rsquo;s firm; the Durrisdeers are
+extinct; and last year, in an old green box, you found these
+papers with Macbrair&rsquo;s indorsation.&nbsp; It is that
+indorsation of which I want a copy; you may remember, when you
+gave me the papers, I neglected to take that, and I am sure you
+are a man too careful of antiquities to have let it fall
+aside.&nbsp; I shall have a little introduction descriptive of my
+visit to Edinburgh, arrival there, denner with yoursel&rsquo;,
+and first reading of the papers in your smoking-room: all of
+which, of course, you well remember.&mdash;Ever yours
+affectionately,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L S.</p>
+<p>Your name is my friend Mr. Johnstone Thomson, W.S.!!!</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Saranac</i>, <i>Winter</i>
+1887&ndash;8.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MR. BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;I am
+keeping the sermon to see if I can&rsquo;t add another.&nbsp;
+Meanwhile, I will send you very soon a different paper which may
+take its place.&nbsp; Possibly some of these days soon I may get
+together a <a name="page91"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+91</span>talk on things current, which should go in (if possible)
+earlier than either.&nbsp; I am now less nervous about these
+papers; I believe I can do the trick without great strain, though
+the terror that breathed on my back in the beginning is not yet
+forgotten.</p>
+<p><i>The Master of Ballantrae</i> I have had to leave aside, as
+I was quite worked out.&nbsp; But in about a week I hope to try
+back and send you the first four numbers: these are all drafted,
+it is only the revision that has broken me down, as it is often
+the hardest work.&nbsp; These four I propose you should set up
+for me at once, and we&rsquo;ll copyright &rsquo;em in a
+pamphlet.&nbsp; I will tell you the names of the <i>bona fide</i>
+purchasers in England.</p>
+<p>The numbers will run from twenty to thirty pages of my
+manuscript.&nbsp; You can give me that much, can you not?&nbsp;
+It is a howling good tale&mdash;at least these first four numbers
+are; the end is a trifle more fantastic, but &rsquo;tis all
+picturesque.</p>
+<p>Don&rsquo;t trouble about any more French books; I am on
+another scent, you see, just now.&nbsp; Only the <i>French in
+Hindustan</i> I await with impatience, as that is for
+<i>Ballantrae</i>.&nbsp; The scene of that romance is
+Scotland&mdash;the
+States&mdash;Scotland&mdash;India&mdash;Scotland&mdash;and the
+States again; so it jumps like a flea.&nbsp; I have enough about
+the States now, and very much obliged I am; yet if Drake&rsquo;s
+<i>Tragedies of the Wilderness</i> is (as I gather) a collection
+of originals, I should like to purchase it.&nbsp; If it is a
+picturesque vulgarisation, I do not wish to look it in the
+face.&nbsp; Purchase, I say; for I think it would be well to have
+some such collection by me with a view to fresh
+works.&mdash;Yours very sincerely,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;If you think of having the <i>Master</i>
+illustrated, I suggest that Hole would be very well up to the
+Scottish, which is the larger part.&nbsp; If you have it done
+here, tell your artist to look at the hall of Craigievar in
+Billing&rsquo;s <i>Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities</i>,
+and he will get a <a name="page92"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+92</span>broad hint for the hall at Durrisdeer: it is, I think,
+the chimney of Craigievar and the roof of Pinkie, and perhaps a
+little more of Pinkie altogether; but I should have to see the
+book myself to be sure.&nbsp; Hole would be invaluable for
+this.&nbsp; I dare say if you had it illustrated, you could let
+me have one or two for the English edition.</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>Saranac</i>, <i>Winter</i>
+1887&ndash;8.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR ARCHER</span>,&mdash;What am I
+to say?&nbsp; I have read your friend&rsquo;s book with singular
+relish.&nbsp; If he has written any other, I beg you will let me
+see it; and if he has not, I beg him to lose no time in supplying
+the deficiency.&nbsp; It is full of promise; but I should like to
+know his age.&nbsp; There are things in it that are very clever,
+to which I attach small importance; it is the shape of the
+age.&nbsp; And there are passages, particularly the rally in
+presence of the Zulu king, that show genuine and remarkable
+narrative talent&mdash;a talent that few will have the wit to
+understand, a talent of strength, spirit, capacity, sufficient
+vision, and sufficient self-sacrifice, which last is the chief
+point in a narrator.</p>
+<p>As a whole, it is (of course) a fever dream of the most
+feverish.&nbsp; Over Bashville the footman I howled with derision
+and delight; I dote on Bashville&mdash;I could read of him for
+ever; <i>de Bashville je suis le fervent</i>&mdash;there is only
+one Bashville, and I am his devoted slave; <i>Bashville est
+magnifique</i>, <i>mais il n&rsquo;est gu&egrave;re
+possible</i>.&nbsp; He is the note of the book.&nbsp; It is all
+mad, mad and deliriously delightful; the author has a taste in
+chivalry like Walter Scott&rsquo;s or Dumas&rsquo;, and then he
+daubs in little bits of socialism; he soars away on the wings of
+the romantic griffon&mdash;even the griffon, as he cleaves air,
+shouting with laughter at the nature of the quest&mdash;and I
+believe in his heart he <a name="page93"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 93</span>thinks he is labouring in a quarry of
+solid granite realism.</p>
+<p>It is this that makes me&mdash;the most hardened adviser now
+extant&mdash;stand back and hold my peace.&nbsp; If Mr. Shaw is
+below five-and-twenty, let him go his path; if he is thirty, he
+had best be told that he is a romantic, and pursue romance with
+his eyes open;&mdash;or perhaps he knows it;&mdash;God
+knows!&mdash;my brain is softened.</p>
+<p>It is <span class="GutSmall">HORRID FUN</span>.&nbsp; All I
+ask is more of it.&nbsp; Thank you for the pleasure you gave us,
+and tell me more of the inimitable author.</p>
+<p>(I say, Archer, my God, what women!)&mdash;Yours very
+truly,</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>Saranac</i>, <i>February</i>
+1888.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR ARCHER</span>,&mdash;Pretty
+sick in bed; but necessary to protest and continue your
+education.</p>
+<p>Why was Jenkin an amateur in my eyes?&nbsp; You think because
+not amusing (I think he often was amusing).&nbsp; The reason is
+this: I never, or almost never, saw two pages of his work that I
+could not have put in one without the smallest loss of
+material.&nbsp; That is the only test I know of writing.&nbsp; If
+there is anywhere a thing said in two sentences that could have
+been as clearly and as engagingly and as forcibly said in one,
+then it&rsquo;s amateur work.&nbsp; Then you will bring me up
+with old Dumas.&nbsp; Nay, the object of a story is to be long,
+to fill up hours; the story-teller&rsquo;s art of writing is to
+water out by continual invention, historical and technical, and
+yet not seem to water; seem on the other hand to practise that
+same wit of conspicuous and declaratory condensation which is the
+proper art of writing.&nbsp; That is one thing in which my
+stories fail: I am always cutting the flesh off their bones.</p>
+<p>I would rise from the dead to preach!</p>
+<p>Hope all well.&nbsp; I think my wife better, but she&rsquo;s
+not allowed to write; and this (only wrung from me by desire <a
+name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 94</span>to Boss and
+Parsonise and Dominate, strong in sickness) is my first letter
+for days, and will likely be my last for many more.&nbsp; Not
+blame my wife for her silence: doctor&rsquo;s orders.&nbsp; All
+much interested by your last, and fragment from brother, and
+anecdotes of Tomarcher.&mdash;The sick but still Moral</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p>Tell Shaw to hurry up: I want another.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to William Archer</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Saranac</i>, <i>Spring</i>
+1888?]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR ARCHER</span>,&mdash;It
+happened thus.&nbsp; I came forth from that performance in a
+breathing heat of indignation.&nbsp; (Mind, at this distance of
+time and with my increased knowledge, I admit there is a problem
+in the piece; but I saw none then, except a problem in brutality;
+and I still consider the problem in that case not
+established.)&nbsp; On my way down the <i>Fran&ccedil;ais</i>
+stairs, I trod on an old gentleman&rsquo;s toes, whereupon with
+that suavity that so well becomes me, I turned about to
+apologise, and on the instant, repenting me of that intention,
+stopped the apology midway, and added something in French to this
+effect: No, you are one of the <i>l&acirc;ches</i> who have been
+applauding that piece.&nbsp; I retract my apology.&nbsp; Said the
+old Frenchman, laying his hand on my arm, and with a smile that
+was truly heavenly in temperance, irony, good-nature, and
+knowledge of the world, &lsquo;Ah, monsieur, vous &ecirc;tes bien
+jeune!&rsquo;&mdash;Yours very truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Saranac</i> [<i>February</i>
+1888].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MR. BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;Will
+you send me (from the library) some of the works of my dear old
+G. P. R. James.&nbsp; <a name="page95"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 95</span>With the following especially I
+desire to make or to renew acquaintance: <i>The Songster</i>,
+<i>The Gipsy</i>, <i>The Convict</i>, <i>The Stepmother</i>,
+<i>The Gentleman of the Old School</i>, <i>The Robber</i>.</p>
+<p><i>Excusez du peu</i>.</p>
+<p>This sudden return to an ancient favourite hangs upon an
+accident.&nbsp; The &lsquo;Franklin County Library&rsquo;
+contains two works of his, <i>The Cavalier</i> and <i>Morley
+Ernstein</i>.&nbsp; I read the first with indescribable
+amusement&mdash;it was worse than I had feared, and yet somehow
+engaging; the second (to my surprise) was better than I had dared
+to hope: a good honest, dull, interesting tale, with a genuine
+old-fashioned talent in the invention when not strained; and a
+genuine old-fashioned feeling for the English language.&nbsp;
+This experience awoke appetite, and you see I have taken steps to
+stay it.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Saranac</i>, <i>February</i>
+1888.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MR.
+BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;1.&nbsp; Of course then don&rsquo;t use
+it.&nbsp; Dear Man, I write these to please you, not myself, and
+you know a main sight better than I do what is good.&nbsp; In
+that case, however, I enclose another paper, and return the
+corrected proof of <i>Pulvis et Umbra</i>, so that we may be
+afloat.</p>
+<p>2.&nbsp; I want to say a word as to the <i>Master</i>.&nbsp;
+(<i>The Master of Ballantrae</i> shall be the name by all
+means.)&nbsp; If you like and want it, I leave it to you to make
+an offer.&nbsp; You may remember I thought the offer you made
+when I was still in England too small; by which I did not at all
+mean, I thought it less than it was worth, but too little to
+tempt me to undergo the disagreeables of serial
+publication.&nbsp; This tale (if you want it) you are to have;
+for it is the least I can do for you; and you are to observe that
+the sum you pay me for my articles going far to meet my wants, I
+am quite open to be satisfied with less than formerly.&nbsp; I
+tell you I do dislike this battle of the dollars.&nbsp; <a
+name="page96"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 96</span>I feel sure
+you all pay too much here in America; and I beg you not to spoil
+me any more.&nbsp; For I am getting spoiled: I do not want
+wealth, and I feel these big sums demoralise me.</p>
+<p>My wife came here pretty ill; she had a dreadful bad night;
+to-day she is better.&nbsp; But now Valentine is ill; and Lloyd
+and I have got breakfast, and my hand somewhat shakes after
+washing dishes.&mdash;Yours very sincerely,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;Please order me the <i>Evening Post</i> for
+two months.&nbsp; My subscription is run out.&nbsp; The
+<i>Mutiny</i> and <i>Edwardes</i> to hand.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Saranac</i>, <i>March</i>
+1888.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;Fanny has
+been very unwell.&nbsp; She is not long home, has been ill again
+since her return, but is now better again to a degree.&nbsp; You
+must not blame her for not writing, as she is not allowed to
+write at all, not even a letter.&nbsp; To add to our misfortunes,
+Valentine is quite ill and in bed.&nbsp; Lloyd and I get
+breakfast; I have now, 10.15, just got the dishes washed and the
+kitchen all clear, and sit down to give you as much news as I
+have spirit for, after such an engagement.&nbsp; Glass is a thing
+that really breaks my spirit: I do not like to fail, and with
+glass I cannot reach the work of my high calling&mdash;the
+artist&rsquo;s.</p>
+<p>I am, as you may gather from this, wonderfully better: this
+harsh, grey, glum, doleful climate has done me good.&nbsp; You
+cannot fancy how sad a climate it is.&nbsp; When the thermometer
+stays all day below 10&deg;, it is really cold; and when the wind
+blows, O commend me to the result.&nbsp; Pleasure in life is all
+delete; there is no red spot left, fires do not radiate, you burn
+your hands all the time on what seem to be cold stones.&nbsp; It
+is odd, zero is like summer heat to us now; and we like, when the
+thermometer <a name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+97</span>outside is really low, a room at about 48&deg;: 60&deg;
+we find oppressive.&nbsp; Yet the natives keep their holes at
+90&deg; or even 100&deg;.</p>
+<p>This was interrupted days ago by household labours.&nbsp;
+Since then I have had and (I tremble to write it, but it does
+seem as if I had) beaten off an influenza.&nbsp; The cold is
+exquisite.&nbsp; Valentine still in bed.&nbsp; The proofs of the
+first part of the <i>Master of Ballantrae</i> begin to come in;
+soon you shall have it in the pamphlet form; and I hope you will
+like it.&nbsp; The second part will not be near so good; but
+there&mdash;we can but do as it&rsquo;ll do with us.&nbsp; I have
+every reason to believe this winter has done me real good, so far
+as it has gone; and if I carry out my scheme for next winter, and
+succeeding years, I should end by being a tower of
+strength.&nbsp; I want you to save a good holiday for next
+winter; I hope we shall be able to help you to some larks.&nbsp;
+Is there any Greek Isle you would like to explore? or any creek
+in Asia Minor?&mdash;Yours ever affectionately,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to the Rev. Dr. Charteris</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Saranac Lake</i>, <i>Winter</i>
+1887&ndash;1888.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR DR. CHARTERIS</span>,&mdash;I
+have asked Douglas and Foulis to send you my last volume, so that
+you may possess my little paper on my father in a permanent
+shape; not for what that is worth, but as a tribute of respect to
+one whom my father regarded with such love, esteem, and
+affection.&nbsp; Besides, as you will see, I have brought you
+under contribution, and I have still to thank you for your letter
+to my mother; so more than kind; in much, so just.&nbsp; It is my
+hope, when time and health permit, to do something more definite
+for my father&rsquo;s memory.&nbsp; You are one of the very few
+who can (if you <a name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+98</span>will) help me.&nbsp; Pray believe that I lay on you no
+obligation; I know too well, you may believe me, how difficult it
+is to put even two sincere lines upon paper, where all, too, is
+to order.&nbsp; But if the spirit should ever move you, and you
+should recall something memorable of your friend, his son will
+heartily thank you for a note of it.&mdash;With much respect,
+believe me, yours sincerely,</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>Saranac Lake</i>, <i>March</i>
+1888.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR DELIGHTFUL
+JAMES</span>,&mdash;To quote your heading to my wife, I think no
+man writes so elegant a letter, I am sure none so kind, unless it
+be Colvin, and there is more of the stern parent about him.&nbsp;
+I was vexed at your account of my admired Meredith: I wish I
+could go and see him; as it is I will try to write.&nbsp; I read
+with indescribable admiration your <i>Emerson</i>.&nbsp; I begin
+to long for the day when these portraits of yours shall be
+collected: do put me in.&nbsp; But Emerson is a higher
+flight.&nbsp; Have you a <i>Tourgueneff</i>?&nbsp; You have told
+me many interesting things of him, and I seem to see them
+written, and forming a graceful and <i>bildend</i> sketch.&nbsp;
+My novel is a tragedy; four parts out of six or seven are
+written, and gone to Burlingame.&nbsp; Five parts of it are
+sound, human tragedy; the last one or two, I regret to say, not
+so soundly designed; I almost hesitate to write them; they are
+very picturesque, but they are fantastic; they shame, perhaps
+degrade, the beginning.&nbsp; I wish I knew; that was how the
+tale came to me however.&nbsp; I got the situation; it was an old
+taste of mine: The older brother goes out in the &rsquo;45, the
+younger stays; the younger, of course, gets title and estate and
+marries the bride designate of the elder&mdash;a family match,
+but he (the younger) had always loved her, and she had really
+loved the elder.&nbsp; Do you see the situation?&nbsp; Then the
+devil and Saranac <a name="page99"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+99</span>suggested this <i>d&eacute;nouement</i>, and I joined
+the two ends in a day or two of constant feverish thought, and
+began to write.&nbsp; And now&mdash;I wonder if I have not gone
+too far with the fantastic?&nbsp; The elder brother is an <span
+class="GutSmall">INCUBUS</span>: supposed to be killed at
+Culloden, he turns up again and bleeds the family of money; on
+that stopping he comes and lives with them, whence flows the real
+tragedy, the nocturnal duel of the brothers (very naturally, and
+indeed, I think, inevitably arising), and second supposed death
+of the elder.&nbsp; Husband and wife now really make up, and then
+the cloven hoof appears.&nbsp; For the third supposed death and
+the manner of the third reappearance is steep; steep, sir.&nbsp;
+It is even very steep, and I fear it shames the honest stuff so
+far; but then it is highly pictorial, and it leads up to the
+death of the elder brother at the hands of the younger in a
+perfectly cold-blooded murder, of which I wish (and mean) the
+reader to approve.&nbsp; You see how daring is the design.&nbsp;
+There are really but six characters, and one of these episodic,
+and yet it covers eighteen years, and will be, I imagine, the
+longest of my works.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p><i>Read Gosse&rsquo;s Raleigh</i>.&nbsp;
+First-rate.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to the Rev. Dr. Charteris</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Saranac Lake</i>,
+<i>Adirondacks</i>,<br />
+<i>New York</i>, <i>U.S.A.</i>, <i>Spring</i> 1888.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR DR. CHARTERIS</span>,&mdash;The
+funeral letter, your notes, and many other things, are reserved
+for a book, <i>Memorials of a Scottish Family</i>, if ever I can
+find time and opportunity.&nbsp; I wish I could throw off all
+else and sit down to it to-day.&nbsp; Yes, my father was a
+&lsquo;distinctly religious man,&rsquo; but not a pious.&nbsp;
+The distinction painfully and pleasurably recalls old conflicts;
+it used to be my great gun&mdash;and you, who suffered for the
+whole Church, know how needful it was to have some reserve
+artillery!&nbsp; <a name="page100"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+100</span>His sentiments were tragic; he was a tragic
+thinker.&nbsp; Now, granted that life is tragic to the marrow, it
+seems the proper function of religion to make us accept and serve
+in that tragedy, as officers in that other and comparable one of
+war.&nbsp; Service is the word, active service, in the military
+sense; and the religious man&mdash;I beg pardon, the pious
+man&mdash;is he who has a military joy in duty&mdash;not he who
+weeps over the wounded.&nbsp; We can do no more than try to do
+our best.&nbsp; Really, I am the grandson of the manse&mdash;I
+preach you a kind of sermon.&nbsp; Box the brat&rsquo;s ears!</p>
+<p>My mother&mdash;to pass to matters more within my
+competence&mdash;finely enjoys herself.&nbsp; The new country,
+some new friends we have made, the interesting experiment of this
+climate-which (at least) is tragic&mdash;all have done her
+good.&nbsp; I have myself passed a better winter than for years,
+and now that it is nearly over have some diffident hopes of doing
+well in the summer and &lsquo;eating a little more air&rsquo;
+than usual.</p>
+<p>I thank you for the trouble you are taking, and my mother
+joins with me in kindest regards to yourself and Mrs.
+Charteris.&mdash;Yours very truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to S. R. Crockett</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Saranac Lake</i>, <i>Spring</i>
+1888.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MINISTER OF THE FREE KIRK AT
+PENICUIK</span>,&mdash;For O, man, I cannae read your
+name!&mdash;That I have been so long in answering your delightful
+letter sits on my conscience badly.&nbsp; The fact is I let my
+correspondence accumulate until I am going to leave a place; and
+then I pitch in, overhaul the pile, and my cries of penitence
+might be heard a mile about.&nbsp; Yesterday I despatched
+thirty-five belated letters: conceive the state of my conscience,
+above all as the Sins of Omission (see boyhood&rsquo;s guide, the
+Shorter Catechism) are in my view the only <a
+name="page101"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 101</span>serious
+ones; I call it my view, but it cannot have escaped you that it
+was also Christ&rsquo;s.&nbsp; However, all that is not to the
+purpose, which is to thank you for the sincere pleasure afforded
+by your charming letter.&nbsp; I get a good few such; how few
+that please me at all, you would be surprised to learn&mdash;or
+have a singularly just idea of the dulness of our race; how few
+that please me as yours did, I can tell you in one
+word&mdash;<i>None</i>.&nbsp; I am no great kirkgoer, for many
+reasons&mdash;and the sermon&rsquo;s one of them, and the first
+prayer another, but the chief and effectual reason is the
+stuffiness.&nbsp; I am no great kirkgoer, says I, but when I read
+yon letter of yours, I thought I would like to sit under
+ye.&nbsp; And then I saw ye were to send me a bit buik, and says
+I, I&rsquo;ll wait for the bit buik, and then I&rsquo;ll mebbe
+can read the man&rsquo;s name, and anyway I&rsquo;ll can kill twa
+birds wi&rsquo; ae stane.&nbsp; And, man! the buik was
+ne&rsquo;er heard tell o&rsquo;!</p>
+<p>That fact is an adminicle of excuse for my delay.</p>
+<p>And now, dear minister of the illegible name, thanks to you,
+and greeting to your wife, and may you have good guidance in your
+difficult labours, and a blessing on your life.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">(No just so young sae young&rsquo;s
+he was, though&mdash;<br />
+I&rsquo;m awfae near forty, man.)</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Address c/o <span
+class="smcap">Charles Scribner&rsquo;s Sons</span>,<br />
+743 <span class="smcap">Broadway</span>, <span class="smcap">New
+York</span>.</p>
+<p>Don&rsquo;t put &lsquo;N.B.&rsquo; in your paper: put
+<i>Scotland</i>, and be done with it.&nbsp; Alas, that I should
+be thus stabbed in the home of my friends!&nbsp; The name of my
+native land is not <i>North Britain</i>, whatever may be the name
+of yours.</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>Saranac Lake</i>, <i>April</i>
+1888.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAREST COGGIE</span>,&mdash;I wish
+I could find the letter I began to you some time ago when I was
+ill; but I can&rsquo;t <a name="page102"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 102</span>and I don&rsquo;t believe there was
+much in it anyway.&nbsp; We have all behaved like pigs and beasts
+and barn-door poultry to you; but I have been sunk in work, and
+the lad is lazy and blind and has been working too; and as for
+Fanny, she has been (and still is) really unwell.&nbsp; I had a
+mean hope you might perhaps write again before I got up steam: I
+could not have been more ashamed of myself than I am, and I
+should have had another laugh.</p>
+<p>They always say I cannot give news in my letters: I shall
+shake off that reproach.&nbsp; On Monday, if she is well enough,
+Fanny leaves for California to see her friends; it is rather an
+anxiety to let her go alone; but the doctor simply forbids it in
+my case, and she is better anywhere than here&mdash;a bleak,
+blackguard, beggarly climate, of which I can say no good except
+that it suits me and some others of the same or similar
+persuasions whom (by all rights) it ought to kill.&nbsp; It is a
+form of Arctic St. Andrews, I should imagine; and the miseries of
+forty degrees below zero, with a high wind, have to be felt to be
+appreciated.&nbsp; The greyness of the heavens here is a
+circumstance eminently revolting to the soul; I have near forgot
+the aspect of the sun&mdash;I doubt if this be news; it is
+certainly no news to us.&nbsp; My mother suffers a little from
+the inclemency of the place, but less on the whole than would be
+imagined.&nbsp; Among other wild schemes, we have been projecting
+yacht voyages; and I beg to inform you that Cogia Hassan was cast
+for the part of passenger.&nbsp; They may come off!&mdash;Again
+this is not news.&nbsp; The lad?&nbsp; Well, the lad wrote a tale
+this winter, which appeared to me so funny that I have taken it
+in hand, and some of these days you will receive a copy of a work
+entitled &lsquo;<i>A Game of Bluff</i>, by Lloyd Osbourne and
+Robert Louis Stevenson.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Otherwise he (the lad) is much as usual.&nbsp; There remains,
+I believe, to be considered only R. L. S., the house-bond, prop,
+pillar, bread-winner, and bully of the establishment.&nbsp; Well,
+I do think him much better; he is <a name="page103"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 103</span>making piles of money; the hope of
+being able to hire a yacht ere long dances before his eyes;
+otherwise he is not in very high spirits at this particular
+moment, though compared with last year at Bournemouth an angel of
+joy.</p>
+<p>And now is this news, Cogia, or is it not?&nbsp; It all
+depends upon the point of view, and I call it news.&nbsp; The
+devil of it is that I can think of nothing else, except to send
+you all our loves, and to wish exceedingly you were here to cheer
+us all up.&nbsp; But we&rsquo;ll see about that on board the
+yacht.&mdash;Your affectionate 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>Saranac Lake</i>], <i>April</i>
+9<i>th</i>!! 1888</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;I have
+been long without writing to you, but am not to blame, I had some
+little annoyances quite for a private eye, but they ran me so
+hard that I could not write without lugging them in, which (for
+several reasons) I did not choose to do.&nbsp; Fanny is off to
+San Francisco, and next week I myself flit to New York: address
+Scribner&rsquo;s.&nbsp; Where we shall go I know not, nor (I was
+going to say) care; so bald and bad is my frame of mind.&nbsp; Do
+you know our&mdash;ahem!&mdash;fellow clubman, Colonel
+Majendie?&nbsp; I had such an interesting letter from him.&nbsp;
+Did you see my sermon?&nbsp; It has evoked the worst feeling: I
+fear people don&rsquo;t care for the truth, or else I don&rsquo;t
+tell it.&nbsp; Suffer me to wander without purpose.&nbsp; I have
+sent off twenty letters to-day, and begun and stuck at a
+twenty-first, and taken a copy of one which was on business, and
+corrected several galleys of proof, and sorted about a bushel of
+old letters; so if any one has a right to be romantically stupid
+it is I&mdash;and I am.&nbsp; Really deeply stupid, and at that
+stage when in old days I used to pour out words without any
+meaning whatever and with my mind taking no part in the
+performance.&nbsp; I suspect that <a name="page104"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 104</span>is now the case.&nbsp; I am reading
+with extraordinary pleasure the life of Lord Lawrence: Lloyd and
+I have a mutiny novel&mdash;</p>
+<p>(<i>Next morning</i>, <i>after twelve other
+letters</i>)&mdash;mutiny novel on hand&mdash;a tremendous
+work&mdash;so we are all at Indian books.&nbsp; The idea of the
+novel is Lloyd&rsquo;s: I call it a novel.&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis a
+tragic romance, of the most tragic sort: I believe the end will
+be almost too much for human endurance&mdash;when the hero is
+thrown to the ground with one of his own (Sepoy) soldier&rsquo;s
+knees upon his chest, and the cries begin in the
+Beebeeghar.&nbsp; O truly, you know it is a howler!&nbsp; The
+whole last part is&mdash;well the difficulty is that, short of
+resuscitating Shakespeare, I don&rsquo;t know who is to write
+it.</p>
+<p>I still keep wonderful.&nbsp; I am a great performer before
+the Lord on the penny whistle.&nbsp; Dear sir, sincerely
+yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Andrew
+Jackson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Miss Adelaide Boodle</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Saranac Lake</i>, <i>April</i>
+1888.]<br />
+<i>Address c/o Messrs. Scribner&rsquo;s Sons</i>,<br />
+743 <i>Broadway</i>, <i>N.Y.</i></p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR GAMEKEEPER</span>,&mdash;Your
+p. c. (proving you a good student of Micawber) has just arrived,
+and it paves the way to something I am anxious to say.&nbsp; I
+wrote a paper the other day&mdash;<i>Pulvis et Umbra</i>;&mdash;I
+wrote it with great feeling and conviction: to me it seemed
+bracing and healthful, it is in such a world (so seen by me),
+that I am very glad to fight out my battle, and see some fine
+sunsets, and hear some excellent jests between whiles round the
+camp fire.&nbsp; But I find that to some people this vision of
+mine is a nightmare, and extinguishes all ground of faith in God
+or pleasure in man.&nbsp; Truth I think not so much of; for I do
+not know it.&nbsp; And I could wish in my heart that I had not
+published this paper, if it troubles folk too much: all have not
+the same digestion, nor the same sight of things.&nbsp; And it
+came over me with special pain that perhaps this article (which I
+was at the pains to <a name="page105"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 105</span>send to her) might give dismalness
+to my <i>Gamekeeper at Home</i>.&nbsp; Well, I cannot take back
+what I have said; but yet I may add this.&nbsp; If my view be
+everything but the nonsense that it may be&mdash;to me it seems
+self-evident and blinding truth&mdash;surely of all things it
+makes this world holier.&nbsp; There is nothing in it but the
+moral side&mdash;but the great battle and the breathing times
+with their refreshments.&nbsp; I see no more and no less.&nbsp;
+And if you look again, it is not ugly, and it is filled with
+promise.</p>
+<p>Pray excuse a desponding author for this apology.&nbsp; My
+wife is away off to the uttermost parts of the States, all by
+herself.&nbsp; I shall be off, I hope, in a week; but
+where?&nbsp; Ah! that I know not.&nbsp; I keep wonderful, and my
+wife a little better, and the lad flourishing.&nbsp; We now
+perform duets on two D tin whistles; it is no joke to make the
+bass; I think I must really send you one, which I wish you would
+correct . . . I may be said to live for these instrumental
+labours now, but I have always some childishness on hand.&mdash;I
+am, dear Gamekeeper, your indulgent but intemperate Squire,</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"><a name="page106"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 106</span><i>Union House</i>,
+<i>Manasquan</i>, <i>N.J.</i>, <i>but address to
+Scribner&rsquo;s</i>,<br />
+11<i>th</i> <i>May</i> 1888.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;I have
+found a yacht, and we are going the full pitch for seven
+months.&nbsp; If I cannot get my health back (more or less),
+&rsquo;tis madness; but, of course, there is the hope, and I will
+play big. . . . If this business fails to set me up, well,
+&pound;2000 is gone, and I know I can&rsquo;t get better.&nbsp;
+We sail from San Francisco, June 15th, for the South Seas in the
+yacht <i>Casco</i>.&mdash;With a million thanks for all your dear
+friendliness, ever yours affectionately,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Homer St. Gaudens</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Manasquan</i>, <i>New Jersey</i>,
+27<i>th</i> <i>May</i> 1888.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR HOMER ST.
+GAUDENS</span>,&mdash;Your father has brought you this day to see
+me, and he tells me it is his hope you may remember the
+occasion.&nbsp; I am going to do what I can to carry out his
+wish; and it may amuse you, years after, to see this little scrap
+of paper and to read what I write.&nbsp; I must begin by
+testifying that you yourself took no interest whatever in the
+introduction, and in the most proper spirit displayed a
+single-minded ambition to get back to play, and this I thought an
+excellent and admirable point in your character.&nbsp; You were
+also (I use the past tense, with a view to the time when you
+shall read, rather than to that when I am writing) a very pretty
+boy, and (to my European views) startlingly self-possessed.&nbsp;
+My time of observation was so limited that you must pardon me if
+I can say no more: what else I marked, what restlessness of foot
+and hand, what graceful clumsiness, what experimental designs
+upon the furniture, was <a name="page107"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 107</span>but the common inheritance of human
+youth.&nbsp; But you may perhaps like to know that the lean
+flushed man in bed, who interested you so little, was in a state
+of mind extremely mingled and unpleasant: harassed with work
+which he thought he was not doing well, troubled with
+difficulties to which you will in time succeed, and yet looking
+forward to no less a matter than a voyage to the South Seas and
+the visitation of savage and desert islands.&mdash;Your
+father&rsquo;s friend,</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>Manasquan</i> (<i>ahem</i>!),
+<i>New Jersey</i>, <i>May</i> 28<i>th</i>, 1888.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR JAMES</span>,&mdash;With what a
+torrent it has come at last!&nbsp; Up to now, what I like best is
+the first number of a <i>London Life</i>.&nbsp; You have never
+done anything better, and I don&rsquo;t know if perhaps you have
+ever done anything so good as the girl&rsquo;s outburst:
+tip-top.&nbsp; I have been preaching your later works in your
+native land.&nbsp; I had to present the Beltraffio volume to Low,
+and it has brought him to his knees; he was <i>amazed</i> at the
+first part of Georgina&rsquo;s Reasons, although (like me) not so
+well satisfied with Part <span class="GutSmall">II</span>.&nbsp;
+It is annoying to find the American public as stupid as the
+English, but they will waken up in time: I wonder what they will
+think of <i>Two Nations</i>? . . .</p>
+<p>This, dear James, is a valedictory.&nbsp; On June 15th the
+schooner yacht <i>Casco</i> will (weather and a jealous
+providence permitting) steam through the Golden Gates for
+Honolulu, Tahiti, the Galapagos, Guayaquil, and&mdash;I hope
+<i>not</i> the bottom of the Pacific.&nbsp; It will contain your
+obedient &rsquo;umble servant and party.&nbsp; It seems too good
+to be true, and is a very good way of getting through the
+green-sickness of maturity which, with all its accompanying ills,
+is now declaring itself in my mind and life.&nbsp; They tell me
+it is not so severe as that of youth; if I (and the <i>Casco</i>)
+are spared, I shall tell you more exactly, as I am one of the few
+people in the world who do not forget their own lives.</p>
+<p><a name="page108"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+108</span>Good-bye, then, my dear fellow, and please write us a
+word; we expect to have three mails in the next two months:
+Honolulu, Tahiti, and Guayaquil.&nbsp; But letters will be
+forwarded from Scribner&rsquo;s, if you hear nothing more
+definite directly.&nbsp; In 3 (three) days I leave for San
+Francisco.&mdash;Ever yours most cordially,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h2>X<br />
+PACIFIC VOYAGES<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">JUNE 1888-NOVEMBER 1890</span></h2>
+<h3><a name="page114"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+114</span><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Yacht</i>
+&lsquo;<i>Casco</i>,&rsquo; <i>Anaho Bay</i>, <i>Nukahiva</i>,<br
+/>
+<i>Marquesas Islands</i> [<i>July</i> 1888].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;From this
+somewhat (ahem) out of the way place, I write to say how
+d&rsquo;ye do.&nbsp; It is all a swindle: I chose these isles as
+having the most beastly population, and they are far better, and
+far more civilised than we.&nbsp; I know one old chief Ko-o-amua,
+a great cannibal in his day, who ate his enemies even as he
+walked home from killing &rsquo;em, and he is a perfect gentleman
+and exceedingly amiable and simple-minded: no fool, though.</p>
+<p>The climate is delightful; and the harbour where we lie one of
+the loveliest spots imaginable.&nbsp; Yesterday evening we had
+near a score natives on board; lovely parties.&nbsp; We have a
+native god; very rare now.&nbsp; Very rare and equally absurd to
+view.</p>
+<p>This sort of work is not favourable to correspondence: it
+takes me all the little strength I have to go about and see, and
+then come home and note, the strangeness around us.&nbsp; I
+shouldn&rsquo;t wonder if there came trouble here some day, all
+the same.&nbsp; I could name a nation that is not beloved in
+certain islands&mdash;and it does not know it! <a
+name="citation114"></a><a href="#footnote114"
+class="citation">[114]</a>&nbsp; Strange: like ourselves,
+perhaps, in India!&nbsp; Love to all and much to yourself.</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>Yacht</i>
+&lsquo;<i>Casco</i>,&rsquo; <i>at sea</i>, <i>near the
+Paumotus</i>,<br />
+7 <span class="GutSmall">A.M.</span>, <i>September</i>
+6<i>th</i>, 1888, <i>with a dreadful pen</i>.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;Last
+night as I lay under my blanket in the cockpit, courting sleep, I
+had a comic seizure.&nbsp; There was nothing visible but the
+southern stars, and the steersman there out by the binnacle lamp;
+we were all looking forward to a most deplorable landfall on the
+morrow, praying God we should fetch a tuft of <a
+name="page115"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 115</span>palms which
+are to indicate the Dangerous Archipelago; the night was as warm
+as milk, and all of a sudden I had a vision of&mdash;Drummond
+Street.&nbsp; It came on me like a flash of lightning: I simply
+returned thither, and into the past.&nbsp; And when I remember
+all I hoped and feared as I pickled about Rutherford&rsquo;s in
+the rain and the east wind; how I feared I should make a mere
+shipwreck, and yet timidly hoped not; how I feared I should never
+have a friend, far less a wife, and yet passionately hoped I
+might; how I hoped (if I did not take to drink) I should possibly
+write one little book, etc. etc.&nbsp; And then now&mdash;what a
+change!&nbsp; I feel somehow as if I should like the incident set
+upon a brass plate at the corner of that dreary thoroughfare for
+all students to read, poor devils, when their hearts are
+down.&nbsp; And I felt I must write one word to you.&nbsp; Excuse
+me if I write little: when I am at sea, it gives me a headache;
+when I am in port, I have my diary crying &lsquo;Give,
+give.&rsquo;&nbsp; I shall have a fine book of travels, I feel
+sure; and will tell you more of the South Seas after very few
+months than any other writer has done&mdash;except Herman
+Melville perhaps, who is a howling cheese.&nbsp; Good luck to
+you, God bless you.&mdash;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>Fakarava</i>, <i>Low
+Archipelago</i>, <i>September</i> 21<i>st</i>, 1888.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;Only a
+word.&nbsp; Get out your big atlas, and imagine a straight line
+from San Francisco to Anaho, the N.E. corner of Nukahiva, one of
+the Marquesas Islands; imagine three weeks there: imagine a
+day&rsquo;s sail on August 12th round the eastern end of the
+island to Tai-o-hae, the capital; imagine us there till August
+22nd: imagine us skirt the east side of Ua-pu&mdash;perhaps
+Rona-Poa on your atlas&mdash;and through the Bondelais straits to
+Taaka-uku in Hiva-Oa, where we arrive on the 23rd; imagine us
+there until September 4th, when we sailed for Fakarava, which we
+reached on the 9th, after a <a name="page116"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 116</span>very difficult and dangerous passage
+among these isles.&nbsp; Tuesday, we shall leave for Taiti, where
+I shall knock off and do some necessary work ashore.&nbsp; It
+looks pretty bald in the atlas; not in fact; nor I trust in the
+130 odd pages of diary which I have just been looking up for
+these dates: the interest, indeed, has been <i>incredible</i>: I
+did not dream there were such places or such races.&nbsp; My
+health has stood me splendidly; I am in for hours wading over the
+knees for shells; I have been five hours on horseback: I have
+been up pretty near all night waiting to see where the
+<i>Casco</i> would go ashore, and with my diary all
+ready&mdash;simply the most entertaining night of my life.&nbsp;
+Withal I still have colds; I have one now, and feel pretty sick
+too; but not as at home: instead of being in bed, for instance, I
+am at this moment sitting snuffling and writing in an undershirt
+and trousers; and as for colour, hands, arms, feet, legs, and
+face, I am browner than the berry: only my trunk and the
+aristocratic spot on which I sit retain the vile whiteness of the
+north.</p>
+<p>Please give my news and kind love to Henley, Henry James, and
+any whom you see of well-wishers.&nbsp; Accept from me the very
+best of my affection: and believe me ever yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">The Old Man
+Virulent</span>.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Taiti</i>, <i>October</i>
+7<i>th</i>, 1888.</p>
+<p>Never having found a chance to send this off, I may add more
+of my news.&nbsp; My cold took a very bad turn, and I am pretty
+much out of sorts at this particular, living in a little bare
+one-twentieth-furnished house, surrounded by mangoes, etc.&nbsp;
+All the rest are well, and I mean to be soon.&nbsp; But these
+Taiti colds are very severe and, to children, often fatal; so
+they were not the thing for me.&nbsp; Yesterday the brigantine
+came in from San Francisco, so we can get our letters off
+soon.&nbsp; There are in Papeete at this moment, in a little
+wooden house with grated verandahs, two people who love you very
+much, and one of them is</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><a name="page117"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+117</span><span class="smcap">to Charles Baxter</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Taiti</i>, <i>as ever was</i>,
+6<i>th</i> <i>October</i> 1888.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;. . . You
+will receive a lot of mostly very bad proofs of photographs: the
+paper was so bad.&nbsp; Please keep them very private, as they
+are for the book.&nbsp; We send them, having learned so dread a
+fear of the sea, that we wish to put our eggs in different
+baskets.&nbsp; We have been thrice within an ace of being ashore:
+we were lost (!) for about twelve hours in the Low Archipelago,
+but by God&rsquo;s blessing had quiet weather all the time; and
+once, in a squall, we cam&rsquo; so near gaun heels ower hurdies,
+that I really dinnae ken why we didnae athegither.&nbsp; Hence,
+as I say, a great desire to put our eggs in different baskets,
+particularly on the Pacific (aw-haw-haw) Pacific Ocean.</p>
+<p>You can have no idea what a mean time we have had, owing to
+incidental beastlinesses, nor what a glorious, owing to the
+intrinsic interest of these isles.&nbsp; I hope the book will be
+a good one; nor do I really very much doubt that&mdash;the stuff
+is so curious; what I wonder is, if the public will rise to
+it.&nbsp; A copy of my journal, or as much of it as is made,
+shall go to you also; it is, of course, quite imperfect, much
+being to be added and corrected; but O, for the eggs in the
+different baskets.</p>
+<p>All the rest are well enough, and all have enjoyed the cruise
+so far, in spite of its drawbacks.&nbsp; We have had an awfae
+time in some ways, Mr. Baxter; and if I wasnae sic a verra
+patient man (when I ken that I <i>have</i> to be) there wad hae
+been a braw row; and ance if I hadnae happened to be on deck
+about three in the marnin&rsquo;, I <i>think</i> there would have
+been <i>murder</i> done.&nbsp; The American Mairchant Marine is a
+kent service; ye&rsquo;ll have heard its praise, I&rsquo;m
+thinkin&rsquo;; an&rsquo; if ye never did, ye can get <i>Twa
+Years Before the Mast</i>, by Dana, whaur forbye a great deal
+o&rsquo; pleisure, ye&rsquo;ll get a&rsquo; the needcessary
+information.&nbsp; Love to your father and all the
+family.&mdash;Ever your affectionate friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><a name="page118"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+118</span><span class="smcap">to Miss Adelaide Boodle</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Taiti</i>, <i>October</i>
+10<i>th</i>, 1888.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR GIVER</span>,&mdash;I am at a loss
+to conceive your object in giving me to a person so locomotory as
+my proprietor.&nbsp; The number of thousand miles that I have
+travelled, the strange bed-fellows with which I have been made
+acquainted, I lack the requisite literary talent to make clear to
+your imagination.&nbsp; I speak of bed-fellows; pocket-fellows
+would be a more exact expression, for the place of my abode is in
+my master&rsquo;s righthand trouser-pocket; and there, as he
+waded on the resounding beaches of Nukahiva, or in the shallow
+tepid water on the reef of Fakarava, I have been overwhelmed by
+and buried among all manner of abominable South Sea shells,
+beautiful enough in their way, I make no doubt, but singular
+company for any self-respecting paper-cutter.&nbsp; He, my
+master&mdash;or as I more justly call him, my bearer; for
+although I occasionally serve him, does not he serve me daily and
+all day long, carrying me like an African potentate on my
+subject&rsquo;s legs?&mdash;<i>he</i> is delighted with these
+isles, and this climate, and these savages, and a variety of
+other things.&nbsp; He now blows a flageolet with singular
+effects: sometimes the poor thing appears stifled with shame,
+sometimes it screams with agony; he pursues his career with
+truculent insensibility.&nbsp; Health appears to reign in the
+party.&nbsp; I was very nearly sunk in a squall.&nbsp; I am sorry
+I ever left England, for here there are no books to be had, and
+without books there is no stable situation for, dear Giver, your
+affectionate</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Wooden
+Paper-Cutter</span>.</p>
+<p>A neighbouring pair of scissors snips a kiss in your
+direction.</p>
+<h3><a name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+119</span><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Taiti</i>, <i>October</i>
+16<i>th</i>, 1888.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;The
+cruiser for San Francisco departs to-morrow morning bearing you
+some kind of a scratch.&nbsp; This much more important packet
+will travel by way of Auckland.&nbsp; It contains a ballant; and
+I think a better ballant than I expected ever to do.&nbsp; I can
+imagine how you will wag your pow over it; and how ragged you
+will find it, etc., but has it not spirit all the same? and
+though the verse is not all your fancy painted it, has it not
+some life?&nbsp; And surely, as narrative, the thing has
+considerable merit!&nbsp; Read it, get a typewritten copy taken,
+and send me that and your opinion to the Sandwiches.&nbsp; I know
+I am only courting the most excruciating mortification; but the
+real cause of my sending the thing is that I could bear to go
+down myself, but not to have much <span
+class="GutSmall">MS</span>. go down with me.&nbsp; To say truth,
+we are through the most dangerous; but it has left in all minds a
+strong sense of insecurity, and we are all for putting eggs in
+various baskets.</p>
+<p>We leave here soon, bound for Uahiva, Reiatea, Bora-Bora, and
+the Sandwiches.</p>
+<p class="poetry">O, how my spirit languishes<br />
+To step ashore on the Sanguishes;<br />
+For there my letters wait,<br />
+There shall I know my fate.<br />
+O, how my spirit languidges<br />
+To step ashore on the Sanguidges.</p>
+<p>18<i>th</i>.&mdash;I think we shall leave here if all is well
+on Monday.&nbsp; I am quite recovered, astonishingly recovered.
+It must be owned these climates and this voyage have <a
+name="page120"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 120</span>given me
+more strength than I could have thought possible.&nbsp; And yet
+the sea is a terrible place, stupefying to the mind and poisonous
+to the temper, the sea, the motion, the lack of space, the cruel
+publicity, the villainous tinned foods, the sailors, the captain,
+the passengers&mdash;but you are amply repaid when you sight an
+island, and drop anchor in a new world.&nbsp; Much trouble has
+attended this trip, but I must confess more pleasure.&nbsp; Nor
+should I ever complain, as in the last few weeks, with the curing
+of my illness indeed, as if that were the bursting of an abscess,
+the cloud has risen from my spirits and to some degree from my
+temper.&nbsp; Do you know what they called the <i>Casco</i> at
+Fakarava?&nbsp; The <i>Silver Ship</i>.&nbsp; Is that not
+pretty?&nbsp; Pray tell Mrs. Jenkin, <i>die silberne Frau</i>, as
+I only learned it since I wrote her.&nbsp; I think of calling the
+book by that name: <i>The Cruise of the Silver Ship</i>&mdash;so
+there will be one poetic page at least&mdash;the title.&nbsp; At
+the Sandwiches we shall say farewell to the <i>S. S.</i> with
+mingled feelings.&nbsp; She is a lovely creature: the most
+beautiful thing at this moment in Taiti.</p>
+<p>Well, I will take another sheet, though I know I have nothing
+to say.&nbsp; You would think I was bursting: but the voyage is
+all stored up for the book, which is to pay for it, we fondly
+hope; and the troubles of the time are not worth telling; and our
+news is little.</p>
+<p>Here I conclude (Oct. 24th, I think), for we are now stored,
+and the Blue Peter metaphorically flies.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to William and Thomas Archer</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Taiti</i>, <i>October</i>
+17<i>th</i>, 1888.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR ARCHER</span>,&mdash;Though quite
+unable to write letters, I nobly send you a line signifying
+nothing.&nbsp; The voyage has agreed well with all; it has had
+its pains, and its <a name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+121</span>extraordinary pleasures; nothing in the world can equal
+the excitement of the first time you cast anchor in some bay of a
+tropical island, and the boats begin to surround you, and the
+tattooed people swarm aboard.&nbsp; Tell Tomarcher, with my
+respex, that hide-and-seek is not equal to it; no, nor
+hidee-in-the-dark; which, for the matter of that, is a game for
+the unskilful: the artist prefers daylight, a good-sized garden,
+some shrubbery, an open paddock, and&mdash;come on, Macduff.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Tomarcher</span>, I am now a distinguished
+litterytour, but that was not the real bent of my genius.&nbsp; I
+was the best player of hide-and-seek going; not a good runner, I
+was up to every shift and dodge, I could jink very well, I could
+crawl without any noise through leaves, I could hide under a
+carrot plant, it used to be my favourite boast that I always
+<i>walked</i> into the den.&nbsp; You may care to hear,
+Tomarcher, about the children in these parts; their parents obey
+them, they do not obey their parents; and I am sorry to tell you
+(for I dare say you are already thinking the idea a good one)
+that it does not pay one halfpenny.&nbsp; There are three sorts
+of civilisation, Tomarcher: the real old-fashioned one, in which
+children either had to find out how to please their dear papas,
+or their dear papas cut their heads off.&nbsp; This style did
+very well, but is now out of fashion.&nbsp; Then the modern
+European style: in which children have to behave reasonably well,
+and go to school and say their prayers, or their dear papas
+<i>will know the reason why</i>.&nbsp; This does fairly
+well.&nbsp; Then there is the South Sea Island plan, which does
+not do one bit.&nbsp; The children beat their parents here; it
+does not make their parents any better; so do not try it.</p>
+<p>Dear Tomarcher, I have forgotten the address of your new
+house, but will send this to one of your papa&rsquo;s
+publishers.&nbsp; Remember us all to all of you, and believe me,
+yours respectably,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><a name="page122"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+122</span><span class="smcap">to Charles Baxter</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Tautira</i> (<i>The Garden of the
+World</i>), <i>otherwise called</i><br />
+<i>Hans-Christian-Andersen-ville</i> [<i>November</i> 1888].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;Whether I
+have a penny left in the wide world, I know not, nor shall know,
+till I get to Honolulu, where I anticipate a devil of an
+awakening.&nbsp; It will be from a mighty pleasant dream at
+least: Tautira being mere Heaven.&nbsp; But suppose, for the sake
+of argument, any money to be left in the hands of my painful
+doer, what is to be done with it?&nbsp; Save us from exile would
+be the wise man&rsquo;s choice, I suppose; for the exile
+threatens to be eternal.&nbsp; But yet I am of opinion&mdash;in
+case there should be <i>some</i> dibs in the hand of the P.D.,
+<i>i.e.</i> painful doer; because if there be none, I shall take
+to my flageolet on the high-road, and work home the best way I
+can, having previously made away with my family&mdash;I am of
+opinion that if &mdash; and his are in the customary state, and
+you are thinking of an offering, and there should be still some
+funds over, you would be a real good P.D. to put some in with
+yours and tak&rsquo; the credit o&rsquo;t, like a wee man!&nbsp;
+I know it&rsquo;s a beastly thing to ask; but it, after all, does
+no earthly harm, only that much good.&nbsp; And besides, like
+enough there&rsquo;s nothing in the till, and there is an
+end.&nbsp; Yet I live here in the full lustre of millions; it is
+thought I am the richest son of man that has yet been to Tautira:
+I!&mdash;and I am secretly eaten with the fear of lying in pawn,
+perhaps for the remainder of my days, in San Francisco.&nbsp; As
+usual, my colds have much hashed my finances.</p>
+<p>Do tell Henley I write this just after having dismissed Ori
+the sub-chief, in whose house I live, Mrs. Ori, and Pairai, their
+adopted child, from the evening hour of <a
+name="page123"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 123</span>music:
+during which I Publickly (with a k) Blow on the Flageolet.&nbsp;
+These are words of truth.&nbsp; Yesterday I told Ori about W. E.
+H., counterfeited his playing on the piano and the pipe, and
+succeeded in sending the six feet four there is of that sub-chief
+somewhat sadly to his bed; feeling that his was not the genuine
+article after all.&nbsp; Ori is exactly like a colonel in the
+Guards.&mdash;I am, dear Charles, ever yours affectionately,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Tautira</i>, 10<i>th</i>
+<i>November</i> &rsquo;88.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;Our
+mainmast is dry-rotten, and we are all to the devil; I shall lie
+in a debtor&rsquo;s jail.&nbsp; Never mind, Tautira is first
+chop.&nbsp; I am so besotted that I shall put on the back of this
+my attempt at words to Wandering Willie; if you can conceive at
+all the difficulty, you will also conceive the vanity with which
+I regard any kind of result; and whatever mine is like, it has
+some sense, and Burns&rsquo;s has none.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Home no more home to me, whither must I
+wander?<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Hunger my driver, I go where I must.<br />
+Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Thick drives the rain, and my roof is in the
+dust.<br />
+Loved of wise men was the shade of my roof-tree.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The true word of welcome was spoken in the
+door&mdash;<br />
+Dear days of old, with the faces in the firelight,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Kind folks of old, you come again no more.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly
+faces,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child.<br
+/>
+Fire and the windows bright glittered on the moorland;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Song, tuneful song, built a palace in the wild.<br
+/>
+Now, when day dawns on the brow of the moorland,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Lone stands the house, and the chimney-stone is
+cold.<br />
+Lone let it stand, now the friends are all departed,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the
+place of old.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><a name="page124"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+124</span><span class="smcap">to J. A. Symonds</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>November</i> 11<i>th</i>
+1888.</p>
+<p><i>One November night</i>, <i>in the village of Tautira</i>,
+<i>we sat at the high table in the hall of assembly</i>,
+<i>hearing the natives sing</i>.&nbsp; <i>It was dark in the
+hall</i>, <i>and very warm</i>; <i>though at times the land wind
+blew a little shrewdly through the chinks</i>, <i>and at
+times</i>, <i>through the larger openings</i>, <i>we could see
+the moonlight on the lawn</i>.&nbsp; <i>As the songs arose in the
+rattling Tahitian chorus</i>, <i>the chief translated here and
+there a verse</i>.&nbsp; <i>Farther on in the volume you shall
+read the songs themselves</i>; <i>and I am in hopes that not you
+only</i>, <i>but all who can find a savour in the ancient poetry
+of places</i>, <i>will read them with some pleasure</i>.&nbsp;
+<i>You are to conceive us</i>, <i>therefore</i>, <i>in strange
+circumstances and very pleasing</i>; <i>in a strange land and
+climate</i>, <i>the most beautiful on earth</i>; <i>surrounded by
+a foreign race that all travellers have agreed to be the most
+engaging</i>; <i>and taking a double interest in two foreign
+arts</i>.</p>
+<p><i>We came forth again at last</i>, <i>in a cloudy
+moonlight</i>, <i>on the forest lawn which is the street of
+Tautira</i>.&nbsp; <i>The Pacific roared outside upon the
+reef</i>.&nbsp; <i>Here and there one of the scattered palm-built
+lodges shone out under the shadow of the wood</i>, <i>the
+lamplight bursting through the crannies of the wall</i>.&nbsp;
+<i>We went homeward slowly</i>, <i>Ori a Ori carrying behind us
+the lantern and the chairs</i>, <i>properties with which we had
+just been enacting our part of the distinguished
+visitor</i>.&nbsp; <i>It was one of those moments in which minds
+not altogether churlish recall the names and deplore the absence
+of congenial friends</i>; <i>and it was your name that first rose
+upon our lips</i>.&nbsp; &lsquo;<i>How Symonds would have enjoyed
+this evening</i>!&rsquo; <i>said one</i>, <i>and then
+another</i>.&nbsp; <i>The word caught in my mind</i>; <i>I went
+to bed</i>, <i>and it was still there</i>.&nbsp; <i>The
+glittering</i>, <i>frosty solitudes in which your days are cast
+arose before me</i>: <i>I seemed to see you walking there in the
+late night</i>, <i>under the pine-trees and the stars</i>; <i>and
+I received the image with something like remorse</i>.</p>
+<p><i>There is a modern attitude towards fortune</i>; <i>in this
+place I will not use a graver name</i>.&nbsp; <i>Staunchly to
+withstand her buffets and to enjoy with equanimity her favours
+was the code of the virtuous of old</i>.&nbsp; <i>Our
+fathers</i>, <i>it should seem</i>, <i>wondered and doubted how
+they had merited their misfortunes</i>: <i>we</i>, <i>rather how
+we have deserved our happiness</i>.&nbsp; <i>And we stand often
+abashed and sometimes revolted</i>, <i>at those partialities of
+fate by which we profit most</i>.&nbsp; <i>It was so with me on
+that November night</i>: <i>I felt that our positions should be
+changed</i>.&nbsp; <i>It was you</i>, <i>dear Symonds</i>, <i>who
+should have gone upon that voyage and written this
+account</i>.&nbsp; <i>With your rich stores of knowledge</i>,
+<i>you could have remarked and understood a thousand things of
+interest and beauty that escaped my ignorance</i>; <i>and the
+brilliant colours of your style would have carried into a
+thousand sickrooms the sea air and the strong sun of tropic
+islands</i>.&nbsp; <i>It was otherwise decreed</i>.&nbsp; <i>But
+suffer me at least to connect you</i>, <i>if only in name and
+only in the fondness of imagination</i>, <i>with the voyage of
+the</i> &lsquo;Silver Ship.&rsquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR SYMONDS</span>,&mdash;I send you
+this (November 11th), the morning of its completion.&nbsp; If I
+ever write an account of this voyage, may I place this letter at
+the beginning?&nbsp; It represents&mdash;I need not tell you, for
+you too are an artist&mdash;a most genuine feeling, which kept me
+long awake last night; and though perhaps a little elaborate, I
+think it a good piece of writing.&nbsp; We are <i>in heaven
+here</i>.&nbsp; Do not forget</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p>Please keep this: I have no perfect copy.</p>
+<p><i>Tautira</i>, <i>on the peninsula of Tahiti</i>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Thomas Archer</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Tautira</i>, <i>Island of
+Tahiti</i> [<i>November</i> 1888].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR TOMARCHER</span>,&mdash;This is a
+pretty state of things! seven o&rsquo;clock and no word of
+breakfast!&nbsp; And I was awake a good deal last night, for it
+was full moon, and they had made a great fire of cocoa-nut husks
+down by the sea, and as we have no blinds or shutters, this kept
+my room very bright.&nbsp; And then the rats had a wedding or a
+school-feast under my bed.&nbsp; And then I woke early, and I
+have nothing to read except Virgil&rsquo;s <i>&AElig;neid</i>,
+which is not good fun on an empty stomach, and a Latin
+dictionary, which is good for naught, and by some humorous
+accident, your dear papa&rsquo;s article on Skerryvore.&nbsp; And
+I read the whole of that, and very impudent it is, but you must
+not tell your dear papa I said so, or it might come to a battle
+in which you might lose either a dear papa or a valued
+correspondent, or both, which would be prodigal.&nbsp; And still
+no breakfast; so I said &lsquo;Let&rsquo;s write to
+Tomarcher.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>This is a much better place for children than any I have
+hitherto seen in these seas.&nbsp; The girls (and sometimes the
+boys) play a very elaborate kind of hopscotch.&nbsp; The boys
+play horses exactly as we do in Europe; and have very good fun on
+stilts, trying to knock each other down, in which they do not
+often succeed.&nbsp; The children of all ages go to church and
+are allowed to do what they please, running about the aisles,
+rolling balls, stealing mamma&rsquo;s bonnet and publicly sitting
+on it, and at last going to sleep in the middle of the
+floor.&nbsp; I forgot to say that the whips to play horses, and
+the balls to roll about the church&mdash;at least I never saw
+them used elsewhere&mdash;grow ready made on trees; which is
+rough on toy-shops.&nbsp; The whips are so good that I wanted to
+play horses myself; but no such luck! my hair is grey, and I am a
+great, big, ugly man.&nbsp; The balls are rather hard, but very
+light and quite round.&nbsp; When you grow up and become
+offensively rich, you can charter a ship in the port of London,
+and have it come back to you entirely loaded with these balls;
+when you could satisfy your mind as to their character, and give
+them away when done with to your uncles and aunts.&nbsp; But what
+I really wanted to tell you was this: besides the tree-top toys
+(Hush-a-by, toy-shop, on the tree-top!), I have seen some real
+<i>made</i> toys, the first hitherto observed in the South
+Seas.</p>
+<p>This was how.&nbsp; You are to imagine a four-wheeled gig; one
+horse; in the front seat two Tahiti natives, in their Sunday
+clothes, blue coat, white shirt, kilt (a little longer than the
+Scotch) of a blue stuff with big white or yellow flowers, legs
+and feet bare; in the back seat me and my wife, who is a friend
+of yours; under our feet, plenty of lunch and things: among us a
+great deal of fun in broken Tahitian, one of the natives, the
+sub-chief of the village, being a great ally of mine.&nbsp;
+Indeed we have exchanged names; so that he is now called Rui, the
+nearest they can come to Louis, for they have no <i>l</i> and no
+<i>s</i> in their language.&nbsp; Rui is six feet three in his
+stockings, and a magnificent man.&nbsp; We all have straw hats,
+for the sun is strong.&nbsp; We drive between the sea, which
+makes a great noise, and the mountains; the road is cut through a
+forest mostly of fruit trees, the very creepers, which take the
+place of our ivy, heavy with a great and delicious fruit, bigger
+than your head and far nicer, called Barbedine.&nbsp; Presently
+we came to a house in a pretty garden, quite by itself, very
+nicely kept, the doors and windows open, no one about, and no
+noise but that of the sea.&nbsp; It looked like a house in a
+fairy-tale, and just beyond we must ford a river, and there we
+saw the inhabitants.&nbsp; Just in the mouth of the river, where
+it met the sea waves, they were ducking and bathing and screaming
+together like a covey of birds: seven or eight little naked brown
+boys and girls as happy as the day was long; and on the banks of
+the stream beside them, real toys&mdash;toy ships, full rigged,
+and with their sails set, though they were lying in the dust on
+their beam ends.&nbsp; And then I knew for sure they were all
+children in a fairy-story, living alone together in that lonely
+house with the only toys in all the island; and that I had myself
+driven, in my four-wheeled gig, into a corner of the fairy-story,
+and the question was, should I get out again?&nbsp; But it was
+all right; I guess only one of the wheels of the gig had got into
+the fairy-story; and the next jolt the whole thing vanished, and
+we drove on in our sea-side forest as before, and I have the
+honour to be Tomarcher&rsquo;s valued correspondent, <span
+class="smcap">Teriitepa</span>, which he was previously known
+as</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>Yacht</i>
+&lsquo;<i>Casco</i>,&rsquo; <i>at Sea</i>, 14<i>th</i>
+<i>January</i>, 1889.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;Twenty
+days out from Papeete.&nbsp; Yes, sir, all that, and only (for a
+guess) in 4&deg; north or at the best 4&deg; 30&prime;, though
+already the wind seems to smell a little of the North Pole.&nbsp;
+My handwriting you must take as you get, for we are speeding
+along through a nasty swell, and I can only keep my place at the
+table by means of a foot against the divan, the unoccupied hand
+meanwhile gripping the ink-bottle.&nbsp; As we begin (so very
+slowly) to draw near to seven months of correspondence, we are
+all in some fear; and I want to have letters written before I
+shall be plunged into that boiling pot of disagreeables which I
+constantly expect at Honolulu.&nbsp; What is needful can be added
+there.</p>
+<p>We were kept two months at Tautira in the house of my dear old
+friend, Ori a Ori, till both the masts of this invaluable yacht
+had been repaired.&nbsp; It was all for the best: Tautira being
+the most beautiful spot, and its people the most amiable, I have
+ever found.&nbsp; Besides which, the climate suited me to the
+ground; I actually went sea-bathing almost every day, and in our
+feasts (we are all huge eaters in Taiarapu) have been known to
+apply four <a name="page129"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+129</span>times for pig.&nbsp; And then again I got wonderful
+materials for my book, collected songs and legends on the spot;
+songs still sung in chorus by perhaps a hundred persons, not two
+of whom can agree on their translation; legends, on which I have
+seen half a dozen seniors sitting in conclave and debating what
+came next.&nbsp; Once I went a day&rsquo;s journey to the other
+side of the island to Tati, the high chief of the
+Tevas&mdash;<i>my</i> chief that is, for I am now a Teva and
+Teriitera, at your service&mdash;to collect more and correct what
+I had already.&nbsp; In the meanwhile I got on with my work,
+almost finished the <i>Master of Ballantrae</i>, which contains
+more human work than anything of mine but <i>Kidnapped</i>, and
+wrote the half of another ballad, the <i>Song of Rahero</i>, on a
+Taiarapu legend of my own clan, sir&mdash;not so much fire as the
+<i>Feast of Famine</i>, but promising to be more even and
+correct.&nbsp; But the best fortune of our stay at Tautira was my
+knowledge of Ori himself, one of the finest creatures
+extant.&nbsp; The day of our parting was a sad one.&nbsp; We
+deduced from it a rule for travellers: not to stay two months in
+one place&mdash;which is to cultivate regrets.</p>
+<p>At last our contemptible ship was ready; to sea we went, bound
+for Honolulu and the letter-bag, on Christmas Day; and from then
+to now have experienced every sort of minor misfortune, squalls,
+calms, contrary winds and seas, pertinacious rains, declining
+stores, till we came almost to regard ourselves as in the case of
+Vanderdecken.&nbsp; Three days ago our luck seemed to improve, we
+struck a leading breeze, got creditably through the doldrums, and
+just as we looked to have the N.E. trades and a straight run, the
+rains and squalls and calms began again about midnight, and this
+morning, though there is breeze enough to send us along, we are
+beaten back by an obnoxious swell out of the north.&nbsp; Here is
+a page of complaint, when a verse of thanksgiving had perhaps
+been more in place.&nbsp; For all this time we must have been
+skirting past dangerous weather, in the tail and circumference of
+<a name="page130"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+130</span>hurricanes, and getting only annoyance where we should
+have had peril, and ill-humour instead of fear.</p>
+<p>I wonder if I have managed to give you any news this time, or
+whether the usual damn hangs over my letter?&nbsp; &lsquo;The
+midwife whispered, Be thou dull!&rsquo; or at least
+inexplicit.&nbsp; Anyway I have tried my best, am exhausted with
+the effort, and fall back into the land of generalities.&nbsp; I
+cannot tell you how often we have planned our arrival at the
+Monument: two nights ago, the 12th January, we had it all planned
+out, arrived in the lights and whirl of Waterloo, hailed a
+hansom, span up Waterloo Road, over the bridge, etc. etc., and
+hailed the Monument gate in triumph and with indescribable
+delight.&nbsp; My dear Custodian, I always think we are too
+sparing of assurances: Cordelia is only to be excused by Regan
+and Goneril in the same nursery; I wish to tell you that the
+longer I live, the more dear do you become to me; nor does my
+heart own any stronger sentiment.&nbsp; If the bloody schooner
+didn&rsquo;t send me flying in every sort of direction at the
+same time, I would say better what I feel so much; but really, if
+you were here, you would not be writing letters, I believe; and
+even I, though of a more marine constitution, am much perturbed
+by this bobbery and wish&mdash;O ye Gods, how I wish!&mdash;that
+it was done, and we had arrived, and I had Pandora&rsquo;s Box
+(my mail bag) in hand, and was in the lively hope of something
+eatable for dinner instead of salt horse, tinned mutton, duff
+without any plums, and pie fruit, which now make up our whole
+repertory.&nbsp; O Pandora&rsquo;s Box!&nbsp; I wonder what you
+will contain.&nbsp; As like as not you will contain but little
+money: if that be so, we shall have to retire to &rsquo;Frisco in
+the <i>Casco</i>, and thence by sea <i>via</i> Panama to
+Southampton, where we should arrive in April.&nbsp; I would like
+fine to see you on the tug: ten years older both of us than the
+last time you came to welcome Fanny and me to England.&nbsp; If
+we have money, however, we shall do a little differently: send
+the <i>Casco</i> away from Honolulu empty of its high-born
+lessees, <a name="page131"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+131</span>for that voyage to &rsquo;Frisco is one long dead beat
+in foul and at last in cold weather; stay awhile behind, follow
+by steamer, cross the States by train, stay awhile in New York on
+business, and arrive probably by the German Line in
+Southampton.&nbsp; But all this is a question of money.&nbsp; We
+shall have to lie very dark awhile to recruit our finances: what
+comes from the book of the cruise, I do not want to touch until
+the capital is repaid.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Honolulu</i>, <i>January</i>
+1889.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;Here
+at last I have arrived.&nbsp; We could not get away from Tahiti
+till Christmas Day, and then had thirty days of calms and
+squalls, a deplorable passage.&nbsp; This has thrown me all out
+of gear in every way.&nbsp; I plunge into business.</p>
+<p>1.&nbsp; <i>The Master</i>: Herewith go three more
+parts.&nbsp; You see he grows in balk; this making ten already,
+and I am not yet sure if I can finish it in an eleventh; which
+shall go to you <i>quam primum</i>&mdash;I hope by next mail.</p>
+<p>2.&nbsp; <i>Illustrations to M</i>.&nbsp; I totally forgot to
+try to write to Hole.&nbsp; It was just as well, for I find it
+impossible to forecast with sufficient precision.&nbsp; You had
+better throw off all this and let him have it at once.&nbsp;
+<i>Please do</i>: <i>all</i>, <i>and at once</i>: <i>see
+further</i>; and I should hope he would still be in time for the
+later numbers.&nbsp; The three pictures I have received are so
+truly good that I should bitterly regret having the volume
+imperfectly equipped.&nbsp; They are the best illustrations I
+have seen since I don&rsquo;t know when.</p>
+<p>3.&nbsp; <i>Money</i>.&nbsp; To-morrow the mail comes in, and
+I hope it will bring me money either from you or home, but I will
+add a word on that point.</p>
+<p>4.&nbsp; My address will be Honolulu&mdash;no longer Yacht
+<i>Casco</i>, which I am packing off&mdash;till probably
+April.</p>
+<p><a name="page132"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+132</span>5.&nbsp; As soon as I am through with <i>The
+Master</i>, I shall finish the <i>Game of Bluff</i>&mdash;now
+rechristened <i>The Wrong Box</i>.&nbsp; This I wish to sell,
+cash down.&nbsp; It is of course copyright in the States; and I
+offer it to you for five thousand dollars.&nbsp; Please reply on
+this by return.&nbsp; Also please tell the typewriter who was so
+good as to be amused by our follies that I am filled with
+admiration for his piece of work.</p>
+<p>6.&nbsp; <i>Master</i> again.&nbsp; Please see that I
+haven&rsquo;t the name of the Governor of New York wrong (1764 is
+the date) in part ten.&nbsp; I have no book of reference to put
+me right.&nbsp; Observe you now have up to August inclusive in
+hand, so you should begin to feel happy.</p>
+<p>Is this all?&nbsp; I wonder, and fear not.&nbsp; Henry the
+Trader has not yet turned up: I hope he may to-morrow, when we
+expect a mail.&nbsp; Not one word of business have I received
+either from the States or England, nor anything in the shape of
+coin; which leaves me in a fine uncertainty and quite penniless
+on these islands.&nbsp; H.M. <a name="citation132"></a><a
+href="#footnote132" class="citation">[132]</a> (who is a
+gentleman of a courtly order and much tinctured with letters) is
+very polite; I may possibly ask for the position of palace
+doorkeeper.&nbsp; My voyage has been a singular mixture of good
+and ill-fortune.&nbsp; As far as regards interest and material,
+the fortune has been admirable; as far as regards time, money,
+and impediments of all kinds, from squalls and calms to rotten
+masts and sprung spars, simply detestable.&nbsp; I hope you will
+be interested to hear of two volumes on the wing.&nbsp; The
+cruise itself, you are to know, will make a big volume with
+appendices; some of it will first appear as (what they call)
+letters in some of M&rsquo;Clure&rsquo;s papers.&nbsp; I believe
+the book when ready will have a fair measure of serious interest:
+I have had great fortune in finding old songs and ballads and
+stories, for instance, and have many singular instances of life
+in the last few years among these islands.</p>
+<p>The second volume is of ballads.&nbsp; You know
+<i>Ticonderoga</i>.&nbsp; <a name="page133"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 133</span>I have written another: <i>The Feast
+of Famine</i>, a Marquesan story.&nbsp; A third is half done:
+<i>The Song of Rahero</i>, a genuine Tahitian legend.&nbsp; A
+fourth dances before me.&nbsp; A Hawaiian fellow this, <i>The
+Priest&rsquo;s Drought</i>, or some such name.&nbsp; If, as I
+half suspect, I get enough subjects out of the islands,
+<i>Ticonderoga</i> shall be suppressed, and we&rsquo;ll call the
+volume <i>South Sea Ballads</i>.&nbsp; In health, spirits,
+renewed interest in life, and, I do believe, refreshed capacity
+for work, the cruise has proved a wise folly.&nbsp; Still
+we&rsquo;re not home, and (although the friend of a crowned head)
+are penniless upon these (as one of my correspondents used to
+call them) &lsquo;lovely but <i>fatil</i> islands.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+By the way, who wrote the <i>Lion of the Nile</i>?&nbsp; My dear
+sir, that is Something Like.&nbsp; Overdone in bits, it has a
+true thought and a true ring of language.&nbsp; Beg the anonymous
+from me, to delete (when he shall republish) the two last verses,
+and end on &lsquo;the lion of the Nile.&rsquo;&nbsp; One Lampman
+has a good sonnet on a &lsquo;Winter Evening&rsquo; in, I think,
+the same number: he seems ill named, but I am tempted to hope a
+man is not always answerable for his name. <a
+name="citation133"></a><a href="#footnote133"
+class="citation">[133]</a>&nbsp; For instance, you would think
+you knew mine.&nbsp; No such matter.&nbsp; It is&mdash;at your
+service and Mr. Scribner&rsquo;s and that of all of the
+faithful&mdash;Teriitera (pray pronounce Tayree-Tayra) or
+(<i>gallic&eacute;</i>) T&eacute;ri-t&eacute;ra.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p>More when the mail shall come.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>I am an idiot.&nbsp; I want to be clear on one point.&nbsp;
+Some of Hole&rsquo;s drawings must of course be too late; and yet
+they seem to me so excellent I would fain have the lot
+complete.&nbsp; It is one thing for you to pay for drawings which
+are to appear in that soul-swallowing machine, your magazine:
+quite another if they are only to illustrate a volume.&nbsp; I
+wish you to take a brisk (even a fiery) decision on the point;
+and let Hole know.&nbsp; To resume <a name="page134"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 134</span>my desultory song, I desire you
+would carry the same fire (hereinbefore suggested) into your
+decision on the <i>Wrong Box</i>; for in my present state of
+benighted ignorance as to my affairs for the last seven
+months&mdash;I know not even whether my house or my
+mother&rsquo;s house have been let&mdash;I desire to see
+something definite in front of me&mdash;outside the lot of palace
+doorkeeper.&nbsp; I believe the said <i>Wrong Box</i> is a real
+lark; in which, of course, I may be grievously deceived; but the
+typewriter is with me.&nbsp; I may also be deceived as to the
+numbers of <i>The Master</i> now going and already gone; but to
+me they seem First Chop, sir, First Chop.&nbsp; I hope I shall
+pull off that damned ending; but it still depresses me: this is
+your doing, Mr. Burlingame: you would have it there and then, and
+I fear it&mdash;I fear that ending.</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>Honolulu</i>, <i>February</i>
+8<i>th</i>, 1889.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;Here we
+are at Honolulu, and have dismissed the yacht, and lie here till
+April anyway, in a fine state of haze, which I am yet in hopes
+some letter of yours (still on the way) may dissipate.&nbsp; No
+money, and not one word as to money!&nbsp; However, I have got
+the yacht paid off in triumph, I think; and though we stay here
+impignorate, it should not be for long, even if you bring us no
+extra help from home.&nbsp; The cruise has been a great success,
+both as to matter, fun, and health; and yet, Lord, man!
+we&rsquo;re pleased to be ashore!&nbsp; Yon was a very fine
+voyage from Tahiti up here, but&mdash;the dry land&rsquo;s a fine
+place too, and we don&rsquo;t mind squalls any longer, and eh,
+man, that&rsquo;s a great thing.&nbsp; Blow, blow, thou wintry
+wind, thou hast done me no appreciable harm beyond a few grey
+hairs!&nbsp; Altogether, this foolhardy venture is achieved; and
+if I have but nine months of life and any kind of health, I shall
+have both eaten my cake and got it back again with usury.&nbsp;
+But, man, there have <a name="page135"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 135</span>been days when I felt guilty, and
+thought I was in no position for the head of a house.</p>
+<p>Your letter and accounts are doubtless at S. F., and will
+reach me in course.&nbsp; My wife is no great shakes; she is the
+one who has suffered most.&nbsp; My mother has had a Huge Old
+Time; Lloyd is first chop; I so well that I do not know
+myself&mdash;sea-bathing, if you please, and what is far more
+dangerous, entertaining and being entertained by His Majesty
+here, who is a very fine intelligent fellow, but O, Charles! what
+a crop for the drink!&nbsp; He carries it, too, like a mountain
+with a sparrow on its shoulders.&nbsp; We calculated five bottles
+of champagne in three hours and a half (afternoon), and the
+sovereign quite presentable, although perceptibly more dignified
+at the end. . . .</p>
+<p>The extraordinary health I enjoy and variety of interests I
+find among these islands would tempt me to remain here; only for
+Lloyd, who is not well placed in such countries for a permanency;
+and a little for Colvin, to whom I feel I owe a sort of filial
+duty.&nbsp; And these two considerations will no doubt bring me
+back&mdash;to go to bed again&mdash;in England.&mdash;Yours ever
+affectionately,</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>Honolulu</i>, <i>Hawaiian
+Islands</i>, <i>February</i> 1889.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BOB</span>,&mdash;My extremely
+foolhardy venture is practically over.&nbsp; How foolhardy it was
+I don&rsquo;t think I realised.&nbsp; We had a very small
+schooner, and, like most yachts, over-rigged and over-sparred,
+and like many American yachts on a very dangerous sail
+plan.&nbsp; The waters we sailed in are, of course, entirely
+unlighted, and very badly charted; in the Dangerous Archipelago,
+through which we were fools enough to go, we were perfectly in
+ignorance of where we were for a whole night and half the next
+day, and this in the midst of <a name="page136"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 136</span>invisible islands and rapid and
+variable currents; and we were lucky when we found our
+whereabouts at last.&nbsp; We have twice had all we wanted in the
+way of squalls: once, as I came on deck, I found the green sea
+over the cockpit coamings and running down the companion like a
+brook to meet me; at that same moment the foresail sheet jammed
+and the captain had no knife; this was the only occasion on the
+cruise that ever I set a hand to a rope, but I worked like a
+Trojan, judging the possibility of h&aelig;morrhage better than
+the certainty of drowning.&nbsp; Another time I saw a rather
+singular thing: our whole ship&rsquo;s company as pale as paper
+from the captain to the cook; we had a black squall astern on the
+port side and a white squall ahead to starboard; the complication
+passed off innocuous, the black squall only fetching us with its
+tail, and the white one slewing off somewhere else.&nbsp; Twice
+we were a long while (days) in the close vicinity of hurricane
+weather, but again luck prevailed, and we saw none of it.&nbsp;
+These are dangers incident to these seas and small craft.&nbsp;
+What was an amazement, and at the same time a powerful stroke of
+luck, both our masts were rotten, and we found it out&mdash;I was
+going to say in time, but it was stranger and luckier than
+that.&nbsp; The head of the mainmast hung over so that hands were
+afraid to go to the helm; and less than three weeks
+before&mdash;I am not sure it was more than a fortnight&mdash;we
+had been nearly twelve hours beating off the lee shore of Eimeo
+(or Moorea, next island to Tahiti) in half a gale of wind with a
+violent head sea: she would neither tack nor wear once, and had
+to be boxed off with the mainsail&mdash;you can imagine what an
+ungodly show of kites we carried&mdash;and yet the mast
+stood.&nbsp; The very day after that, in the southern bight of
+Tahiti, we had a near squeak, the wind suddenly coming calm; the
+reefs were close in with, my eye! what a surf!&nbsp; The pilot
+thought we were gone, and the captain had a boat cleared, when a
+lucky squall came to our rescue.&nbsp; My wife, hearing the <a
+name="page137"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 137</span>order given
+about the boats, remarked to my mother, &lsquo;Isn&rsquo;t that
+nice?&nbsp; We shall soon be ashore!&rsquo;&nbsp; Thus does the
+female mind unconsciously skirt along the verge of
+eternity.&nbsp; Our voyage up here was most
+disastrous&mdash;calms, squalls, head sea, waterspouts of rain,
+hurricane weather all about, and we in the midst of the hurricane
+season, when even the hopeful builder and owner of the yacht had
+pronounced these seas unfit for her.&nbsp; We ran out of food,
+and were quite given up for lost in Honolulu: people had ceased
+to speak to Belle <a name="citation137"></a><a
+href="#footnote137" class="citation">[137]</a> about the
+<i>Casco</i>, as a deadly subject.</p>
+<p>But the perils of the deep were part of the programme; and
+though I am very glad to be done with them for a while and
+comfortably ashore, where a squall does not matter a snuff to any
+one, I feel pretty sure I shall want to get to sea again ere
+long.&nbsp; The dreadful risk I took was financial, and
+double-headed.&nbsp; First, I had to sink a lot of money in the
+cruise, and if I didn&rsquo;t get health, how was I to get it
+back?&nbsp; I have got health to a wonderful extent; and as I
+have the most interesting matter for my book, bar accidents, I
+ought to get all I have laid out and a profit.&nbsp; But, second
+(what I own I never considered till too late), there was the
+danger of collisions, of damages and heavy repairs, of
+disablement, towing, and salvage; indeed, the cruise might have
+turned round and cost me double.&nbsp; Nor will this danger be
+quite over till I hear the yacht is in San Francisco; for though
+I have shaken the dust of her deck from my feet, I fear (as a
+point of law) she is still mine till she gets there.</p>
+<p>From my point of view, up to now the cruise has been a
+wonderful success.&nbsp; I never knew the world was so
+amusing.&nbsp; On the last voyage we had grown so used to
+sea-life that no one wearied, though it lasted a full month,
+except Fanny, who is always ill.&nbsp; All the time our visits <a
+name="page138"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 138</span>to the
+islands have been more like dreams than realities: the people,
+the life, the beachcombers, the old stories and songs I have
+picked up, so interesting; the climate, the scenery, and (in some
+places) the women, so beautiful.&nbsp; The women are handsomest
+in Tahiti, the men in the Marquesas; both as fine types as can be
+imagined.&nbsp; Lloyd reminds me, I have not told you one
+characteristic incident of the cruise from a semi-naval point of
+view.&nbsp; One night we were going ashore in Anaho Bay; the most
+awful noise on deck; the breakers distinctly audible in the
+cabin; and there I had to sit below, entertaining in my best
+style a negroid native chieftain, much the worse for rum!&nbsp;
+You can imagine the evening&rsquo;s pleasure.</p>
+<p>This naval report on cruising in the South Seas would be
+incomplete without one other trait.&nbsp; On our voyage up here I
+came one day into the dining-room, the hatch in the floor was
+open, the ship&rsquo;s boy was below with a baler, and two of the
+hands were carrying buckets as for a fire; this meant that the
+pumps had ceased working.</p>
+<p>One stirring day was that in which we sighted Hawaii.&nbsp; It
+blew fair, but very strong; we carried jib, foresail, and
+mainsail, all single-reefed, and she carried her lee rail under
+water and flew.&nbsp; The swell, the heaviest I have ever been
+out in&mdash;I tried in vain to estimate the height, <i>at
+least</i> fifteen feet&mdash;came tearing after us about a point
+and a half off the wind.&nbsp; We had the best hand&mdash;old
+Louis&mdash;at the wheel; and, really, he did nobly, and had
+noble luck, for it never caught us once.&nbsp; At times it seemed
+we must have it; Louis would look over his shoulder with the
+queerest look and dive down his neck into his shoulders; and then
+it missed us somehow, and only sprays came over our quarter,
+turning the little outside lane of deck into a mill race as deep
+as to the cockpit coamings.&nbsp; I never remember anything more
+delightful and exciting.&nbsp; Pretty soon after we were lying
+absolutely becalmed under the lee of Hawaii, of which we had been
+warned; and the captain never confessed he had done it <a
+name="page139"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 139</span>on purpose,
+but when accused, he smiled.&nbsp; Really, I suppose he did quite
+right, for we stood committed to a dangerous race, and to bring
+her to the wind would have been rather a heart-sickening
+man&oelig;uvre.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Marcel Schwob</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Honolulu</i>, <i>Sandwich
+Islands</i>, <i>February</i> 8<i>th</i>, 1889.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR SIR</span>,&mdash;I thank
+you&mdash;from the midst of such a flurry as you can imagine,
+with seven months&rsquo; accumulated correspondence on my
+table&mdash;for your two friendly and clever letters.&nbsp; Pray
+write me again.&nbsp; I shall be home in May or June, and not
+improbably shall come to Paris in the summer.&nbsp; Then we can
+talk; or in the interval I may be able to write, which is to-day
+out of the question.&nbsp; Pray take a word from a man of
+crushing occupations, and count it as a volume.&nbsp; Your little
+<i>conte</i> is delightful.&nbsp; Ah yes, you are right, I love
+the eighteenth century; and so do you, and have not listened to
+its voice in vain.&mdash;The Hunted One,</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>Honolulu</i>, 8<i>th</i>
+<i>March</i> 1889.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;At last I
+have the accounts: the Doer has done excellently, and in the
+words of &mdash;, &lsquo;I reciprocate every step of your
+behaviour.&rsquo; . .&nbsp; I send a letter for Bob in your care,
+as I don&rsquo;t know his Liverpool address, by which (for he is
+to show you part of it) you will see we have got out of this
+adventure&mdash;or hope to have&mdash;with wonderful
+fortune.&nbsp; I have the retrospective horrors on me when I
+think of the liabilities I incurred; but, thank God, I think
+I&rsquo;m in port again, and I have <a name="page140"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 140</span>found one climate in which I can
+enjoy life.&nbsp; Even Honolulu is too cold for me; but the south
+isles were a heaven upon earth to a puir, catarrhal party like
+Johns&rsquo;one.&nbsp; We think, as Tahiti is too complete a
+banishment, to try Madeira.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s only a week from
+England, good communications, and I suspect in climate and
+scenery not unlike our dear islands; in people, alas! there can
+be no comparison.&nbsp; But friends could go, and I could come in
+summer, so I should not be quite cut off.</p>
+<p>Lloyd and I have finished a story, <i>The Wrong Box</i>.&nbsp;
+If it is not funny, I am sure I do not know what is.&nbsp; I have
+split over writing it.&nbsp; Since I have been here, I have been
+toiling like a galley slave: three numbers of <i>The Master</i>
+to rewrite, five chapters of the <i>Wrong Box</i> to write and
+rewrite, and about five hundred lines of a narrative poem to
+write, rewrite, and re-rewrite.&nbsp; Now I have <i>The
+Master</i> waiting me for its continuation, two numbers more;
+when that&rsquo;s done, I shall breathe.&nbsp; This spasm of
+activity has been chequered with champagne parties: Happy and
+Glorious, Hawaii Ponoi paua: kou moi&mdash;(Native Hawaiians,
+dote upon your monarch!) Hawaiian God save the King.&nbsp; (In
+addition to my other labours, I am learning the language with a
+native moonshee.)&nbsp; Kalakaua is a terrible companion; a
+bottle of fizz is like a glass of sherry to him, he thinks
+nothing of five or six in an afternoon as a whet for
+dinner.&nbsp; You should see a photograph of our party after an
+afternoon with H. H. M.: my! what a crew!&mdash;Yours ever
+affectionately,</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>Honolulu</i> [<i>March</i>
+1889].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR JAMES</span>,&mdash;Yes&mdash;I
+own up&mdash;I am untrue to friendship and (what is less, but
+still considerable) to civilisation.&nbsp; I am not coming home
+for another year.&nbsp; There it is, cold and bald, and now you
+won&rsquo;t believe in <a name="page141"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 141</span>me at all, and serve me right (says
+you) and the devil take me.&nbsp; But look here, and judge me
+tenderly.&nbsp; I have had more fun and pleasure of my life these
+past months than ever before, and more health than any time in
+ten long years.&nbsp; And even here in Honolulu I have withered
+in the cold; and this precious deep is filled with islands, which
+we may still visit; and though the sea is a deathful place, I
+like to be there, and like squalls (when they are over); and to
+draw near to a new island, I cannot say how much I like.&nbsp; In
+short, I take another year of this sort of life, and mean to try
+to work down among the poisoned arrows, and mean (if it may be)
+to come back again when the thing is through, and converse with
+Henry James as heretofore; and in the meanwhile issue directions
+to H. J. to write to me once more.&nbsp; Let him address here at
+Honolulu, for my views are vague; and if it is sent here it will
+follow and find me, if I am to be found; and if I am not to be
+found the man James will have done his duty, and we shall be at
+the bottom of the sea, where no post-office clerk can be expected
+to discover us, or languishing on a coral island, the philosophic
+drudges of some barbarian potentate: perchance, of an American
+Missionary.&nbsp; My wife has just sent to Mrs. Sitwell a
+translation (<i>tant bien que mal</i>) of a letter I have had
+from my chief friend in this part of the world: go and see her,
+and get a hearing of it; it will do you good; it is a better
+method of correspondence than even Henry James&rsquo;s. <a
+name="citation141"></a><a href="#footnote141"
+class="citation">[141]</a>&nbsp; I <a name="page142"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 142</span>jest, but seriously it is a strange
+thing for a tough, sick, middle-aged scrivener like R. L. S. to
+receive a letter so conceived from a man fifty years old, a
+leading politician, a crack orator, and the great wit of his
+village: boldly say, &lsquo;the highly popular M.P. of
+Tautira.&rsquo;&nbsp; My nineteenth century strikes here, and
+lies alongside of something beautiful and ancient.&nbsp; I think
+the receipt of such a letter might humble, shall I say even
+&mdash;? and for me, I would rather have received it than written
+<i>Redgauntlet</i> or the <i>Sixth &AElig;neid</i>.&nbsp; All
+told, if my books have enabled or helped me to make this voyage,
+to know Rui, and to have received such a letter, they have (in
+the old prefatorial expression) not been writ in vain.&nbsp; It
+would seem from this that I have been not so much humbled as
+puffed up; but, I assure you, I have in fact been both.&nbsp; A
+little of what that letter says is my own earning; not all, but
+yet a little; and the little makes me proud, and all the rest
+ashamed; and in the contrast, how much more beautiful altogether
+is the ancient man than him of to-day!</p>
+<p>Well, well, Henry James is pretty good, though he <i>is</i> of
+the nineteenth century, and that glaringly.&nbsp; And to curry
+favour with him, I wish I could be more explicit; but, indeed, I
+am still of necessity extremely vague, and cannot tell what I am
+to do, nor where I am to go for some while <a
+name="page143"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 143</span>yet.&nbsp;
+As soon as I am sure, you shall hear.&nbsp; All are fairly
+well&mdash;the wife, your countrywoman, least of all; troubles
+are not entirely wanting; but on the whole we prosper, and we are
+all affectionately 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>Honolulu</i>, <i>April</i>
+2<i>nd</i>, 1889.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;I am
+beginning to be ashamed of writing on to you without the least
+acknowledgment, like a tramp; but I do not care&mdash;I am
+hardened; and whatever be the cause of your silence, I mean to
+write till all is blue.&nbsp; I am outright ashamed of my news,
+which is that we are not coming home for another year.&nbsp; I
+cannot but hope it may continue the vast improvement of my
+health: I think it good for Fanny and Lloyd; and we have all a
+taste for this wandering and dangerous life.&nbsp; My mother I
+send home, to my relief, as this part of our cruise will be (if
+we can carry it out) rather difficult in places.&nbsp; Here is
+the idea: about the middle of June (unless the Boston Board
+objects) we sail from Honolulu in the missionary ship
+(barquentine auxiliary steamer) <i>Morning Star</i>: she takes us
+through the Gilberts and Marshalls, and drops us (this is my
+great idea) on Ponape, one of the volcanic islands of the
+Carolines.&nbsp; Here we stay marooned among a doubtful
+population, with a Spanish vice-governor and five native kings,
+and a sprinkling of missionaries all at loggerheads, on the
+chance of fetching a passage to Sydney in a trader, a labour
+ship, or (maybe, but this appears too bright) a ship of
+war.&nbsp; If we can&rsquo;t get the <i>Morning Star</i> (and the
+Board has many reasons that I can see for refusing its
+permission) I mean to try to fetch Fiji, hire a schooner there,
+do the Fijis and Friendlies, hit the course of the
+<i>Richmond</i> at Tonga Tabu, make back by Tahiti, and so to S.
+F., and home: perhaps in June 1890.&nbsp; For the latter part of
+the cruise will likely be the same in <a name="page144"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 144</span>either case.&nbsp; You can see for
+yourself how much variety and adventure this promises, and that
+it is not devoid of danger at the best; but if we can pull it off
+in safety, gives me a fine book of travel, and Lloyd a fine
+lecture and diorama, which should vastly better our finances.</p>
+<p>I feel as if I were untrue to friendship; believe me, Colvin,
+when I look forward to this absence of another year, my
+conscience sinks at thought of the Monument; but I think you will
+pardon me if you consider how much this tropical weather mends my
+health.&nbsp; Remember me as I was at home, and think of me
+sea-bathing and walking about, as jolly as a sandboy: you will
+own the temptation is strong; and as the scheme, bar fatal
+accidents, is bound to pay into the bargain, sooner or later, it
+seems it would be madness to come home now, with an imperfect
+book, no illustrations to speak of, no diorama, and perhaps fall
+sick again by autumn.&nbsp; I do not think I delude myself when I
+say the tendency to catarrh has visibly diminished.</p>
+<p>It is a singular tiring that as I was packing up old papers
+ere I left Skerryvore, I came on the prophecies of a drunken
+Highland sibyl, when I was seventeen.&nbsp; She said I was to be
+very happy, to visit America, and <i>to be much upon the
+sea</i>.&nbsp; It seems as if it were coming true with a
+vengeance.&nbsp; Also, do you remember my strong, old, rooted
+belief that I shall die by drowning?&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t want
+that to come true, though it is an easy death; but it occurs to
+me oddly, with these long chances in front.&nbsp; I cannot say
+why I like the sea; no man is more cynically and constantly alive
+to its perils; I regard it as the highest form of gambling; and
+yet I love the sea as much as I hate gambling.&nbsp; Fine, clean
+emotions; a world all and always beautiful; air better than wine;
+interest unflagging; there is upon the whole no better
+life.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><a name="page145"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+145</span><span class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Honolulu</i>, <i>April</i>
+1889.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;This
+is to announce the most prodigious change of programme.&nbsp; I
+have seen so much of the South Seas that I desire to see more,
+and I get so much health here that I dread a return to our vile
+climates.&nbsp; I have applied accordingly to the missionary folk
+to let me go round in the <i>Morning Star</i>; and if the Boston
+Board should refuse, I shall get somehow to Fiji, hire a trading
+schooner, and see the Fijis and Friendlies and Samoa.&nbsp; He
+would be a South Seayer, Mr. Burlingame.&nbsp; Of course, if I go
+in the <i>Morning Star</i>, I see all the eastern (or western?)
+islands.</p>
+<p>Before I sail, I shall make out to let you have the last of
+<i>The Master</i>: though I tell you it sticks!&mdash;and I hope
+to have had some proofs forbye, of the verses anyway.&nbsp; And
+now to business.</p>
+<p>I want (if you can find them) in the British sixpenny edition,
+if not, in some equally compact and portable shape&mdash;Seaside
+Library, for instance&mdash;the Waverley Novels entire, or as
+entire as you can get &rsquo;em, and the following of Marryat:
+<i>Phantom Ship</i>, <i>Peter Simple</i>, <i>Percival Keene</i>,
+<i>Privateersman</i>, <i>Children of the New Forest</i>, <i>Frank
+Mildmay</i>, <i>Newton Forster</i>, <i>Dog Fiend</i>
+(<i>Snarleyyow</i>).&nbsp; Also <i>Midshipman Easy</i>,
+<i>Kingsburn</i>, Carlyle&rsquo;s <i>French Revolution</i>,
+Motley&rsquo;s <i>Dutch Republic</i>, Lang&rsquo;s <i>Letters on
+Literature</i>, a complete set of my works, <i>Jenkin</i>, in
+duplicate; also <i>Familiar Studies</i>, ditto.</p>
+<p>I have to thank you for the accounts, which are satisfactory
+indeed, and for the cheque for $1000.&nbsp; Another account will
+have come and gone before I see you.&nbsp; I hope it will be
+equally roseate in colour.&nbsp; I am quite worked out, and this
+cursed end of <i>The Master</i> hangs over me like the arm of the
+gallows; but it is always darkest before dawn, and no doubt the
+clouds will soon rise; but it is a <a name="page146"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 146</span>difficult thing to write, above all
+in Mackellarese; and I cannot yet see my way clear.&nbsp; If I
+pull this off, <i>The Master</i> will be a pretty good novel or I
+am the more deceived; and even if I don&rsquo;t pull it off,
+it&rsquo;ll still have some stuff in it.</p>
+<p>We shall remain here until the middle of June anyway; but my
+mother leaves for Europe early in May.&nbsp; Hence our mail
+should continue to come here; but not hers.&nbsp; I will let you
+know my next address, which will probably be Sydney.&nbsp; If we
+get on the <i>Morning Star</i>, I propose at present to get
+marooned on Ponape, and take my chance of getting a passage to
+Australia.&nbsp; It will leave times and seasons mighty vague,
+and the cruise is risky; but I shall know something of the South
+Seas when it is done, or else the South Seas will contain all
+there is of me.&nbsp; It should give me a fine book of travels,
+anyway.</p>
+<p>Low will probably come and ask some dollars of you.&nbsp; Pray
+let him have them, they are for outfit.&nbsp; O, another complete
+set of my books should go to Captain A. H. Otis, care of Dr.
+Merritt, Yacht <i>Casco</i>, Oakland, Cal.&nbsp; In haste,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Miss Adelaide Boodle</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Honolulu</i>, <i>April</i>
+6<i>th</i>, 1889.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MISS
+BOODLE</span>,&mdash;Nobody writes a better letter than my
+Gamekeeper: so gay, so pleasant, so engagingly particular,
+answering (by some delicate instinct) all the questions she
+suggests.&nbsp; It is a shame you should get such a poor return
+as I can make, from a mind essentially and originally incapable
+of the art epistolary.&nbsp; I would let the paper-cutter take my
+place; but I am sorry to say the little wooden seaman did after
+the manner of seamen, and deserted in the Societies.&nbsp; The
+place he seems to have stayed at&mdash;seems, for his absence was
+not observed till we were near the Equator&mdash;was Tautira,
+and, I assure you, he displayed good taste, Tautira being as
+&lsquo;nigh hand heaven&rsquo; as a paper-cutter or anybody has a
+right to expect.</p>
+<p><a name="page147"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 147</span>I
+think all our friends will be very angry with us, and I give the
+grounds of their probable displeasure bluntly&mdash;we are not
+coming home for another year.&nbsp; My mother returns next
+month.&nbsp; Fanny, Lloyd, and I push on again among the islands
+on a trading schooner, the <i>Equator</i>&mdash;first for the
+Gilbert group, which we shall have an opportunity to explore
+thoroughly; then, if occasion serve, to the Marshalls and
+Carolines; and if occasion (or money) fail, to Samoa, and back to
+Tahiti.&nbsp; I own we are deserters, but we have excuses.&nbsp;
+You cannot conceive how these climates agree with the wretched
+house-plant of Skerryvore: he wonders to find himself
+sea-bathing, and cutting about the world loose, like a grown-up
+person.&nbsp; They agree with Fanny too, who does not suffer from
+her rheumatism, and with Lloyd also.&nbsp; And the interest of
+the islands is endless; and the sea, though I own it is a
+fearsome place, is very delightful.&nbsp; We had applied for
+places in the American missionary ship, the <i>Morning Star</i>,
+but this trading schooner is a far preferable idea, giving us
+more time and a thousandfold more liberty; so we determined to
+cut off the missionaries with a shilling.</p>
+<p>The Sandwich Islands do not interest us very much; we live
+here, oppressed with civilisation, and look for good things in
+the future.&nbsp; But it would surprise you if you came out
+to-night from Honolulu (all shining with electric lights, and all
+in a bustle from the arrival of the mail, which is to carry you
+these lines) and crossed the long wooden causeway along the
+beach, and came out on the road through Kapiolani park, and
+seeing a gate in the palings, with a tub of gold-fish by the
+wayside, entered casually in.&nbsp; The buildings stand in three
+groups by the edge of the beach, where an angry little spitfire
+sea continually spirts and thrashes with impotent irascibility,
+the big seas breaking further out upon the reef.&nbsp; The first
+is a small house, with a very large summer parlour, or
+<i>lanai</i>, as they call it here, roofed, but practically
+open.&nbsp; There you will find the lamps burning and the family
+<a name="page148"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 148</span>sitting
+about the table, dinner just done: my mother, my wife, Lloyd,
+Belle, my wife&rsquo;s daughter, Austin her child, and to-night
+(by way of rarity) a guest.&nbsp; All about the walls our South
+Sea curiosities, war clubs, idols, pearl shells, stone axes,
+etc.; and the walls are only a small part of a lanai, the rest
+being glazed or latticed windows, or mere open space.&nbsp; You
+will see there no sign of the Squire, however; and being a person
+of a humane disposition, you will only glance in over the balcony
+railing at the merry-makers in the summer parlour, and proceed
+further afield after the Exile.&nbsp; You look round, there is
+beautiful green turf, many trees of an outlandish sort that drop
+thorns&mdash;look out if your feet are bare; but I beg your
+pardon, you have not been long enough in the South Seas&mdash;and
+many oleanders in full flower.&nbsp; The next group of buildings
+is ramshackle, and quite dark; you make out a coach-house door,
+and look in&mdash;only some cocoanuts; you try round to the left
+and come to the sea front, where Venus and the moon are making
+luminous tracks on the water, and a great swell rolls and shines
+on the outer reef; and here is another door&mdash;all these
+places open from the outside&mdash;and you go in, and find
+photography, tubs of water, negatives steeping, a tap, and a
+chair and an inkbottle, where my wife is supposed to write; round
+a little further, a third door, entering which you find a picture
+upon the easel and a table sticky with paints; a fourth door
+admits you to a sort of court, where there is a hen
+sitting&mdash;I believe on a fallacious egg.&nbsp; No sign of the
+Squire in all this.&nbsp; But right opposite the studio door you
+have observed a third little house, from whose open door
+lamplight streams and makes hay of the strong moonlight
+shadows.&nbsp; You had supposed it made no part of the grounds,
+for a fence runs round it lined with oleander; but as the Squire
+is nowhere else, is it not just possible he may be here?&nbsp; It
+is a grim little wooden shanty; cobwebs bedeck it; friendly mice
+inhabit its recesses; the mailed cockroach walks upon the wall;
+so <a name="page149"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 149</span>also,
+I regret to say, the scorpion.&nbsp; Herein are two pallet beds,
+two mosquito curtains, strung to the pitch-boards of the roof,
+two tables laden with books and manuscripts, three chairs, and,
+in one of the beds, the Squire busy writing to yourself, as it
+chances, and just at this moment somewhat bitten by
+mosquitoes.&nbsp; He has just set fire to the insect powder, and
+will be all right in no time; but just now he contemplates large
+white blisters, and would like to scratch them, but knows
+better.&nbsp; The house is not bare; it has been inhabited by
+Kanakas, and&mdash;you know what children are!&mdash;the bare
+wood walls are pasted over with pages from the <i>Graphic</i>,
+<i>Harper&rsquo;s Weekly</i>, etc.&nbsp; The floor is matted, and
+I am bound to say the matting is filthy.&nbsp; There are two
+windows and two doors, one of which is condemned; on the panels
+of that last a sheet of paper is pinned up, and covered with
+writing.&nbsp; I cull a few plums:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&lsquo;A duck-hammock for each person.</p>
+<p>A patent organ like the commandant&rsquo;s at Taiohae.</p>
+<p>Cheap and bad cigars for presents.</p>
+<p>Revolvers.</p>
+<p>Permanganate of potass.</p>
+<p>Liniment for the head and sulphur.</p>
+<p>Fine tooth-comb.&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>What do you think this is?&nbsp; Simply life in the South Seas
+foreshortened.&nbsp; These are a few of our desiderata for the
+next trip, which we jot down as they occur.</p>
+<p>There, I have really done my best and tried to send something
+like a letter&mdash;one letter in return for all your
+dozens.&nbsp; Pray remember us all to yourself, Mrs. Boodle, and
+the rest of your house.&nbsp; I do hope your mother will be
+better when this comes.&nbsp; I shall write and give you a new
+address when I have made up my mind as to the most probable, and
+I do beg you will continue to write from time to time and give us
+airs from home.&nbsp; To-morrow&mdash;think of it&mdash;I must be
+off by a quarter to eight to drive in to the palace and breakfast
+with his Hawaiian <a name="page150"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+150</span>Majesty at 8.30: I shall be dead indeed.&nbsp; Please
+give my news to Scott, I trust he is better; give him my warm
+regards.&nbsp; To you we all send all kinds of things, and I am
+the absentee Squire,</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>Honolulu</i>, <i>April</i>
+1889.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;As usual,
+your letter is as good as a cordial, and I thank you for it, and
+all your care, kindness, and generous and thoughtful friendship,
+from my heart.&nbsp; I was truly glad to hear a word of Colvin,
+whose long silence has terrified me; and glad to hear that you
+condoned the notion of my staying longer in the South Seas, for I
+have decided in that sense.&nbsp; The first idea was to go in the
+<i>Morning Star</i>, missionary ship; but now I have found a
+trading schooner, the <i>Equator</i>, which is to call for me
+here early in June and carry us through the Gilberts.&nbsp; What
+will happen then, the Lord knows.&nbsp; My mother does not
+accompany us: she leaves here for home early in May, and you will
+hear of us from her; but not, I imagine, anything more
+definite.&nbsp; We shall get dumped on Butaritari, and whether we
+manage to go on to the Marshalls and Carolines, or whether we
+fall back on Samoa, Heaven must decide; but I mean to fetch back
+into the course of the <i>Richmond</i>&mdash;(to think you
+don&rsquo;t know what the <i>Richmond</i> is!&mdash;the steamer
+of the Eastern South Seas, joining New Zealand, Tongatabu, the
+Samoas, Taheite, and Rarotonga, and carrying by last advices
+sheep in the saloon!)&mdash;into the course of the
+<i>Richmond</i> and make Taheite again on the home track.&nbsp;
+Would I like to see the <i>Scots Observer</i>?&nbsp;
+Wouldn&rsquo;t I not?&nbsp; But whaur?&nbsp; I&rsquo;m direckit
+at space.&nbsp; They have nae post offishes at the Gilberts, and
+as for the Car&rsquo;lines!&nbsp; Ye see, Mr. Baxter, we&rsquo;re
+no just in the punkshewal <i>centre</i> o&rsquo;
+civ&rsquo;lisation.&nbsp; But pile them up for me, and when
+I&rsquo;ve <a name="page151"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+151</span>decided on an address, I&rsquo;ll let you ken, and
+ye&rsquo;ll can send them stavin&rsquo; after me.&mdash;Ever your
+affectionate,</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>Honolulu</i>, 10<i>th</i>
+<i>May</i> 1889.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;I am
+appalled to gather from your last just to hand that you have felt
+so much concern about the letter.&nbsp; Pray dismiss it from your
+mind.&nbsp; But I think you scarce appreciate how disagreeable it
+is to have your private affairs and private unguarded expressions
+getting into print.&nbsp; It would soon sicken any one of writing
+letters.&nbsp; I have no doubt that letter was very wisely
+selected, but it just shows how things crop up.&nbsp; There was a
+raging jealousy between the two yachts; our captain was nearly in
+a fight over it.&nbsp; However, no more; and whatever you think,
+my dear fellow, do not suppose me angry with you or &mdash;;
+although I was <i>annoyed at the circumstance</i>&mdash;a very
+different thing.&nbsp; But it is difficult to conduct life by
+letter, and I continually feel I may be drifting into some matter
+of offence, in which my heart takes no part.</p>
+<p>I must now turn to a point of business.&nbsp; This new cruise
+of ours is somewhat venturesome; and I think it needful to warn
+you not to be in a hurry to suppose us dead.&nbsp; In these
+ill-charted seas, it is quite on the cards we might be cast on
+some unvisited, or very rarely visited, island; that there we
+might lie for a long time, even years, unheard of; and yet turn
+up smiling at the hinder end.&nbsp; So do not let me be
+&lsquo;rowpit&rsquo; till you get some certainty we have gone to
+Davie Jones in a squall, or graced the feast of some barbarian in
+the character of Long Pig.</p>
+<p><a name="page152"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 152</span>I
+have just been a week away alone on the lee coast of Hawaii, the
+only white creature in many miles, riding five and a half hours
+one day, living with a native, seeing four lepers shipped off to
+Molokai, hearing native causes, and giving my opinion as
+<i>amicus curi&aelig;</i> as to the interpretation of a statute
+in English; a lovely week among God&rsquo;s best&mdash;at least
+God&rsquo;s sweetest works&mdash;Polynesians.&nbsp; It has
+bettered me greatly.&nbsp; If I could only stay there the time
+that remains, I could get my work done and be happy; but the care
+of my family keeps me in vile Honolulu, where I am always out of
+sorts, amidst heat and cold and cesspools and beastly
+<i>haoles</i>. <a name="citation152"></a><a href="#footnote152"
+class="citation">[152]</a>&nbsp; What is a haole?&nbsp; You are
+one; and so, I am sorry to say, am I.&nbsp; After so long a dose
+of whites, it was a blessing to get among Polynesians again even
+for a week.</p>
+<p>Well, Charles, there are waur haoles than yoursel&rsquo;,
+I&rsquo;ll say that for ye; and trust before I sail I shall get
+another letter with more about yourself.&mdash;Ever your
+affectionate friend</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to W. H. Low</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Honolulu</i>, (<i>about</i>)
+20<i>th</i> <i>May</i> &rsquo;89.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LOW</span>,&mdash;. . . The
+goods have come; many daughters have done virtuously, but thou
+excellest them all.&mdash;I have at length finished <i>The
+Master</i>; it has been a sore cross to me; but now he is buried,
+his body&rsquo;s under hatches,&mdash;his soul, if there is any
+hell to go to, gone to hell; and I forgive him: it is harder to
+forgive Burlingame for having induced me to begin the
+publication, or myself for suffering the induction.&mdash;Yes, I
+think Hole has done finely; it will be one of the most adequately
+illustrated books of <a name="page153"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 153</span>our generation; he gets the note, he
+tells the story&mdash;<i>my</i> story: I know only one
+failure&mdash;the Master standing on the beach.&mdash;You must
+have a letter for me at Sydney&mdash;till further notice.&nbsp;
+Remember me to Mrs. Will. H., the godlike sculptor, and any of
+the faithful.&nbsp; If you want to cease to be a republican, see
+my little Kaiulani, as she goes through&mdash;but she is gone
+already.&nbsp; You will die a red, I wear the colours of that
+little royal maiden, <i>Nous allons chanter &agrave; la
+ronde</i>, <i>si vous voulez</i>! only she is not blonde by
+several chalks, though she is but a half-blood, and the wrong
+half Edinburgh Scots like mysel&rsquo;.&nbsp; But, O Low, I love
+the Polynesian: this civilisation of ours is a dingy,
+ungentlemanly business; it drops out too much of man, and too
+much of that the very beauty of the poor beast: who has his
+beauties in spite of Zola and Co.&nbsp; As usual, here is a whole
+letter with no news: I am a bloodless, inhuman dog; and no doubt
+Zola is a better correspondent.&mdash;Long live your fine old
+English admiral&mdash;yours, I mean&mdash;the U.S.A. one at
+Samoa; I wept tears and loved myself and mankind when I read of
+him: he is not too much civilised.&nbsp; And there was Gordon,
+too; and there are others, beyond question.&nbsp; But if you
+could live, the only white folk, in a Polynesian village; and
+drink that warm, light <i>vin du pays</i> of human affection, and
+enjoy that simple dignity of all about you&mdash;I will not gush,
+for I am now in my fortieth year, which seems highly unjust, but
+there it is, Mr. Low, and the Lord enlighten your
+affectionate</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. R. L. Stevenson</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Kalawao</i>, <i>Molokai</i>
+[<i>May</i> 1889].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR FANNY</span>,&mdash;I had a lovely
+sail up.&nbsp; Captain Cameron and Mr. Gilfillan, both born in
+the States, yet the first still <a name="page154"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 154</span>with a strong Highland, and the
+second still with a strong Lowland accent, were good company; the
+night was warm, the victuals plain but good.&nbsp; Mr. Gilfillan
+gave me his berth, and I slept well, though I heard the sisters
+sick in the next stateroom, poor souls.&nbsp; Heavy rolling woke
+me in the morning; I turned in all standing, so went right on the
+upper deck.&nbsp; The day was on the peep out of a low morning
+bank, and we were wallowing along under stupendous cliffs.&nbsp;
+As the lights brightened, we could see certain abutments and
+buttresses on their front where wood clustered and grass grew
+brightly.&nbsp; But the whole brow seemed quite impassable, and
+my heart sank at the sight.&nbsp; Two thousand feet of rock
+making 19&deg; (the Captain guesses) seemed quite beyond my
+powers.&nbsp; However, I had come so far; and, to tell you the
+truth, I was so cowed with fear and disgust that I dared not go
+back on the adventure in the interests of my own
+self-respect.&nbsp; Presently we came up with the leper
+promontory: lowland, quite bare and bleak and harsh, a little
+town of wooden houses, two churches, a landing-stair, all
+unsightly, sour, northerly, lying athwart the sunrise, with the
+great wall of the pali cutting the world out on the south.&nbsp;
+Our lepers were sent on the first boat, about a dozen, one poor
+child very horrid, one white man, leaving a large grown family
+behind him in Honolulu, and then into the second stepped the
+sisters and myself.&nbsp; I do not know how it would have been
+with me had the sisters not been there.&nbsp; My horror of the
+horrible is about my weakest point; but the moral loveliness at
+my elbow blotted all else out; and when I found that one of them
+was crying, poor soul, quietly under her veil, I cried a little
+myself; then I felt as right as a trivet, only a little crushed
+to be there so uselessly.&nbsp; I thought it was a sin and a
+shame she should feel unhappy; I turned round to her, and said
+something like this: &lsquo;Ladies, God Himself is here to give
+you welcome.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m sure it is good for me to be beside
+you; I hope it will be blessed to me; I thank you for <a
+name="page155"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 155</span>myself and
+the good you do me.&rsquo;&nbsp; It seemed to cheer her up; but
+indeed I had scarce said it when we were at the landing-stairs,
+and there was a great crowd, hundreds of (God save us!) pantomime
+masks in poor human flesh, waiting to receive the sisters and the
+new patients.</p>
+<p>Every hand was offered: I had gloves, but I had made up my
+mind on the boat&rsquo;s voyage <i>not</i> to give my hand; that
+seemed less offensive than the gloves.&nbsp; So the sisters and I
+went up among that crew, and presently I got aside (for I felt I
+had no business there) and set off on foot across the promontory,
+carrying my wrap and the camera.&nbsp; All horror was quite gone
+from me: to see these dread creatures smile and look happy was
+beautiful.&nbsp; On my way through Kalaupapa I was exchanging
+cheerful <i>alohas</i> with the patients coming galloping over on
+their horses; I was stopping to gossip at house-doors; I was
+happy, only ashamed of myself that I was here for no good.&nbsp;
+One woman was pretty, and spoke good English, and was infinitely
+engaging and (in the old phrase) towardly; she thought I was the
+new white patient; and when she found I was only a visitor, a
+curious change came in her face and voice&mdash;the only sad
+thing, morally sad, I mean&mdash;that I met that morning.&nbsp;
+But for all that, they tell me none want to leave.&nbsp; Beyond
+Kalaupapa the houses became rare; dry stone dykes, grassy, stony
+land, one sick pandanus; a dreary country; from overhead in the
+little clinging wood shogs of the pali chirruping of birds fell;
+the low sun was right in my face; the trade blew pure and cool
+and delicious; I felt as right as ninepence, and stopped and
+chatted with the patients whom I still met on their horses, with
+not the least disgust.&nbsp; About half-way over, I met the
+superintendent (a leper) with a horse for me, and O, wasn&rsquo;t
+I glad!&nbsp; But the horse was one of those curious, dogged,
+cranky brutes that always dully want to go somewhere else, and my
+traffic with him completed my crushing fatigue.&nbsp; I got to
+the guest-house, an empty house with several rooms, kitchen, <a
+name="page156"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 156</span>bath,
+etc.&nbsp; There was no one there, and I let the horse go loose
+in the garden, lay down on the bed, and fell asleep.</p>
+<p>Dr. Swift woke me and gave me breakfast, then I came back and
+slept again while he was at the dispensary, and he woke me for
+dinner; and I came back and slept again, and he woke me about six
+for supper; and then in about an hour I felt tired again, and
+came up to my solitary guest-house, played the flageolet, and am
+now writing to you.&nbsp; As yet, you see, I have seen nothing of
+the settlement, and my crushing fatigue (though I believe that
+was moral and a measure of my cowardice) and the doctor&rsquo;s
+opinion make me think the pali hopeless.&nbsp; &lsquo;You
+don&rsquo;t look a strong man,&rsquo; said the doctor; &lsquo;but
+are you sound?&rsquo;&nbsp; I told him the truth; then he said it
+was out of the question, and if I were to get up at all, I must
+be carried up.&nbsp; But, as it seems, men as well as horses
+continually fall on this ascent: the doctor goes up with a change
+of clothes&mdash;it is plain that to be carried would in itself
+be very fatiguing to both mind and body; and I should then be at
+the beginning of thirteen miles of mountain road to be ridden
+against time.&nbsp; How should I come through?&nbsp; I hope you
+will think me right in my decision: I mean to stay, and shall not
+be back in Honolulu till Saturday, June first.&nbsp; You must all
+do the best you can to make ready.</p>
+<p>Dr. Swift has a wife and an infant son, beginning to toddle
+and run, and they live here as composed as brick and
+mortar&mdash;at least the wife does, a Kentucky German, a fine
+enough creature, I believe, who was quite amazed at the sisters
+shedding tears!&nbsp; How strange is mankind!&nbsp; Gilfillan
+too, a good fellow I think, and far from a stupid, kept up his
+hard Lowland Scottish talk in the boat while the sister was
+covering her face; but I believe he knew, and did it (partly) in
+embarrassment, and part perhaps in mistaken kindness.&nbsp; And
+that was one reason, too, why I made my speech to them.&nbsp;
+Partly, too, I did it, because I was ashamed to do so, and
+remembered one of my <a name="page157"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 157</span>golden rules, &lsquo;When you are
+ashamed to speak, speak up at once.&rsquo;&nbsp; But, mind you,
+that rule is only golden with strangers; with your own folks,
+there are other considerations.&nbsp; This is a strange place to
+be in.&nbsp; A bell has been sounded at intervals while I wrote,
+now all is still but a musical humming of the sea, not unlike the
+sound of telegraph wires; the night is quite cool and pitch dark,
+with a small fine rain; one light over in the leper settlement,
+one cricket whistling in the garden, my lamp here by my bedside,
+and my pen cheeping between my inky fingers.</p>
+<p>Next day, lovely morning, slept all night, 80&deg; in the
+shade, strong, sweet Anaho trade-wind.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">Louis</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Sidney Colvin</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Honolulu</i>, <i>June</i>
+1889.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;I am just
+home after twelve days journey to Molokai, seven of them at the
+leper settlement, where I can only say that the sight of so much
+courage, cheerfulness, and devotion strung me too high to mind
+the infinite pity and horror of the sights.&nbsp; I used to ride
+over from Kalawao to Kalaupapa (about three miles across the
+promontory, the cliff-wall, ivied with forest and yet
+inaccessible from steepness, on my left), go to the
+Sisters&rsquo; home, which is a miracle of neatness, play a game
+of croquet with seven leper girls (90&deg; in the shade), got a
+little old-maid meal served me by the Sisters, and ride home
+again, tired enough, but not too tired.&nbsp; The girls have all
+dolls, and love dressing them.&nbsp; You who know so many ladies
+delicately clad, and they who know so many dressmakers, please
+make it known it would be an acceptable gift to send scraps for
+doll dressmaking to the Reverend Sister Maryanne, Bishop Home,
+Kalaupapa, Molokai, Hawaiian Islands.</p>
+<p>I have seen sights that cannot be told, and heard stories <a
+name="page158"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 158</span>that cannot
+be repeated: yet I never admired my poor race so much, nor
+(strange as it may seem) loved life more than in the
+settlement.&nbsp; A horror of moral beauty broods over the place:
+that&rsquo;s like bad Victor Hugo, but it is the only way I can
+express the sense that lived with me all these days.&nbsp; And
+this even though it was in great part Catholic, and my sympathies
+flew never with so much difficulty as towards Catholic
+virtues.&nbsp; The pass-book kept with heaven stirs me to anger
+and laughter.&nbsp; One of the sisters calls the place &lsquo;the
+ticket office to heaven.&rsquo;&nbsp; Well, what is the
+odds?&nbsp; They do their darg and do it with kindness and
+efficiency incredible; and we must take folk&rsquo;s virtues as
+we find them, and love the better part.&nbsp; Of old Damien,
+whose weaknesses and worse perhaps I heard fully, I think only
+the more.&nbsp; It was a European peasant: dirty, bigoted,
+untruthful, unwise, tricky, but superb with generosity, residual
+candour and fundamental good-humour: convince him he had done
+wrong (it might take hours of insult) and he would undo what he
+had done and like his corrector better.&nbsp; A man, with all the
+grime and paltriness of mankind, but a saint and hero all the
+more for that.&nbsp; The place as regards scenery is grand,
+gloomy, and bleak.&nbsp; Mighty mountain walls descending sheer
+along the whole face of the island into a sea unusually deep; the
+front of the mountain ivied and furred with clinging forest, one
+viridescent cliff: about half-way from east to west, the low,
+bare, stony promontory edged in between the cliff and the ocean;
+the two little towns (Kalawao and Kalaupapa) seated on either
+side of it, as bare almost as bathing machines upon a beach; and
+the population&mdash;gorgons and chimaeras dire.&nbsp; All this
+tear of the nerves I bore admirably; and the day after I got
+away, rode twenty miles along the opposite coast and up into the
+mountains: they call it twenty, I am doubtful of the figures: I
+should guess it nearer twelve; but let me take credit for what
+residents allege; and I was riding again the day after, so I need
+<a name="page159"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 159</span>say no
+more about health.&nbsp; Honolulu does not agree with me at all:
+I am always out of sorts there, with slight headache, blood to
+the head, etc.&nbsp; I had a good deal of work to do and did it
+with miserable difficulty; and yet all the time I have been
+gaining strength, as you see, which is highly encouraging.&nbsp;
+By the time I am done with this cruise I shall have the material
+for a very singular book of travels: names of strange stories and
+characters, cannibals, pirates, ancient legends, old Polynesian
+poetry,&mdash;never was so generous a farrago.&nbsp; I am going
+down now to get the story of a shipwrecked family, who were
+fifteen months on an island with a murderer: there is a
+specimen.&nbsp; The Pacific is a strange place; the nineteenth
+century only exists there in spots: all round, it is a no
+man&rsquo;s land of the ages, a stir-about of epochs and races,
+barbarisms and civilisations, virtues and crimes.</p>
+<p>It is good of you to let me stay longer, but if I had known
+how ill you were, I should be now on my way home.&nbsp; I had
+chartered my schooner and made all arrangements before (at last)
+we got definite news.&nbsp; I feel highly guilty; I should be
+back to insult and worry you a little.&nbsp; Our address till
+further notice is to be c/o R. Towns and Co., Sydney.&nbsp; That
+is final: I only got the arrangement made yesterday; but you may
+now publish it abroad.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to James Payn</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Honolulu</i>, <i>H.I.</i>,
+<i>June</i> 13<i>th</i>, 1889.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR JAMES PAYN</span>,&mdash;I get
+sad news of you here at my offsetting for further voyages: I wish
+I could say what I feel.&nbsp; Sure there was never any man less
+deserved this calamity; for I have heard you speak time and
+again, <a name="page160"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+160</span>and I remember nothing that was unkind, nothing that
+was untrue, nothing that was not helpful, from your lips.&nbsp;
+It is the ill-talkers that should hear no more.&nbsp; God knows,
+I know no word of consolation; but I do feel your trouble.&nbsp;
+You are the more open to letters now; let me talk to you for two
+pages.&nbsp; I have nothing but happiness to tell; and you may
+bless God you are a man so sound-hearted that (even in the
+freshness of your calamity) I can come to you with my own good
+fortune unashamed and secure of sympathy.&nbsp; It is a good
+thing to be a good man, whether deaf or whether dumb; and of all
+our fellow-craftsmen (whom yet they count a jealous race), I
+never knew one but gave you the name of honesty and kindness:
+come to think of it gravely, this is better than the finest
+hearing.&nbsp; We are all on the march to deafness, blindness,
+and all conceivable and fatal disabilities; we shall not all get
+there with a report so good.&nbsp; My good news is a health
+astonishingly reinstated.&nbsp; This climate; these voyagings;
+these landfalls at dawn; new islands peaking from the morning
+bank; new forested harbours; new passing alarms of squalls and
+surf; new interests of gentle natives,&mdash;the whole tale of my
+life is better to me than any poem.</p>
+<p>I am fresh just now from the leper settlement of Molokai,
+playing croquet with seven leper girls, sitting and yarning with
+old, blind, leper beachcombers in the hospital, sickened with the
+spectacle of abhorrent suffering and deformation amongst the
+patients, touched to the heart by the sight of lovely and
+effective virtues in their helpers: no stranger time have I ever
+had, nor any so moving.&nbsp; I do not think it a little thing to
+be deaf, God knows, and God defend me from the same!&mdash;but to
+be a leper, of one of the self-condemned, how much more awful!
+and yet there&rsquo;s a way there also.&nbsp; &lsquo;There are
+Molokais everywhere,&rsquo; said Mr. Dutton, Father
+Damien&rsquo;s dresser; you are but new landed in yours; and my
+dear and kind adviser, I wish you, with all my soul, that
+patience and courage which you will require.&nbsp; Think of me
+meanwhile <a name="page161"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+161</span>on a trading schooner, bound for the Gilbert Islands,
+thereafter for the Marshalls, with a diet of fish and cocoanut
+before me; bound on a cruise of&mdash;well, of investigation to
+what islands we can reach, and to get (some day or other) to
+Sydney, where a letter addressed to the care of R. Towns &amp;
+Co. will find me sooner or later; and if it contain any good
+news, whether of your welfare or the courage with which you bear
+the contrary, will do me good.&mdash;Yours affectionately
+(although so near a stranger),</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>Schooner</i>
+&lsquo;<i>Equator</i>,&rsquo; <i>Apaiang Lagoon</i>,
+<i>August</i> 22<i>nd</i>, 1889.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;The
+missionary ship is outside the reef trying (vainly) to get in; so
+I may have a chance to get a line off.&nbsp; I am glad to say I
+shall be home by June <a name="page162"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 162</span>next for the summer, or we shall
+know the reason why.&nbsp; For God&rsquo;s sake be well and jolly
+for the meeting.&nbsp; I shall be, I believe, a different
+character from what you have seen this long while.&nbsp; This
+cruise is up to now a huge success, being interesting, pleasant,
+and profitable.&nbsp; The beachcomber is perhaps the most
+interesting character here; the natives are very different, on
+the whole, from Polynesians: they are moral, stand-offish (for
+good reasons), and protected by a dark tongue.&nbsp; It is
+delightful to meet the few Hawaiians (mostly missionaries) that
+are dotted about, with their Italian <i>brio</i> and their ready
+friendliness.&nbsp; The whites are a strange lot, many of them
+good, kind, pleasant fellows; others quite the lowest I have ever
+seen even in the slums of cities.&nbsp; I wish I had time to
+narrate to you the doings and character of three white murderers
+(more or less proven) I have met.&nbsp; One, the only undoubted
+assassin of the lot, quite gained my affection in his big home
+out of a wreck, with his New Hebrides wife in her savage turban
+of hair and yet a perfect lady, and his three adorable little
+girls in Rob Roy Macgregor dresses, dancing to the hand organ,
+performing circus on the floor with startling effects of nudity,
+and curling up together on a mat to sleep, three sizes, three
+attitudes, three Rob Roy dresses, and six little clenched fists:
+the murderer meanwhile brooding and gloating over his chicks,
+till your whole heart went out to him; and yet his crime on the
+face of it was dark: disembowelling, in his own house, an old man
+of seventy, and him drunk.</p>
+<p>It is lunch-time, I see, and I must close up with my warmest
+love to you.&nbsp; I wish you were here to sit upon me when
+required.&nbsp; Ah! if you were but a good sailor!&nbsp; I will
+never leave the sea, I think; it is only there that a Briton
+lives: my poor grandfather, it is from him I inherit the taste, I
+fancy, and he was round many islands in his day; but I, please
+God, shall beat him at that before the recall is sounded.&nbsp;
+Would you be surprised to learn that I contemplate becoming a
+shipowner?&nbsp; I <a name="page163"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+163</span>do, but it is a secret.&nbsp; Life is far better fun
+than people dream who fall asleep among the chimney stacks and
+telegraph wires.</p>
+<p>Love to Henry James and others near.&mdash;Ever yours, my dear
+fellow,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Equator Town</i>, <i>Apemama</i>,
+<i>October</i> 1889.</p>
+<p>No <i>Morning Star</i> came, however; and so now I try to send
+this to you by the schooner <i>J. L. Tiernan</i>.&nbsp; We have
+been about a month ashore, camping out in a kind of town the king
+set up for us: on the idea that I was really a &lsquo;big
+chief&rsquo; in England.&nbsp; He dines with us sometimes, and
+sends up a cook for a share of our meals when he does not come
+himself.&nbsp; This sounds like high living! alas, undeceive
+yourself.&nbsp; Salt junk is the mainstay; a low island, except
+for cocoanuts, is just the same as a ship at sea: brackish water,
+no supplies, and very little shelter.&nbsp; The king is a great
+character&mdash;a thorough tyrant, very much of a gentleman, a
+poet, a musician, a historian, or perhaps rather more a
+genealogist&mdash;it is strange to see him lying in his house
+among a lot of wives (nominal wives) writing the History of
+Apemama in an account-book; his description of one of his own
+songs, which he sang to me himself, as &lsquo;about sweethearts,
+and trees, and the sea&mdash;and no true, all-the-same
+lie,&rsquo; seems about as compendious a definition of lyric
+poetry as a man could ask.&nbsp; Tembinoka is here the great
+attraction: all the rest is heat and tedium and villainous
+dazzle, and yet more villainous mosquitoes.&nbsp; We are like to
+be here, however, many a long week before we get away, and then
+whither?&nbsp; A strange trade this voyaging: so vague, so
+bound-down, so helpless.&nbsp; Fanny has been planting some
+vegetables, and we have actually onions and radishes coming up:
+ah, onion-despiser, were you but awhile in a low island, how your
+heart would leap at sight of a coster&rsquo;s barrow!&nbsp; I
+think I could shed tears over a dish of turnips.&nbsp; No doubt
+we shall all be glad to say farewell to low islands&mdash;<a
+name="page164"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 164</span>I had near
+said for ever.&nbsp; They are very tame; and I begin to read up
+the directory, and pine for an island with a profile, a running
+brook, or were it only a well among the rocks.&nbsp; The thought
+of a mango came to me early this morning and set my greed on
+edge; but you do not know what a mango is, so&mdash;.</p>
+<p>I have been thinking a great deal of you and the Monument of
+late, and even tried to get my thoughts into a poem, hitherto
+without success.&nbsp; God knows how you are: I begin to weary
+dreadfully to see you&mdash;well, in nine months, I hope; but
+that seems a long time.&nbsp; I wonder what has befallen me too,
+that flimsy part of me that lives (or dwindles) in the public
+mind; and what has befallen <i>The Master</i>, and what kind of a
+Box the Merry Box has been found.&nbsp; It is odd to know nothing
+of all this.&nbsp; We had an old woman to do devil-work for you
+about a month ago, in a Chinaman&rsquo;s house on Apaiang (August
+23rd or 24th).&nbsp; You should have seen the crone with a noble
+masculine face, like that of an old crone [<i>sic</i>], a body
+like a man&rsquo;s (naked all but the feathery female girdle),
+knotting cocoanut leaves and muttering spells: Fanny and I, and
+the good captain of the <i>Equator</i>, and the Chinaman and his
+native wife and sister-in-law, all squatting on the floor about
+the sibyl; and a crowd of dark faces watching from behind her
+shoulder (she sat right in the doorway) and tittering aloud with
+strange, appalled, embarrassed laughter at each fresh
+adjuration.&nbsp; She informed us you were in England, not
+travelling and now no longer sick; she promised us a fair wind
+the next day, and we had it, so I cherish the hope she was as
+right about Sidney Colvin.&nbsp; The shipownering has rather
+petered out since I last wrote, and a good many other plans
+beside.</p>
+<p>Health?&nbsp; Fanny very so-so; I pretty right upon the whole,
+and getting through plenty work: I know not quite how, but it
+seems to me not bad and in places funny.</p>
+<p><a name="page165"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 165</span>South
+Sea Yarns:</p>
+<p class="gutindent">1. <i>The Wrecker</i></p>
+<p class="gutindent">2. <i>The Pearl Fisher</i></p>
+<p class="gutindent">3. <i>The Beachcombers</i></p>
+<p style="text-align: right">by R. L. S. and Lloyd O.</p>
+<p><i>The Pearl Fisher</i>, part done, lies in Sydney.&nbsp; It
+is <i>The Wrecker</i> we are now engaged upon: strange ways of
+life, I think, they set forth: things that I can scarce touch
+upon, or even not at all, in my travel book; and the yarns are
+good, I do believe.&nbsp; <i>The Pearl Fisher</i> is for the
+<i>New York Ledger</i>: the yarn is a kind of Monte Cristo
+one.&nbsp; <i>The Wrecker</i> is the least good as a story, I
+think; but the characters seem to me good.&nbsp; <i>The
+Beachcombers</i> is more sentimental.&nbsp; These three scarce
+touch the outskirts of the life we have been viewing; a hot-bed
+of strange characters and incidents: Lord, how different from
+Europe or the Pallid States!&nbsp; Farewell.&nbsp; Heaven knows
+when this will get to you.&nbsp; I burn to be in Sydney and have
+news.</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>Schooner</i>
+&lsquo;<i>Equator</i>,&rsquo; <i>at sea</i>. 190 <i>miles off
+Samoa</i>.<br />
+<i>Monday</i>, <i>December</i> 2<i>nd</i>, 1889</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COLVIN</span>,&mdash;We are
+just nearing the end of our long cruise.&nbsp; Rain, calms,
+squalls, bang&mdash;there&rsquo;s the foretopmast gone; rain,
+calm, squalls, away with the staysail; more rain, more calm, more
+squalls; a prodigious heavy sea all the time, and the
+<i>Equator</i> staggering and hovering like a swallow in a storm;
+and the cabin, a great square, crowded with wet human beings, and
+the rain avalanching <a name="page166"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 166</span>on the deck, and the leaks dripping
+everywhere: Fanny, in the midst of fifteen males, bearing up
+wonderfully.&nbsp; But such voyages are at the best a
+trial.&nbsp; We had one particularity: coming down on Winslow
+Reef, p. d. (position doubtful): two positions in the directory,
+a third (if you cared to count that) on the chart; heavy sea
+running, and the night due.&nbsp; The boats were cleared, bread
+put on board, and we made up our packets for a boat voyage of
+four or five hundred miles, and turned in, expectant of a
+crash.&nbsp; Needless to say it did not come, and no doubt we
+were far to leeward.&nbsp; If we only had twopenceworth of wind,
+we might be at dinner in Apia to-morrow evening; but no such
+luck: here we roll, dead before a light air&mdash;and that is no
+point of sailing at all for a fore and aft schooner&mdash;the sun
+blazing overhead, thermometer 88&deg;, four degrees above what I
+have learned to call South Sea temperature; but for all that,
+land so near, and so much grief being happily astern, we are all
+pretty gay on board, and have been photographing and
+draught-playing and sky-larking like anything.&nbsp; I am minded
+to stay not very long in Samoa and confine my studies there (as
+far as any one can forecast) to the history of the late
+war.&nbsp; My book is now practically modelled: if I can execute
+what is designed, there are few better books now extant on this
+globe, bar the epics, and the big tragedies, and histories, and
+the choice lyric poetics and a novel or so&mdash;none.&nbsp; But
+it is not executed yet; and let not him that putteth on his
+armour, vaunt himself.&nbsp; At least, nobody has had such stuff;
+such wild stories, such beautiful scenes, such singular
+intimacies, such manners and traditions, so incredible a mixture
+of the beautiful and horrible, the savage and civilised.&nbsp; I
+will give you here some idea of the table of contents, which
+ought to make your mouth water.&nbsp; I propose to call the book
+<i>The South Seas</i>: it is rather a large title, but not many
+people have seen more of them than I, perhaps no
+one&mdash;certainly no one capable of using the material.</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="3"><p style="text-align: center"><a
+name="page167"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 167</span><i>Part
+I</i>.&nbsp; <i>General</i>.&nbsp; &lsquo;<i>Of schooners</i>,
+<i>islands</i>, <i>and maroons</i>.&rsquo;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="GutSmall">CHAPTER</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">I</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Marine.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">II</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Contraband (smuggling, barratry, labour traffic).</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">III</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>The Beachcomber.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">IV</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Beachcomber stories.&nbsp; i. The Murder of the
+Chinaman.&nbsp; ii. Death of a Beachcomber.&nbsp; iii. A
+Character.&nbsp; iv. The Apia Blacksmith.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="3"><p style="text-align: center"><i>Part
+II</i>.&nbsp; <i>The Marquesas</i>.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">V</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Anaho.&nbsp; i. Arrival.&nbsp; ii. Death.&nbsp; iii. The
+Tapu.&nbsp; iv. Morals.&nbsp; v. Hoka.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">VI</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Tai-o-hae.&nbsp; i. Arrival.&nbsp; ii. The French.&nbsp;
+iii. The Royal Family.&nbsp; iv. Chiefless Folk.&nbsp; v. The
+Catholics.&nbsp; vi. Hawaiian Missionaries.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">VII</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Observations of a Long Pig.&nbsp; i. Cannibalism.&nbsp;
+ii. Hatiheu.&nbsp; iii. Fr&egrave;re Michel.&nbsp; iv.&nbsp;
+Toahauka and Atuona.&nbsp; v. The Vale of Atuona.&nbsp; vi.
+Moipu.&nbsp; vii. Captain Hati.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="3"><p style="text-align: center"><i>Part
+III</i>.&nbsp; <i>The Dangerous Archipelago</i>.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">VIII</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>The Group.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">IX</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>A House to let in a Low Island.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">X</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>A Paumotuan Funeral.&nbsp; i. The Funeral.&nbsp; ii. Tales
+of the Dead.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="3"><p style="text-align: center"><i>Part
+IV</i>.&nbsp; <i>Tahiti</i>.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XI</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Tautira.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XII</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Village Government in Tahiti.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XIII</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>A Journey in Quest of Legends.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XIV</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Legends and Songs.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XV</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Life in Eden.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XVI</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Note on the French Regimen.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="3"><p style="text-align: center"><i>Part
+V</i>.&nbsp; <i>The Eight Islands</i>.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XVII</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>A Note on Missions.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XVIII</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>The Kona Coast of Hawaii.&nbsp; i. Hookena.&nbsp; ii. A
+Ride in the Forest.&nbsp; iii. A Law Case.&nbsp; iv. The City of
+Refuge.&nbsp; v. The Lepers.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><a name="page168"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 168</span><span
+class="GutSmall">XIX</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Molokai.&nbsp; i. A Week in the Precinct.&nbsp; ii.
+History of the Leper Settlement.&nbsp; iii. The Mokolii.&nbsp;
+iv. The Free Island.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="3"><p style="text-align: center"><i>Part
+VI</i>.&nbsp; <i>The Gilberts</i>.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XX</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>The Group.&nbsp; ii. Position of Woman.&nbsp; iii. The
+Missions.&nbsp; iv. Devilwork.&nbsp; v. Republics.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XXI</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Rule and Misrule on Makin.&nbsp; i. Butaritari, its King
+and Court.&nbsp; ii. History of Three Kings.&nbsp; iii. The Drink
+Question.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XXII</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>A Butaritarian Festival.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XXIII</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>The King of Apemama.&nbsp; i. First Impressions.&nbsp; ii.
+Equator Town and the Palace.&nbsp; iii. The Three Corselets.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="3"><p style="text-align: center"><i>Part
+VII</i>.&nbsp; <i>Samoa</i>.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="3"><p style="text-align: center">which I have not
+yet reached.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>Even as so sketched it makes sixty chapters, not less than 300
+<i>Cornhill</i> pages; and I suspect not much under 500.&nbsp;
+Samoa has yet to be accounted for: I think it will be all
+history, and I shall work in observations on Samoan manners,
+under the similar heads in other Polynesian islands.&nbsp; It is
+still possible, though unlikely, that I may add a passing visit
+to Fiji or Tonga, or even both; but I am growing impatient to see
+yourself, and I do not want to be later than June of coming to
+England.&nbsp; Anyway, you see it will be a large work, and as it
+will be copiously illustrated, the Lord knows what it will
+cost.&nbsp; We shall return, God willing, by Sydney, Ceylon, Suez
+and, I guess, Marseilles the many-masted (copyright
+epithet).&nbsp; I shall likely pause a day or two in Paris, but
+all that is too far ahead&mdash;although now it begins to look
+near&mdash;so near, and I can hear the rattle of the hansom up
+Endell Street, and see the gates swing back, and feel myself jump
+out upon the Monument steps&mdash;Hosanna!&mdash;home
+again.&nbsp; My dear fellow, now that my father is done with his
+troubles, and 17 Heriot Row no more than a mere shell, you and
+that <a name="page169"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+169</span>gaunt old Monument in Bloomsbury are all that I have in
+view when I use the word home; some passing thoughts there may be
+of the rooms at Skerryvore, and the black-birds in the chine on a
+May morning; but the essence is S. C. and the Museum.&nbsp;
+Suppose, by some damned accident, you were no more: well, I
+should return just the same, because of my mother and Lloyd, whom
+I now think to send to Cambridge; but all the spring would have
+gone out of me, and ninety per cent. of the attraction
+lost.&nbsp; I will copy for you here a copy of verses made in
+Apemama.</p>
+<p class="poetry">I heard the pulse of the besieging sea<br />
+Throb far away all night.&nbsp; I heard the wind<br />
+Fly crying, and convulse tumultuous palms.<br />
+I rose and strolled.&nbsp; The isle was all bright sand,<br />
+And flailing fans and shadows of the palm:<br />
+The heaven all moon, and wind, and the blind vault&mdash;<br />
+The keenest planet slain, for Venus slept.<br />
+The King, my neighbour, with his host of wives,<br />
+Slept in the precinct of the palisade:<br />
+Where single, in the wind, under the moon,<br />
+Among the slumbering cabins, blazed a fire,<br />
+Sole street-lamp and the only sentinel.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To other lands and nights my fancy turned,<br />
+To London first, and chiefly to your house,<br />
+The many-pillared and the well-beloved.<br />
+There yearning fancy lighted; there again<br />
+In the upper room I lay and heard far off<br />
+The unsleeping city murmur like a shell;<br />
+The muffled tramp of the Museum guard<br />
+Once more went by me; I beheld again<br />
+Lamps vainly brighten the dispeopled street;<br />
+Again I longed for the returning morn,<br />
+The awaking traffic, the bestirring birds,<br />
+The consentaneous trill of tiny song<br />
+That weaves round monumental cornices<br />
+A passing charm of beauty: most of all,<br />
+<a name="page170"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 170</span>For your
+light foot I wearied, and your knock<br />
+That was the glad r&eacute;veill&eacute; of my day.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Lo, now, when to your task in the great house<br />
+At morning through the portico you pass,<br />
+One moment glance where, by the pillared wall,<br />
+Far-voyaging island gods, begrimed with smoke,<br />
+Sit now unworshipped, the rude monument<br />
+Of faiths forgot and races undivined;<br />
+Sit now disconsolate, remembering well<br />
+The priest, the victim, and the songful crowd,<br />
+The blaze of the blue noon, and that huge voice<br />
+Incessant, of the breakers on the shore.<br />
+As far as these from their ancestral shrine,<br />
+So far, so foreign, your divided friends<br />
+Wander, estranged in body, not in mind.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Schooner</i>
+&lsquo;<i>Equator</i>,&rsquo; <i>at sea</i>, <i>Wednesday</i>,
+4<i>th</i> <i>December</i> 1889.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;We are
+now about to rise, like whales, from this long dive, and I make
+ready a communication which is to go to you by the first mail
+from Samoa.&nbsp; How long we shall stay in that group I cannot
+forecast; but it will be best still to address at Sydney, where I
+trust, when I shall arrive, perhaps in one month from now, more
+probably in two or three, to find all news.</p>
+<p><i>Business</i>.&mdash;Will you be likely to have a space in
+the Magazine for a serial story, which should be, ready, I
+believe, by April, at latest by autumn?&nbsp; It is called <i>The
+Wrecker</i>; and in book form will appear as number 1 of South
+Sea Yarns by R. L. S. and Lloyd Osbourne.&nbsp; Here is the table
+as far as fully conceived, and indeed executed. <a
+name="citation170"></a><a href="#footnote170"
+class="citation">[170]</a> . . .</p>
+<p><a name="page171"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 171</span>The
+story is founded on fact, the mystery I really believe to be
+insoluble; the purchase of a wreck has never been handled before,
+no more has San Francisco.&nbsp; These seem all elements of
+success.&nbsp; There is, besides, a character, Jim Pinkerton, of
+the advertising American, on whom we build a good deal; and some
+sketches of the American merchant marine, opium smuggling in
+Honolulu, etc.&nbsp; It should run to (about) three hundred pages
+of my <span class="GutSmall">MS</span>.&nbsp; I would like to
+know if this tale smiles upon you, if you will have a vacancy,
+and what you will be willing to pay.&nbsp; It will of course be
+copyright in both the States and England.&nbsp; I am a little
+anxious to have it tried serially, as it tests the interest of
+the mystery.</p>
+<p><i>Pleasure</i>.&mdash;We have had a fine time in the Gilbert
+group, though four months on low islands, which involves low
+diet, is a largish order; and my wife is rather down.&nbsp; I am
+myself, up to now, a pillar of health, though our long and vile
+voyage of calms, squalls, cataracts of rain, sails carried away,
+foretopmast lost, boats cleared and packets made on the approach
+of a p. d. reef, etc., has cured me of salt brine, and filled me
+with a longing for beef steak and mangoes not to be
+depicted.&nbsp; The interest has been immense.&nbsp; Old King
+Tembinoka of Apemama, the Napoleon of the group, poet, tyrant,
+altogether a man of mark, gave me the woven corselets of his
+grandfather, his father and his uncle, and, what pleased me more,
+told me their singular story, then all manner of strange tales,
+facts and experiences for my South Sea book, which should be a
+Tearer, Mr. Burlingame: no one at least has had such stuff.</p>
+<p>We are now engaged in the hell of a dead calm, the heat is
+cruel&mdash;it is the only time when I suffer from heat: I have
+nothing on but a pair of serge trousers, and a singlet without
+sleeves of Oxford gauze&mdash;O, yes, and a red sash about my
+waist; and yet as I sit here in the cabin, sweat streams from
+me.&nbsp; The rest are on deck under a bit of awning; we are not
+much above a hundred miles from <a name="page172"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 172</span>port, and we might as well be in
+Kamschatka.&nbsp; However, I should be honest: this is the first
+calm I have endured without the added bane of a heavy swell, and
+the intoxicated blue-bottle wallowings and knockings of the
+helpless ship.</p>
+<p>I wonder how you liked the end of <i>The Master</i>; that was
+the hardest job I ever had to do; did I do it?</p>
+<p>My wife begs to be remembered to yourself and Mrs.
+Burlingame.&nbsp; Remember all of us to all friends, particularly
+Low, in case I don&rsquo;t get a word through for him.&mdash;I
+am, 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>Samoa</i>, [<i>December</i>
+1889].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BAXTER</span>,&mdash;. . . I
+cannot return until I have seen either Tonga or Fiji or both: and
+I must not leave here till I have finished my collections on the
+war&mdash;a very interesting bit of history, the truth often very
+hard to come at, and the search (for me) much complicated by the
+German tongue, from the use of which I have desisted (I suppose)
+these fifteen years.&nbsp; The last two days I have been mugging
+with a dictionary from five to six hours a day; besides this, I
+have to call upon, keep sweet, and judiciously interview all
+sorts of persons&mdash;English, American, German, and
+Samoan.&nbsp; It makes a hard life; above all, as after every
+interview I have to come and get my notes straight on the
+nail.&nbsp; I believe I should have got my facts before the end
+of January, when I shall make our Tonga or Fiji.&nbsp; I am down
+right in the hurricane season; but they had so bad a one last <a
+name="page173"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 173</span>year, I
+don&rsquo;t imagine there will be much of an edition this.&nbsp;
+Say that I get to Sydney some time in April, and I shall have
+done well, and be in a position to write a very singular and
+interesting book, or rather two; for I shall begin, I think, with
+a separate opuscule on the Samoan Trouble, about as long as
+<i>Kidnapped</i>, not very interesting, but valuable&mdash;and a
+thing proper to be done.&nbsp; And then, hey! for the big South
+Sea Book: a devil of a big one, and full of the finest sport.</p>
+<p>This morning as I was going along to my breakfast a little
+before seven, reading a number of <i>Blackwood&rsquo;s
+Magazine</i>, I was startled by a soft <i>talofa</i>, <i>alii</i>
+(note for my mother: they are quite courteous here in the
+European style, quite unlike Tahiti), right in my ear: it was
+Mataafa coming from early mass in his white coat and white linen
+kilt, with three fellows behind him.&nbsp; Mataafa is the nearest
+thing to a hero in my history, and really a fine fellow; plenty
+sense, and the most dignified, quiet, gentle manners.&nbsp;
+Talking of <i>Blackwood</i>&mdash;a file of which I was lucky
+enough to find here in the lawyer&rsquo;s&mdash;Mrs. Oliphant
+seems in a staggering state: from the <i>Wrong Box</i> to <i>The
+Master</i> I scarce recognise either my critic or myself.&nbsp; I
+gather that <i>The Master</i> should do well, and at least that
+notice is agreeable reading.&nbsp; I expect to be home in June:
+you will have gathered that I am pretty well.&nbsp; In addition
+to my labours, I suppose I walk five or six miles a day, and
+almost every day I ride up and see Fanny and Lloyd, who are in a
+house in the bush with Ah Fu.&nbsp; I live in Apia for
+history&rsquo;s sake with Moors, an American trader.&nbsp; Day
+before yesterday I was arrested and fined for riding fast in the
+street, which made my blood bitter, as the wife of the manager of
+the German Firm has twice almost ridden me down, and there seems
+none to say her nay.&nbsp; The Germans have behaved pretty badly
+here, but not in all ways so ill as you may have gathered: they
+were doubtless much provoked; and if the insane Knappe had not
+appeared upon the scene, <a name="page174"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 174</span>might have got out of the muddle
+with dignity.&nbsp; I write along without rhyme or reason, as
+things occur to me.</p>
+<p>I hope from my outcries about printing you do not think I want
+you to keep my news or letters in a Blue Beard closet.&nbsp; I
+like all friends to hear of me; they all should if I had ninety
+hours in the day, and strength for all of them; but you must have
+gathered how hard worked I am, and you will understand I go to
+bed a pretty tired man.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">29<i>th</i> <i>December</i>,
+[1889].</p>
+<p>To-morrow (Monday, I won&rsquo;t swear to my day of the month;
+this is the Sunday between Christmas and New Year) I go up the
+coast with Mr. Clarke, one of the London Society missionaries, in
+a boat to examine schools, see Tamasese, etc.&nbsp; Lloyd comes
+to photograph.&nbsp; Pray Heaven we have good weather; this is
+the rainy season; we shall be gone four or five days; and if the
+rain keep off, I shall be glad of the change; if it rain, it will
+be beastly.&nbsp; This explains still further how hard pressed I
+am, as the mail will be gone ere I return, and I have thus lost
+the days I meant to write in.&nbsp; I have a boy, Henry, who
+interprets and copies for me, and is a great nuisance.&nbsp; He
+said he wished to come to me in order to learn &lsquo;long
+expressions.&rsquo;&nbsp; Henry goes up along with us; and as I
+am not fond of him, he may before the trip is over hear some
+&lsquo;strong expressions.&rsquo;&nbsp; I am writing this on the
+back balcony at Moors&rsquo;, palms and a hill like the hill of
+Kinnoull looking in at me; myself lying on the floor, and (like
+the parties in Handel&rsquo;s song) &lsquo;clad in robes of
+virgin white&rsquo;; the ink is dreadful, the heat delicious, a
+fine going breeze in the palms, and from the other side of the
+house the sudden angry splash and roar of the Pacific on the
+reef, where the warships are still piled from last year&rsquo;s
+hurricane, some under water, one high and dry upon her side, the
+strangest figure of a ship was ever witnessed; the narrow bay
+there is full of ships; the men-of-war covered with sail after
+the rains, <a name="page175"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+175</span>and (especially the German ship, which is fearfully and
+awfully top heavy) rolling almost yards in, in what appears to be
+calm water.</p>
+<p>Samoa, Apia at least, is far less beautiful than the Marquesas
+or Tahiti: a more gentle scene, gentler acclivities, a tamer face
+of nature; and this much aided, for the wanderer, by the great
+German plantations with their countless regular avenues of
+palms.&nbsp; The island has beautiful rivers, of about the
+bigness of our waters in the Lothians, with pleasant pools and
+waterfalls and overhanging verdure, and often a great volume of
+sound, so that once I thought I was passing near a mill, and it
+was only the voice of the river.&nbsp; I am not specially
+attracted by the people; but they are courteous; the women very
+attractive, and dress lovely; the men purposelike, well set up,
+tall, lean, and dignified.&nbsp; As I write the breeze is
+brisking up, doors are beginning to slam: and shutters; a strong
+draught sweeps round the balcony; it looks doubtful for
+to-morrow.&nbsp; Here I shut up.&mdash;Ever your
+affectionate,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
+class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Dr. Scott</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Apia</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>January</i> 20<i>th</i>, 1890.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR SCOTT</span>,&mdash;Shameful
+indeed that you should not have heard of me before!&nbsp; I have
+now been some twenty months in the South Seas, and am (up to
+date) a person whom you would scarce know.&nbsp; I think nothing
+of long walks and rides: I was four hours and a half gone the
+other day, partly riding, partly climbing up a steep
+ravine.&nbsp; I have stood a six months&rsquo; voyage on a copra
+schooner with about three months ashore on coral atolls, which
+means (except for cocoanuts to drink) no change whatever from
+ship&rsquo;s food.&nbsp; My wife suffered badly&mdash;it <a
+name="page176"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 176</span>was too
+rough a business altogether&mdash;Lloyd suffered&mdash;and, in
+short, I was the only one of the party who &lsquo;kept my end
+up.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I am so pleased with this climate that I have decided to
+settle; have even purchased a piece of land from three to four
+hundred acres, I know not which till the survey is completed, and
+shall only return next summer to wind up my affairs in England;
+thenceforth I mean to be a subject of the High Commissioner.</p>
+<p>Now you would have gone longer yet without news of your truant
+patient, but that I have a medical discovery to
+communicate.&nbsp; I find I can (almost immediately) fight off a
+cold with liquid extract of coca; two or (if obstinate) three
+teaspoonfuls in the day for a variable period of from one to five
+days sees the cold generally to the door.&nbsp; I find it at once
+produces a glow, stops rigour, and though it makes one very
+uncomfortable, prevents the advance of the disease.&nbsp; Hearing
+of this influenza, it occurred to me that this might prove
+remedial; and perhaps a stronger exhibition&mdash;injections of
+cocaine, for instance&mdash;still better.</p>
+<p>If on my return I find myself let in for this epidemic, which
+seems highly calculated to nip me in the bud, I shall feel very
+much inclined to make the experiment.&nbsp; See what a gulf you
+may save me from if you shall have previously made it on <i>anima
+vili</i>, on some less important sufferer, and shall have found
+it worse than useless.</p>
+<p>How is Miss Boodle and her family?&nbsp; Greeting to your
+brother and all friends in Bournemouth, 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"><a name="page177"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 177</span><i>Februar den</i> 3<i>en</i>
+1890.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Dampfer L&uuml;beck zwischen Apia
+und Sydney</i>.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;I have
+got one delightful letter from you, and heard from my mother of
+your kindness in going to see her.&nbsp; Thank you for that: you
+can in no way more touch and serve me. . . . Ay, ay, it is sad to
+sell 17; sad and fine were the old days: when I was away in
+Apemama, I wrote two copies of verse about Edinburgh and the
+past, so ink black, so golden bright.&nbsp; I will send them, if
+I can find them, for they will say something to you, and indeed
+one is more than half addressed to you.&nbsp; This is
+it&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">TO MY OLD COMRADES</p>
+<p class="poetry">Do you remember&mdash;can we e&rsquo;er
+forget?&mdash;<br />
+How, in the coiled perplexities of youth,<br />
+In our wild climate, in our scowling town,<br />
+We gloomed and shivered, sorrowed, sobbed, and feared?<br />
+The belching winter wind, the missile rain,<br />
+The rare and welcome silence of the snows,<br />
+The laggard morn, the haggard day, the night,<br />
+The grimy spell of the nocturnal town,<br />
+Do you remember?&mdash;Ah, could one forget!<br />
+As when the fevered sick that all night long<br />
+Listed the wind intone, and hear at last<br />
+The ever-welcome voice of the chanticleer<br />
+Sing in the bitter hour before the dawn,&mdash;<br />
+With sudden ardour, these desire the day:</p>
+<p>(Here a squall sends all flying.)</p>
+<p class="poetry">So sang in the gloom of youth the bird of
+hope;<br />
+So we, exulting, hearkened and desired.<br />
+For lo! as in the palace porch of life<br />
+We huddled with chimeras, from within&mdash;<br />
+How sweet to hear!&mdash;the music swelled and fell,<br />
+And through the breach of the revolving doors<br />
+What dreams of splendour blinded us and fled!<br />
+<a name="page178"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 178</span>I have
+since then contended and rejoiced;<br />
+Amid the glories of the house of life<br />
+Profoundly entered, and the shrine beheld:<br />
+Yet when the lamp from my expiring eyes<br />
+Shall dwindle and recede, the voice of love<br />
+Fall insignificant on my closing ears,<br />
+What sound shall come but the old cry of the wind<br />
+In our inclement city? what return<br />
+But the image of the emptiness of youth,<br />
+Filled with the sound of footsteps and that voice<br />
+Of discontent and rapture and despair?<br />
+So, as in darkness, from the magic lamp,<br />
+The momentary pictures gleam and fade<br />
+And perish, and the night resurges&mdash;these<br />
+Shall I remember, and then all forget.</p>
+<p>They&rsquo;re pretty second-rate, but felt.&nbsp; I
+can&rsquo;t be bothered to copy the other.</p>
+<p>I have bought 314&frac12; acres of beautiful land in the bush
+behind Apia; when we get the house built, the garden laid, and
+cattle in the place, it will be something to fall back on for
+shelter and food; and if the island could stumble into political
+quiet, it is conceivable it might even bring a little income. . .
+. We range from 600 to 1500 feet, have five streams, waterfalls,
+precipices, profound ravines, rich tablelands, fifty head of
+cattle on the ground (if any one could catch them), a great view
+of forest, sea, mountains, the warships in the haven: really a
+noble place.&nbsp; Some day you are to take a long holiday and
+come and see us: it has been all planned.</p>
+<p>With all these irons in the fire, and cloudy prospects, you
+may be sure I was pleased to hear a good account of
+business.&nbsp; I believed <i>The Master</i> was a sure card: I
+wonder why Henley thinks it grimy; grim it is, God knows, but
+sure not grimy, else I am the more deceived.&nbsp; I am sorry he
+did not care for it; I place it on the line with <i>Kidnapped</i>
+myself.&nbsp; We&rsquo;ll see as time goes on whether it goes
+above or falls below.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><a name="page179"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+179</span><span class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>SS. L&uuml;beck</i>, [<i>between
+Apia and Sydney</i>, <i>February</i>] 1890.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;I
+desire nothing better than to continue my relation with the
+Magazine, to which it pleases me to hear I have been
+useful.&nbsp; The only thing I have ready is the enclosed
+barbaric piece.&nbsp; As soon as I have arrived in Sydney I shall
+send you some photographs, a portrait of Tembinoka, perhaps a
+view of the palace or of the &lsquo;matted men&rsquo; at their
+singing; also T.&rsquo;s flag, which my wife designed for him: in
+a word, what I can do best for you.&nbsp; It will be thus a
+foretaste of my book of travels.&nbsp; I shall ask you to let me
+have, if I wish it, the use of the plates made, and to make up a
+little tract of the verses and illustrations, of which you might
+send six copies to H. M. Tembinoka, King of Apemama <i>via</i>
+Butaritari, Gilbert Islands.&nbsp; It might be best to send it by
+Crawford and Co., S. F.&nbsp; There is no postal service; and
+schooners must take it, how they may and when.&nbsp; Perhaps some
+such note as this might be prefixed:</p>
+<p><i>At my departure from the island of Apemama</i>, <i>for
+which you will look in vain in most atlases</i>, <i>the king and
+I agreed</i>, <i>since we both set up to be in the poetical
+way</i>, <i>that we should celebrate our separation in
+verse</i>.&nbsp; <i>Whether or not his majesty has been true to
+his bargain</i>, <i>the laggard posts of the Pacific may perhaps
+inform me in six months</i>, <i>perhaps not before a
+year</i>.&nbsp; <i>The following lines represent my part of the
+contract</i>, <i>and it is hoped</i>, <i>by their pictures of
+strange manners</i>, <i>they may entertain a civilised
+audience</i>.&nbsp; <i>Nothing throughout has been invented or
+exaggerated</i>; <i>the lady herein referred to as the
+author&rsquo;s Muse</i>, <i>has confined herself to stringing
+into rhyme facts and legends that I saw or heard during two
+months&rsquo; residence upon the island</i>.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p><a name="page180"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 180</span>You
+will have received from me a letter about <i>The
+Wrecker</i>.&nbsp; No doubt it is a new experiment for me, being
+disguised so much as a study of manners, and the interest turning
+on a mystery of the detective sort, I think there need be no
+hesitation about beginning it in the fall of the year.&nbsp;
+Lloyd has nearly finished his part, and I shall hope to send you
+very soon the <span class="GutSmall">MS</span>. of about the
+first four-sevenths.&nbsp; At the same time, I have been
+employing myself in Samoa, collecting facts about the recent war;
+and I propose to write almost at once and to publish shortly a
+small volume, called I know not what&mdash;the War In Samoa, the
+Samoa Trouble, an Island War, the War of the Three Consuls, I
+know not&mdash;perhaps you can suggest.&nbsp; It was meant to be
+a part of my travel book; but material has accumulated on my
+hands until I see myself forced into volume form, and I hope it
+may be of use, if it come soon.&nbsp; I have a few photographs of
+the war, which will do for illustrations.&nbsp; It is conceivable
+you might wish to handle this in the Magazine, although I am
+inclined to think you won&rsquo;t, and to agree with you.&nbsp;
+But if you think otherwise, there it is.&nbsp; The travel letters
+(fifty of them) are already contracted for in papers; these I was
+quite bound to let M&rsquo;Clure handle, as the idea was of his
+suggestion, and I always felt a little sore as to one trick I
+played him in the matter of the end-papers.&nbsp; The war-volume
+will contain some very interesting and picturesque details: more
+I can&rsquo;t promise for it.&nbsp; Of course the fifty newspaper
+letters will be simply patches chosen from the travel volume (or
+volumes) as it gets written.</p>
+<p>But you see I have in hand:&mdash;</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Say half done.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>1. <i>The Wrecker</i>.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Lloyd&rsquo;s copy half done, mine not touched.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>2. <i>The Pearl Fisher</i> (a novel promised to the
+<i>Ledger</i>, and which will form, when it comes in book form,
+No. 2 of our <i>South Sea Yarns</i>).</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><a name="page181"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+181</span>Not begun, but all material ready.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>3. <i>The War Volume</i>.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Ditto.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>4. <i>The Big Travel Book</i>, which includes the
+letters.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>You know how they stand.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>5. <i>The Ballads</i>.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p><i>Excusez du peu</i>!&nbsp; And you see what madness it would
+be to make any fresh engagement.&nbsp; At the same time, you have
+<i>The Wrecker</i> and the <i>War Volume</i>, if you like
+either&mdash;or both&mdash;to keep my name in the Magazine.</p>
+<p>It begins to look as if I should not be able to get any more
+ballads done this somewhile.&nbsp; I know the book would sell
+better if it were all ballads; and yet I am growing half tempted
+to fill up with some other verses.&nbsp; A good few are connected
+with my voyage, such as the &lsquo;Home of Tembinoka&rsquo; sent
+herewith, and would have a sort of slight affinity to the
+<i>South Sea Ballads</i>.&nbsp; You might tell me how that
+strikes a stranger.</p>
+<p>In all this, my real interest is with the travel volume, which
+ought to be of a really extraordinary interest.</p>
+<p>I am sending you &lsquo;Tembinoka&rsquo; as he stands; but
+there are parts of him that I hope to better, particularly in
+stanzas <span class="GutSmall">III</span>. and <span
+class="GutSmall">II</span>.&nbsp; I scarce feel intelligent
+enough to try just now; and I thought at any rate you had better
+see it, set it up if you think well, and let me have a proof; so,
+at least, we shall get the bulk of it straight.&nbsp; I have
+spared you Te&ntilde;koruti, Tenbaitake, Tembinatake, and other
+barbarous names, because I thought the dentists in the States had
+work enough without my assistance; but my chiefs name is <span
+class="smcap">Tembinoka</span>, pronounced, according to the
+present quite modern habit in the Gilberts,
+Tembinok&rsquo;.&nbsp; Compare in the margin Tengkorootch; a
+singular new trick, setting at defiance all South Sea analogy,
+for nowhere else do they show even the ability, far less the
+will, to end a word upon a consonant.&nbsp; Loia is Lloyd&rsquo;s
+name, ship becomes ship&eacute;, teapot, tipot&eacute;,
+etc.&nbsp; <a name="page182"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+182</span>Our admirable friend Herman Melville, of whom, since I
+could judge, I have thought more than ever, had no ear for
+languages whatever: his Hapar tribe should be Hapaa, etc.</p>
+<p>But this is of no interest to you: suffice it, you see how I
+am as usual up to the neck in projects, and really all likely
+bairns this time.&nbsp; When will this activity cease?&nbsp; Too
+soon for me, I dare to say.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to James Payn</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>February</i> 4<i>th</i>, 1890,
+<i>SS.</i> &lsquo;<i>L&uuml;beck</i>.&rsquo;</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR JAMES PAYN</span>,&mdash;In
+virtue of confessions in your last, you would at the present
+moment, if you were along of me, be sick; and I will ask you to
+receive that as an excuse for my hand of write.&nbsp; Excuse a
+plain seaman if he regards with scorn the likes of you pore
+land-lubbers ashore now.&nbsp; (Reference to nautical
+ditty.)&nbsp; Which I may however be allowed to add that when
+eight months&rsquo; mail was laid by my side one evening in Apia,
+and my wife and I sat up the most of the night to peruse the
+same&mdash;(precious indisposed we were next day in
+consequence)&mdash;no letter, out of so many, more appealed to
+our hearts than one from the pore, stick-in-the-mud,
+land-lubbering, common (or garden) Londoner, James Payn.&nbsp;
+Thank you for it; my wife says, &lsquo;Can&rsquo;t I see him when
+we get back to London?&rsquo;&nbsp; I have told her the thing
+appeared to me within the spear of practical politix.&nbsp; (Why
+can&rsquo;t I spell and write like an honest, sober, god-fearing
+litry gent?&nbsp; I think it&rsquo;s the motion of the
+ship.)&nbsp; Here I was interrupted to play chess with the chief
+engineer; as I grow old, I prefer the &lsquo;athletic sport of
+cribbage,&rsquo; of which (I am sure I misquote) I have just been
+reading in your delightful <i>Literary Recollections</i>.&nbsp;
+How you skim along, you and Andrew Lang (different as you are),
+and yet the only two who can keep a fellow smiling every page,
+and ever and again laughing out loud.&nbsp; I joke wi&rsquo;
+deeficulty, <a name="page183"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+183</span>I believe; I am not funny; and when I am, Mrs. Oliphant
+says I&rsquo;m vulgar, and somebody else says (in Latin) that
+I&rsquo;m a whore, which seems harsh and even uncalled for: I
+shall stick to weepers; a 5s. weeper, 2s. 6d. laugher, 1s.
+shocker.</p>
+<p>My dear sir, I grow more and more idiotic; I cannot even feign
+sanity.&nbsp; Sometime in the month of June a stalwart
+weather-beaten man, evidently of seafaring antecedents, shall be
+observed wending his way between the Athen&aelig;um Club and
+Waterloo Place.&nbsp; Arrived off No. 17, he shall be observed to
+bring his head sharply to the wind, and tack into the outer
+haven.&nbsp; &lsquo;Captain Payn in the
+harbour?&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Ay, ay, sir.&nbsp; What
+ship?&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Barquentin R. L. S., nine hundred and
+odd days out from the port of Bournemouth, homeward bound, with
+yarns and curiosities.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Who was it said, &lsquo;For God&rsquo;s sake, don&rsquo;t
+speak of it!&rsquo; about Scott and his tears?&nbsp; He knew what
+he was saying.&nbsp; The fear of that hour is the skeleton in all
+our cupboards; that hour when the pastime and the livelihood go
+together; and&mdash;I am getting hard of hearing myself; a pore
+young child of forty, but new come frae my Mammy, O!</p>
+<p>Excuse these follies, and accept the expression of all my
+regards.&mdash;Yours affectionately,</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>Union Club</i>, <i>Sydney</i>,
+<i>March</i> 7<i>th</i>, 1890.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;I did not
+send off the enclosed before from laziness; having gone quite
+sick, and being <a name="page184"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+184</span>a blooming prisoner here in the club, and indeed in my
+bedroom.&nbsp; I was in receipt of your letters and your
+ornamental photo, and was delighted to see how well you looked,
+and how reasonably well I stood. . . . I am sure I shall never
+come back home except to die; I may do it, but shall always think
+of the move as suicidal, unless a great change comes over me, of
+which as yet I see no symptom.&nbsp; This visit to Sydney has
+smashed me handsomely; and yet I made myself a prisoner here in
+the club upon my first arrival.&nbsp; This is not encouraging for
+further ventures; Sydney winter&mdash;or, I might almost say,
+Sydney spring, for I came when the worst was over&mdash;is so
+small an affair, comparable to our June depression at home in
+Scotland. . . . The pipe is right again; it was the springs that
+had rusted, and ought to have been oiled.&nbsp; Its voice is now
+that of an angel; but, Lord! here in the club I dare not wake
+it!&nbsp; Conceive my impatience to be in my own backwoods and
+raise the sound of minstrelsy.&nbsp; What pleasures are to be
+compared with those of the Unvirtuous Virtuoso.&mdash;Yours ever
+affectionately, the Unvirtuous Virtuoso,</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>SS.</i> &lsquo;<i>Janet
+Nicoll</i>,&rsquo; <i>off Upolu</i> [<i>Spring</i> 1890].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAREST COLVIN</span>,&mdash;I was
+sharply ill at Sydney, cut off, right out of bed, in this steamer
+on a fresh island cruise, and have already reaped the
+benefit.&nbsp; We are excellently found this time, on a spacious
+vessel, with an <a name="page185"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+185</span>excellent table; the captain, supercargo, our one
+fellow-passenger, etc., very nice; and the charterer, Mr.
+Henderson, the very man I could have chosen.&nbsp; The truth is,
+I fear, this life is the only one that suits me; so long as I
+cruise in the South Seas, I shall be well and happy&mdash;alas,
+no, I do not mean that, and <i>absit omen</i>!&mdash;I mean that,
+so soon as I cease from cruising, the nerves are strained, the
+decline commences, and I steer slowly but surely back to
+bedward.&nbsp; We left Sydney, had a cruel rough passage to
+Auckland, for the <i>Janet</i> is the worst roller I was ever
+aboard of.&nbsp; I was confined to my cabin, ports closed, self
+shied out of the berth, stomach (pampered till the day I left on
+a diet of perpetual egg-nogg) revolted at ship&rsquo;s food and
+ship eating, in a frowsy bunk, clinging with one hand to the
+plate, with the other to the glass, and using the knife and fork
+(except at intervals) with the eyelid.&nbsp; No matter: I picked
+up hand over hand.&nbsp; After a day in Auckland, we set sail
+again; were blown up in the main cabin with calcium fires, as we
+left the bay.&nbsp; Let no man say I am unscientific: when I ran,
+on the alert, out of my stateroom, and found the main cabin
+incarnadined with the glow of the last scene of a pantomime, I
+stopped dead: &lsquo;What is this?&rsquo; said I.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;This ship is on fire, I see that; but why a
+pantomime?&rsquo;&nbsp; And I stood and reasoned the point, until
+my head was so muddled with the fumes that I could not find the
+companion.&nbsp; A few seconds later, the captain had to enter
+crawling on his belly, and took days to recover (if he has
+recovered) from the fumes.&nbsp; By singular good fortune, we got
+the hose down in time and saved the ship, but Lloyd lost most of
+his clothes and a great part of our photographs was
+destroyed.&nbsp; Fanny saw the native sailors tossing overboard a
+blazing trunk; she stopped them in time, and behold, it contained
+my manuscripts.&nbsp; Thereafter we had three (or two) days fine
+weather: then got into a gale of wind, with rain and a vexatious
+sea.&nbsp; As we drew into our anchorage in a bight of Savage
+Island, a man ashore told me afterwards <a
+name="page186"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 186</span>the sight
+of the <i>Janet Nicoll</i> made him sick; and indeed it was rough
+play, though nothing to the night before.&nbsp; All through this
+gale I worked four to six hours per diem, spearing the ink-bottle
+like a flying fish, and holding my papers together as I
+might.&nbsp; For, of all things, what I was at was
+history&mdash;the Samoan business&mdash;and I had to turn from
+one to another of these piles of manuscript notes, and from one
+page to another in each, until I should have found employment for
+the hands of Briareus.&nbsp; All the same, this history is a
+godsend for a voyage; I can put in time, getting events
+co-ordinated and the narrative distributed, when my much-heaving
+numskull would be incapable of finish or fine style.&nbsp; At
+Savage we met the missionary barque <i>John Williams</i>.&nbsp; I
+tell you it was a great day for Savage Island: the path up the
+cliffs was crowded with gay islandresses (I like that feminine
+plural) who wrapped me in their embraces, and picked my pockets
+of all my tobacco, with a manner which a touch would have made
+revolting, but as it was, was simply charming, like the Golden
+Age.&nbsp; One pretty, little, stalwart minx, with a red flower
+behind her ear, had searched me with extraordinary zeal; and
+when, soon after, I missed my matches, I accused her (she still
+following us) of being the thief.&nbsp; After some delay, and
+with a subtle smile, she produced the box, gave me <i>one
+match</i>, and put the rest away again.&nbsp; Too tired to add
+more.&mdash;Your most affectionate,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>S.S.</i> &lsquo;<i>Janet
+Nicoll</i>,&rsquo; <i>off Peru Island</i>, <i>Kingsmills
+Group</i>,<br />
+<i>July</i> 13<i>th</i>, &rsquo;90.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;I am
+moved to write to you in the matter of the end papers.&nbsp; I am
+somewhat tempted to begin them again.&nbsp; Follow the reasons
+<i>pro</i> and <i>con</i>:&mdash;</p>
+<p>1st.&nbsp; I must say I feel as if something in the nature of
+<a name="page187"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 187</span>the end
+paper were a desirable finish to the number, and that the
+substitutes of occasional essays by occasional contributors
+somehow fail to fill the bill.&nbsp; Should you differ with me on
+this point, no more is to be said.&nbsp; And what follows must be
+regarded as lost words.</p>
+<p>2nd.&nbsp; I am rather taken with the idea of continuing the
+work.&nbsp; For instance, should you have no distaste for papers
+of the class called <i>Random Memories</i>, I should enjoy
+continuing them (of course at intervals), and when they were done
+I have an idea they might make a readable book.&nbsp; On the
+other hand, I believe a greater freedom of choice might be taken,
+the subjects more varied and more briefly treated, in somewhat
+approaching the manner of Andrew Lang in the <i>Sign of the
+Ship</i>; it being well understood that the broken sticks <a
+name="citation187"></a><a href="#footnote187"
+class="citation">[187]</a> method is one not very suitable (as
+Colonel Burke would say) to my genius, and not very likely to be
+pushed far in my practice.&nbsp; Upon this point I wish you to
+condense your massive brain.&nbsp; In the last lot I was
+promised, and I fondly expected to receive, a vast amount of
+assistance from intelligent and genial correspondents.&nbsp; I
+assure you, I never had a scratch of a pen from any one above the
+level of a village idiot, except once, when a lady sowed my head
+full of grey hairs by announcing that she was going to direct her
+life in future by my counsels.&nbsp; Will the correspondents be
+more copious and less irrelevant in the future?&nbsp; Suppose
+that to be the case, will they be of any use to me in my place of
+exile?&nbsp; Is it possible for a man in Samoa to be in touch
+with the great heart of the People?&nbsp; And is it not perhaps a
+mere folly to attempt, from so hopeless a distance, anything so
+delicate as a series of papers?&nbsp; Upon these points, perpend,
+and give me the results of your perpensions.</p>
+<p>3rd.&nbsp; The emolument would be agreeable to your humble
+servant.</p>
+<p>I have now stated all the <i>pros</i>, and the most of the
+<i>cons</i> <a name="page188"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+188</span>are come in by the way.&nbsp; There follows, however,
+one immense Con (with a capital &lsquo;C&rsquo;), which I beg you
+to consider particularly.&nbsp; I fear that, to be of any use for
+your magazine, these papers should begin with the beginning of a
+volume.&nbsp; Even supposing my hands were free, this would be
+now impossible for next year.&nbsp; You have to consider whether,
+supposing you have no other objection, it would be worth while to
+begin the series in the middle of a volume, or desirable to delay
+the whole matter until the beginning of another year.</p>
+<p>Now supposing that the <i>cons</i> have it, and you refuse my
+offer, let me make another proposal, which you will be very
+inclined to refuse at the first off-go, but which I really
+believe might in time come to something.&nbsp; You know how the
+penny papers have their answers to correspondents.&nbsp; Why not
+do something of the same kind for the
+&lsquo;culchawed&rsquo;?&nbsp; Why not get men like Stimson,
+Brownell, Professor James, Goldwin Smith, and others who will
+occur to you more readily than to me, to put and to answer a
+series of questions of intellectual and general interest, until
+at last you should have established a certain standard of matter
+to be discussed in this part of the Magazine?</p>
+<p>I want you to get me bound volumes of the Magazine from its
+start.&nbsp; The Lord knows I have had enough copies; where they
+are I know not.&nbsp; A wandering author gathers no
+magazines.</p>
+<p><i>The Wrecker</i> is in no forrader state than in last
+reports.&nbsp; I have indeed got to a period when I cannot well
+go on until I can refresh myself on the proofs of the
+beginning.&nbsp; My respected collaborator, who handles the
+machine which is now addressing you, has indeed carried his
+labours farther, but not, I am led to understand, with what we
+used to call a blessing; at least, I have been refused a sight of
+his latest labours.&nbsp; However, there is plenty of time ahead,
+and I feel no anxiety about the tale, except that it may meet
+with your approval.</p>
+<p><a name="page189"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 189</span>All
+this voyage I have been busy over my <i>Travels</i>, which, given
+a very high temperature and the saloon of a steamer usually going
+before the wind, and with the cabins in front of the engines, has
+come very near to prostrating me altogether.&nbsp; You will
+therefore understand that there are no more poems.&nbsp; I wonder
+whether there are already enough, and whether you think that such
+a volume would be worth the publishing?&nbsp; I shall hope to
+find in Sydney some expression of your opinion on this
+point.&nbsp; Living as I do among&mdash;not the most cultured of
+mankind (&lsquo;splendidly educated and perfect gentlemen when
+sober&rsquo;)&mdash;I attach a growing importance to friendly
+criticisms from yourself.</p>
+<p>I believe that this is the most of our business.&nbsp; As for
+my health, I got over my cold in a fine style, but have not been
+very well of late.&nbsp; To my unaffected annoyance, the
+blood-spitting has started again.&nbsp; I find the heat of a
+steamer decidedly wearing and trying in these latitudes, and I am
+inclined to think the superior expedition rather dearly paid
+for.&nbsp; Still, the fact that one does not even remark the
+coming of a squall, nor feel relief on its departure, is a mercy
+not to be acknowledged without gratitude.&nbsp; The rest of the
+family seem to be doing fairly well; both seem less run down than
+they were on the <i>Equator</i>, and Mrs. Stevenson very much
+less so.&nbsp; We have now been three months away, have visited
+about thirty-five islands, many of which were novel to us, and
+some extremely entertaining; some also were old acquaintances,
+and pleasant to revisit.&nbsp; In the meantime, we have really a
+capital time aboard ship, in the most pleasant and interesting
+society, and with (considering the length and nature of the
+voyage) an excellent table.&nbsp; Please remember us all to Mr.
+Scribner, the young chieftain of the house, and the lady, whose
+health I trust is better.&nbsp; To Mrs. Burlingame we all desire
+to be remembered, and I hope you will give our news to Low, St.
+Gaudens, Faxon, and others of the faithful in the city.&nbsp; I
+shall <a name="page190"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+190</span>probably return to Samoa direct, having given up all
+idea of returning to civilisation in the meanwhile.&nbsp; There,
+on my ancestral acres, which I purchased six months ago from a
+blind Scots blacksmith, you will please address me until further
+notice.&nbsp; The name of the ancestral acres is going to be
+Vailima; but as at the present moment nobody else knows the name,
+except myself and the co-patentees, it will be safer, if less
+ambitious, to address R. L. S., Apia, Samoa.&nbsp; The ancestral
+acres run to upwards of three hundred; they enjoy the
+ministrations of five streams, whence the name.&nbsp; They are
+all at the present moment under a trackless covering of
+magnificent forest, which would be worth a great deal if it grew
+beside a railway terminus.&nbsp; To me, as it stands, it
+represents a handsome deficit.&nbsp; Obliging natives from the
+Cannibal Islands are now cutting it down at my expense.&nbsp; You
+would be able to run your magazine to much greater advantage if
+the terms of authors were on the same scale with those of my
+cannibals.&nbsp; We have also a house about the size of a
+manufacturer&rsquo;s lodge.&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis but the egg of the
+future palace, over the details of which on paper Mrs. Stevenson
+and I have already shed real tears; what it will be when it comes
+to paying for it, I leave you to imagine.&nbsp; But if it can
+only be built as now intended, it will be with genuine
+satisfaction and a growunded pride that I shall welcome you at
+the steps of my Old Colonial Home, when you land from the steamer
+on a long-merited holiday.&nbsp; I speak much at my ease; yet I
+do not know, I may be now an outlaw, a bankrupt, the abhorred of
+all good men.&nbsp; I do not know, you probably do.&nbsp; Has
+Hyde <a name="citation190"></a><a href="#footnote190"
+class="citation">[190]</a> turned upon me?&nbsp; Have I fallen,
+like Danvers Carew?</p>
+<p>It is suggested to me that you might like to know what will be
+my future society.&nbsp; Three consuls, all at logger-heads with
+one another, or at the best in a clique of two <a
+name="page191"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 191</span>against
+one; three different sects of missionaries, not upon the best of
+terms; and the Catholics and Protestants in a condition of
+unhealable ill-feeling as to whether a wooden drum ought or ought
+not to be beaten to announce the time of school.&nbsp; The native
+population, very genteel, very songful, very agreeable, very
+good-looking, chronically spoiling for a fight (a circumstance
+not to be entirely neglected in the design of the palace).&nbsp;
+As for the white population of (technically, &lsquo;The
+Beach&rsquo;), I don&rsquo;t suppose it is possible for any
+person not thoroughly conversant with the South Seas to form the
+smallest conception of such a society, with its grog-shops, its
+apparently unemployed hangers-on, its merchants of all degrees of
+respectability and the reverse.&nbsp; The paper, of which I must
+really send you a copy&mdash;if yours were really a live
+magazine, you would have an exchange with the editor: I assure
+you, it has of late contained a great deal of matter about one of
+your contributors&mdash;rejoices in the name of <i>Samoa Times
+and South Sea Advertiser</i>.&nbsp; The advertisements in the
+<i>Advertiser</i> are permanent, being simply subsidies for its
+existence.&nbsp; A dashing warfare of newspaper correspondence
+goes on between the various residents, who are rather fond of
+recurring to one another&rsquo;s antecedents.&nbsp; But when all
+is said, there are a lot of very nice, pleasant people, and I
+don&rsquo;t know that Apia is very much worse than half a hundred
+towns that I could name.</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>Hotel Sebastopol</i>,
+<i>Noumea</i>, <i>August</i> 1890.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;I have
+stayed here a week while Lloyd and my wife continue to voyage in
+the <i>Janet Nicoll</i>; <a name="page192"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 192</span>this I did, partly to see the
+convict system, partly to shorten my stay in the extreme
+cold&mdash;hear me with my extreme! <i>moi qui suis originaire
+d&rsquo;Edinbourg</i>&mdash;of Sydney at this season.&nbsp; I am
+feeling very seedy, utterly fatigued, and overborne with
+sleep.&nbsp; I have a fine old gentleman of a doctor, who attends
+and cheers and entertains, if he does not cure me; but even with
+his ministrations I am almost incapable of the exertion
+sufficient for this letter; and I am really, as I write, falling
+down with sleep.&nbsp; What is necessary to say, I must try to
+say shortly.&nbsp; Lloyd goes to clear out our establishments:
+pray keep him in funds, if I have any; if I have not, pray try to
+raise them.&nbsp; Here is the idea: to install ourselves, at the
+risk of bankruptcy, in Samoa.&nbsp; It is not the least likely it
+will pay (although it may); but it is almost certain it will
+support life, with very few external expenses.&nbsp; If I die, it
+will be an endowment for the survivors, at least for my wife and
+Lloyd; and my mother, who might prefer to go home, has her
+own.&nbsp; Hence I believe I shall do well to hurry my
+installation.&nbsp; The letters are already in part done; in part
+done is a novel for Scribner; in the course of the next twelve
+months I should receive a considerable amount of money.&nbsp; I
+am aware I had intended to pay back to my capital some of
+this.&nbsp; I am now of opinion I should act foolishly.&nbsp;
+Better to build the house and have a roof and farm of my own; and
+thereafter, with a livelihood assured, save and repay . . .&nbsp;
+There is my livelihood, all but books and wine, ready in a
+nutshell; and it ought to be more easy to save and to repay
+afterwards.&nbsp; Excellent, say you, but will you save and will
+you repay?&nbsp; I do not know, said the Bell of Old Bow. . . .
+It seems clear to me. . . . The deuce of the affair is that I do
+not know when I shall see you and Colvin.&nbsp; I guess you will
+have to come and see me: many a time already we have arranged the
+details of your visit in the yet unbuilt house on the
+mountain.&nbsp; I shall be able to get decent wine from
+Noumea.&nbsp; We shall be able to give you a decent welcome, <a
+name="page193"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 193</span>and talk of
+old days.&nbsp; <i>Apropos</i> of old days, do you remember still
+the phrase we heard in Waterloo Place?&nbsp; I believe you made a
+piece for the piano on that phrase.&nbsp; Pray, if you remember
+it, send it me in your next.&nbsp; If you find it impossible to
+write correctly, send it me <i>&agrave; la r&eacute;citative</i>,
+and indicate the accents.&nbsp; Do you feel (you must) how
+strangely heavy and stupid I am?&nbsp; I must at last give up and
+go sleep; I am simply a rag.</p>
+<p>The morrow: I feel better, but still dim and groggy.&nbsp;
+To-night I go to the governor&rsquo;s; such a lark&mdash;no dress
+clothes&mdash;twenty-four hours&rsquo; notice&mdash;able-bodied
+Polish tailor&mdash;suit made for a man with the figure of a
+puncheon&mdash;same hastily altered for self with the figure of a
+bodkin&mdash;sight inconceivable.&nbsp; Never mind; dress
+clothes, &lsquo;which nobody can deny&rsquo;; and the officials
+have been all so civil that I liked neither to refuse nor to
+appear in mufti.&nbsp; Bad dress clothes only prove you are a
+grisly ass; no dress clothes, even when explained, indicate a
+want of respect.&nbsp; I wish you were here with me to help me
+dress in this wild raiment, and to accompany me to M.
+Noel-Pardon&rsquo;s.&nbsp; I cannot say what I would give if
+there came a knock now at the door and you came in.&nbsp; I guess
+Noel-Pardon would go begging, and we might burn the fr. 200 dress
+clothes in the back garden for a bonfire; or what would be yet
+more expensive and more humorous, get them once more expanded to
+fit you, and when that was done, a second time cut down for my
+gossamer dimensions.</p>
+<p>I hope you never forget to remember me to your father, who has
+always a place in my heart, as I hope I have a little in
+his.&nbsp; His kindness helped me infinitely when you and I were
+young; I recall it with gratitude and affection in this town of
+convicts at the world&rsquo;s end.&nbsp; There are very few
+things, my dear Charles, worth mention: on a retrospect of life,
+the day&rsquo;s flash and colour, one day with another, flames,
+dazzles, and puts to sleep; and when the days are gone, like a
+fast-flying thaumatrope, they make but a single pattern.&nbsp;
+Only a few things stand out; and <a name="page194"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 194</span>among these&mdash;most plainly to
+me&mdash;Rutland Square,&mdash;Ever, my dear Charles, your
+affectionate friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;Just returned from trying on the dress
+clo&rsquo;.&nbsp; Lord, you should see the coat!&nbsp; It stands
+out at the waist like a bustle, the flaps cross in front, the
+sleeves are like bags.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Union Club</i>, <i>Sydney</i>
+[<i>August</i> 1890].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Ballads</i>.</p>
+<p>The deuce is in this volume.&nbsp; It has cost me more
+botheration and dubiety than any other I ever took in hand.&nbsp;
+On one thing my mind is made up: the verses at the end have no
+business there, and throw them down.&nbsp; Many of them are bad,
+many of the rest want nine years&rsquo; keeping, and the
+remainder are not relevant&mdash;throw them down; some I never
+want to hear of more, others will grow in time towards decent
+items in a second <i>Underwoods</i>&mdash;and in the meanwhile,
+down with them!&nbsp; At the same time, I have a sneaking idea
+the ballads are not altogether without merit&mdash;I don&rsquo;t
+know if they&rsquo;re poetry, but they&rsquo;re good narrative,
+or I&rsquo;m deceived.&nbsp; (You&rsquo;ve never said one word
+about them, from which I astutely gather you are dead set
+against: &lsquo;he was a diplomatic man&rsquo;&mdash;extract from
+epitaph of E. L. B.&mdash;&lsquo;and remained on good terms with
+Minor Poets.&rsquo;)&nbsp; You will have to judge: one of the
+Gladstonian trinity of paths must be chosen.&nbsp; (1st) Either
+<a name="page195"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 195</span>publish
+the five ballads, such as they are, in a volume called
+<i>Ballads</i>; in which case pray send sheets at once to Chatto
+and Windus.&nbsp; Or (2nd) write and tell me you think the book
+too small, and I&rsquo;ll try and get into the mood to do some
+more.&nbsp; Or (3rd) write and tell me the whole thing is a
+blooming illusion; in which case draw off some twenty copies for
+my private entertainment, and charge me with the expense of the
+whole dream.</p>
+<p>In the matter of rhyme no man can judge himself; I am at the
+world&rsquo;s end, have no one to consult, and my publisher holds
+his tongue.&nbsp; I call it unfair and almost unmanly.&nbsp; I do
+indeed begin to be filled with animosity; Lord, wait till you see
+the continuation of <i>The Wrecker</i>, when I introduce some New
+York publishers. . . It&rsquo;s a good scene; the quantities you
+drink and the really hideous language you are represented as
+employing may perhaps cause you one tithe of the pain you have
+inflicted by your silence on, sir, The Poetaster,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p>Lloyd is off home; my wife and I dwell sundered: she in
+lodgings, preparing for the move; I here in the club, and at my
+old trade&mdash;bedridden.&nbsp; Naturally, the visit home is
+given up; we only wait our opportunity to get to Samoa, where,
+please, address me.</p>
+<p>Have I yet asked you to despatch the books and papers left in
+your care to me at Apia, Samoa?&nbsp; I wish you would, <i>quam
+primum</i>.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Henry James</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Union Club</i>, <i>Sydney</i>,
+<i>August</i> 1890.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENRY
+JAMES</span>,&mdash;Kipling is too clever to live.&nbsp; The
+<i>B&ecirc;te Humaine</i> I had already perused in Noumea,
+listening the while to the strains of the convict band.&nbsp; He
+a Beast; but not human, and, to be frank, not very <a
+name="page196"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+196</span>interesting.&nbsp; &lsquo;Nervous maladies: the
+homicidal ward,&rsquo; would be the better name: O, this game
+gets very tedious.</p>
+<p>Your two long and kind letters have helped to entertain the
+old familiar sickbed.&nbsp; So has a book called <i>The
+Bondman</i>, by Hall Caine; I wish you would look at it.&nbsp; I
+am not half-way through yet.&nbsp; Read the book, and communicate
+your views.&nbsp; Hall Caine, by the way, appears to take
+Hugo&rsquo;s view of History and Chronology.&nbsp; (<i>Later</i>;
+the book doesn&rsquo;t keep up; it gets very wild.)</p>
+<p>I must tell you plainly&mdash;I can&rsquo;t tell
+Colvin&mdash;I do not think I shall come to England more than
+once, and then it&rsquo;ll be to die.&nbsp; Health I enjoy in the
+tropics; even here, which they call sub- or semi-tropical, I come
+only to catch cold.&nbsp; I have not been out since my arrival;
+live here in a nice bedroom by the fireside, and read books and
+letters from Henry James, and send out to get his <i>Tragic
+Muse</i>, only to be told they can&rsquo;t be had as yet in
+Sydney, and have altogether a placid time.&nbsp; But I
+can&rsquo;t go out!&nbsp; The thermometer was nearly down to
+50&deg; the other day&mdash;no temperature for me, Mr. James: how
+should I do in England?&nbsp; I fear not at all.&nbsp; Am I very
+sorry?&nbsp; I am sorry about seven or eight people in England,
+and one or two in the States.&nbsp; And outside of that, I simply
+prefer Samoa.&nbsp; These are the words of honesty and
+soberness.&nbsp; (I am fasting from all but sin, coughing, <i>The
+Bondman</i>, a couple of eggs and a cup of tea.)&nbsp; I was
+never fond of towns, houses, society, or (it seems)
+civilisation.&nbsp; Nor yet it seems was I ever very fond of
+(what is technically called) God&rsquo;s green earth.&nbsp; The
+sea, islands, the islanders, the island life and climate, make
+and keep me truly happier.&nbsp; These last two years I have been
+much at sea, and I have <i>never wearied</i>; sometimes I have
+indeed grown impatient for some destination; more often I was
+sorry that the voyage drew so early to an end; and never once did
+I lose my fidelity to blue water and a ship.&nbsp; It is plain,
+then, that for me my exile to the place of schooners and islands
+can be in no sense regarded as a calamity.</p>
+<p><a name="page197"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+197</span>Good-bye just now: I must take a turn at my proofs.</p>
+<p><i>N.B.</i>&mdash;Even my wife has weakened about the
+sea.&nbsp; She wearied, the last time we were ashore, to get
+afloat again.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Marcel Schwob</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Union Club</i>, <i>Sydney</i>,
+<i>August</i> 19<i>th</i>, 1890.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MR.
+SCHWOB</span>,&mdash;<i>Mais</i>, <i>alors</i>, <i>vous avez tous
+les bonheurs</i>, <i>vous</i>!&nbsp; More about Villon; it seems
+incredible: when it is put in order, pray send it me.</p>
+<p>You wish to translate the <i>Black Arrow</i>: dear sir, you
+are hereby authorised; but I warn you, I do not like the
+work.&nbsp; Ah, if you, who know so well both tongues, and have
+taste and instruction&mdash;if you would but take a fancy to
+translate a book of mine that I myself admired&mdash;for we
+sometimes admire our own&mdash;or I do&mdash;with what
+satisfaction would the authority be granted!&nbsp; But these
+things are too much to expect.&nbsp; <i>Vous ne d&eacute;testez
+pas alors mes bonnes femmes</i>? <i>moi</i>, <i>je les
+d&eacute;teste</i>.&nbsp; I have never pleased myself with any
+women of mine save two character parts, one of only a few
+lines&mdash;the Countess of Rosen, and Madame Desprez in the
+<i>Treasure of Franchard</i>.</p>
+<p>I had indeed one moment of pride about my poor <i>Black
+Arrow</i>: Dickon Crookback I did, and I do, think is a spirited
+and possible figure.&nbsp; Shakespeare&rsquo;s&mdash;O, if we can
+call that cocoon Shakespeare!&mdash;Shakespeare&rsquo;s is
+spirited&mdash;one likes to see the untaught athlete butting
+against the adamantine ramparts of human nature, head down,
+breach up; it reminds us how trivial we are to-day, and what
+safety resides in our triviality.&nbsp; For spirited it may be,
+but O, sure not possible!&nbsp; I love Dumas and I love
+Shakespeare: you will not mistake me when I say that the Richard
+of the one reminds me of the Porthos of the other; and if by any
+sacrifice of my own literary baggage I could clear the <i>Vicomte
+de Bragelonne</i> of Porthos, <i>Jekyll</i> might go, and the
+<i>Master</i>, and the <i>Black Arrow</i>, you may <a
+name="page198"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 198</span>be sure,
+and I should think my life not lost for mankind if half a dozen
+more of my volumes must be thrown in.</p>
+<p>The tone of your pleasant letters makes me egotistical; you
+make me take myself too gravely.&nbsp; Comprehend how I have
+lived much of my time in France, and loved your country, and many
+of its people, and all the time was learning that which your
+country has to teach&mdash;breathing in rather that atmosphere of
+art which can only there be breathed; and all the time
+knew&mdash;and raged to know&mdash;that I might write with the
+pen of angels or of heroes, and no Frenchman be the least the
+wiser!&nbsp; And now steps in M. Marcel Schwob, writes me the
+most kind encouragement, and reads and understands, and is kind
+enough to like my work.</p>
+<p>I am just now overloaded with work.&nbsp; I have two huge
+novels on hand&mdash;<i>The Wrecker</i> and the <i>Pearl
+Fisher</i>, <a name="citation198"></a><a href="#footnote198"
+class="citation">[198]</a> in collaboration with my stepson: the
+latter, the <i>Pearl Fisher</i>, I think highly of, for a black,
+ugly, trampling, violent story, full of strange scenes and
+striking characters.&nbsp; And then I am about waist-deep in my
+big book on the South Seas: <i>the</i> big book on the South Seas
+it ought to be, and shall.&nbsp; And besides, I have some verses
+in the press, which, however, I hesitate to publish.&nbsp; For I
+am no judge of my own verse; self-deception is there so
+facile.&nbsp; All this and the cares of an impending settlement
+in Samoa keep me very busy, and a cold (as usual) keeps me in
+bed.</p>
+<p>Alas, I shall not have the pleasure to see you yet awhile, if
+ever.&nbsp; You must be content to take me as a wandering voice,
+and in the form of occasional letters from recondite islands; and
+address me, if you will be good enough to write, to Apia,
+Samoa.&nbsp; My stepson, Mr. Osbourne, goes home meanwhile to
+arrange some affairs; it is not unlikely he may go to Paris to
+arrange about the illustrations to my South Seas; in which case I
+shall ask him to call upon you, and give you some word of our
+outlandish destinies.&nbsp; You will find him intelligent, I <a
+name="page199"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 199</span>think; and
+I am sure, if (<i>par hasard</i>) you should take any interest in
+the islands, he will have much to tell you.&mdash;Herewith I
+conclude, and am your obliged and interested correspondent,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;The story you refer to has got lost in the
+post.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Andrew Lang</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Union Club</i>, <i>Sydney</i>
+[<i>August </i>1890].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LANG</span>,&mdash;I observed
+with a great deal of surprise and interest that a controversy in
+which you have been taking sides at home, in yellow London,
+hinges in part at least on the Gilbert Islanders and their
+customs in burial.&nbsp; Nearly six months of my life has been
+passed in the group: I have revisited it but the other day; and I
+make haste to tell you what I know.&nbsp; The upright
+stones&mdash;I enclose you a photograph of one on
+Apemama&mdash;are certainly connected with religion; I do not
+think they are adored.&nbsp; They stand usually on the windward
+shore of the islands, that is to say, apart from habitation (on
+<i>enclosed islands</i>, where the people live on the sea side, I
+do not know how it is, never having lived on one).&nbsp; I
+gathered from Tembinoka, Rex Apemamae, that the pillars were
+supposed to fortify the island from invasion: spiritual
+martellos.&nbsp; I think he indicated they were connected with
+the cult of Tenti&mdash;pronounce almost as chintz in English,
+the <i>t</i> being explosive; but you must take this with a grain
+of salt, for I knew no word of Gilbert Island; and the
+King&rsquo;s English, although creditable, is rather vigorous
+than exact.&nbsp; Now, here follows the point of interest to you:
+such pillars, or standing stones, have no connection with
+graves.&nbsp; The most elaborate grave that I have ever seen in
+the group&mdash;to be certain&mdash;is in the form of a <i>raised
+border</i> of gravel, usually strewn with broken glass.&nbsp;
+One, of which I cannot be sure that it was a grave, for I was
+told by one that it was, and by another <a
+name="page200"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 200</span>that it was
+not&mdash;consisted of a mound about breast high in an excavated
+taro swamp, on the top of which was a child&rsquo;s house, or
+rather <i>maniapa</i>&mdash;that is to say, shed, or open house,
+such as is used in the group for social or political
+gatherings&mdash;so small that only a child could creep under its
+eaves.&nbsp; I have heard of another great tomb on Apemama, which
+I did not see; but here again, by all accounts, no sign of a
+standing stone.&nbsp; My report would be&mdash;no connection
+between standing stones and sepulture.&nbsp; I shall, however,
+send on the terms of the problem to a highly intelligent resident
+trader, who knows more than perhaps any one living, white or
+native, of the Gilbert group; and you shall have the
+result.&nbsp; In Samoa, whither I return for good, I shall myself
+make inquiries; up to now, I have neither seen nor heard of any
+standing stones in that group.&mdash;Yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
+class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Charles Fairchild</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Union Club</i>, <i>Sydney</i>
+[<i>September</i> 1890].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MRS. FAIRCHILD</span>,&mdash;I
+began a letter to you on board the <i>Janet Nicoll</i> on my last
+cruise, wrote, I believe, two sheets, and ruthlessly destroyed
+the flippant trash.&nbsp; Your last has given me great pleasure
+and some pain, for it increased the consciousness of my
+neglect.&nbsp; Now, this must go to you, whatever it is like.</p>
+<p>. . . You are quite right; our civilisation is a hollow fraud,
+all the fun of life is lost by it; all it gains is that a larger
+number of persons can continue to be contemporaneously unhappy on
+the surface of the globe.&nbsp; O, unhappy!&mdash;there is a big
+word and a false&mdash;continue to be not nearly&mdash;by about
+twenty per cent.&mdash;so happy as they might be: that would be
+nearer the mark.</p>
+<p>When&mdash;observe that word, which I will write again and
+larger&mdash;<span class="GutSmall">WHEN</span> you come to see
+us in Samoa, you will see for yourself a healthy and happy
+people.</p>
+<p><a name="page201"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 201</span>You
+see, you are one of the very few of our friends rich enough to
+come and see us; and when my house is built, and the road is
+made, and we have enough fruit planted and poultry and pigs
+raised, it is undeniable that you must come&mdash;must is the
+word; that is the way in which I speak to ladies.&nbsp; You and
+Fairchild, anyway&mdash;perhaps my friend Blair&mdash;we&rsquo;ll
+arrange details in good time.&nbsp; It will be the salvation of
+your souls, and make you willing to die.</p>
+<p>Let me tell you this: In &rsquo;74 or 5 there came to stay
+with my father and mother a certain Mr. Seed, a prime minister or
+something of New Zealand.&nbsp; He spotted what my complaint was;
+told me that I had no business to stay in Europe; that I should
+find all I cared for, and all that was good for me, in the
+Navigator Islands; sat up till four in the morning persuading me,
+demolishing my scruples.&nbsp; And I resisted: I refused to go so
+far from my father and mother.&nbsp; O, it was virtuous, and O,
+wasn&rsquo;t it silly!&nbsp; But my father, who was always my
+dearest, got to his grave without that pang; and now in 1890, I
+(or what is left of me) go at last to the Navigator
+Islands.&nbsp; God go with us!&nbsp; It is but a Pisgah sight
+when all is said; I go there only to grow old and die; but when
+you come, you will see it is a fair place for the purpose.</p>
+<p>Flaubert <a name="citation201"></a><a href="#footnote201"
+class="citation">[201]</a> has not turned up; I hope he will
+soon; I knew of him only through Maxime Descamps.&mdash;With
+kindest messages to yourself and all of yours, I remain,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h2><a name="page209"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+209</span>XI<br />
+LIFE IN SAMOA,<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">NOVEMBER 1890&ndash;DECEMBER
+1892</span></h2>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Apia</i>,
+<i>Samoa</i>, <i>Nov.</i> 7, 1890.</p>
+<p>I <span class="smcap">wish</span> you to add to the words at
+the end of the prologue; they run, I think, thus, &lsquo;And this
+is the yarn of Loudon Dodd&rsquo;; add, &lsquo;not as he told,
+but as he wrote it afterwards for his diversion.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+This becomes the more needful, because, when all is done, I shall
+probably revert to Tai-o-hae, and give final details about the
+characters in the way of a conversation between Dodd and
+Havers.&nbsp; These little snippets of information and
+<i>faits-divers</i> have always a disjointed, broken-backed
+appearance; yet, readers like them.&nbsp; In this book we have
+introduced so many characters, that this kind of epilogue will be
+looked for; and I rather hope, looking far ahead, that I can
+lighten it in dialogue.</p>
+<p>We are well past the middle now.&nbsp; How does it strike you?
+and can you guess my mystery?&nbsp; It will make a fattish
+volume!</p>
+<p>I say, have you ever read the <i>Highland Widow</i>?&nbsp; I
+never had till yesterday: I am half inclined, bar a trip or two,
+to think it Scott&rsquo;s masterpiece; and it has the name of a
+failure!&nbsp; Strange things are readers.</p>
+<p>I expect proofs and revises in duplicate.</p>
+<p>We have now got into a small barrack at our place.&nbsp; We
+see the sea six hundred feet below filling the end of two vales
+of forest.&nbsp; On one hand the mountain runs above us some
+thousand feet higher; great trees stand round us in our clearing;
+there is an endless voice of birds; I have never lived in such a
+heaven; just now, I have fever, which mitigates but not destroys
+my gusto in my circumstances.&mdash;You may envy</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p>. . . O, I don&rsquo;t know if I mentioned that having seen
+your new tail to the magazine, I cried off interference, at least
+<a name="page210"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 210</span>for this
+trip.&nbsp; Did I ask you to send me my books and papers, and all
+the bound volumes of the mag.? <i>quorum pars</i>.&nbsp; I might
+add that were there a good book or so&mdash;new&mdash;I
+don&rsquo;t believe there is&mdash;such would be welcome.</p>
+<p>I desire&mdash;I positively begin to awake&mdash;to be
+remembered to Scribner, Low, St. Gaudens, Russell Sullivan.&nbsp;
+Well, well, you fellows have the feast of reason and the flow of
+soul; I have a better-looking place and climate: you should hear
+the birds on the hill now!&nbsp; The day has just wound up with a
+shower; it is still light without, though I write within here at
+the cheek of a lamp; my wife and an invaluable German are
+wrestling about bread on the back verandah; and how the birds and
+the frogs are rattling, and piping, and hailing from the
+woods!&nbsp; Here and there a throaty chuckle; here and there,
+cries like those of jolly children who have lost their way; here
+and there, the ringing sleigh-bell of the tree frog.&nbsp; Out
+and away down below me on the sea it is still raining; it will be
+wet under foot on schooners, and the house will leak; how well I
+know that!&nbsp; Here the showers only patter on the iron roof,
+and sometimes roar; and within, the lamp burns steady on the
+tafa-covered walls, with their dusky tartan patterns, and the
+book-shelves with their thin array of books; and no squall can
+rout my house or bring my heart into my mouth.&mdash;The
+well-pleased South Sea Islander,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><a name="page211"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 211</span>[<i>Vailima</i>, <i>December</i>
+1890.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;By
+some diabolical accident, I have mislaid your last.&nbsp; What
+was in it?&nbsp; I know not, and here I am caught unexpectedly by
+the American mail, a week earlier than by computation.&nbsp; The
+computation, not the mail, is supposed to be in error.&nbsp; The
+vols. of <i>Scribner&rsquo;s</i> have arrived, and present a
+noble appearance in my house, which is not a noble structure at
+present.&nbsp; But by autumn we hope to be sprawling in our
+verandah, twelve feet, sir, by eighty-eight in front, and
+seventy-two on the flank; view of the sea and mountains, sunrise,
+moonrise, and the German fleet at anchor three miles away in Apia
+harbour.&nbsp; I hope some day to offer you a bowl of kava there,
+or a slice of a pineapple, or some lemonade from my own
+hedge.&nbsp; &lsquo;I know a hedge where the lemons
+grow&rsquo;&mdash;<i>Shakespeare</i>.&nbsp; My house at this
+moment smells of them strong; and the rain, which a while ago
+roared there, now rings in minute drops upon the iron roof.&nbsp;
+I have no <i>Wrecker</i> for you this mail, other things having
+engaged me.&nbsp; I was on the whole rather relieved you did not
+vote for regular papers, as I feared the traces.&nbsp; It is my
+design from time to time to write a paper of a reminiscential
+(beastly word) description; some of them I could scarce publish
+from different considerations; but some of them&mdash;for
+instance, my long experience of gambling places&mdash;Homburg,
+Wiesbaden, Baden-Baden, old Monaco, and new Monte
+Carlo&mdash;would make good magazine padding, if I got the stuff
+handled the right way.&nbsp; I never could fathom why verse was
+put in magazines; it has something to do with the making-up, has
+it not?&nbsp; I am scribbling a lot just now; if you are taken
+badly that way, apply to the South Seas.&nbsp; I could send you
+some, I believe, anyway, only none of it is thoroughly
+ripe.&nbsp; If kept back the volume of ballads, I&rsquo;ll soon
+make it a respectable size if this fit continue.&nbsp; By the
+next mail you may expect some more <a name="page212"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 212</span><i>Wrecker</i>, or I shall be
+displeased.&nbsp; Probably no more than a chapter, however, for
+it is a hard one, and I am denuded of my proofs, my collaborator
+having walked away with them to England; hence some trouble in
+catching the just note.</p>
+<p>I am a mere farmer: my talk, which would scarce interest you
+on Broadway, is all of fuafua and tuitui, and black boys, and
+planting and weeding, and axes and cutlasses; my hands are
+covered with blisters and full of thorns; letters are, doubtless,
+a fine thing, so are beer and skittles, but give me farmering in
+the tropics for real interest.&nbsp; Life goes in enchantment; I
+come home to find I am late for dinner; and when I go to bed at
+night, I could cry for the weariness of my loins and
+thighs.&nbsp; Do not speak to me of vexation, the life brims with
+it, but with living interest fairly.</p>
+<p>Christmas I go to Auckland, to meet Tamate, the New Guinea
+missionary, a man I love.&nbsp; The rest of my life is a prospect
+of much rain, much weeding and making of paths, a little letters,
+and devilish little to eat.&mdash;I am, my dear Burlingame, with
+messages to all whom it may concern, very sincerely yours,</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>Vailima</i>, <i>Apia</i>,
+<i>Samoa</i>, <i>December</i> 29<i>th</i>, 1890.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENRY JAMES</span>,&mdash;It is
+terrible how little everybody writes, and how much of that little
+disappears in the capacious maw of the Post Office.&nbsp; Many
+letters, both from and to me, I now know to have been lost in
+transit: my eye is on the Sydney Post Office, a large ungainly <a
+name="page213"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 213</span>structure
+with a tower, as being not a hundred miles from the scene of
+disappearance; but then I have no proof.&nbsp; <i>The Tragic
+Muse</i> you announced to me as coming; I had already ordered it
+from a Sydney bookseller: about two months ago he advised me that
+his copy was in the post; and I am still tragically museless.</p>
+<p>News, news, news.&nbsp; What do we know of yours?&nbsp; What
+do you care for ours?&nbsp; We are in the midst of the rainy
+season, and dwell among alarms of hurricanes, in a very unsafe
+little two-storied wooden box 650 feet above and about three
+miles from the sea-beach.&nbsp; Behind us, till the other slope
+of the island, desert forest, peaks, and loud torrents; in front
+green slopes to the sea, some fifty miles of which we
+dominate.&nbsp; We see the ships as they go out and in to the
+dangerous roadstead of Apia; and if they lie far out, we can even
+see their topmasts while they are at anchor.&nbsp; Of sounds of
+men, beyond those of our own labourers, there reach us, at very
+long intervals, salutes from the warships in harbour, the bell of
+the cathedral church, and the low of the conch-shell calling the
+labour boys on the German plantations.&nbsp; Yesterday, which was
+Sunday&mdash;the <i>quanti&egrave;me</i> is most likely
+erroneous; you can now correct it&mdash;we had a
+visitor&mdash;Baker of Tonga.&nbsp; Heard you ever of him?&nbsp;
+He is a great man here: he is accused of theft, rape, judicial
+murder, private poisoning, abortion, misappropriation of public
+moneys&mdash;oddly enough, not forgery, nor arson: you would be
+amused if you knew how thick the accusations fly in this South
+Sea world.&nbsp; I make no doubt my own character is something
+illustrious; or if not yet, there is a good time coming.</p>
+<p>But all our resources have not of late been Pacific.&nbsp; We
+have had enlightened society: La Farge the painter, and your
+friend Henry Adams: a great privilege&mdash;would it might
+endure.&nbsp; I would go oftener to see them, but the place is
+awkward to reach on horseback.&nbsp; I had to swim my horse the
+last time I went to dinner; and as I have not yet returned the
+clothes I had to borrow, I dare not <a name="page214"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 214</span>return in the same plight: it seems
+inevitable&mdash;as soon as the wash comes in, I plump straight
+into the American consul&rsquo;s shirt or trousers!&nbsp; They, I
+believe, would come oftener to see me but for the horrid doubt
+that weighs upon our commissariat department; we have
+<i>often</i> almost nothing to eat; a guest would simply break
+the bank; my wife and I have dined on one avocado pear; I have
+several times dined on hard bread and onions.&nbsp; What would
+you do with a guest at such narrow seasons?&mdash;eat him? or
+serve up a labour boy fricasseed?</p>
+<p>Work? work is now arrested, but I have written, I should
+think, about thirty chapters of the South Sea book; they will all
+want rehandling, I dare say.&nbsp; Gracious, what a strain is a
+long book!&nbsp; The time it took me to design this volume,
+before I could dream of putting pen to paper, was excessive; and
+then think of writing a book of travels on the spot, when I am
+continually extending my information, revising my opinions, and
+seeing the most finely finished portions of my work come part by
+part in pieces.&nbsp; Very soon I shall have no opinions
+left.&nbsp; And without an opinion, how to string artistically
+vast accumulations of fact?&nbsp; Darwin said no one could
+observe without a theory; I suppose he was right; &rsquo;tis a
+fine point of metaphysic; but I will take my oath, no man can
+write without one&mdash;at least the way he would like to, and my
+theories melt, melt, melt, and as they melt the thaw-waters wash
+down my writing, and leave unideal tracts&mdash;wastes instead of
+cultivated farms.</p>
+<p>Kipling is by far the most promising young man who has
+appeared since&mdash;ahem&mdash;I appeared.&nbsp; He amazes me by
+his precocity and various endowment.&nbsp; But he alarms me by
+his copiousness and haste.&nbsp; He should shield his fire with
+both hands &lsquo;and draw up all his strength and sweetness in
+one ball.&rsquo;&nbsp; (&lsquo;Draw all his strength and all His
+sweetness up into one ball&rsquo;?&nbsp; I cannot remember
+Marvell&rsquo;s words.)&nbsp; So the critics have been saying to
+me; but I was never capable of&mdash;and surely never guilty
+of&mdash;<a name="page215"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+215</span>such a debauch of production.&nbsp; At this rate his
+works will soon fill the habitable globe; and surely he was armed
+for better conflicts than these succinct sketches and flying
+leaves of verse?&nbsp; I look on, I admire, I rejoice for myself;
+but in a kind of ambition we all have for our tongue and
+literature I am wounded.&nbsp; If I had this man&rsquo;s
+fertility and courage, it seems to me I could heave a
+pyramid.</p>
+<p>Well, we begin to be the old fogies now; and it was high time
+<i>something</i> rose to take our places.&nbsp; Certainly Kipling
+has the gifts; the fairy godmothers were all tipsy at his
+christening: what will he do with them?</p>
+<p>Goodbye, my dear James; find an hour to write to us, and
+register your letter.&mdash;Yours affectionately,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Rudyard Kipling</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Vailima</i>, 1891.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">SIR</span>,&mdash;I cannot call to mind
+having written you, but I am so throng with occupation this may
+have fallen aside.&nbsp; I never heard tell I had any friends in
+Ireland, and I am led to understand you are come of no
+considerable family.&nbsp; The gentleman I now serve with assures
+me, however, you are a very pretty fellow and your letter
+deserves to be remarked.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s true he is himself a
+man of a <a name="page216"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+216</span>very low descent upon the one side; though upon the
+other he counts cousinship with a gentleman, my very good friend,
+the late Mr. Balfour of the Shaws, in the Lothian; which I should
+be wanting in good fellowship to forget.&nbsp; He tells me
+besides you are a man of your hands; I am not informed of your
+weapon; but if all be true it sticks in my mind I would be ready
+to make exception in your favour, and meet you like one gentleman
+with another.&nbsp; I suppose this&rsquo;ll be your purpose in
+your favour, which I could very ill make out; it&rsquo;s one I
+would be sweir to baulk you of.&nbsp; It seems, Mr. McIlvaine,
+which I take to be your name, you are in the household of a
+gentleman of the name of Coupling: for whom my friend is very
+much engaged.&nbsp; The distances being very uncommodious, I
+think it will be maybe better if we leave it to these two to
+settle all that&rsquo;s necessary to honour.&nbsp; I would have
+you to take heed it&rsquo;s a very unusual condescension on my
+part, that bear a King&rsquo;s name; and for the matter of that I
+think shame to be mingled with a person of the name of Coupling,
+which is doubtless a very good house but one I never heard tell
+of, any more than Stevenson.&nbsp; But your purpose being
+laudable, I would be sorry (as the word goes) to cut off my nose
+to spite my face.&mdash;I am, Sir, your humble servant,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">A. <span
+class="smcap">Stewart</span>,<br />
+<i>Chevalier de St. Louis</i>.</p>
+<p><i>To Mr. M&rsquo;Ilvaine</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Gentleman Private in a foot
+regiment</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>under cover
+to Mr. Coupling</i>.</p>
+<p>He has read me some of your Barrack Room Ballants, which are
+not of so noble a strain as some of mine in the Gaelic, but I
+could set some of them to the pipes if this rencounter goes as
+it&rsquo;s to be desired.&nbsp; Let&rsquo;s first, as I
+understand you to move, do each other this rational courtesys;
+and if either will survive, we may grow better acquaint.&nbsp;
+For your tastes for what&rsquo;s martial and for poetry agree
+with mine.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">A. S.</p>
+<h3><a name="page217"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+217</span><span class="smcap">to Marcel Schwob</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Sydney</i>, <i>January</i>
+19<i>th</i>, 1891.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR
+SIR</span>,&mdash;<i>Sapristi</i>, <i>comme vous y
+allez</i>!&nbsp; Richard <span class="GutSmall">III</span>. and
+Dumas, with all my heart; but not Hamlet.&nbsp; Hamlet is great
+literature; Richard <span class="GutSmall">III</span>. a big,
+black, gross, sprawling melodrama, writ with infinite spirit but
+with no refinement or philosophy by a man who had the world,
+himself, mankind, and his trade still to learn.&nbsp; I prefer
+the Vicomte de Bragelonne to Richard <span
+class="GutSmall">III</span>.; it is better done of its kind: I
+simply do not mention the Vicomte in the same part of the
+building with Hamlet, or Lear, or Othello, or any of those
+masterpieces that Shakespeare survived to give us.</p>
+<p>Also, <i>comme vous y allez</i> in my commendation!&nbsp; I
+fear my <i>solide &eacute;ducation classique</i> had best be
+described, like Shakespeare&rsquo;s, as &lsquo;little Latin and
+no Greek,&rsquo; and I was educated, let me inform you, for an
+engineer.&nbsp; I shall tell my bookseller to send you a copy of
+<i>Memories and Portraits</i>, where you will see something of my
+descent and education, as it was, and hear me at length on my
+dear Vicomte.&nbsp; I give you permission gladly to take your
+choice out of my works, and translate what you shall prefer, too
+much honoured that so clever a young man should think it worth
+the pains.&nbsp; My own choice would lie between <i>Kidnapped</i>
+and the <i>Master of Ballantrae</i>.&nbsp; Should you choose the
+latter, pray do not let Mrs. Henry thrust the sword up to the
+hilt in the frozen ground&mdash;one of my inconceivable blunders,
+an exaggeration to stagger Hugo.&nbsp; Say &lsquo;she sought to
+thrust it in the ground.&rsquo;&nbsp; In both these works you
+should be prepared for Scotticisms used deliberately.</p>
+<p>I fear my stepson will not have found time to get to Paris; he
+was overwhelmed with occupation, and is already on his voyage
+back.&nbsp; We live here in a beautiful land, amid a beautiful
+and interesting people.&nbsp; The life is still very hard: my
+wife and I live in a two-roomed cottage, <a
+name="page218"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 218</span>about three
+miles and six hundred and fifty feet above the sea; we have had
+to make the road to it; our supplies are very imperfect; in the
+wild weather of this (the hurricane) season we have much
+discomfort: one night the wind blew in our house so outrageously
+that we must sit in the dark; and as the sound of the rain on the
+roof made speech inaudible, you may imagine we found the evening
+long.&nbsp; All these things, however, are pleasant to me.&nbsp;
+You say <i>l&rsquo;artiste inconscient</i> set off to travel: you
+do not divide me right.&nbsp; 0.6 of me is artist; 0.4,
+adventurer.&nbsp; First, I suppose, come letters; then adventure;
+and since I have indulged the second part, I think the formula
+begins to change: 0.55 of an artist, 0.45 of the adventurer were
+nearer true.&nbsp; And if it had not been for my small strength,
+I might have been a different man in all things.</p>
+<p>Whatever you do, do not neglect to send me what you publish on
+Villon: I look forward to that with lively interest.&nbsp; I have
+no photograph at hand, but I will send one when I can.&nbsp; It
+would be kind if you would do the like, for I do not see much
+chance of our meeting in the flesh: and a name, and a
+handwriting, and an address, and even a style?&nbsp; I know about
+as much of Tacitus, and more of Horace; it is not enough between
+contemporaries, such as we still are.&nbsp; I have just
+remembered another of my books, which I re-read the other day,
+and thought in places good&mdash;<i>Prince Otto</i>.&nbsp; It is
+not as good as either of the others; but it has one
+recommendation&mdash;it has female parts, so it might perhaps
+please better in France.</p>
+<p>I will ask Chatto to send you, then&mdash;<i>Prince Otto</i>,
+<i>Memories and Portraits</i>, <i>Underwoods</i>, and
+<i>Ballads</i>, none of which you seem to have seen.&nbsp; They
+will be too late for the New Year: let them be an Easter
+present.</p>
+<p>You must translate me soon; you will soon have better to do
+than to transverse the work of others.&mdash;Yours very
+truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>,<br />
+With the worst pen in the South Pacific.</p>
+<h3><a name="page219"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+219</span><span class="smcap">to Charles Baxter</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>SS.</i>
+&lsquo;<i>L&uuml;beck</i>,&rsquo; <i>at sea</i> [<i>on the return
+voyage from Sydney</i>, <i>March</i> 1891].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;Perhaps
+in my old days I do grow irascible; &lsquo;the old man
+virulent&rsquo; has long been my pet name for myself.&nbsp; Well,
+the temper is at least all gone now; time is good at lowering
+these distemperatures; far better is a sharp sickness, and I am
+just (and scarce) afoot again after a smoking hot little malady
+at Sydney.&nbsp; And the temper being gone, I still think the
+same. . . .&nbsp; We have not our parents for ever; we are never
+very good to them; when they go and we have lost our front-file
+man, we begin to feel all our neglects mighty sensibly.&nbsp; I
+propose a proposal.&nbsp; My mother is here on board with me;
+to-day for once I mean to make her as happy as I am able, and to
+do that which I know she likes.&nbsp; You, on the other hand, go
+and see your father, and do ditto, and give him a real good hour
+or two.&nbsp; We shall both be glad hereafter.&mdash;Yours
+ever,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to H. B. Baildon</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Upolu</i>
+[<i>Undated</i>, <i>but written in</i> 1891].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BAILDON</span>,&mdash;This is a
+real disappointment.&nbsp; It was so long since we had met, I was
+anxious to see where time had carried and stranded us.&nbsp; Last
+time we saw each other&mdash;it must have been all ten years ago,
+as we were new to the thirties&mdash;it was only for a moment,
+and now we&rsquo;re in the forties, and before very long we shall
+be in our graves.&nbsp; Sick and well, I have had a splendid life
+of it, grudge nothing, regret very little&mdash;and then only
+some <a name="page220"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+220</span>little corners of misconduct for which I deserve
+hanging, and must infallibly be damned&mdash;and, take it all
+over, damnation and all, would hardly change with any man of my
+time, unless perhaps it were Gordon or our friend Chalmers: a man
+I admire for his virtues, love for his faults, and envy for the
+really A1 life he has, with everything heart&mdash;my heart, I
+mean&mdash;could wish.&nbsp; It is curious to think you will read
+this in the grey metropolis; go the first grey, east-windy day
+into the Caledonian Station, if it looks at all as it did of
+yore: I met Satan there.&nbsp; And then go and stand by the
+cross, and remember the other one&mdash;him that went
+down&mdash;my brother, Robert Fergusson.&nbsp; It is a pity you
+had not made me out, and seen me as patriarch and planter.&nbsp;
+I shall look forward to some record of your time with Chalmers:
+you can&rsquo;t weary me of that fellow, he is as big as a house
+and far bigger than any church, where no man warms his
+hands.&nbsp; Do you know anything of Thomson?&nbsp; Of A&mdash;,
+B&mdash;, C&mdash;, D&mdash;, E&mdash;, F&mdash;, at all?&nbsp;
+As I write C.&rsquo;s name mustard rises my nose; I have never
+forgiven that weak, amiable boy a little trick he played me when
+I could ill afford it: I mean that whenever I think of it, some
+of the old wrath kindles, not that I would hurt the poor soul, if
+I got the world with it.&nbsp; And Old X&mdash;?&nbsp; Is he
+still afloat?&nbsp; Harmless bark!&nbsp; I gather you ain&rsquo;t
+married yet, since your sister, to whom I ask to be remembered,
+goes with you.&nbsp; Did you see a silly tale, <i>John
+Nicholson&rsquo;s Predicament</i>, <a name="citation220"></a><a
+href="#footnote220" class="citation">[220]</a> or some such name,
+in which I made free with your home at Murrayfield?&nbsp; There
+is precious little sense in it, but it might amuse.&nbsp;
+Cassell&rsquo;s published it in a thing called <i>Yule-Tide</i>
+years ago, and nobody that ever I heard of read or has ever seen
+<i>Yule-Tide</i>.&nbsp; It is addressed to a class we never
+met&mdash;readers of Cassell&rsquo;s series and that class of
+conscientious chaff, and my tale was dull, though I don&rsquo;t
+recall that it was conscientious.&nbsp; Only, there&rsquo;s the
+house at Murrayfield and a dead body in it.&nbsp; Glad the <a
+name="page221"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+221</span><i>Ballads</i> amused you.&nbsp; They failed to
+entertain a coy public, at which I wondered, not that I set much
+account by my verses, which are the verses of Prosator; but I do
+know how to tell a yarn, and two of the yarns are great.&nbsp;
+<i>Rahero</i> is for its length a perfect folk-tale: savage and
+yet fine, full of tailforemost morality, ancient as the granite
+rocks; if the historian, not to say the politician, could get
+that yarn into his head, he would have learned some of his A B C.
+But the average man at home cannot understand antiquity; he is
+sunk over the ears in Roman civilisation; and a tale like that of
+<i>Rahero</i> falls on his ears inarticulate.&nbsp; The
+<i>Spectator</i> said there was no psychology in it; that
+interested me much: my grandmother (as I used to call that able
+paper, and an able paper it is, and a fair one) cannot so much as
+observe the existence of savage psychology when it is put before
+it.&nbsp; I am at bottom a psychologist and ashamed of it; the
+tale seized me one-third because of its picturesque features,
+two-thirds because of its astonishing psychology, and the
+<i>Spectator</i> says there&rsquo;s none.&nbsp; I am going on
+with a lot of island work, exulting in the knowledge of a new
+world, &lsquo;a new created world&rsquo; and new men; and I am
+sure my income will <span class="GutSmall">DECLINE</span> and
+<span class="GutSmall">FALL</span> off; for the effort of
+comprehension is death to the intelligent public, and sickness to
+the dull.</p>
+<p>I do not know why I pester you with all this trash, above all
+as you deserve nothing.&nbsp; I give you my warm <i>talofa</i>
+(&lsquo;my love to you,&rsquo; Samoan salutation).&nbsp; Write me
+again when the spirit moves you.&nbsp; And some day, if I still
+live, make out the trip again and let us hob-a-nob with our grey
+pows on my verandah.&mdash;Yours sincerely,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to W. Craibe Angus</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><a name="page222"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 222</span><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>April</i> 1891.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MR. ANGUS</span>,&mdash;Surely I
+remember you!&nbsp; It was W. C. Murray who made us acquainted,
+and we had a pleasant crack.&nbsp; I see your poet is not yet
+dead.&nbsp; I remember even our talk&mdash;or you would not think
+of trusting that invaluable <i>Jolly Beggars</i> to the
+treacherous posts, and the perils of the sea, and the
+carelessness of authors.&nbsp; I love the idea, but I could not
+bear the risk.&nbsp; However&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&lsquo;Hale be your heart, hale be your
+fiddle&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>it was kindly thought upon.</p>
+<p>My interest in Burns is, as you suppose, perennial.&nbsp; I
+would I could be present at the exhibition, with the purpose of
+which I heartily sympathise; but the <i>Nancy</i> has not waited
+in vain for me, I have followed my chest, the anchor is weighed
+long ago, I have said my last farewell to the hills and the
+heather and the lynns: like Leyden, I have gone into far lands to
+die, not stayed like Burns to mingle in the end with Scottish
+soil.&nbsp; I shall not even return like Scott for the last
+scene.&nbsp; Burns Exhibitions are all over.&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis a
+far cry to Lochow from tropical Vailima.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&lsquo;But still our hearts are true, our hearts
+are Highland,<br />
+And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>When your hand is in, will you remember our poor Edinburgh
+Robin?&nbsp; Burns alone has been just to his promise; follow
+Burns, he knew best, he knew whence he drew fire&mdash;from the
+poor, white-faced, drunken, vicious boy that raved himself to
+death in the Edinburgh madhouse.&nbsp; Surely there is more to be
+gleaned about Fergusson, and surely it is high time the task was
+set about.&nbsp; I <a name="page223"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+223</span>may tell you (because your poet is not dead) something
+of how I feel: we are three Robins who have touched the Scots
+lyre this last century.&nbsp; Well, the one is the world&rsquo;s,
+he did it, he came off, he is for ever; but I and the
+other&mdash;ah! what bonds we have&mdash;born in the same city;
+both sickly, both pestered, one nearly to madness, one to the
+madhouse, with a damnatory creed; both seeing the stars and the
+dawn, and wearing shoe-leather on the same ancient stones, under
+the same pends, down the same closes, where our common ancestors
+clashed in their armour, rusty or bright.&nbsp; And the old
+Robin, who was before Burns and the flood, died in his acute,
+painful youth, and left the models of the great things that were
+to come; and the new, who came after, outlived his greensickness,
+and has faintly tried to parody the finished work.&nbsp; If you
+will collect the strays of Robin Fergusson, fish for material,
+collect any last re-echoing of gossip, command me to do what you
+prefer&mdash;to write the preface&mdash;to write the whole if you
+prefer: anything, so that another monument (after Burns&rsquo;s)
+be set up to my unhappy predecessor on the causey of Auld
+Reekie.&nbsp; You will never know, nor will any man, how deep
+this feeling is: I believe Fergusson lives in me.&nbsp; I do, but
+tell it not in Gath; every man has these fanciful superstitions,
+coming, going, but yet enduring; only most men are so wise (or
+the poet in them so dead) that they keep their follies for
+themselves.&mdash;I am, yours very truly,</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>Vailima</i>, <i>April</i>
+1891.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR GOSSE</span>,&mdash;I have to
+thank you and Mrs. Gosse for many mementoes, chiefly for your
+<i>Life</i> of your father.&nbsp; There is a very delicate task,
+very delicately done.&nbsp; I noted one or two carelessnesses,
+which I meant to point out to you for another edition; but I find
+I lack the time, <a name="page224"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+224</span>and you will remark them for yourself against a new
+edition.&nbsp; They were two, or perhaps three, flabbinesses of
+style which (in your work) amazed me.&nbsp; Am I right in
+thinking you were a shade bored over the last chapters? or was it
+my own fault that made me think them susceptible of a more
+athletic compression?&nbsp; (The flabbinesses were not there, I
+think, but in the more admirable part, where they showed the
+bigger.)&nbsp; Take it all together, the book struck me as if you
+had been hurried at the last, but particularly hurried over the
+proofs, and could still spend a very profitable fortnight in
+earnest revision and (towards the end) heroic compression.&nbsp;
+The book, in design, subject, and general execution, is well
+worth the extra trouble.&nbsp; And even if I were wrong in
+thinking it specially wanted, it will not be lost; for do we not
+know, in Flaubert&rsquo;s dread confession, that &lsquo;prose is
+never done&rsquo;?&nbsp; What a medium to work in, for a man
+tired, perplexed among different aims and subjects, and spurred
+by the immediate need of &lsquo;siller&rsquo;!&nbsp; However,
+it&rsquo;s mine for what it&rsquo;s worth; and it&rsquo;s one of
+yours, the devil take it; and you know, as well as Flaubert, and
+as well as me, that it is <i>never done</i>; in other words, it
+is a torment of the pit, usually neglected by the bards who
+(lucky beggars!) approached the Styx in measure.&nbsp; I speak
+bitterly at the moment, having just detected in myself the last
+fatal symptom, three blank verses in succession&mdash;and I
+believe, God help me, a hemistich at the tail of them; hence I
+have deposed the labourer, come out of hell by my private trap,
+and now write to you from my little place in purgatory.&nbsp; But
+I prefer hell: would I could always dig in those red
+coals&mdash;or else be at sea in a schooner, bound for isles
+unvisited: to be on shore and not to work is
+emptiness&mdash;suicidal vacancy.</p>
+<p>I was the more interested in your <i>Life</i> of your father,
+because I meditate one of mine, or rather of my family.&nbsp; I
+have no such materials as you, and (our objections already made)
+your attack fills me with despair; it is <a
+name="page225"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 225</span>direct and
+elegant, and your style is always admirable to me&mdash;lenity,
+lucidity, usually a high strain of breeding, an elegance that has
+a pleasant air of the accidental.&nbsp; But beware of purple
+passages.&nbsp; I wonder if you think as well of your purple
+passages as I do of mine?&nbsp; I wonder if you think as ill of
+mine as I do of yours?&nbsp; I wonder; I can tell you at least
+what is wrong with yours&mdash;they are treated in the spirit of
+verse.&nbsp; The spirit&mdash;I don&rsquo;t mean the measure, I
+don&rsquo;t mean you fall into bastard cadences; what I mean is
+that they seem vacant and smoothed out, ironed, if you
+like.&nbsp; And in a style which (like yours) aims more and more
+successfully at the academic, one purple word is already much;
+three&mdash;a whole phrase&mdash;is inadmissible.&nbsp; Wed
+yourself to a clean austerity: that is your force.&nbsp; Wear a
+linen ephod, splendidly candid.&nbsp; Arrange its folds, but do
+not fasten it with any brooch.&nbsp; I swear to you, in your
+talking robes, there should be no patch of adornment; and where
+the subject forces, let it force you no further than it must; and
+be ready with a twinkle of your pleasantry.&nbsp; Yours is a fine
+tool, and I see so well how to hold it; I wonder if you see how
+to hold mine?&nbsp; But then I am to the neck in prose, and just
+now in the &lsquo;dark <i>interstylar</i> cave,&rsquo; all
+methods and effects wooing me, myself in the midst impotent to
+follow any.&nbsp; I look for dawn presently, and a full flowing
+river of expression, running whither it wills.&nbsp; But these
+useless seasons, above all, when a man <i>must</i> continue to
+spoil paper, are infinitely weary.</p>
+<p>We are in our house after a fashion; without furniture,
+&rsquo;tis true, camping there, like the family after a
+sale.&nbsp; But the bailiff has not yet appeared; he will
+probably come after.&nbsp; The place is beautiful beyond dreams;
+some fifty miles of the Pacific spread in front; deep woods all
+round; a mountain making in the sky a profile of huge trees upon
+our left; about us, the little island of our clearing, studded
+with brave old gentlemen (or ladies, or &lsquo;the twa o&rsquo;
+them&rsquo;) whom we have spared.&nbsp; It is a <a
+name="page226"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 226</span>good place
+to be in; night and morning, we have Theodore Rousseaus (always a
+new one) hung to amuse us on the walls of the world; and the
+moon&mdash;this is our good season, we have a moon just
+now&mdash;makes the night a piece of heaven.&nbsp; It amazes me
+how people can live on in the dirty north; yet if you saw our
+rainy season (which is really a caulker for wind, wet, and
+darkness&mdash;howling showers, roaring winds, pit-blackness at
+noon) you might marvel how we could endure that.&nbsp; And we
+can&rsquo;t.&nbsp; But there&rsquo;s a winter everywhere; only
+ours is in the summer.&nbsp; Mark my words: there will be a
+winter in heaven&mdash;and in hell.&nbsp; <i>Cela rentre dans les
+proc&eacute;d&eacute;s du bon Dieu</i>; <i>et vous
+verrez</i>!&nbsp; There&rsquo;s another very good thing about
+Vailima, I am away from the little bubble of the literary
+life.&nbsp; It is not all beer and skittles, is it?&nbsp; By the
+by, my <i>Ballads</i> seem to have been dam bad; all the crickets
+sing so in their crickety papers; and I have no ghost of an idea
+on the point myself: verse is always to me the unknowable.&nbsp;
+You might tell me how it strikes a professional bard: not that it
+really matters, for, of course, good or bad, I don&rsquo;t think
+I shall get into <i>that</i> galley any more.&nbsp; But I should
+like to know if you join the shrill chorus of the crickets.&nbsp;
+The crickets are the devil in all to you: &rsquo;tis a strange
+thing, they seem to rejoice like a strong man in their
+injustice.&nbsp; I trust you got my letter about your Browning
+book.&nbsp; In case it missed, I wish to say again that your
+publication of Browning&rsquo;s kind letter, as an illustration
+of <i>his</i> character, was modest, proper, and in radiant good
+taste.&mdash;In Witness whereof, etc., etc.,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Miss Rawlinson</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><a name="page227"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 227</span><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Apia</i>,
+<i>Samoa</i>, <i>April</i> 1891.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MAY</span>,&mdash;I never think
+of you by any more ceremonial name, so I will not pretend.&nbsp;
+There is not much chance that I shall forget you until the time
+comes for me to forget all this little turmoil in a corner
+(though indeed I have been in several corners) of an
+inconsiderable planet.&nbsp; You remain in my mind for a good
+reason, having given me (in so short a time) the most delightful
+pleasure.&nbsp; I shall remember, and you must still be
+beautiful.&nbsp; The truth is, you must grow more so, or you will
+soon be less.&nbsp; It is not so easy to be a flower, even when
+you bear a flower&rsquo;s name.&nbsp; And if I admired you so
+much, and still remember you, it is not because of your face, but
+because you were then worthy of it, as you must still
+continue.</p>
+<p>Will you give my heartiest congratulations to Mr. S.?&nbsp; He
+has my admiration; he is a brave man; when I was young, I should
+have run away from the sight of you, pierced with the sense of my
+unfitness.&nbsp; He is more wise and manly.&nbsp; What a good
+husband he will have to be!&nbsp; And you&mdash;what a good
+wife!&nbsp; Carry your love tenderly.&nbsp; I will never forgive
+him&mdash;or you&mdash;it is in both your hands&mdash;if the face
+that once gladdened my heart should be changed into one sour or
+sorrowful.</p>
+<p>What a person you are to give flowers!&nbsp; It was so I first
+heard of you; and now you are giving the May flower!</p>
+<p>Yes, Skerryvore has passed; it was, for us.&nbsp; But I wish
+you could see us in our new home on the mountain, in the middle
+of great woods, and looking far out over the Pacific.&nbsp; When
+Mr. S. is very rich, he must bring you round the world and let
+you see it, and see the old gentleman and the old lady.&nbsp; I
+mean to live quite a long while yet, and my wife must do the
+same, or else I couldn&rsquo;t manage it; so, you see, you will
+have plenty of time; and it&rsquo;s a pity not to see the most
+beautiful places, and the most beautiful people moving there, and
+the real stars and moon <a name="page228"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 228</span>overhead, instead of the tin
+imitations that preside over London.&nbsp; I do not think my wife
+very well; but I am in hopes she will now have a little
+rest.&nbsp; It has been a hard business, above all for her; we
+lived four months in the hurricane season in a miserable house,
+overborne with work, ill-fed, continually worried, drowned in
+perpetual rain, beaten upon by wind, so that we must sit in the
+dark in the evenings; and then I ran away, and she had a month of
+it alone.&nbsp; Things go better now; the back of the work is
+broken; and we are still foolish enough to look forward to a
+little peace.&nbsp; I am a very different person from the
+prisoner of Skerryvore.&nbsp; The other day I was
+three-and-twenty hours in an open boat; it made me pretty ill;
+but fancy its not killing me half-way!&nbsp; It is like a fairy
+story that I should have recovered liberty and strength, and
+should go round again among my fellow-men, boating, riding,
+bathing, toiling hard with a wood-knife in the forest.&nbsp; I
+can wish you nothing more delightful than my fortune in life; I
+wish it you; and better, if the thing be possible.</p>
+<p>Lloyd is tinkling below me on the typewriter; my wife has just
+left the room; she asks me to say she would have written had she
+been well enough, and hopes to do it still.&mdash;Accept the best
+wishes of your admirer,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Miss Adelaide Boodle</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Vailima</i>, <i>May</i>
+1891.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR ADELAIDE</span>,&mdash;I will
+own you just did manage to tread on my gouty toe; and I beg to
+assure you with most people I should simply have turned away and
+said no more.&nbsp; My cudgelling was therefore in the nature of
+a caress or testimonial.</p>
+<p>God forbid, I should seem to judge for you on such a <a
+name="page229"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 229</span>point; it
+was what you seemed to set forth as your reasons that fluttered
+my old Presbyterian spirit&mdash;for, mind you, I am a child of
+the Covenanters&mdash;whom I do not love, but they are mine after
+all, my father&rsquo;s and my mother&rsquo;s&mdash;and they had
+their merits too, and their ugly beauties, and grotesque
+heroisms, that I love them for, the while I laugh at them; but in
+their name and mine do what you think right, and let the world
+fall.&nbsp; That is the privilege and the duty of private
+persons; and I shall think the more of you at the greater
+distance, because you keep a promise to your fellow-man, your
+helper and creditor in life, by just so much as I was tempted to
+think the less of you (O not much, or I would never have been
+angry) when I thought you were the swallower of a (tinfoil)
+formula.</p>
+<p>I must say I was uneasy about my letter, not because it was
+too strong as an expression of my unregenerate sentiments, but
+because I knew full well it should be followed by something
+kinder.&nbsp; And the mischief has been in my health.&nbsp; I
+fell sharply sick in Sydney, was put aboard the
+<i>L&uuml;beck</i> pretty bad, got to Vailima, hung on a month
+there, and didn&rsquo;t pick up as well as my work needed; set
+off on a journey, gained a great deal, lost it again; and am back
+at Vailima, still no good at my necessary work.&nbsp; I tell you
+this for my imperfect excuse that I should not have written you
+again sooner to remove the bad taste of my last.</p>
+<p>A road has been called Adelaide Road; it leads from the back
+of our house to the bridge, and thence to the garden, and by a
+bifurcation to the pig pen.&nbsp; It is thus much traversed,
+particularly by Fanny.&nbsp; An oleander, the only one of your
+seeds that prospered in this climate, grows there; and the name
+is now some week or ten days applied and published.&nbsp; <span
+class="smcap">Adelaide Road</span> leads also into the bush, to
+the banana patch, and by a second bifurcation over the left
+branch of the stream to the plateau and the right hand of the
+gorges.&nbsp; In short, it <a name="page230"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 230</span>leads to all sorts of good, and is,
+besides, in itself a pretty winding path, bound downhill among
+big woods to the margin of the stream.</p>
+<p>What a strange idea, to think me a Jew-hater!&nbsp; Isaiah and
+David and Heine are good enough for me; and I leave more
+unsaid.&nbsp; Were I of Jew blood, I do not think I could ever
+forgive the Christians; the ghettos would get in my nostrils like
+mustard or lit gunpowder.&nbsp; Just so you as being a child of
+the Presbytery, I retain&mdash;I need not dwell on that.&nbsp;
+The ascendant hand is what I feel most strongly; I am bound in
+and in with my forbears; were he one of mine, I should not be
+struck at all by Mr. Moss of Bevis Marks, I should still see
+behind him Moses of the Mount and the Tables and the shining
+face.&nbsp; We are all nobly born; fortunate those who know it;
+blessed those who remember.</p>
+<p>I am, my dear Adelaide, most genuinely yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p>Write by return to say you are better, and I will try to do
+the same.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Charles Baxter</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Vailima</i>], <i>Tuesday</i>,
+19<i>th</i> <i>May</i> &rsquo;91.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;I
+don&rsquo;t know what you think of me, not having written to you
+at all during your illness.&nbsp; I find two sheets begun with
+your name, but that is no excuse. . . . I am keeping bravely;
+getting about better, every day, and hope soon to be in my usual
+fettle.&nbsp; My books begin to come; and I fell once more on the
+Old Bailey session papers.&nbsp; I have 1778, 1784, and
+1786.&nbsp; Should you be able to lay hands on any other volumes,
+above all a little later, I should be very glad you should buy
+them for me.&nbsp; I particularly want <i>one</i> or <i>two</i>
+during <a name="page231"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+231</span>the course of the Peninsular War.&nbsp; Come to think,
+I ought rather to have communicated this want to Bain.&nbsp;
+Would it bore you to communicate to that effect with the great
+man?&nbsp; The sooner I have them, the better for me.&nbsp;
+&rsquo;Tis for Henry Shovel.&nbsp; But Henry Shovel has now
+turned into a work called &lsquo;The Shovels of Newton French:
+Including Memoirs of Henry Shovel, a Private in the Peninsular
+War,&rsquo; which work is to begin in 1664 with the marriage of
+Skipper, afterwards Alderman Shovel of Bristol, Henry&rsquo;s
+great-great-grandfather, and end about 1832 with his own second
+marriage to the daughter of his runaway aunt.&nbsp; Will the
+public ever stand such an opus?&nbsp; Gude kens, but it tickles
+me.&nbsp; Two or three historical personages will just appear:
+Judge Jeffreys, Wellington, Colquhoun, Grant, and I think
+Townsend the runner.&nbsp; I know the public won&rsquo;t like it;
+let &rsquo;em lump it then; I mean to make it good; it will be
+more like a saga.&mdash;Adieu, yours ever affectionately,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
+class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i> [<i>Summer</i>
+1891].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;I find
+among my grandfather&rsquo;s papers his own reminiscences of his
+voyage round the north with Sir Walter, eighty years ago,
+<i>labuntur anni</i>!&nbsp; They are not remarkably good, but he
+was not a bad observer, and several touches seem to me
+speaking.&nbsp; It has occurred to me you might like them to
+appear in the <i>Magazine</i>.&nbsp; If you would, kindly let me
+know, and tell me how you would like it handled.&nbsp; My
+grandad&rsquo;s <span class="GutSmall">MS</span>. runs to between
+six and seven thousand words, which I could abbreviate of
+anecdotes that scarce touch Sir W.&nbsp; Would you like this
+done?&nbsp; Would you like me to introduce the old
+gentleman?&nbsp; I had something of the sort in my mind, and
+could fill a few columns rather <i>&agrave; propos</i>.&nbsp; <a
+name="page232"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 232</span>I give you
+the first offer of this, according to your request; for though it
+may forestall one of the interests of my biography, the thing
+seems to me particularly suited for prior appearance in a
+magazine.</p>
+<p>I see the first number of the <i>Wrecker</i>; I thought it
+went lively enough; and by a singular accident, the picture is
+not unlike Tai-o-hae!</p>
+<p>Thus we see the age of miracles, etc.&mdash;Yours very
+sincerely,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p>Proofs for next mail.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to W. Craibe Angus</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Summer</i> 1891.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MR. ANGUS</span>,&mdash;You can
+use my letter as you will.&nbsp; The parcel has not come; pray
+Heaven the next post bring it safe.&nbsp; Is it possible for me
+to write a preface here?&nbsp; I will try if you like, if you
+think I must: though surely there are Rivers in Assyria.&nbsp; Of
+course you will send me sheets of the catalogue; I suppose it
+(the preface) need not be long; perhaps it should be rather very
+short?&nbsp; Be sure you give me your views upon these
+points.&nbsp; Also tell me what names to mention among those of
+your helpers, and do remember to register everything, else it is
+not safe.</p>
+<p>The true place (in my view) for a monument to Fergusson were
+the churchyard of Haddington.&nbsp; But as that would perhaps not
+carry many votes, I should say one of the two following
+sites:&mdash;First, either as near the site of the old Bedlam as
+we could get, or, second, beside the Cross, the heart of his
+city.&nbsp; Upon this I would have a fluttering butterfly, and, I
+suggest, the citation,</p>
+<p class="poetry">Poor butterfly, thy case I mourn.</p>
+<p>For the case of Fergusson is not one to pretend about.&nbsp; A
+more miserable tragedy the sun never shone upon, or <a
+name="page233"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 233</span>(in
+consideration of our climate) I should rather say refused to
+brighten.&mdash;Yours truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p>Where Burns goes will not matter.&nbsp; He is no local poet,
+like your Robin the First; he is general as the casing air.&nbsp;
+Glasgow, as the chief city of Scottish men, would do well; but
+for God&rsquo;s sake, don&rsquo;t let it be like the Glasgow
+memorial to Knox: I remember, when I first saw this, laughing for
+an hour by Shrewsbury clock.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to H. C. Ide</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Vailima</i>, <i>June</i> 19,
+1891.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MR. IDE</span>,&mdash;Herewith
+please find the <span class="smcap">Document</span>, which I
+trust will prove sufficient in law.&nbsp; It seems to me very
+attractive in its eclecticism; Scots, English, and Roman law
+phrases are all indifferently introduced, and a quotation from
+the works of Haynes Bayly can hardly fail to attract the
+indulgence of the Bench.&mdash;Yours very truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p>I, Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate of the Scots Bar, author
+of <i>The Master of Ballantrae</i> and <i>Moral Emblems</i>,
+stuck civil engineer, sole owner and patentee of the Palace and
+Plantation known as Vailima in the island of Upolu, Samoa, a
+British Subject, being in sound mind, and pretty well, I thank
+you, in body:</p>
+<p>In consideration that Miss Annie H. Ide, daughter of H. C.
+Ide, in the town of Saint Johnsbury, in the county of Caledonia,
+in the state of Vermont, United States of America, was born, out
+of all reason, upon Christmas Day, and is therefore out of all
+justice denied the consolation and profit of a proper
+birthday;</p>
+<p><a name="page234"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 234</span>And
+considering that I, the said Robert Louis Stevenson, have
+attained an age when O, we never mention it, and that I have now
+no further use for a birthday of any description;</p>
+<p>And in consideration that I have met H. C. Ide, the father of
+the said Annie H. Ide, and found him about as white a land
+commissioner as I require:</p>
+<p><i>Have transferred</i>, and <i>do hereby transfer</i>, to the
+said Annie H. Ide, <i>all and whole</i> my rights and priviledges
+in the thirteenth day of November, formerly my birthday, now,
+hereby, and henceforth, the birthday of the said Annie H. Ide, to
+have, hold, exercise, and enjoy the same in the customary manner,
+by the sporting of fine raiment, eating of rich meats, and
+receipt of gifts, compliments, and copies of verse, according to
+the manner of our ancestors;</p>
+<p><i>And I direct</i> the said Annie H. Ide to add to the said
+name of Annie H. Ide the name Louisa&mdash;at least in private;
+and I charge her to use my said birthday with moderation and
+humanity, <i>et tamquam bona filia famili&aelig;</i>, the said
+birthday not being so young as it once was, and having carried me
+in a very satisfactory manner since I can remember;</p>
+<p>And in case the said Annie H. Ide shall neglect or contravene
+either of the above conditions, I hereby revoke the donation and
+transfer my rights in the said birthday to the President of the
+United States of America for the time being:</p>
+<p>In witness whereof I have hereto set my hand and seal this
+nineteenth day of June in the year of grace eighteen hundred and
+ninety-one.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+<a href="images/p234b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Circle with word &lsquo;seal&rsquo; in it"
+title=
+"Circle with word &lsquo;seal&rsquo; in it"
+ src="images/p234s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p><i>Witness</i>, <span class="smcap">Lloyd Osbourne</span>,</p>
+<p><i>Witness</i>, <span class="smcap">Harold Watts</span>.</p>
+<h3><a name="page235"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+235</span><span class="smcap">to Henry James</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Vailima</i>, <i>October</i>
+1891.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENRY JAMES</span>,&mdash;From
+this perturbed and hunted being expect but a line, and that line
+shall be but a whoop for Adela.&nbsp; O she&rsquo;s delicious,
+delicious; I could live and die with Adela&mdash;die, rather the
+better of the two; you never did a straighter thing, and never
+will.</p>
+<p><i>David Balfour</i>, second part of <i>Kidnapped</i>, is on
+the stocks at last; and is not bad, I think.&nbsp; As for <i>The
+Wrecker</i>, it&rsquo;s a machine, you know&mdash;don&rsquo;t
+expect aught else&mdash;a machine, and a police machine; but I
+believe the end is one of the most genuine butcheries in
+literature; and we point to our machine with a modest pride, as
+the only police machine without a villain.&nbsp; Our criminals
+are a most pleasing crew, and leave the dock with scarce a stain
+upon their character.</p>
+<p>What a different line of country to be trying to draw Adela,
+and trying to write the last four chapters of <i>The
+Wrecker</i>!&nbsp; Heavens, it&rsquo;s like two centuries; and
+ours is such rude, transpontine business, aiming only at a
+certain fervour of conviction and sense of energy and violence in
+the men; and yours is so neat and bright and of so exquisite a
+surface!&nbsp; Seems dreadful to send such a book to such an
+author; but your name is on the list.&nbsp; And we do modestly
+ask you to consider the chapters on the <i>Norah Creina</i> with
+the study of Captain Nares, and the forementioned last four, with
+their brutality of substance and the curious (and perhaps
+unsound) technical man&oelig;uvre of running the story together
+to a point as we go along, the narrative becoming more succinct
+and the details fining off with every page.&mdash;Sworn affidavit
+of</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p><a name="page236"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 236</span><i>No
+person now alive has beaten Adela</i>: <i>I adore Adela and her
+maker</i>.&nbsp; <i>Sic subscrib.</i></p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p>A Sublime Poem to follow.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Adela, Adela, Adela Chart,<br />
+What have you done to my elderly heart?<br />
+Of all the ladies of paper and ink<br />
+I count you the paragon, call you the pink.<br />
+The word of your brother depicts you in part:<br />
+&lsquo;You raving maniac!&rsquo; Adela Chart;<br />
+But in all the asylums that cumber the ground,<br />
+So delightful a maniac was ne&rsquo;er to be found.</p>
+<p class="poetry">I pore on you, dote on you, clasp you to
+heart,<br />
+I laud, love, and laugh at you, Adela Chart,<br />
+And thank my dear maker the while I admire<br />
+That I can be neither your husband nor sire.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Your husband&rsquo;s, your sire&rsquo;s were a
+difficult part;<br />
+You&rsquo;re a byway to suicide, Adela Chart;<br />
+But to read of, depicted by exquisite James,<br />
+O, sure you&rsquo;re the flower and quintessence of dames.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Eructavit cor meum.</i></p>
+<p>My heart was inditing a goodly matter about Adela Chart.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Though oft I&rsquo;ve been touched by the
+volatile dart,<br />
+To none have I grovelled but Adela Chart,<br />
+There are passable ladies, no question, in art&mdash;<br />
+But where is the marrow of Adela Chart?<br />
+I dreamed that to Tyburn I passed in the cart&mdash;<br />
+I dreamed I was married to Adela Chart:<br />
+From the first I awoke with a palpable start,<br />
+The second dumfoundered me, Adela Chart!</p>
+<p><a name="page237"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+237</span>Another verse bursts from me, you see; no end to the
+violence of the Muse.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>October</i> 8<i>th</i>, 1891.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;All
+right, you shall have the <i>Tales of my Grandfather</i> soon,
+but I guess we&rsquo;ll try and finish off <i>The Wrecker</i>
+first.&nbsp; <i>&Agrave; propos</i> of whom, please send some
+advanced sheets to Cassell&rsquo;s&mdash;away ahead of
+you&mdash;so that they may get a dummy out.</p>
+<p>Do you wish to illustrate <i>My Grandfather</i>?&nbsp; He
+mentions as excellent a portrait of Scott by Basil Hall&rsquo;s
+brother.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t think I ever saw this engraved;
+would it not, if you could get track of it, prove a taking
+embellishment?&nbsp; I suggest this for your consideration and
+inquiry.&nbsp; A new portrait of Scott strikes me as good.&nbsp;
+There is a hard, tough, constipated old portrait of my
+grandfather hanging in my aunt&rsquo;s house, Mrs. Alan
+Stevenson, 16 St. Leonard&rsquo;s Terrace, Chelsea, which has
+never been engraved&mdash;the better portrait, Joseph&rsquo;s
+bust has been reproduced, I believe, twice&mdash;and which, I am
+sure, my aunt would let you have a copy of.&nbsp; The plate could
+be of use for the book when we get so far, and thus to place it
+in the <i>Magazine</i> might be an actual saving.</p>
+<p>I am swallowed up in politics for the first, I hope for the
+last, time in my sublunary career.&nbsp; It is a painful,
+thankless trade; but one thing that came up I could not pass in
+silence.&nbsp; Much drafting, addressing, deputationising has
+eaten up all my time, and again (to my contrition) I leave you
+Wreckerless.&nbsp; As soon as the mail leaves I tackle it
+straight.&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 E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i> [<i>Autumn</i>
+1891].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;The
+time draws nigh, the mail is near due, and I snatch a moment of
+collapse so that you may have at least some sort of a scratch of
+note along with the</p>
+<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;end</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;of</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">The</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">Wrecker.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Hurray!</p>
+<p>which I mean to go herewith.&nbsp; It has taken me a devil of
+a pull, but I think it&rsquo;s going to be ready.&nbsp; If I did
+not know you were on the stretch waiting for it and trembling for
+your illustrations, I would keep it for another finish; but
+things being as they are, I will let it go the best way I can get
+it.&nbsp; I am now within two pages of the end of Chapter <span
+class="GutSmall">XXV</span>., which is the last chapter, the end
+with its gathering up of loose threads, being the dedication to
+Low, and addressed to him: this is my last and best expedient for
+the knotting up of these loose cards.&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis possible I
+may not get that finished in time, in which case you&rsquo;ll
+receive only Chapters <span class="GutSmall">XXII</span>. to
+<span class="GutSmall">XXV</span>. by this mail, which is all
+that can be required for illustration.</p>
+<p>I wish you would send me <i>Memoirs of Baron Marbot</i>
+(French); <i>Introduction to the Study of the History of
+Language</i>, Strong, Logeman &amp; Wheeler; <i>Principles of
+Psychology</i>, William James; Morris &amp; Magnusson&rsquo;s
+<i>Saga Library</i>, any volumes that are out; George
+Meredith&rsquo;s <i>One of our Conquerors</i>; <i>L&agrave;
+Bas</i>, by Huysmans (French); O&rsquo;Connor Morris&rsquo;s
+<i>Great Commanders of Modern Times</i>; <i>Life&rsquo;s
+Handicap</i>, by Kipling; of Taine&rsquo;s <i>Origines de la
+France Contemporaine</i>, I have only as far as <i>la
+R&eacute;volution</i>, vol. iii.; if another volume is out,
+please add that.&nbsp; There is for a book-box.</p>
+<p>I hope you will like the end; I think it is rather strong
+meat.&nbsp; I have got into such a deliberate, dilatory,
+expansive <a name="page239"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+239</span>turn, that the effort to compress this last yarn was
+unwelcome; but the longest yarn has to come to an end
+sometime.&nbsp; Please look it over for carelessnesses, and tell
+me if it had any effect upon your jaded editorial mind.&nbsp;
+I&rsquo;ll see if ever I have time to add more.</p>
+<p>I add to my book-box list Adams&rsquo; <i>Historical
+Essays</i>; the Plays of A. W. Pinero&mdash;all that have
+appeared, and send me the rest in course as they do appear;
+<i>Noughts and Crosses</i> by Q.; Robertson&rsquo;s <i>Scotland
+under her Early Kings</i>.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Sunday</i>.</p>
+<p>The deed is done, didst thou not hear a noise?&nbsp;
+&lsquo;The end&rsquo; has been written to this endless yarn, and
+I am once more a free man.&nbsp; What will he do with it?</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to W. Craibe Angus</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>November</i> 1891.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MR.
+ANGUS</span>,&mdash;Herewith the invaluable sheets.&nbsp; They
+came months after your letter, and I trembled; but here they are,
+and I have scrawled my vile name on them, and &lsquo;thocht
+shame&rsquo; as I did it.&nbsp; I am expecting the sheets of your
+catalogue, so that I may attack the preface.&nbsp; Please give me
+all the time you can.&nbsp; The sooner the better; you might even
+send me early proofs as they are sent out, to give me more
+incubation.&nbsp; I used to write as slow as judgment; now I
+write rather fast; but I am still &lsquo;a slow study,&rsquo; and
+sit a long while silent on my eggs.&nbsp; Unconscious thought,
+there is the only method: macerate your subject, let it boil
+slow, then take the lid off and look in&mdash;and there your
+stuff is, good or bad.&nbsp; But the journalist&rsquo;s method is
+the way to manufacture lies; it is will-worship&mdash;if you know
+the luminous quaker phrase; and the will is only to be brought in
+the field for study, and again for revision.&nbsp; The essential
+part of work is not an act, it is a state.</p>
+<p>I do not know why I write you this trash.</p>
+<p><a name="page240"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 240</span>Many
+thanks for your handsome dedication.&nbsp; I have not yet had
+time to do more than glance at Mrs. Begg; it looks
+interesting.&mdash;Yours very truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Miss Annie H. Ide</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>
+[<i>November</i> 1891].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LOUISA</span>,&mdash;Your
+picture of the church, the photograph of yourself and your
+sister, and your very witty and pleasing letter, came all in a
+bundle, and made me feel I had my money&rsquo;s worth for that
+birthday.&nbsp; I am now, I must be, one of your nearest
+relatives; exactly what we are to each other, I do not know, I
+doubt if the case has ever happened before&mdash;your papa ought
+to know, and I don&rsquo;t believe he does; but I think I ought
+to call you in the meanwhile, and until we get the advice of
+counsel learned in the law, my name-daughter.&nbsp; Well, I was
+extremely pleased to see by the church that my name-daughter
+could draw; by the letter, that she was no fool; and by the
+photograph, that she was a pretty girl, which hurts
+nothing.&nbsp; See how virtues are rewarded!&nbsp; My first idea
+of adopting you was entirely charitable; and here I find that I
+am quite proud of it, and of you, and that I chose just the kind
+of name-daughter I wanted.&nbsp; For I can draw too, or rather I
+mean to say I could before I forgot how; and I am very far from
+being a fool myself, however much I may look it; and I am as
+beautiful as the day, or at least I once hoped that perhaps I
+might be going to be.&nbsp; And so I might.&nbsp; So that you see
+we are well met, and peers on these important points.&nbsp; I am
+<i>very</i> glad also that you are older than your sister.&nbsp;
+So should I have been, if I had had one.&nbsp; So that the number
+of points and virtues which you have inherited from your
+name-father is already quite surprising.</p>
+<p>I wish you would tell your father&mdash;not that I like to <a
+name="page241"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 241</span>encourage
+my rival&mdash;that we have had a wonderful time here of late,
+and that they are having a cold day on Mulinuu, and the consuls
+are writing reports, and I am writing to the <i>Times</i>, and if
+we don&rsquo;t get rid of our friends this time I shall begin to
+despair of everything but my name-daughter.</p>
+<p>You are quite wrong as to the effect of the birthday on your
+age.&nbsp; From the moment the deed was registered (as it was in
+the public press with every solemnity), the 13th of November
+became your own <i>and only</i> birthday, and you ceased to have
+been born on Christmas Day.&nbsp; Ask your father: I am sure he
+will tell you this is sound law.&nbsp; You are thus become a
+month and twelve days younger than you were, but will go on
+growing older for the future in the regular and human manner from
+one 13th November to the next.&nbsp; The effect on me is more
+doubtful; I may, as you suggest, live for ever; I might, on the
+other hand, come to pieces like the one-horse shay at a
+moment&rsquo;s notice; doubtless the step was risky, but I do not
+the least regret that which enables me to sign myself your
+revered and delighted name-father,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Fred Orr</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Upolu</i>,
+<i>Samoa</i>, <i>November</i> 28<i>th</i>, 1891.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR SIR</span>,&mdash;Your obliging
+communication is to hand.&nbsp; I am glad to find that you have
+read some of my books, and to see that you spell my name
+right.&nbsp; This is a point (for some reason) of great
+difficulty; and I believe that a gentleman who can spell
+Stevenson with a v at sixteen, should have a show for the
+Presidency before fifty.&nbsp; By that time</p>
+<blockquote><p>I, nearer to the wayside inn,</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><a name="page242"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+242</span>predict that you will have outgrown your taste for
+autographs, but perhaps your son may have inherited the
+collection, and on the morning of the great day will recall my
+prophecy to your mind.&nbsp; And in the papers of 1921 (say) this
+letter may arouse a smile.</p>
+<p>Whatever you do, read something else besides novels and
+newspapers; the first are good enough when they are good; the
+second, at their best, are worth nothing.&nbsp; Read great books
+of literature and history; try to understand the Roman Empire and
+the Middle Ages; be sure you do not understand when you dislike
+them; condemnation is non-comprehension.&nbsp; And if you know
+something of these two periods, you will know a little more about
+to-day, and may be a good President.</p>
+<p>I send you my best wishes, and am yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>,<br />
+<i>Author of a vast quantity of little books</i>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Vailima</i>, <i>December</i>
+1891.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;The
+end of <i>The Wrecker</i> having but just come in, you will, I
+dare say, be appalled to receive three (possibly four) chapters
+of a new book of the least attractive sort: a history of nowhere
+in a corner, for no time to mention, running to a volume!&nbsp;
+Well, it may very likely be an illusion; it is very likely no one
+could possibly wish to read it, but I wish to publish it.&nbsp;
+If you don&rsquo;t cotton to the idea, kindly set it up at my
+expense, and let me know your terms for publishing.&nbsp; The
+great affair to me is to have per return (if it might be) four or
+five&mdash;better say half a dozen&mdash;sets of the roughest
+proofs that can be drawn.&nbsp; There are a good many men here
+whom I want to read the blessed thing, and not one would have <a
+name="page243"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 243</span>the energy
+to read <span class="GutSmall">MS</span>.&nbsp; At the same time,
+if you care to glance at it, and have the time, I should be very
+glad of your opinion as to whether I have made any step at all
+towards possibly inducing folk at home to read matter so
+extraneous and outlandish.&nbsp; I become heavy and owlish; years
+sit upon me; it begins to seem to me to be a man&rsquo;s business
+to leave off his damnable faces and say his say.&nbsp; Else I
+could have made it pungent and light and lively.&nbsp; In
+considering, kindly forget that I am R. L. S.; think of the four
+chapters as a book you are reading, by an inhabitant of our
+&lsquo;lovely but fatil&rsquo; islands; and see if it could
+possibly amuse the hebetated public.&nbsp; I have to publish
+anyway, you understand; I have a purpose beyond; I am concerned
+for some of the parties to this quarrel.&nbsp; What I want to
+hear is from curiosity; what I want you to judge of is what we
+are to do with the book in a business sense.&nbsp; To me it is
+not business at all; I had meant originally to lay all the
+profits to the credit of Samoa; when it comes to the pinch of
+writing, I judge this unfair&mdash;I give too much&mdash;and I
+mean to keep (if there be any profit at all) one-half for the
+artisan; the rest I shall hold over to give to the Samoans <i>for
+that which I choose and against work done</i>.&nbsp; I think I
+have never heard of greater insolence than to attempt such a
+subject; yet the tale is so strange and mixed, and the people so
+oddly charactered&mdash;above all, the whites&mdash;and the high
+note of the hurricane and the warships is so well prepared to
+take popular interest, and the latter part is so directly in the
+day&rsquo;s movement, that I am not without hope but some may
+read it; and if they don&rsquo;t, a murrain on them!&nbsp; Here
+is, for the first time, a tale of Greeks&mdash;Homeric
+Greeks&mdash;mingled with moderns, and all true; Odysseus
+alongside of Rajah Brooke, <i>proportion gard&eacute;e</i>; and
+all true.&nbsp; Here is for the first time since the Greeks (that
+I remember) the history of a handful of men, where all know each
+other in the eyes, and live close in a few acres, narrated at
+length, and with the seriousness of history.&nbsp; Talk of the
+modern novel; here <a name="page244"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+244</span>is a modern history.&nbsp; And if I had the misfortune
+to found a school, the legitimate historian might lie down and
+die, for he could never overtake his material.&nbsp; Here is a
+little tale that has not &lsquo;caret&rsquo;-ed its
+&lsquo;vates&rsquo;; &lsquo;sacer&rsquo; is another point.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Henry James</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>December</i> 7<i>th</i>,
+1891.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENRY
+JAMES</span>,&mdash;Thanks for yours; your former letter was
+lost; so it appears was my long and masterly treatise on the
+<i>Tragic Muse</i>.&nbsp; I remember sending it very well, and
+there went by the same mail a long and masterly tractate to Gosse
+about his daddy&rsquo;s life, for which I have been long
+expecting an acknowledgment, and which is plainly gone to the
+bottom with the other.&nbsp; If you see Gosse, please mention
+it.&nbsp; These gems of criticism are now lost literature, like
+the tomes of Alexandria.&nbsp; I could not do &rsquo;em
+again.&nbsp; And I must ask you to be content with a dull head, a
+weary hand, and short commons, for to-day, as I am physically
+tired with hard work of every kind, the labours of the planter
+and the author both piled upon me mountain deep.&nbsp; I am
+delighted beyond expression by Bourget&rsquo;s book: he has
+phrases which affect me almost like Montaigne; I had read ere
+this a masterly essay of his on Pascal; this book does it; I
+write for all his essays by this mail, and shall try to meet him
+when I come to Europe.&nbsp; The proposal is to pass a summer in
+France, I think in Royat, where the faithful could come and visit
+me; they are now not many.&nbsp; I expect Henry James to come and
+break a crust or two with us.&nbsp; I believe it will be only my
+wife and myself; and she will go over to England, but not I, or
+possibly incog. to Southampton, and then to Boscombe to see poor
+<a name="page245"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 245</span>Lady
+Shelley.&nbsp; I am writing&mdash;trying to write in a Babel fit
+for the bottomless pit; my wife, her daughter, her grandson and
+my mother, all shrieking at each other round the house&mdash;not
+in war, thank God! but the din is ultra martial, and the note of
+Lloyd joins in occasionally, and the cause of this to-do is
+simply cacao, whereof chocolate comes.&nbsp; You may drink of our
+chocolate perhaps in five or six years from now, and not know
+it.&nbsp; It makes a fine bustle, and gives us some hard work,
+out of which I have slunk for to-day.</p>
+<p>I have a story coming out: God knows when or how; it answers
+to the name of the <i>Beach of Fales&agrave;</i>, and I think
+well of it.&nbsp; I was delighted with the <i>Tragic Muse</i>; I
+thought the Muse herself one of your best works; I was delighted
+also to hear of the success of your piece, as you know I am a dam
+failure, <a name="citation245"></a><a href="#footnote245"
+class="citation">[245]</a> and might have dined with the dinner
+club that Daudet and these parties frequented.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Next day</i>.</p>
+<p>I have just been breakfasting at Baiae and Brindisi, and the
+charm of Bourget hag-rides me.&nbsp; I wonder if this exquisite
+fellow, all made of fiddle-strings and scent and intelligence,
+could bear any of my bald prose.&nbsp; If you think he could, ask
+Colvin to send him a copy of these last essays of mine when they
+appear; and tell Bourget they go to him from a South Sea Island
+as literal homage.&nbsp; I have read no new book for years that
+gave me the same literary thrill as his <i>Sensations
+d&rsquo;Italie</i>.&nbsp; If (as I imagine) my cut-and-dry
+literature would be death to him, and worse than
+death&mdash;journalism&mdash;be silent on the point.&nbsp; For I
+have a great curiosity to know him, and if he doesn&rsquo;t know
+my work, I shall have the better chance of making his
+acquaintance.&nbsp; I read <i>The Pupil</i> the other day with
+great joy; your little boy is admirable; why is there no little
+boy like that unless he hails from the Great Republic?</p>
+<p>Here I broke off, and wrote Bourget a dedication; no use
+resisting; it&rsquo;s a love affair.&nbsp; O, he&rsquo;s
+exquisite, I bless <a name="page246"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+246</span>you for the gift of him.&nbsp; I have really enjoyed
+this book as I&mdash;almost as I&mdash;used to enjoy books when I
+was going twenty&mdash;twenty-three; and these are the years for
+reading!</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Vailima</i>] <i>Jan.</i>
+2<i>nd</i>, &rsquo;92.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR
+BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;Overjoyed you were pleased with
+<i>Wrecker</i>, and shall consider your protests.&nbsp; There is
+perhaps more art than you think for in the peccant chapter, where
+I have succeeded in packing into one a dedication, an
+explanation, and a termination.&nbsp; Surely you had not
+recognised the phrase about boodle?&nbsp; It was a quotation from
+Jim Pinkerton, and seemed to me agreeably skittish.&nbsp;
+However, all shall be prayerfully considered.</p>
+<p>To come to a more painful subject.&nbsp; Herewith go three
+more chapters of the wretched <i>History</i>; as you see, I
+approach the climax.&nbsp; I expect the book to be some 70,000
+words, of which you have now 45.&nbsp; Can I finish it for next
+mail?&nbsp; I am going to try!&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis a long piece of
+journalism, and full of difficulties here and there, of this kind
+and that, and will make me a power of friends to be sure.&nbsp;
+There is one Becker who will probably put up a window to me in
+the church where he was baptized; and I expect a testimonial from
+Captain Hand.</p>
+<p>Sorry to let the mail go without the Scott; this has been a
+bad month with me, and I have been below myself.&nbsp; I shall
+find a way to have it come by next, or know the reason why.&nbsp;
+The mail after, anyway.</p>
+<p>A bit of a sketch map appears to me necessary for my
+<i>History</i>; perhaps two.&nbsp; If I do not have any,
+&rsquo;tis impossible any one should follow; and I, even when not
+at all interested, demand that I shall be able to follow; even a
+tourist book without a map is a cross to me; and there must be
+others of my way of thinking.&nbsp; I inclose the very artless
+one that I think needful.&nbsp; Vailima, in <a
+name="page247"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 247</span>case you
+are curious, is about as far again behind Tanugamanono as that is
+from the sea.</p>
+<p>M&lsquo;Clure is publishing a short story of mine, some 50,000
+words, I think, <i>The Beach of Fales&agrave;</i>; when
+he&rsquo;s done with it, I want you and Cassell to bring it out
+in a little volume; I shall send you a dedication for it; I
+believe it good; indeed, to be honest, very good.&nbsp; Good gear
+that pleases the merchant.</p>
+<p>The other map that I half threaten is a chart for the
+hurricane.&nbsp; Get me Kimberley&rsquo;s report of the
+hurricane: not to be found here.&nbsp; It is of most importance;
+I <i>must</i> have it with my proofs of that part, if I cannot
+have it earlier, which now seems impossible.&mdash;Yours in hot
+haste,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
+class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to J. M. Barrie</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>February</i> 1892.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MR. BARRIE</span>,&mdash;This is
+at least the third letter I have written you, but my
+correspondence has a bad habit of not getting so far as the
+post.&nbsp; That which I possess of manhood turns pale before the
+business of the address and envelope.&nbsp; But I hope to be more
+fortunate with this: for, besides the usual and often recurrent
+desire to thank you for your work-you are one of four that have
+come to the front since I was watching and had a corner of my own
+to watch, and there is no reason, unless it be in these
+mysterious tides that ebb and flow, and make and mar and murder
+the works of poor scribblers, why you should not do work of the
+best order.&nbsp; The tides have borne away my sentence, of which
+I was weary at any rate, and between authors I may allow myself
+so much freedom as to leave it pending.&nbsp; We are both Scots
+besides, and I suspect both rather Scotty Scots; my own
+Scotchness <a name="page248"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+248</span>tends to intermittency, but is at times
+erisypelitous&mdash;if that be rightly spelt.&nbsp; Lastly, I
+have gathered we had both made our stages in the metropolis of
+the winds: our Virgil&rsquo;s &lsquo;grey metropolis,&rsquo; and
+I count that a lasting bond.&nbsp; No place so brands a man.</p>
+<p>Finally, I feel it a sort of duty to you to report
+progress.&nbsp; This may be an error, but I believed I detected
+your hand in an article&mdash;it may be an illusion, it may have
+been by one of those industrious insects who catch up and
+reproduce the handling of each emergent man&mdash;but I&rsquo;ll
+still hope it was yours&mdash;and hope it may please you to hear
+that the continuation of <i>Kidnapped</i> is under way.&nbsp; I
+have not yet got to Alan, so I do not know if he is still alive,
+but David seems to have a kick or two in his shanks.&nbsp; I was
+pleased to see how the Anglo-Saxon theory fell into the trap: I
+gave my Lowlander a Gaelic name, and even commented on the fact
+in the text; yet almost all critics recognised in Alan and David
+a Saxon and a Celt.&nbsp; I know not about England; in Scotland
+at least, where Gaelic was spoken in Fife little over the century
+ago, and in Galloway not much earlier, I deny that there exists
+such a thing as a pure Saxon, and I think it more than
+questionable if there be such a thing as a pure Celt.</p>
+<p>But what have you to do with this? and what have I?&nbsp; Let
+us continue to inscribe our little bits of tales, and let the
+heathen rage!&nbsp; Yours, with sincere interest in your
+career,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to William Morris</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>Feb.</i> 1892.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MASTER</span>,&mdash;A plea from a
+place so distant should have some weight, and from a heart so
+grateful should have <a name="page249"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 249</span>some address.&nbsp; I have been long
+in your debt, Master, and I did not think it could be so much
+increased as you have now increased it.&nbsp; I was long in your
+debt and deep in your debt for many poems that I shall never
+forget, and for <i>Sigurd</i> before all, and now you have
+plunged me beyond payment by the Saga Library.&nbsp; And so now,
+true to human nature, being plunged beyond payment, I come and
+bark at your heels.</p>
+<p>For surely, Master, that tongue that we write, and that you
+have illustrated so nobly, is yet alive.&nbsp; She has her rights
+and laws, and is our mother, our queen, and our instrument.&nbsp;
+Now in that living tongue <i>where</i> has one sense,
+<i>whereas</i> another.&nbsp; In the <i>Heathslayings Story</i>,
+p. 241, line 13, it bears one of its ordinary senses.&nbsp;
+Elsewhere and usually through the two volumes, which is all that
+has yet reached me of this entrancing publication, <i>whereas</i>
+is made to figure for <i>where</i>.</p>
+<p>For the love of God, my dear and honoured Morris, use
+<i>where</i>, and let us know <i>whereas</i> we are, wherefore
+our gratitude shall grow, whereby you shall be the more honoured
+wherever men love clear language, whereas now, although we
+honour, we are troubled.</p>
+<p>Whereunder, please find inscribed to this very impudent but
+yet very anxious document, the name of one of the most distant
+but not the youngest or the coldest of those who honour you.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Charles Fairchild</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Vailima</i>, <i>March</i>
+1892.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MRS. FAIRCHILD</span>,&mdash;I
+am guilty in your sight, but my affairs besiege
+me.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The chief-justiceship of a family of
+nineteen persons is in itself no sinecure, and <a
+name="page250"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 250</span>sometimes
+occupies me for days: two weeks ago for four days almost
+entirely, and for two days entirely.&nbsp; Besides which, I have
+in the last few months written all but one chapter of a
+<i>History of Samoa</i> for the last eight or nine years; and
+while I was unavoidably delayed in the writing of this, awaiting
+material, put in one-half of <i>David Balfour</i>, the sequel to
+<i>Kidnapped</i>.&nbsp; Add the ordinary impediments of life, and
+admire my busyness.&nbsp; I am now an old, but healthy skeleton,
+and degenerate much towards the machine.&nbsp; By six at work:
+stopped at half-past ten to give a history lesson to a
+step-grandson; eleven, lunch; after lunch we have a musical
+performance till two; then to work again; bath, 4.40, dinner,
+five; cards in the evening till eight; and then to bed&mdash;only
+I have no bed, only a chest with a mat and blankets&mdash;and
+read myself to sleep.&nbsp; This is the routine, but often sadly
+interrupted.&nbsp; Then you may see me sitting on the floor of my
+verandah haranguing and being harangued by squatting chiefs on a
+question of a road; or more privately holding an inquiry into
+some dispute among our familiars, myself on my bed, the boys on
+the floor&mdash;for when it comes to the judicial I play
+dignity&mdash;or else going down to Apia on some more or less
+unsatisfactory errand.&nbsp; Altogether it is a life that suits
+me, but it absorbs me like an ocean.&nbsp; That is what I have
+always envied and admired in Scott; with all that immensity of
+work and study, his mind kept flexible, glancing to all points of
+natural interest.&nbsp; But the lean hot spirits, such as mine,
+become hypnotised with their bit occupations&mdash;if I may use
+Scotch to you&mdash;it is so far more scornful than any English
+idiom.&nbsp; Well, I can&rsquo;t help being a skeleton, and you
+are to take this devious passage for an apology.</p>
+<p>I thought <i>Aladdin</i> capital fun; but why, in fortune, did
+he pretend it was moral at the end?&nbsp; The so-called
+nineteenth century, <i>o&ugrave; va-t-il se nicher</i>?&nbsp;
+&rsquo;Tis a trifle, but Pyle would do well to knock the passage
+out, and <a name="page251"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+251</span>leave his boguey tale a boguey tale, and a good one at
+that.</p>
+<p>The arrival of your box was altogether a great success to the
+castaways.&nbsp; You have no idea where we live.&nbsp; Do you
+know, in all these islands there are not five hundred whites, and
+no postal delivery, and only one village&mdash;it is no
+more&mdash;and would be a mean enough village in Europe?&nbsp; We
+were asked the other day if Vailima were the name of our post
+town, and we laughed.&nbsp; Do you know, though we are but three
+miles from the village metropolis, we have no road to it, and our
+goods are brought on the pack-saddle?&nbsp; And do you
+know&mdash;or I should rather say, can you believe&mdash;or (in
+the famous old Tichborne trial phrase) would you be surprised to
+learn, that all you have read of Vailima&mdash;or Subpriorsford,
+as I call it&mdash;is entirely false, and we have no ice-machine,
+and no electric light, and no water supply but the cistern of the
+heavens, and but one public room, and scarce a bedroom
+apiece?&nbsp; But, of course, it is well known that I have made
+enormous sums by my evanescent literature, and you will smile at
+my false humility.&nbsp; The point, however, is much on our minds
+just now.&nbsp; We are expecting an invasion of Kiplings; very
+glad we shall be to see them; but two of the party are ladies,
+and I tell you we had to hold a council of war to stow
+them.&nbsp; You European ladies are so particular; with all of
+mine, sleeping has long become a public function, as with natives
+and those who go down much into the sea in ships.</p>
+<p>Dear Mrs. Fairchild, I must go to my work.&nbsp; I have but
+two words to say in conclusion.</p>
+<p>First, civilisation is rot.</p>
+<p>Second, console a savage with more of the milk of that over
+civilised being, your adorable schoolboy.</p>
+<p>As I wrote these remarkable words, I was called down to eight
+o&rsquo;clock prayers, and have just worked through a chapter of
+Joshua and five verses, with five treble choruses of a Samoan
+hymn; but the music was good, our boys <a
+name="page252"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 252</span>and
+precentress (&rsquo;tis always a woman that leads) did better
+than I ever heard them, and to my great pleasure I understood it
+all except one verse.&nbsp; This gave me the more time to try and
+identify what the parts were doing, and further convict my dull
+ear.&nbsp; Beyond the fact that the soprano rose to the tonic
+above, on one occasion I could recognise nothing.&nbsp; This is
+sickening, but I mean to teach my ear better before I am done
+with it or this vile carcase.</p>
+<p>I think it will amuse you (for a last word) to hear that our
+precentress&mdash;she is the washerwoman&mdash;is our
+shame.&nbsp; She is a good, healthy, comely, strapping young
+wench, full of energy and seriousness, a splendid workwoman,
+delighting to train our chorus, delighting in the poetry of the
+hymns, which she reads aloud (on the least provocation) with a
+great sentiment of rhythm.&nbsp; Well, then, what is
+curious?&nbsp; Ah, we did not know! but it was told us in a
+whisper from the cook-house&mdash;she is not of good
+family.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t let it get out, please; everybody knows
+it, of course, here; there is no reason why Europe and the States
+should have the advantage of me also.&nbsp; And the rest of my
+housefolk are all chief-people, I assure you.&nbsp; And my late
+overseer (far the best of his race) is a really serious chief
+with a good &lsquo;name.&rsquo;&nbsp; Tina is the name; it is not
+in the Almanach de Gotha, it must have got dropped at
+press.&nbsp; The odd thing is, we rather share the
+prejudice.&nbsp; I have almost always&mdash;though not quite
+always&mdash;found the higher the chief the better the man
+through all the islands; or, at least, that the best man came
+always from a highish rank.&nbsp; I hope Helen will continue to
+prove a bright exception.</p>
+<p>With love to Fairchild and the Huge Schoolboy, I am, my dear
+Mrs. Fairchild, yours very sincerely,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><a name="page253"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+253</span><span class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Vailima</i>, <i>March</i>
+1892.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR
+BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;Herewith Chapters <span
+class="GutSmall">IX</span>. and <span class="GutSmall">X</span>.,
+and I am left face to face with the horrors and dilemmas of the
+present regimen: pray for those that go down to the sea in
+ships.&nbsp; I have promised Henley shall have a chance to
+publish the hurricane chapter if he like, so please let the slips
+be sent <i>quam primum</i> to C. Baxter, W.S., 11 S. Charlotte
+Street, Edinburgh.&nbsp; I got on mighty quick with that
+chapter&mdash;about five days of the toughest kind of work.&nbsp;
+God forbid I should ever have such another pirn to wind!&nbsp;
+When I invent a language, there shall be a direct and an indirect
+pronoun differently declined&mdash;then writing would be some
+fun.</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>DIRECT</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>INDIRECT</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p class="gutindent">He</p>
+</td>
+<td><p class="gutindent">Tu</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p class="gutindent">Him</p>
+</td>
+<td><p class="gutindent">Tum</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p class="gutindent">His</p>
+</td>
+<td><p class="gutindent">Tus</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>Ex.: <i>He</i> seized <i>tum</i> by <i>tus</i> throat; but
+<i>tu</i> at the same moment caught <i>him</i> by <i>his</i>
+hair.&nbsp; A fellow could write hurricanes with an inflection
+like that!&nbsp; Yet there would he difficulties too.</p>
+<p>Do what you please about <i>The Beach</i>; and I give you
+<i>carte blanche</i> to write in the matter to Baxter&mdash;or
+telegraph if the time press&mdash;to delay the English
+contingent.&nbsp; Herewith the two last slips of <i>The
+Wrecker</i>.&nbsp; I cannot go beyond.&nbsp; By the way, pray
+compliment the printers on the proofs of the Samoa racket, but
+hint to them that it is most unbusiness-like and unscholarly to
+clip the edges of the galleys; these proofs should really have
+been sent me on large paper; and I and my friends here are all
+put to a great deal of trouble and confusion by the <a
+name="page254"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+254</span>mistake.&nbsp; For, as you must conceive, in a matter
+so contested and complicated, the number of corrections and the
+length of explanations is considerable.</p>
+<p>Please add to my former orders&mdash;</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p><i>Le Chevalier Des Touches</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p>by Barbey d&rsquo;Aur&eacute;villy.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><i>Les Diaboliques</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><i>Correspondance de Henri Beyle</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p>(Stendahl).</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>Yours sincerely,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
+class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to T. W. Dover</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima Plantation</i>,
+<i>Upolu</i>, <i>Samoa</i>, <i>June</i> 20<i>th</i>, 1892.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,&mdash;In reply to your very
+interesting letter, I cannot fairly say that I have ever been
+poor, or known what it was to want a meal.&nbsp; I have been
+reduced, however, to a very small sum of money, with no apparent
+prospect of increasing it; and at that time I reduced myself to
+practically one meal a day, with the most disgusting consequences
+to my health.&nbsp; At this time I lodged in the house of a
+working man, and associated much with others.&nbsp; At the same
+time, from my youth up, I have always been a good deal and rather
+intimately thrown among the working-classes, partly as a civil
+engineer in out-of-the-way places, partly from a strong and, I
+hope, not ill-favoured sentiment of curiosity.&nbsp; But the
+place where, perhaps, I was most struck with the fact upon which
+you comment was the house of a friend, who was exceedingly poor,
+in fact, I may say destitute, and who lived in the attic of a
+very tall house entirely inhabited by persons in varying stages
+of poverty.&nbsp; As he was also in ill-health, I made a habit of
+passing my afternoon with him, and when there it was my part to
+answer the door.&nbsp; The steady procession of people begging,
+and the expectant <a name="page255"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+255</span>and confident manner in which they presented
+themselves, struck me more and more daily; and I could not but
+remember with surprise that though my father lived but a few
+streets away in a fine house, beggars scarce came to the door
+once a fortnight or a month.&nbsp; From that time forward I made
+it my business to inquire, and in the stories which I am very
+fond of hearing from all sorts and conditions of men, learned
+that in the time of their distress it was always from the poor
+they sought assistance, and almost always from the poor they got
+it.</p>
+<p>Trusting I have now satisfactorily answered your question,
+which I thank you for asking, I remain, with sincere
+compliments,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Summer</i>
+1892.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;First
+of all, <i>you have all the corrections on</i> &lsquo;<i>The
+Wrecker</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp; I found I had made what I meant and
+forgotten it, and was so careless as not to tell you.</p>
+<p>Second, of course, and by all means, charge corrections on the
+Samoa book to me; but there are not near so many as I
+feared.&nbsp; The Lord hath dealt bountifully with me, and I
+believe all my advisers were amazed to see how nearly correct I
+had got the truck, at least I was.&nbsp; With this you will
+receive the whole revise and a typewritten copy of the last
+chapter.&nbsp; And the thing now is Speed, to catch a possible
+revision of the treaty.&nbsp; I believe Cassells are to bring it
+out, but Baxter knows, and the thing has to be crammed through
+<i>prestissimo</i>, <i>&agrave; la chasseur</i>.</p>
+<p>You mention the belated Barbeys; what about the equally
+belated Pineros?&nbsp; And I hope you will keep your bookshop
+alive to supplying me continuously with the <i>Saga
+Library</i>.&nbsp; I cannot get enough of <i>Sagas</i>; I wish
+there were nine thousand; talk about realism!</p>
+<p><a name="page256"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 256</span>All
+seems to flourish with you; I also prosper; none the less for
+being quit of that abhorred task, Samoa.&nbsp; I could give a
+supper party here were there any one to sup.&nbsp; Never was such
+a disagreeable task, but the thing had to be told. . . .</p>
+<p>There, I trust I am done with this cursed chapter of my
+career, bar the rotten eggs and broken bottles that may follow,
+of course.&nbsp; Pray remember, speed is now all that can be
+asked, hoped, or wished.&nbsp; I give up all hope of proofs,
+revises, proof of the map, or sic like; and you on your side will
+try to get it out as reasonably seemly as may be.</p>
+<p>Whole Samoa book herewith.&nbsp; Glory be to God.&mdash;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>Vailima Plantation</i>,
+<i>Upolu</i>, <i>Samoan Islands</i>, 18<i>th</i> <i>July</i>
+1892.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;. . . I
+have been now for some time contending with powers and
+principalities, and I have never once seen one of my own letters
+to the <i>Times</i>.&nbsp; So when you see something in the
+papers that you think might interest the exiles of Upolu, do not
+think twice, out with your saxpence, and send it flying to
+Vailima.&nbsp; Of what you say of the past, eh, man, it was a
+queer time, and awful miserable, but there&rsquo;s no sense in
+denying it was awful fun.&nbsp; Do you mind the youth in Highland
+garb and the tableful of coppers?&nbsp; Do you mind the <span
+class="GutSmall">SIGNAL</span> of Waterloo Place?&mdash;Hey, how
+the blood stands to the heart at such a memory!&mdash;Hae ye the
+notes o&rsquo;t?&nbsp; Gie&rsquo;s them.&mdash;Gude&rsquo;s sake,
+man, gie&rsquo;s the notes o&rsquo;t; I mind ye made a tune
+o&rsquo;t an&rsquo; played it on your pinanny; gie&rsquo;s the
+notes.&nbsp; Dear Lord, that past.</p>
+<p>Glad to hear Henley&rsquo;s prospects are fair: his new volume
+is the work of a real poet.&nbsp; He is one of those who can make
+a noise of his own with words, and in whom experience strikes an
+individual note.&nbsp; There is perhaps no <a
+name="page257"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 257</span>more
+genuine poet living, bar the Big Guns.&nbsp; In case I cannot
+overtake an acknowledgment to himself by this mail, please let
+him hear of my pleasure and admiration.&nbsp; How
+poorly&mdash;compares!&nbsp; He is all smart journalism and
+cleverness: it is all bright and shallow and limpid, like a
+business paper&mdash;a good one, <i>s&rsquo;entend</i>; but there
+is no blot of heart&rsquo;s blood and the Old Night: there are no
+harmonics, there is scarce harmony to his music; and in
+Henley&mdash;all of these; a touch, a sense within sense, a sound
+outside the sound, the shadow of the inscrutable, eloquent beyond
+all definition.&nbsp; The First London Voluntary knocked me
+wholly.&mdash;Ever yours affectionately, my dear Charles,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p>Kind memories to your father and all friends.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to W. E. Henley</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima Plantation</i>,
+<i>Upolu</i>, <i>Samoa</i>, <i>August</i> 1<i>st</i>, 1892.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENLEY</span>,&mdash;It is
+impossible to let your new volume pass in silence.&nbsp; I have
+not received the same thrill of poetry since G. M.&rsquo;s <i>Joy
+of Earth</i> volume and <i>Love in a Valley</i>; and I do not
+know that even that was so intimate and deep.&nbsp; Again and
+again, I take the book down, and read, and my blood is fired as
+it used to be in youth.&nbsp; <i>Andante con moto</i> in the
+<i>Voluntaries</i>, and the thing about the trees at night (No.
+<span class="GutSmall">XXIV</span>. I think) are up to date my
+favourites.&nbsp; I did not guess you were so great a magician;
+these are new tunes, this is an undertone of the true Apollo;
+these are not verse, they are poetry&mdash;inventions, creations,
+in language.&nbsp; I thank you for the joy you have given me, and
+remain your old friend and present huge admirer,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p>The hand is really the hand of Esau, but under a course of
+threatened scrivener&rsquo;s cramp.</p>
+<p>For the next edition of the Book of Verses, pray accept <a
+name="page258"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 258</span>an
+emendation.&nbsp; Last three lines of Echoes No. <span
+class="GutSmall">XLIV</span>. read&mdash;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&lsquo;But life in act?&nbsp; How should the
+grave<br />
+Be victor over these,<br />
+Mother, a mother of men?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The two vocatives scatter the effect of this inimitable
+close.&nbsp; If you insist on the longer line, equip
+&lsquo;grave&rsquo; with an epithet.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Upolu</i>,
+<i>August</i> 1<i>st</i>, &rsquo;92.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR
+BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;Herewith <i>My Grandfather</i>.&nbsp; I
+have had rather a bad time suppressing the old gentleman, who was
+really in a very garrulous stage; as for getting him <i>in
+order</i>, I could do but little towards that; however, there are
+one or two points of interest which may justify us in
+printing.&nbsp; The swinging of his stick and not knowing the
+sailor of Coruiskin, in particular, and the account of how he
+wrote the lives in the Bell Book particularly please me. I hope
+my own little introduction is not egoistic; or rather I do not
+care if it is.&nbsp; It was that old gentleman&rsquo;s blood that
+brought me to Samoa.</p>
+<p>By the by, vols. vii., viii., and ix. of Adams&rsquo;s
+<i>History</i> have never come to hand; no more have the
+dictionaries.</p>
+<p>Please send me <i>Stonehenge on Horse</i>, <i>Stories and
+Interludes</i> by Barry Pain, and <i>Edinburgh Sketches and
+Memoirs</i> by David Masson.&nbsp; <i>The Wrecker</i> has turned
+up.&nbsp; So far as I have seen, it is very satisfactory, but on
+pp. 548, 549, there has been a devil of a miscarriage.&nbsp; The
+two Latin quotations instead of following each other being
+separated (doubtless for printing considerations) by a line of
+prose.&nbsp; My compliments to the printers; there is doubtless
+such a thing as good printing, but there is such a thing as good
+sense.</p>
+<p>The sequel to <i>Kidnapped</i>, <i>David Balfour</i> by name,
+is about three-quarters done and gone to press for serial <a
+name="page259"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+259</span>publication.&nbsp; By what I can find out it ought to
+be through hand with that and ready for volume form early next
+spring.&mdash;Yours very sincerely,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Andrew Lang</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Vailima</i>, <i>August</i>
+1892.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LANG</span>,&mdash;I knew you
+would prove a trusty purveyor.&nbsp; The books you have sent are
+admirable.&nbsp; I got the name of my hero out of
+Brown&mdash;Blair of Balmyle&mdash;Francie Blair.&nbsp; But
+whether to call the story <i>Blair of Balmyle</i>, or whether to
+call it <i>The Young Chevalier</i>, I have not yet decided.&nbsp;
+The admirable Cameronian tract&mdash;perhaps you will think this
+a cheat&mdash;is to be boned into <i>David Balfour</i>, where it
+will fit better, and really furnishes me with a desired foothold
+over a boggy place.</p>
+<p><i>Later</i>; no, it won&rsquo;t go in, and I fear I must give
+up &lsquo;the idolatrous occupant upon the throne,&rsquo; a
+phrase that overjoyed me beyond expression.&nbsp; I am in a deuce
+of a flutter with politics, which I hate, and in which I
+certainly do not shine; but a fellow cannot stand aside and look
+on at such an exhibition as our government.&nbsp; &rsquo;Taint
+decent; no gent can hold a candle to it.&nbsp; But it&rsquo;s a
+grind to be interrupted by midnight messengers and pass your days
+writing proclamations (which are never proclaimed) and petitions
+(which ain&rsquo;t petited) and letters to the <i>Times</i>,
+which it makes my jaws yawn to re-read, and all your time have
+your heart with David Balfour: he has just left Glasgow this
+morning for Edinburgh, James More has escaped from the castle; it
+is far more real to me than the Behring Sea or the Baring
+brothers either&mdash;he got the news of James More&rsquo;s
+escape from the Lord Advocate, and started off straight to
+comfort Catriona.&nbsp; You don&rsquo;t know her; she&rsquo;s
+James More&rsquo;s daughter, and a respectable <a
+name="page260"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 260</span>young
+wumman; the Miss Grants think so&mdash;the Lord Advocate&rsquo;s
+daughters&mdash;so there can&rsquo;t be anything really
+wrong.&nbsp; Pretty soon we all go to Holland, and be hanged;
+thence to Dunkirk, and be damned; and the tale concludes in
+Paris, and be Poll-parrotted.&nbsp; This is the last authentic
+news.&nbsp; You are not a real hard-working novelist; not a
+practical novelist; so you don&rsquo;t know the temptation to let
+your characters maunder.&nbsp; Dumas did it, and lived.&nbsp; But
+it is not war; it ain&rsquo;t sportsmanlike, and I have to be
+stopping their chatter all the time.&nbsp; Brown&rsquo;s appendix
+is great reading.</p>
+<p class="poetry">My only grief is that I can&rsquo;t<br />
+Use the idolatrous occupant.</p>
+<p>Yours ever,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p>Blessing and praising you for a useful (though idolatrous)
+occupant of Kensington.</p>
+<h2><span class="smcap">to the Countess of Jersey</span></h2>
+<p style="text-align: right"><a name="page261"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 261</span><i>August</i> 14, 1745.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">TO MISS AMELIA BALFOUR&mdash;MY DEAR
+COUSIN</span>,&mdash;We are going an expedition to leeward on
+Tuesday morning.&nbsp; If a lady were perhaps to be encountered
+on horseback&mdash;say, towards the Gasi-gasi river&mdash;about
+six <span class="GutSmall">A.M.</span>, I think we should have an
+episode somewhat after the style of the &rsquo;45.&nbsp; What a
+misfortune, my dear cousin, that you should have arrived while
+your cousin Graham was occupying my only guest-chamber&mdash;for
+Osterley Park is not so large in Samoa as it was at
+home&mdash;but happily our friend Haggard has found a corner for
+you!</p>
+<p>The King over the Water&mdash;the Gasi-gasi water&mdash;will
+be pleased to see the clan of Balfour mustering so thick around
+his standard.</p>
+<p>I have (one serious word) been so lucky as to get a really
+secret interpreter, so all is for the best in our little
+adventure into the <i>Waverley Novels</i>.&mdash;I am your
+affectionate cousin,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p>Observe the stealth with which I have blotted my signature,
+but we must be political <i>&agrave; outrance</i>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to the Countess of Jersey</span></h3>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR COUSIN</span>,&mdash;I send for
+your information a copy of my last letter to the gentleman in
+question.&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis thought more wise, in consideration of
+the difficulty and peril of the enterprise, that we should leave
+the town in the afternoon, and by several detachments.&nbsp; If
+you would start for a ride with the Master of Haggard and Captain
+Lockhart of Lee, say at three o&rsquo;clock of the afternoon, you
+would make some rencounters by the wayside which might be
+agreeable to your political opinions.&nbsp; All present will be
+staunch.</p>
+<p>The Master of Haggard might extend his ride a little, and
+return through the marsh and by the nuns&rsquo; house (I trust
+that has the proper flavour), so as a little to <a
+name="page262"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 262</span>diminish
+the effect of separation.&mdash;I remain, your affectionate
+cousin to command,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">O <span
+class="smcap">Tusitala</span>.</p>
+<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;It is to be thought this present year of
+grace will be historical.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Charles Fairchild</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Vailima</i>, <i>August</i>
+1892.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MRS.
+FAIRCHILD</span>,&mdash;Thank you a thousand times for your
+letter.&nbsp; You are the Angel of (the sort of) Information
+(that I care about); I appoint you successor to the newspaper
+press; and I beg of you, whenever you wish to gird at the age, or
+think the bugs out of proportion to the roses, or despair, or
+enjoy any cosmic or epochal emotion, to sit down again and write
+to the Hermit of Samoa.&nbsp; What do I think of it all?&nbsp;
+Well, I love the romantic solemnity of youth; and even in this
+form, although not without laughter, I have to love it
+still.&nbsp; They are such ducks!&nbsp; But what are they made
+of?&nbsp; We were just as solemn as that about atheism and the
+stars and humanity; but we were all for belief anyway&mdash;we
+held atheism and sociology (of which none of us, nor indeed
+anybody, knew anything) for a gospel and an iron rule of life;
+and it was lucky enough, or there would have been more windows
+broken.&nbsp; What is apt to puzzle one at first sight in the New
+Youth is that, with such rickety and risky problems always at
+heart, they should not plunge down a Niagara of
+Dissolution.&nbsp; But let us remember the high practical
+timidity of youth.&nbsp; I was a particularly brave
+boy&mdash;this I think of myself, looking back&mdash;and plunged
+into adventures and experiments, and ran risks that it still
+surprises me to recall.&nbsp; But, dear me, what a fear I was in
+of that strange blind machinery in the midst of which I stood;
+and with what a compressed heart and what empty lungs I would
+touch a new crank and await developments!&nbsp; I do not mean to
+say I do not <a name="page263"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+263</span>fear life still; I do; and that terror (for an
+adventurer like myself) is still one of the chief joys of
+living.</p>
+<p>But it was different indeed while I was yet girt with the
+priceless robes of inexperience; then the fear was exquisite and
+infinite.&nbsp; And so, when you see all these little Ibsens, who
+seem at once so dry and so excitable, and faint in swathes over a
+play (I suppose&mdash;for a wager) that would seem to me merely
+tedious, smile behind your hand, and remember the little dears
+are all in a blue funk.&nbsp; It must be very funny, and to a
+spectator like yourself I almost envy it.&nbsp; But never get
+desperate; human nature is human nature; and the Roman Empire,
+since the Romans founded it and made our European human nature
+what it is, bids fair to go on and to be true to itself.&nbsp;
+These little bodies will all grow up and become men and women,
+and have heaps of fun; nay, and are having it now; and whatever
+happens to the fashion of the age, it makes no
+difference&mdash;there are always high and brave and amusing
+lives to be lived; and a change of key, however exotic, does not
+exclude melody.&nbsp; Even Chinamen, hard as we find it to
+believe, enjoy being Chinese.&nbsp; And the Chinaman stands alone
+to be unthinkable; natural enough, as the representative of the
+only other great civilisation.&nbsp; Take my people here at my
+doors; their life is a very good one; it is quite thinkable,
+quite acceptable to us.&nbsp; And the little dears will be soon
+skating on the other foot; sooner or later, in each generation,
+the one-half of them at least begin to remember all the material
+they had rejected when first they made and nailed up their little
+theory of life; and these become reactionaries or conservatives,
+and the ship of man begins to fill upon the other tack.</p>
+<p>Here is a sermon, by your leave!&nbsp; It is your own fault,
+you have amused and interested me so much by your breath of the
+New Youth, which comes to me from so far away, where I live up
+here in my mountain, and secret messengers bring me letters from
+rebels, and the government sometimes seizes them, and generally
+grumbles in <a name="page264"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+264</span>its beard that Stevenson should really be
+deported.&nbsp; O, my life is the more lively, never fear!</p>
+<p>It has recently been most amusingly varied by a visit from
+Lady Jersey.&nbsp; I took her over mysteriously (under the
+pseudonym of my cousin, Miss Amelia Balfour) to visit Mataafa,
+our rebel; and we had great fun, and wrote a Ouida novel on our
+life here, in which every author had to describe himself in the
+Ouida glamour, and of which&mdash;for the Jerseys intend printing
+it&mdash;I must let you have a copy.&nbsp; My wife&rsquo;s
+chapter, and my description of myself, should, I think, amuse
+you.&nbsp; But there were finer touches still; as when Belle and
+Lady Jersey came out to brush their teeth in front of the rebel
+King&rsquo;s palace, and the night guard squatted opposite on the
+grass and watched the process; or when I and my interpreter, and
+the King with his secretary, mysteriously disappeared to
+conspire.&mdash;Ever yours sincerely,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
+class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Gordon Browne</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>Autumn</i> 1892.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>To the Artist who did the
+illustrations to</i> &lsquo;<i>Uma</i>.&rsquo;</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR SIR</span>,&mdash;I only know you
+under the initials G. B., but you have done some exceedingly
+spirited and satisfactory illustrations to my story <i>The Beach
+of Fales&agrave;</i>, and I wish to write and thank you expressly
+for the care and talent shown.&nbsp; Such numbers of people can
+do good black and whites!&nbsp; So few can illustrate a story, or
+apparently read it.&nbsp; You have shown that you can do both,
+and your creation of Wiltshire is a real illumination of the
+text.&nbsp; It was exactly so that Wiltshire dressed and looked,
+and you have the line of his nose to a nicety.&nbsp; His nose is
+an inspiration.&nbsp; Nor should I forget to thank you for Case,
+particularly in his last appearance.&nbsp; It is a singular
+fact&mdash;which seems to point still more directly to
+inspiration in your case&mdash;that your missionary actually
+resembles the flesh-and-blood person from whom Mr. Tarleton was
+<a name="page265"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+265</span>drawn.&nbsp; The general effect of the islands is all
+that could be wished; indeed I have but one criticism to make,
+that in the background of Case taking the dollar from Mr.
+Tarleton&rsquo;s head&mdash;head&mdash;not hand, as the fools
+have printed it&mdash;the natives have a little too much the look
+of Africans.</p>
+<p>But the great affair is that you have been to the pains to
+illustrate my story instead of making conscientious black and
+whites of people sitting talking.&nbsp; I doubt if you have left
+unrepresented a single pictorial incident.&nbsp; I am writing by
+this mail to the editor in the hopes that I may buy from him the
+originals, and I am, dear sir, your very much obliged,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Miss Morse</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoan
+Islands</i>, <i>October</i> 7<i>th</i>, 1892.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MADAM</span>,&mdash;I have a great
+diffidence in answering your valued letter.&nbsp; It would be
+difficult for me to express the feelings with which I read
+it&mdash;and am now trying to re-read it as I dictate this.</p>
+<p>You ask me to forgive what you say &lsquo;must seem a
+liberty,&rsquo; and I find that I cannot thank you sufficiently
+or even find a word with which to qualify your letter.&nbsp; Dear
+Madam, such a communication even the vainest man would think a
+sufficient reward for a lifetime of labour.&nbsp; That I should
+have been able to give so much help and pleasure to your sister
+is the subject of my grateful wonder.</p>
+<p>That she, being dead, and speaking with your pen, should be
+able to repay the debt with such a liberal interest, is one of
+those things that reconcile us with the world and make us take
+hope again.&nbsp; I do not know what I have done to deserve so
+beautiful and touching <a name="page266"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 266</span>a compliment; and I feel there is
+but one thing fit for me to say here, that I will try with
+renewed courage to go on in the same path, and to deserve, if not
+to receive, a similar return from others.</p>
+<p>You apologise for speaking so much about yourselves.&nbsp;
+Dear Madam, I thought you did so too little.&nbsp; I should have
+wished to have known more of those who were so sympathetic as to
+find a consolation in my work, and so graceful and so tactful as
+to acknowledge it in such a letter as was yours.</p>
+<p>Will you offer to your mother the expression of a sympathy
+which (coming from a stranger) must seem very airy, but which yet
+is genuine; and accept for yourself my gratitude for the thought
+which inspired you to write to me and the words which you found
+to express it.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima Plantation</i>, <i>Samoan
+Islands</i>, <i>Oct.</i> 10<i>th</i>, 1892.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;It is
+now, as you see, the 10th of October, and there has not reached
+the Island of Upolu one single copy, or rag of a copy, of the
+Samoa book.&nbsp; I lie; there has come one, and that in the
+pocket of a missionary man who is at daggers drawn with me, who
+lends it to all my enemies, conceals it from all my friends, and
+is bringing a lawsuit against me on the strength of expressions
+in the same which I have forgotten, and now cannot see.&nbsp;
+This is pretty tragic, I think you will allow; and I was inclined
+to fancy it was the fault of the Post Office.&nbsp; But I hear
+from my sister-in-law Mrs. Sanchez that she is in the same case,
+and has received no &lsquo;Footnote.&rsquo;&nbsp; I have also to
+consider that I had no letter from you last mail, although you
+ought to have received by that time &lsquo;My Grandfather and
+Scott,&rsquo; and &lsquo;Me and my Grandfather.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Taking one consideration with another, therefore, I prefer to
+conceive that No. 743 <a name="page267"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 267</span>Broadway has fallen upon gentle and
+continuous slumber, and is become an enchanted palace among
+publishing houses.&nbsp; If it be not so, if the
+&lsquo;Footnotes&rsquo; were really sent, I hope you will fall
+upon the Post Office with all the vigour you possess.&nbsp; How
+does <i>The Wrecker</i> go in the States?&nbsp; It seems to be
+doing exceptionally well in England.&mdash;Yours sincerely,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to J. M. Barrie</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima Plantation</i>, <i>Samoan
+Islands</i>, <i>November</i> 1<i>st</i>, 1892.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MR. BARRIE</span>,&mdash;I can
+scarce thank you sufficiently for your extremely amusing
+letter.&nbsp; No, <i>The Auld Licht Idyls</i> never reached
+me&mdash;I wish it had, and I wonder extremely whether it would
+not be good for me to have a pennyworth of the Auld Licht
+pulpit.&nbsp; It is a singular thing that I should live here in
+the South Seas under conditions so new and so striking, and yet
+my imagination so continually inhabit that cold old huddle of
+grey hills from which we come.&nbsp; I have just finished
+<i>David Balfour</i>; I have another book on the stocks, <i>The
+Young Chevalier</i>, which is to be part in France and part in
+Scotland, and to deal with Prince Charlie about the year 1749;
+and now what have I done but begun a third which is to be all
+moorland together, and is to have for a centrepiece a figure that
+I think you will appreciate&mdash;that of the immortal
+Braxfield&mdash;Braxfield himself is my <i>grand premier</i>, or,
+since you are so much involved in the British drama, let me say
+my heavy lead. . . .</p>
+<p>Your descriptions of your dealings with Lord Rintoul are
+frightfully unconscientious.&nbsp; You should never write about
+anybody until you persuade yourself at least for the moment that
+you love him, above all anybody on whom your plot revolves.&nbsp;
+It will always make a hole in the book; and, if he has anything
+to do with the mechanism, prove a stick in your machinery.&nbsp;
+But you <a name="page268"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+268</span>know all this better than I do, and it is one of your
+most promising traits that you do not take your powers too
+seriously.&nbsp; The <i>Little Minister</i> ought to have ended
+badly; we all know it did; and we are infinitely grateful to you
+for the grace and good feeling with which you lied about
+it.&nbsp; If you had told the truth, I for one could never have
+forgiven you.&nbsp; As you had conceived and written the earlier
+parts, the truth about the end, though indisputably true to fact,
+would have been a lie, or what is worse, a discord in art.&nbsp;
+If you are going to make a book end badly, it must end badly from
+the beginning.&nbsp; Now your book began to end well.&nbsp; You
+let yourself fall in love with, and fondle, and smile at your
+puppets.&nbsp; Once you had done that, your honour was
+committed&mdash;at the cost of truth to life you were bound to
+save them.&nbsp; It is the blot on <i>Richard Feverel</i>, for
+instance, that it begins to end well; and then tricks you and
+ends ill.&nbsp; But in that case there is worse behind, for the
+ill-ending does not inherently issue from the plot&mdash;the
+story <i>had</i>, in fact, <i>ended well</i> after the great last
+interview between Richard and Lucy&mdash;and the blind, illogical
+bullet which smashes all has no more to do between the boards
+than a fly has to do with the room into whose open window it
+comes buzzing.&nbsp; It <i>might</i> have so happened; it needed
+not; and unless needs must, we have no right to pain our
+readers.&nbsp; I have had a heavy case of conscience of the same
+kind about my Braxfield story.&nbsp; Braxfield&mdash;only his
+name is Hermiston&mdash;has a son who is condemned to death;
+plainly, there is a fine tempting fitness about this; and I meant
+he was to hang.&nbsp; But now on considering my minor characters,
+I saw there were five people who would&mdash;in a sense who
+must&mdash;break prison and attempt his rescue.&nbsp; They were
+capable, hardy folks, too, who might very well succeed.&nbsp; Why
+should they not then?&nbsp; Why should not young Hermiston escape
+clear out of the country? and be happy, if he could, with
+his&mdash;&nbsp; But soft!&nbsp; I will not betray my secret of
+<a name="page269"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 269</span>my
+heroine.&nbsp; Suffice it to breathe in your ear that she was
+what Hardy calls (and others in their plain way don&rsquo;t) a
+Pure Woman.&nbsp; Much virtue in a capital letter, such as yours
+was.</p>
+<p>Write to me again in my infinite distance.&nbsp; Tell me about
+your new book.&nbsp; No harm in telling <i>me</i>; I am too far
+off to be indiscreet; there are too few near me who would care to
+hear.&nbsp; I am rushes by the riverside, and the stream is in
+Babylon: breathe your secrets to me fearlessly; and if the Trade
+Wind caught and carried them away, there are none to catch them
+nearer than Australia, unless it were the Tropic Birds.&nbsp; In
+the unavoidable absence of my amanuensis, who is buying eels for
+dinner, I have thus concluded my despatch, like St. Paul, with my
+own hand.</p>
+<p>And in the inimitable words of Lord Kames, Faur ye weel, ye
+bitch.&mdash;Yours very truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to E. L. Burlingame</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima Plantation</i>,
+<i>Nov.</i> 2<i>nd</i>, 1892.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BURLINGAME</span>,&mdash;In the
+first place, I have to acknowledge receipt of your munificent
+cheque for three hundred and fifty dollars.&nbsp; Glad you liked
+the Scott voyage; rather more than I did upon the whole.&nbsp; As
+the proofs have not turned up at all, there can be no question of
+returning them, and I am therefore very much pleased to think you
+have arranged not to wait.&nbsp; The volumes of Adams arrived
+along with yours of October 6th.&nbsp; One of the dictionaries
+has also blundered home, apparently from the Colonies; the other
+is still to seek.&nbsp; I note and sympathise with your
+bewilderment as to <i>Fales&agrave;</i>.&nbsp; My own direct
+correspondence with Mr. Baxter is now about three months in
+abeyance.&nbsp; Altogether you see how well it would be if you
+could do anything to wake up the Post Office.&nbsp; Not a single
+copy of the &lsquo;Footnote&rsquo; has yet reached Samoa, but I
+hear of one having <a name="page270"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+270</span>come to its address in Hawaii.&nbsp; Glad to hear good
+news of Stoddard.&mdash;Yours sincerely,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
+class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;Since the above was written an aftermath of
+post matter came in, among which were the proofs of <i>My
+Grandfather</i>.&nbsp; I shall correct and return them, but as I
+have lost all confidence in the Post Office, I shall mention
+here: first galley, 4th line from the bottom, for &lsquo;<span
+class="GutSmall">AS</span>&rsquo; read &lsquo;<span
+class="GutSmall">OR</span>.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Should I ever again have to use my work without waiting for
+proofs, bear in mind this golden principle.&nbsp; From a
+congenital defect, I must suppose, I am unable to write the word
+<span class="GutSmall">OR</span>&mdash;wherever I write it the
+printer unerringly puts <span
+class="GutSmall">AS</span>&mdash;and those who read for me had
+better, wherever it is possible, substitute <i>or</i> for
+<i>as</i>.&nbsp; This the more so since many writers have a habit
+of using <i>as</i> which is death to my temper and confusion to
+my face.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Lieutenant Eeles</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima Plantation</i>,
+<i>Upolu</i>, <i>Samoan Islands</i>, <i>November</i> 15<i>th</i>,
+1892.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR EELES</span>,&mdash;In the first
+place, excuse me writing to you by another hand, as that is the
+way in which alone all my correspondence gets effected.&nbsp;
+Before I took to this method, or rather before I found a victim,
+it <i>simply</i> didn&rsquo;t get effected.</p>
+<p>Thank you again and again, first for your kind thought of
+writing to me, and second for your extremely amusing and
+interesting letter.&nbsp; You can have no guess how immediately
+interesting it was to our family.&nbsp; First of all, the poor
+soul at Nukufetau is an old friend of ours, and we have actually
+treated him ourselves on a former visit to the island.&nbsp; I
+don&rsquo;t know if Hoskin would approve of our treatment; it
+consisted, I believe, mostly in a present <a
+name="page271"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 271</span>of stout
+and a recommendation to put nails in his water-tank.&nbsp; We
+also (as you seem to have done) recommended him to leave the
+island; and I remember very well how wise and kind we thought his
+answer.&nbsp; He had half-caste children (he said) who would
+suffer and perhaps be despised if he carried them elsewhere; if
+he left them there alone, they would almost certainly miscarry;
+and the best thing was that he should stay and die with
+them.&nbsp; But the cream of the fun was your meeting with
+Burn.&nbsp; We not only know him, but (as the French say) we
+don&rsquo;t know anybody else; he is our intimate and adored
+original; and&mdash;prepare your mind&mdash;he was, is, and ever
+will be, <span class="smcap">Tommy Haddon</span>! <a
+name="citation271"></a><a href="#footnote271"
+class="citation">[271]</a>&nbsp; As I don&rsquo;t believe you to
+be inspired, I suspect you to have suspected this.&nbsp; At least
+it was a mighty happy suspicion.&nbsp; You are quite right: Tommy
+is really &lsquo;a good chap,&rsquo; though about as comic as
+they make them.</p>
+<p>I was extremely interested in your Fiji legend, and perhaps
+even more so in your capital account of the
+<i>Cura&ccedil;oa&rsquo;s</i> misadventure.&nbsp; Alas! we have
+nothing so thrilling to relate.&nbsp; All hangs and fools on in
+this isle of misgovernment, without change, though not without
+novelty, but wholly without hope, unless perhaps you should
+consider it hopeful that I am still more immediately threatened
+with arrest.&nbsp; The confounded thing is, that if it comes off,
+I shall be sent away in the Ringarooma instead of the
+<i>Cura&ccedil;oa</i>.&nbsp; The former ship burst upon by the
+run&mdash;she had been sent off by despatch and without
+orders&mdash;and to make me a little more easy in my mind she
+brought newspapers clamouring for my incarceration.&nbsp; Since
+then I have had a conversation with the German Consul.&nbsp; He
+said he had read a review of my Samoa book, and if the review
+were fair, must regard it as an insult, and one that would have
+to be resented.&nbsp; At the same time, I learn that letters
+addressed to the German squadron lie for them here in the Post
+Office.&nbsp; Reports are current of <a name="page272"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 272</span>other English ships being on the
+way&mdash;I hope to goodness yours will be among the
+number.&nbsp; And I gather from one thing and another that there
+must be a holy row going on between the powers at home, and that
+the issue (like all else connected with Samoa) is on the knees of
+the gods.&nbsp; One thing, however, is pretty sure&mdash;if that
+issue prove to be a German Protectorate, I shall have to
+tramp.&nbsp; Can you give us any advice as to a fresh field of
+energy?&nbsp; We have been searching the atlas, and it seems
+difficult to fill the bill.&nbsp; How would Rarotonga do?&nbsp; I
+forget if you have been there.&nbsp; The best of it is that my
+new house is going up like winking, and I am dictating this
+letter to the accompaniment of saws and hammers.&nbsp; A hundred
+black boys and about a score draught-oxen perished, or at least
+barely escaped with their lives, from the mud-holes on our road,
+bringing up the materials.&nbsp; It will be a fine legacy to
+H.I.G.M.&rsquo;s Protectorate, and doubtless the Governor will
+take it for his country-house.&nbsp; The Ringarooma people, by
+the way, seem very nice.&nbsp; I liked Stansfield
+particularly.</p>
+<p>Our middy <a name="citation272"></a><a href="#footnote272"
+class="citation">[272]</a> has gone up to San Francisco in
+pursuit of the phantom Education.&nbsp; We have good word of him,
+and I hope he will not be in disgrace again, as he was when the
+hope of the British Navy&mdash;need I say that I refer to Admiral
+Burney?&mdash;honoured us last.&nbsp; The next time you come, as
+the new house will be finished, we shall be able to offer you a
+bed.&nbsp; Nares and Meiklejohn may like to hear that our new
+room is to be big enough to dance in.&nbsp; It will be a very
+pleasant day for me to see the Cura&ccedil;oa in port again and
+at least a proper contingent of her officers &lsquo;skipping in
+my &rsquo;all.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>We have just had a feast on my birthday at which we had three
+of the Ringaromas, and I wish they had been three
+<i>Cura&ccedil;oas</i>&mdash;say yourself, Hoskin, and Burney the
+ever Great.&nbsp; (Consider this an invitation.)&nbsp; Our boys
+had got the thing up regardless.&nbsp; There were two huge
+sows&mdash;<a name="page273"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+273</span>oh, brutes of animals that would have broken down a
+hansom cab&mdash;four smaller pigs, two barrels of beef, and a
+horror of vegetables and fowls.&nbsp; We sat down between forty
+and fifty in a big new native house behind the kitchen that you
+have never seen, and ate and public spoke till all was
+blue.&nbsp; Then we had about half an hour&rsquo;s holiday with
+some beer and sherry and brandy and soda to restrengthen the
+European heart, and then out to the old native house to see a
+siva.&nbsp; Finally, all the guests were packed off in a
+trackless black night and down a road that was rather fitted for
+the <i>Cura&ccedil;oa</i> than any human pedestrian, though to be
+sure I do not know the draught of the
+<i>Cura&ccedil;oa</i>.&nbsp; My ladies one and all desire to be
+particularly remembered to our friends on board, and all look
+forward, as I do myself, in the hope of your return.&mdash;Yours
+sincerely,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p>And let me hear from you again!</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Charles Baxter</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">1<i>st</i> <i>Dec.</i>
+&rsquo;92.</p>
+<p>. . . I have a novel on the stocks to be called <i>The
+Justice-Clerk</i>.&nbsp; It is pretty Scotch, the Grand Premier
+is taken from Braxfield&mdash;(Oh, by the by, send me
+Cockburn&rsquo;s <i>Memorials</i>)&mdash;and some of the story
+is&mdash;well&mdash;queer.&nbsp; The heroine is seduced by one
+man, and finally disappears with the other man who shot him. . .
+. Mind you, I expect the <i>Justice-Clerk</i> to be my
+masterpiece.&nbsp; My Braxfield is already a thing of beauty and
+a joy for ever, and so far as he has gone <i>far</i> my best
+character.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Later</i>.]</p>
+<p>Second thought.&nbsp; I wish Pitcairn&rsquo;s <i>Criminal
+Trials quam primum</i>.&nbsp; Also, an absolutely correct text of
+the Scots judiciary oath.</p>
+<p><a name="page274"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 274</span>Also,
+in case Pitcairn does not come down late enough, I wish as full a
+report as possible of a Scotch murder trial between
+1790&ndash;1820.&nbsp; Understand, <i>the fullest
+possible</i>.</p>
+<p>Is there any book which would guide me as to the following
+facts?</p>
+<p>The Justice-Clerk tries some people capitally on
+circuit.&nbsp; Certain evidence cropping up, the charge is
+transferred to the J.-C.&rsquo;s own son.&nbsp; Of course, in the
+next trial the J.-C. is excluded, and the case is called before
+the Lord-Justice General.</p>
+<p>Where would this trial have to be?&nbsp; I fear in Edinburgh,
+which would not suit my view.&nbsp; Could it be again at the
+circuit town?</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Jenkin</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>December</i> 5<i>th</i>,
+1892.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN</span>,&mdash;. . .
+So much said, I come with guilty speed to what more immediately
+concerns myself.&nbsp; Spare us a month or two for old
+sake&rsquo;s sake, and make my wife and me happy and proud.&nbsp;
+We are only fourteen days from San Francisco, just about a month
+from Liverpool; we have our new house almost finished.&nbsp; The
+thing <i>can</i> be done; I believe we can make you almost
+comfortable.&nbsp; It is the loveliest climate in the world, our
+political troubles seem near an end.&nbsp; It can be done, it
+must!&nbsp; Do, please, make a virtuous effort, come and take a
+glimpse of a new world I am sure you do not dream of, and some
+old friends who do often dream of your arrival.</p>
+<p>Alas, I was just beginning to get eloquent, and there goes the
+lunch bell, and after lunch I must make up the mail.</p>
+<p>Do come.&nbsp; You must not come in February or
+March&mdash;bad months.&nbsp; From April on it is
+delightful.&mdash;Your sincere friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><a name="page275"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+275</span><span class="smcap">to Henry James</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>December</i> 5<i>th</i>,
+1892.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR JAMES</span>,&mdash;How comes
+it so great a silence has fallen?&nbsp; The still small voice of
+self-approval whispers me it is not from me.&nbsp; I have looked
+up my register, and find I have neither written to you nor heard
+from you since June 22nd, on which day of grace that invaluable
+work began.&nbsp; This is not as it should be.&nbsp; How to get
+back?&nbsp; I remember acknowledging with rapture the &mdash; of
+the <i>Master</i>, and I remember receiving <i>Marbot</i>: was
+that our last relation?</p>
+<p>Hey, well! anyway, as you may have probably gathered from the
+papers, I have been in devilish hot water, and (what may be new
+to you) devilish hard at work.&nbsp; In twelve calendar months I
+finished <i>The Wrecker</i>, wrote all of <i>Fales&agrave;</i>
+but the first chapter (well, much of), the <i>History of
+Samoa</i>, did something here and there to my <i>Life of my
+Grandfather</i>, and began And Finished <i>David
+Balfour</i>.&nbsp; What do you think of it for a year?&nbsp;
+Since then I may say I have done nothing beyond draft three
+chapters of another novel, <i>The Justice-Clerk</i>, which ought
+to be shorter and a blower&mdash;at least if it don&rsquo;t make
+a spoon, it will spoil the horn of an Aurochs (if that&rsquo;s
+how it should be spelt).</p>
+<p>On the hot water side it may entertain you to know that I have
+been actually sentenced to deportation by my friends on Mulinuu,
+C. J. Cedercrantz, and Baron Senfft von Pilsach.&nbsp; The awful
+doom, however, declined to fall, owing to Circumstances over
+Which.&nbsp; I only heard of it (so to speak) last night.&nbsp; I
+mean officially, but I had walked among rumours.&nbsp; The whole
+tale will be some day put into my hand, and I shall share it with
+humorous friends.</p>
+<p>It is likely, however, by my judgment, that this epoch of
+gaiety in Samoa will soon cease; and the fierce white <a
+name="page276"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 276</span>light of
+history will beat no longer on Yours Sincerely and his fellows
+here on the beach.&nbsp; We ask ourselves whether the reason will
+more rejoice over the end of a disgraceful business, or the
+unregenerate man more sorrow over the stoppage of the fun.&nbsp;
+For, say what you please, it has been a deeply interesting
+time.&nbsp; You don&rsquo;t know what news is, nor what politics,
+nor what the life of man, till you see it on so small a scale and
+with your own liberty on the board for stake.&nbsp; I would not
+have missed it for much.&nbsp; And anxious friends beg me to stay
+at home and study human nature in Brompton drawing-rooms!&nbsp;
+<i>Farceurs</i>!&nbsp; And anyway you know that such is not my
+talent.&nbsp; I could never be induced to take the faintest
+interest in Brompton <i>qua</i> Brompton or a drawing-room
+<i>qua</i> a drawing-room.&nbsp; I am an Epick Writer with a k to
+it, but without the necessary genius.</p>
+<p>Hurry up with another book of stories.&nbsp; I am now reduced
+to two of my contemporaries, you and Barrie&mdash;O, and
+Kipling&mdash;you and Barrie and Kipling are now my Muses
+Three.&nbsp; And with Kipling, as you know, there are
+reservations to be made.&nbsp; And you and Barrie don&rsquo;t
+write enough.&nbsp; I should say I also read Anstey when he is
+serious, and can almost always get a happy day out of Marion
+Crawford&mdash;<i>ce n&rsquo;est pas toujours la guerre</i>, but
+it&rsquo;s got life to it and guts, and it moves.&nbsp; Did you
+read the <i>Witch of Prague</i>?&nbsp; Nobody could read it
+twice, of course; and the first time even it was necessary to
+skip.&nbsp; <i>E pur si muove</i>.&nbsp; But Barrie is a beauty,
+the <i>Little Minister</i> and the <i>Window in Thrums</i>,
+eh?&nbsp; Stuff in that young man; but he must see and not be too
+funny.&nbsp; Genius in him, but there&rsquo;s a journalist at his
+elbow&mdash;there&rsquo;s the risk.&nbsp; Look, what a page is
+the glove business in the <i>Window</i>! knocks a man flat;
+that&rsquo;s guts, if you please.</p>
+<p>Why have I wasted the little time that is left with a sort of
+naked review article?&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t know, I&rsquo;m
+sure.&nbsp; I suppose a mere ebullition of congested literary
+talk <a name="page277"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 277</span>I
+am beginning to think a visit from friends would be due.&nbsp;
+Wish you could come!</p>
+<p>Let us have your news anyway, and forgive this silly stale
+effusion.&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to J. M. Barrie</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Vailima</i>, <i>December</i>
+1892.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR J. M. BARRIE</span>,&mdash;You
+will be sick of me soon; I cannot help it.&nbsp; I have been off
+my work for some time, and re-read the <i>Edinburgh Eleven</i>,
+and had a great mind to write a parody and give you all your
+sauce back again, and see how you would like it yourself.&nbsp;
+And then I read (for the first time&mdash;I know not how) the
+<i>Window in Thrums</i>; I don&rsquo;t say that it is better than
+<i>The Minister</i>; it&rsquo;s less of a tale&mdash;and there is
+a beauty, a material beauty, of the tale <i>ipse</i>, which
+clever critics nowadays long and love to forget; it has more real
+flaws; but somehow it is&mdash;well, I read it last anyway, and
+it&rsquo;s by Barrie.&nbsp; And he&rsquo;s the man for my
+money.&nbsp; The glove is a great page; it is startlingly
+original, and as true as death and judgment.&nbsp; Tibbie Birse
+in the Burial is great, but I think it was a journalist that got
+in the word &lsquo;official.&rsquo;&nbsp; The same character
+plainly had a word to say to Thomas Haggard.&nbsp; Thomas affects
+me as a lie&mdash;I beg your pardon; doubtless he was somebody
+you knew, that leads people so far astray.&nbsp; The actual is
+not the true.</p>
+<p>I am proud to think you are a Scotchman&mdash;though to be
+sure I know nothing of that country, being only an English
+tourist, quo&rsquo; Gavin Ogilvy.&nbsp; I commend the hard case
+of Mr. Gavin Ogilvy to J. M. Barrie, whose work is to me a source
+of living pleasure and heartfelt national pride.&nbsp; There are
+two of us now that the Shirra might have <a
+name="page278"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 278</span>patted on
+the head.&nbsp; And please do not think when I thus seem to
+bracket myself with you, that I am wholly blinded with
+vanity.&nbsp; Jess is beyond my frontier line; I could not touch
+her skirt; I have no such glamour of twilight on my pen.&nbsp; I
+am a capable artist; but it begins to look to me as if you were a
+man of genius.&nbsp; Take care of yourself, for my sake.&nbsp;
+It&rsquo;s a devilish hard thing for a man who writes so many
+novels as I do, that I should get so few to read.&nbsp; And I can
+read yours, and I love them.</p>
+<p>A pity for you that my amanuensis is not on stock to-day, and
+my own hand perceptibly worse than usual.&mdash;Yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>December</i> 5<i>th</i>,
+1892.</p>
+<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;They tell me your health is not
+strong.&nbsp; Man, come out here and try the Prophet&rsquo;s
+chamber.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s only one bad point to us&mdash;we do
+rise early.&nbsp; The Amanuensis states that you are a lover of
+silence&mdash;and that ours is a noisy house&mdash;and she is a
+chatterbox&mdash;I am not answerable for these statements, though
+I do think there is a touch of garrulity about my premises.&nbsp;
+We have so little to talk about, you see.&nbsp; The house is
+three miles from town, in the midst of great silent
+forests.&nbsp; There is a burn close by, and when we are not
+talking you can hear the burn, and the birds, and the sea
+breaking on the coast three miles away and six hundred feet below
+us, and about three times a month a bell&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know
+where the bell is, nor who rings it; it may be the bell in Hans
+Andersen&rsquo;s story for all I know.&nbsp; It is never hot
+here&mdash;86 in the shade is about our hottest&mdash;and it is
+never cold except just in the early mornings.&nbsp; Take it for
+all in all, I suppose this island climate to be by far the
+healthiest in the world&mdash;even the influenza entirely lost
+its sting.&nbsp; Only two patients died, and one was a man nearly
+eighty, and the other a child below four months.&nbsp; I
+won&rsquo;t tell you if it is beautiful, for I want you to come
+<a name="page279"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 279</span>here and
+see for yourself.&nbsp; Everybody on the premises except my wife
+has some Scotch blood in their veins&mdash;I beg your
+pardon&mdash;except the natives&mdash;and then my wife is a
+Dutchwoman&mdash;and the natives are the next thing conceivable
+to Highlanders before the forty-five.&nbsp; We would have some
+grand cracks!</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Come</span>, it will broaden your mind,
+and be the making of me.</p>
+<h2>XII<br />
+LIFE IN SAMOA,<br />
+<i>Continued</i><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">JANUARY 1893&ndash;DECEMBER
+1894</span></h2>
+<h3><a name="page285"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+285</span><span class="smcap">to Charles Baxter</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>April</i>, 1893.]</p>
+<p>. . . About <i>The Justice-Clerk</i>, I long to go at it, but
+will first try to get a short story done.&nbsp; Since January I
+<a name="page286"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 286</span>have had
+two severe illnesses, my boy, and some heart-breaking anxiety
+over Fanny; and am only now convalescing.&nbsp; I came down to
+dinner last night for the first time, and that only because the
+service had broken down, and to relieve an inexperienced
+servant.&nbsp; Nearly four months now I have rested my brains;
+and if it be true that rest is good for brains, I ought to be
+able to pitch in like a giant refreshed.&nbsp; Before the autumn,
+I hope to send you some <i>Justice-Clerk</i>, or <i>Weir of
+Hermiston</i>, as Colvin seems to prefer; I own to
+indecision.&nbsp; Received <i>Syntax</i>, <i>Dance of Death</i>,
+and <i>Pitcairn</i>, which last I have read from end to end since
+its arrival, with vast improvement.&nbsp; What a pity it stops so
+soon!&nbsp; I wonder is there nothing that seems to prolong the
+series?&nbsp; Why doesn&rsquo;t some young man take it up?&nbsp;
+How about my old friend Fountainhall&rsquo;s
+<i>Decisions</i>?&nbsp; I remember as a boy that there was some
+good reading there.&nbsp; Perhaps you could borrow me that, and
+send it on loan; and perhaps Laing&rsquo;s <i>Memorials</i>
+therewith; and a work I&rsquo;m ashamed to say I have never read,
+<i>Balfour&rsquo;s Letters</i>. . . . I have come by accident,
+through a correspondent, on one very curious and interesting
+fact&mdash;namely, that Stevenson was one of the names adopted by
+the MacGregors at the proscription.&nbsp; The details supplied by
+my correspondent are both convincing and amusing; but it would be
+highly interesting to find out more of this.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to A. Conan Doyle</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Apia</i>,
+<i>Samoa</i>, <i>April</i> 5<i>th</i>, 1893.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR SIR</span>,&mdash;You have taken
+many occasions to make yourself very agreeable to me, for which I
+might in decency have thanked you earlier.&nbsp; It is now my
+turn; and I hope you will allow me to offer you my compliments on
+your very ingenious and very interesting adventures of Sherlock
+Holmes.&nbsp; That is the class of literature that I like when <a
+name="page287"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 287</span>I have the
+toothache.&nbsp; As a matter of fact, it was a pleurisy I was
+enjoying when I took the volume up; and it will interest you as a
+medical man to know that the cure was for the moment
+effectual.&nbsp; Only the one thing troubles me: can this be my
+old friend Joe Bell?&mdash;I am, yours very truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;And lo, here is your address supplied me
+here in Samoa!&nbsp; But do not take mine, O frolic fellow
+Spookist, from the same source; mine is wrong.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to S. R. Crockett</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>May</i> 17<i>th</i>, 1893.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MR. CROCKETT</span>,&mdash;I do
+not owe you two letters, nor yet nearly one, sir!&nbsp; The last
+time I heard of you, you wrote about an accident, and I sent you
+a letter to my lawyer, Charles Baxter, which does not seem to
+have been presented, as I see nothing of it in his
+accounts.&nbsp; Query, was that lost?&nbsp; I should not like you
+to think I had been so unmannerly and so inhuman.&nbsp; If you
+have written since, your letter also has miscarried, as is much
+the rule in this part of the world, unless you register.</p>
+<p>Your book is not yet to hand, but will probably follow next
+month.&nbsp; I detected you early in the <i>Bookman</i>, which I
+usually see, and noted you in particular as displaying a
+monstrous ingratitude about the footnote.&nbsp; Well, mankind is
+ungrateful; &lsquo;Man&rsquo;s ingratitude to man makes countless
+thousands mourn,&rsquo; quo&rsquo; Rab&mdash;or words to that
+effect.&nbsp; By the way, an anecdote of a cautious sailor:
+&lsquo;Bill, Bill,&rsquo; says I to him, &lsquo;<i>or words to
+that effect</i>.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I shall never take that walk by the Fisher&rsquo;s Tryst and
+Glencorse.&nbsp; I shall never see Auld Reekie.&nbsp; I shall
+never set my foot again upon the heather.&nbsp; Here I am until I
+<a name="page288"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 288</span>die, and
+here will I be buried.&nbsp; The word is out and the doom
+written.&nbsp; Or, if I do come, it will be a voyage to a further
+goal, and in fact a suicide; which, however, if I could get my
+family all fixed up in the money way, I might, perhaps, perform,
+or attempt.&nbsp; But there is a plaguey risk of breaking down by
+the way; and I believe I shall stay here until the end comes like
+a good boy, as I am.&nbsp; If I did it, I should put upon my
+trunks: &lsquo;Passenger to&mdash;Hades.&rsquo;&nbsp; How
+strangely wrong your information is!&nbsp; In the first place, I
+should never carry a novel to Sydney; I should post it from
+here.&nbsp; In the second place, <i>Weir of Hermiston</i> is as
+yet scarce begun.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s going to be excellent, no
+doubt; but it consists of about twenty pages.&nbsp; I have a
+tale, a shortish tale in length, but it has proved long to do,
+<i>The Ebb Tide</i>, some part of which goes home this
+mail.&nbsp; It is by me and Mr. Osbourne, and is really a
+singular work.&nbsp; There are only four characters, and three of
+them are bandits&mdash;well, two of them are, and the third is
+their comrade and accomplice.&nbsp; It sounds cheering,
+doesn&rsquo;t it?&nbsp; Barratry, and drunkenness, and vitriol,
+and I cannot tell you all what, are the beams of the roof.&nbsp;
+And yet&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know&mdash;I sort of think
+there&rsquo;s something in it.&nbsp; You&rsquo;ll see (which is
+more than I ever can) whether Davis and Attwater come off or
+not.</p>
+<p><i>Weir of Hermiston</i> is a much greater undertaking, and
+the plot is not good, I fear; but Lord Justice-Clerk Hermiston
+ought to be a plum.&nbsp; Of other schemes, more or less
+executed, it skills not to speak.</p>
+<p>I am glad to hear so good an account of your activity and
+interests, and shall always hear from you with pleasure; though I
+am, and must continue, a mere sprite of the inkbottle, unseen in
+the flesh.&nbsp; Please remember me to your wife and to the
+four-year-old sweetheart, if she be not too engrossed with higher
+matters.&nbsp; Do you know where the road crosses the burn under
+Glencorse Church?&nbsp; Go there, and say a prayer for me:
+<i>moriturus salutat</i>.&nbsp; See that it&rsquo;s a sunny day;
+I would like it to be a Sunday, <a name="page289"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 289</span>but that&rsquo;s not possible in the
+premises; and stand on the right-hand bank just where the road
+goes down into the water, and shut your eyes, and if I
+don&rsquo;t appear to you! well, it can&rsquo;t be helped, and
+will be extremely funny.</p>
+<p>I have no concern here but to work and to keep an eye on this
+distracted people.&nbsp; I live just now wholly alone in an upper
+room of my house, because the whole family are down with
+influenza, bar my wife and myself.&nbsp; I get my horse up
+sometimes in the afternoon and have a ride in the woods; and I
+sit here and smoke and write, and rewrite, and destroy, and rage
+at my own impotence, from six in the morning till eight at night,
+with trifling and not always agreeable intervals for meals.</p>
+<p>I am sure you chose wisely to keep your country charge.&nbsp;
+There a minister can be something, not in a town.&nbsp; In a
+town, the most of them are empty houses&mdash;and public
+speakers.&nbsp; Why should you suppose your book will be slated
+because you have no friends?&nbsp; A new writer, if he is any
+good, will be acclaimed generally with more noise than he
+deserves.&nbsp; But by this time you will know for
+certain.&mdash;I am, yours sincerely,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;Be it known to this fluent generation that I
+R. L. S., in the forty-third of my age and the twentieth of my
+professional life, wrote twenty-four pages in twenty-one days,
+working from six to eleven, and again in the afternoon from two
+to four or so, without fail or interruption.&nbsp; Such are the
+gifts the gods have endowed us withal: such was the facility of
+this prolific writer!</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Augustus St. Gaudens</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>May</i> 29<i>th</i>, 1893</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR GOD-LIKE
+SCULPTOR</span>,&mdash;I wish in the most delicate manner in the
+world to insinuate a few commissions:&mdash;</p>
+<p>No. 1. Is for a couple of copies of my medallion, as <a
+name="page290"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 290</span>gilt-edged
+and high-toned as it is possible to make them.&nbsp; One is for
+our house here, and should be addressed as above.&nbsp; The other
+is for my friend Sidney Colvin, and should be
+addressed&mdash;Sidney Colvin, Esq., Keeper of the Print Room,
+British Museum, London.</p>
+<p>No. 2. This is a rather large order, and demands some
+explanation.&nbsp; Our house is lined with varnished wood of a
+dark ruddy colour, very beautiful to see; at the same time, it
+calls very much for gold; there is a limit to picture frames, and
+really you know there has to be a limit to the pictures you put
+inside of them.&nbsp; Accordingly, we have had an idea of a
+certain kind of decoration, which, I think, you might help us to
+make practical.&nbsp; What we want is an alphabet of gilt letters
+(very much such as people play with), and all mounted on spikes
+like drawing-pins; say two spikes to each letter, one at top, and
+one at bottom.&nbsp; Say that they were this height, 
+<a href="images/p290b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"large letter capital I about 4 times bigger than normal size"
+title=
+"large letter capital I about 4 times bigger than normal size"
+ src="images/p290s.jpg" />
+</a> and that you chose a model of some really exquisitely fine,
+clear type from some Roman monument, and that they were made
+either of metal or some composition gilt&mdash;the point is,
+could not you, in your land of wooden houses, get a manufacturer
+to take the idea and manufacture them at a venture, so that I
+could get two or three hundred pieces or so at a moderate
+figure?&nbsp; You see, suppose you entertain an honoured guest,
+when he goes he leaves his name in gilt letters on your walls; an
+infinity of fun and decoration can be got out of hospitable and
+festive mottoes; and the doors of every room can be beautified by
+the legend of their names.&nbsp; I really think there is
+something in the idea, and you might be able to push it with the
+brutal and licentious manufacturer, using my name if necessary,
+though I should think the name of the god-like sculptor would be
+more germane.&nbsp; In case you should get it started, I should
+tell you that we should require commas in order to write the
+Samoan language, which is full of words written thus: <a
+name="page291"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 291</span>la&rsquo;u,
+ti&rsquo;e ti&rsquo;e.&nbsp; As the Samoan language uses but a
+very small proportion of the consonants, we should require a
+double or treble stock of all vowels and of F, G, L, U, N, P, S,
+T, and V.</p>
+<p>The other day in Sydney, I think you might be interested to
+hear, I was sculpt a second time by a man called &mdash;, as well
+as I can remember and read.&nbsp; I mustn&rsquo;t criticise a
+present, and he had very little time to do it in.&nbsp; It is
+thought by my family to be an excellent likeness of Mark
+Twain.&nbsp; This poor fellow, by the by, met with the devil of
+an accident.&nbsp; A model of a statue which he had just finished
+with a desperate effort was smashed to smithereens on its way to
+exhibition.</p>
+<p>Please be sure and let me know if anything is likely to come
+of this letter business, and the exact cost of each letter, so
+that I may count the cost before ordering.&mdash;Yours
+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>June</i> 10<i>th</i>, 1893.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR GOSSE</span>,&mdash;My mother
+tells me you never received the very long and careful letter that
+I sent you more than a year ago; or is it two years?</p>
+<p>I was indeed so much surprised at your silence that I wrote to
+Henry James and begged him to inquire if you had received it; his
+reply was an (if possible) higher power of the same silence;
+whereupon I bowed my head and acquiesced.&nbsp; But there is no
+doubt the letter was written and sent; and I am sorry it was
+lost, for it contained, among other things, an irrecoverable
+criticism of your father&rsquo;s <i>Life</i>, with a number of
+suggestions for another edition, which struck me at the time as
+excellent.</p>
+<p>Well, suppose we call that cried off, and begin as <a
+name="page292"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+292</span>before?&nbsp; It is fortunate indeed that we can do so,
+being both for a while longer in the day.&nbsp; But, alas! when I
+see &lsquo;works of the late J. A. S.,&rsquo; <a
+name="citation292"></a><a href="#footnote292"
+class="citation">[292]</a>&nbsp; I can see no help and no
+reconciliation possible.&nbsp; I wrote him a letter, I think,
+three years ago, heard in some roundabout way that he had
+received it, waited in vain for an answer (which had probably
+miscarried), and in a humour between frowns and smiles wrote to
+him no more.&nbsp; And now the strange, poignant, pathetic,
+brilliant creature is gone into the night, and the voice is
+silent that uttered so much excellent discourse; and I am sorry
+that I did not write to him again.&nbsp; Yet I am glad for him;
+light lie the turf!&nbsp; The <i>Saturday</i> is the only
+obituary I have seen, and I thought it very good upon the
+whole.&nbsp; I should be half tempted to write an <i>In
+Memoriam</i>, but I am submerged with other work.&nbsp; Are you
+going to do it?&nbsp; I very much admire your efforts that way;
+you are our only academician.</p>
+<p>So you have tried fiction?&nbsp; I will tell you the truth:
+when I saw it announced, I was so sure you would send it to me,
+that I did not order it!&nbsp; But the order goes this mail, and
+I will give you news of it.&nbsp; Yes, honestly, fiction is very
+difficult; it is a terrible strain to <i>carry</i> your
+characters all that time.&nbsp; And the difficulty of according
+the narrative and the dialogue (in a work in the third person) is
+extreme.&nbsp; That is one reason out of half a dozen why I so
+often prefer the first.&nbsp; It is much in my mind just now,
+because of my last work, just off the stocks three days ago,
+<i>The Ebb Tide</i>: a dreadful, grimy business in the third
+person, where the strain between a vilely realistic dialogue and
+a narrative style pitched about (in phrase) &lsquo;four notes
+higher&rsquo; than it should have been, has sown my head with
+grey hairs; or I believe so&mdash;if my head escaped, my heart
+has them.</p>
+<p>The truth is, I have a little lost my way, and stand bemused
+at the cross-roads.&nbsp; A subject?&nbsp; Ay, I have dozens; I
+have at least four novels begun, they are none <a
+name="page293"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 293</span>good
+enough; and the mill waits, and I&rsquo;ll have to take second
+best.&nbsp; <i>The Ebb Tide</i> I make the world a present of; I
+expect, and, I suppose, deserve to be torn to pieces; but there
+was all that good work lying useless, and I had to finish it!</p>
+<p>All your news of your family is pleasant to hear.&nbsp; My
+wife has been very ill, but is now better; I may say I am ditto,
+<i>The Ebb Tide</i> having left me high and dry, which is a good
+example of the mixed metaphor.&nbsp; Our home, and estate, and
+our boys, and the politics of the island, keep us perpetually
+amused and busy; and I grind away with an odd, dogged, down
+sensation&mdash;and an idea <i>in petto</i> that the game is
+about played out.&nbsp; I have got too realistic, and I must
+break the trammels&mdash;I mean I would if I could; but the yoke
+is heavy.&nbsp; I saw with amusement that Zola says the same
+thing; and truly the <i>D&eacute;b&acirc;cle</i> was a mighty big
+book, I have no need for a bigger, though the last part is a mere
+mistake in my opinion.&nbsp; But the Emperor, and Sedan, and the
+doctor at the ambulance, and the horses in the field of battle,
+Lord, how gripped it is!&nbsp; What an epical performance!&nbsp;
+According to my usual opinion, I believe I could go over that
+book and leave a masterpiece by blotting and no ulterior
+art.&nbsp; But that is an old story, ever new with me.&nbsp;
+Taine gone, and Renan, and Symonds, and Tennyson, and Browning;
+the suns go swiftly out, and I see no suns to follow, nothing but
+a universal twilight of the demi-divinities, with parties like
+you and me and Lang beating on toy drums and playing on penny
+whistles about glow-worms.&nbsp; But Zola is big anyway; he has
+plenty in his belly; too much, that is all; he wrote the
+<i>D&eacute;b&acirc;cle</i> and he wrote <i>La B&ecirc;te
+humaine</i>, perhaps the most excruciatingly silly book that I
+ever read to an end.&nbsp; And why did I read it to an end, W. E.
+G.?&nbsp; Because the animal in me was interested in the
+lewdness.&nbsp; Not sincerely, of course, my mind refusing to
+partake in it; but the flesh was slightly pleased.&nbsp; And when
+it was done, I cast it from me with a peal of <a
+name="page294"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 294</span>laughter,
+and forgot it, as I would forget a Mont&eacute;pin.&nbsp; Taine
+is to me perhaps the chief of these losses; I did luxuriate in
+his <i>Origines</i>; it was something beyond literature, not
+quite so good, if you please, but so much more systematic, and
+the pages that had to be &lsquo;written&rsquo; always so
+adequate.&nbsp; Robespierre, Napoleon, were both excellent
+good.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>June</i> 18<i>th</i>,
+&rsquo;93</p>
+<p>Well, I have left fiction wholly, and gone to my
+<i>Grandfather</i>, and on the whole found peace.&nbsp; By next
+month my <i>Grandfather</i> will begin to be quite grown
+up.&nbsp; I have already three chapters about as good as done; by
+which, of course, as you know, I mean till further notice or the
+next discovery.&nbsp; I like biography far better than fiction
+myself: fiction is too free.&nbsp; In biography you have your
+little handful of facts, little bits of a puzzle, and you sit and
+think, and fit &rsquo;em together this way and that, and get up
+and throw &rsquo;em down, and say damn, and go out for a
+walk.&nbsp; And it&rsquo;s real soothing; and when done, gives an
+idea of finish to the writer that is very peaceful.&nbsp; Of
+course, it&rsquo;s not really so finished as quite a rotten
+novel; it always has and always must have the incurable
+illogicalities of life about it, the fathoms of slack and the
+miles of tedium.&nbsp; Still, that&rsquo;s where the fun comes
+in; and when you have at last managed to shut up the castle
+spectre (dulness), the very outside of his door looks beautiful
+by contrast.&nbsp; There are pages in these books that may seem
+nothing to the reader; but you <i>remember what they were</i>,
+<i>you know what they might have been</i>, and they seem to you
+witty beyond comparison.&nbsp; In my <i>Grandfather</i>
+I&rsquo;ve had (for instance) to give up the temporal order
+almost entirely; doubtless the temporal order is the great foe of
+the biographer; it is so tempting, so easy, and lo! there you are
+in the bog!&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
+class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p>With all kind messages from self and wife to you and
+yours.&nbsp; My wife is very much better, having been the <a
+name="page295"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 295</span>early part
+of this year alarmingly ill.&nbsp; She is now all right, only
+complaining of trifles, annoying to her, but happily not
+interesting to her friends.&nbsp; I am in a hideous state, having
+stopped drink and smoking; yes, both.&nbsp; No wine, no tobacco;
+and the dreadful part of it is that&mdash;looking forward&mdash;I
+have&mdash;what shall I say?&mdash;nauseating intimations that it
+ought to be for ever.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Henry James</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima Plantation</i>, <i>Samoan
+Islands</i>, <i>June</i> 17<i>th</i>, 1893.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENRY JAMES</span>,&mdash;I
+believe I have neglected a mail in answering yours.&nbsp; You
+will be very sorry to hear that my wife was exceedingly ill, and
+very glad to hear that she is better.&nbsp; I cannot say that I
+feel any more anxiety about her.&nbsp; We shall send you a
+photograph of her taken in Sydney in her customary island habit
+as she walks and gardens and shrilly drills her brown
+assistants.&nbsp; She was very ill when she sat for it, which may
+a little explain the appearance of the photograph.&nbsp; It
+reminds me of a friend of my grandmother&rsquo;s who used to say
+when talking to younger women, &lsquo;Aweel, when I was young, I
+wasnae just exactly what ye wad call <i>bonny</i>, but I was
+pale, penetratin&rsquo;, and interestin&rsquo;.&rsquo;&nbsp; I
+would not venture to hint that Fanny is &lsquo;no bonny,&rsquo;
+but there is no doubt but that in this presentment she is
+&lsquo;pale, penetratin&rsquo;, and interesting.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>As you are aware, I have been wading deep waters and
+contending with the great ones of the earth, not wholly without
+success.&nbsp; It is, you may be interested to hear, a dreary and
+infuriating business.&nbsp; If you can get the fools to admit one
+thing, they will always save their face by denying another.&nbsp;
+If you can induce them to take a step to the right hand, they
+generally indemnify themselves by cutting a caper to the
+left.&nbsp; I always held (upon no evidence whatever, from a mere
+sentiment or intuition) that politics was the dirtiest, the most
+foolish, and the <a name="page296"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+296</span>most random of human employments.&nbsp; I always held,
+but now I know it!&nbsp; Fortunately, you have nothing to do with
+anything of the kind, and I may spare you the horror of further
+details.</p>
+<p>I received from you a book by a man by the name of Anatole
+France.&nbsp; Why should I disguise it?&nbsp; I have no use for
+Anatole.&nbsp; He writes very prettily, and then
+afterwards?&nbsp; Baron Marbot was a different pair of
+shoes.&nbsp; So likewise is the Baron de Vitrolles, whom I am now
+perusing with delight.&nbsp; His escape in 1814 is one of the
+best pages I remember anywhere to have read.&nbsp; But Marbot and
+Vitrolles are dead, and what has become of the living?&nbsp; It
+seems as if literature were coming to a stand.&nbsp; I am sure it
+is with me; and I am sure everybody will say so when they have
+the privilege of reading <i>The Ebb Tide</i>.&nbsp; My dear man,
+the grimness of that story is not to be depicted in words.&nbsp;
+There are only four characters, to be sure, but they are such a
+troop of swine!&nbsp; And their behaviour is really so deeply
+beneath any possible standard, that on a retrospect I wonder I
+have been able to endure them myself until the yarn was
+finished.&nbsp; Well, there is always one thing; it will serve as
+a touchstone.&nbsp; If the admirers of Zola admire him for his
+pertinent ugliness and pessimism, I think they should admire
+this; but if, as I have long suspected, they neither admire nor
+understand the man&rsquo;s art, and only wallow in his rancidness
+like a hound in offal, then they will certainly be disappointed
+in <i>The Ebb Tide</i>.&nbsp; <i>Alas</i>! poor little tale, it
+is not <i>even</i> rancid.</p>
+<p>By way of an antidote or febrifuge, I am going on at a great
+rate with my <i>History of the Stevensons</i>, which I hope may
+prove rather amusing, in some parts at least.&nbsp; The excess of
+materials weighs upon me.&nbsp; My grandfather is a delightful
+comedy part; and I have to treat him besides as a serious and (in
+his way) a heroic figure, and at times I lose my way, and I fear
+in the end will blur the effect.&nbsp; However, <i>&agrave; la
+gr&acirc;ce de Dieu</i>!&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll make <a
+name="page297"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 297</span>a spoon or
+spoil a horn.&nbsp; You see, I have to do the Building of the
+Bell Rock by cutting down and packing my grandsire&rsquo;s book,
+which I rather hope I have done, but do not know.&nbsp; And it
+makes a huge chunk of a very different style and quality between
+Chapters <span class="GutSmall">II</span>. and <span
+class="GutSmall">IV</span>.&nbsp; And it can&rsquo;t be
+helped!&nbsp; It is just a delightful and exasperating
+necessity.&nbsp; You know, the stuff is really excellent
+narrative: only, perhaps there&rsquo;s too much of it!&nbsp;
+There is the rub.&nbsp; Well, well, it will be plain to you that
+my mind is affected; it might be with less.&nbsp; <i>The Ebb
+Tide</i> and <i>Northern Lights</i> are a full meal for any plain
+man.</p>
+<p>I have written and ordered your last book, <i>The Real
+Thing</i>, so be sure and don&rsquo;t send it.&nbsp; What else
+are you doing or thinking of doing?&nbsp; News I have none, and
+don&rsquo;t want any.&nbsp; I have had to stop all strong drink
+and all tobacco, and am now in a transition state between the
+two, which seems to be near madness.&nbsp; You never smoked, I
+think, so you can never taste the joys of stopping it.&nbsp; But
+at least you have drunk, and you can enter perhaps into my
+annoyance when I suddenly find a glass of claret or a
+brandy-and-water give me a splitting headache the next
+morning.&nbsp; No mistake about it; drink anything, and
+there&rsquo;s your headache.&nbsp; Tobacco just as bad for
+me.&nbsp; If I live through this breach of habit, I shall be a
+white-livered puppy indeed.&nbsp; Actually I am so made, or so
+twisted, that I do not like to think of a life without the red
+wine on the table and the tobacco with its lovely little coal of
+fire.&nbsp; It doesn&rsquo;t amuse me from a distance.&nbsp; I
+may find it the Garden of Eden when I go in, but I don&rsquo;t
+like the colour of the gate-posts.&nbsp; Suppose somebody said to
+you, you are to leave your home, and your books, and your clubs,
+and go out and camp in mid-Africa, and command an expedition, you
+would howl, and kick, and flee.&nbsp; I think the same of a life
+without wine and tobacco; and if this goes on, I&rsquo;ve got to
+go and do it, sir, in the living flesh!</p>
+<p>I thought Bourget was a friend of yours?&nbsp; And I thought
+the French were a polite race?&nbsp; He has taken <a
+name="page298"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 298</span>my
+dedication with a stately silence that has surprised me into
+apoplexy.&nbsp; Did I go and dedicate my book <a
+name="citation298a"></a><a href="#footnote298a"
+class="citation">[298a]</a> to the nasty alien, and the
+&rsquo;norrid Frenchman, and the Bloody Furrineer?&nbsp; Well, I
+wouldn&rsquo;t do it again; and unless his case is susceptible of
+explanation, you might perhaps tell him so over the walnuts and
+the wine, by way of speeding the gay hours.&nbsp; Sincerely, I
+thought my dedication worth a letter.</p>
+<p>If anything be worth anything here below!&nbsp; Do you know
+the story of the man who found a button in his hash, and called
+the waiter?&nbsp; &lsquo;What do you call that?&rsquo; says
+he.&nbsp; &lsquo;Well,&rsquo; said the waiter, &lsquo;what
+d&rsquo;you expect?&nbsp; Expect to find a gold watch and
+chain?&rsquo;&nbsp; Heavenly apologue, is it not?&nbsp; I
+expected (rather) to find a gold watch and chain; I expected to
+be able to smoke to excess and drink to comfort all the days of
+my life; and I am still indignantly staring on this button!&nbsp;
+It&rsquo;s not even a button; it&rsquo;s a teetotal
+badge!&mdash;Ever yours,</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>Apia</i>, <i>July</i> 1893.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENRY
+JAMES</span>,&mdash;Yes.&nbsp; <i>Les Troph&eacute;es</i>, on the
+whole, a book. <a name="citation298b"></a><a href="#footnote298b"
+class="citation">[298b]</a>&nbsp; It is excellent; but is it a
+life&rsquo;s work?&nbsp; I always suspect <i>you</i> of a volume
+of sonnets up your sleeve; when is it coming down?&nbsp; I am in
+one of my moods of wholesale impatience with all fiction and all
+verging on it, reading instead, with rapture,
+<i>Fountainhall&rsquo;s Decisions</i>.&nbsp; You never read it:
+well, it hasn&rsquo;t much form, and is inexpressibly dreary, I
+should suppose, to others&mdash;and even to me for pages.&nbsp;
+It&rsquo;s like walking in a mine underground, and with a damned
+bad lantern, and picking out pieces of ore.&nbsp; This, and war,
+will be my excuse for not having read your (doubtless) charming
+work of fiction.&nbsp; <a name="page299"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 299</span>The revolving year will bring me
+round to it; and I know, when fiction shall begin to feel a
+little <i>solid</i> to me again, that I shall love it, because
+it&rsquo;s James.&nbsp; Do you know, when I am in this mood, I
+would rather try to read a bad book?&nbsp; It&rsquo;s not so
+disappointing, anyway.&nbsp; And <i>Fountainhall</i> is prime,
+two big folio volumes, and all dreary, and all true, and all as
+terse as an obituary; and about one interesting fact on an
+average in twenty pages, and ten of them unintelligible for
+technicalities.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s literature, if you
+like!&nbsp; It feeds; it falls about you genuine like rain.&nbsp;
+Rain: nobody has done justice to rain in literature yet: surely a
+subject for a Scot.&nbsp; But then you can&rsquo;t do rain in
+that ledger-book style that I am trying for&mdash;or between a
+ledger-book and an old ballad.&nbsp; How to get over, how to
+escape from, the besotting <i>particularity</i> of fiction.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Roland approached the house; it had green doors and window
+blinds; and there was a scraper on the upper step.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+To hell with Roland and the scraper!&mdash;Yours ever,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to A. Conan Doyle</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>July</i> 12,
+1893.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR DR. CONAN
+DOYLE</span>,&mdash;The <i>White Company</i> has not yet turned
+up; but when it does&mdash;which I suppose will be next
+mail&mdash;you shall hear news of me.&nbsp; I have a great talent
+for compliment, accompanied by a hateful, even a diabolic
+frankness.</p>
+<p>Delighted to hear I have a chance of seeing you and Mrs.
+Doyle; Mrs. Stevenson bids me say (what is too true) that our
+rations are often spare.&nbsp; Are you Great Eaters?&nbsp; Please
+reply.</p>
+<p>As to ways and means, here is what you will have to do.&nbsp;
+Leave San Francisco by the down mail, get off at Samoa, and
+twelve days or a fortnight later, you can continue your journey
+to Auckland per Upolu, which will give you a look at Tonga and
+possibly Fiji by the way.&nbsp; <a name="page300"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 300</span>Make this a <i>first part of your
+plans</i>.&nbsp; A fortnight, even of Vailima diet, could kill
+nobody.</p>
+<p>We are in the midst of war here; rather a nasty business, with
+the head-taking; and there seem signs of other trouble.&nbsp; But
+I believe you need make no change in your design to visit
+us.&nbsp; All should be well over; and if it were not, why! you
+need not leave the steamer.&mdash;Yours very truly,</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">19<i>th</i> <i>July</i>
+&rsquo;93.</p>
+<p>. . . We are in the thick of war&mdash;see <i>Illustrated
+London News</i>&mdash;we have only two outside boys left to
+us.&nbsp; Nothing is doing, and <i>per contra</i> little paying.
+. .&nbsp; My life here is dear; but I can live within my income
+for a time at least&mdash;so long as my prices keep up&mdash;and
+it seems a clear duty to waste none of it on gadding about. . .
+.&nbsp; My life of my family fills up intervals, and should be an
+excellent book when it is done, but big, damnably big.</p>
+<p>My dear old man, I perceive by a thousand signs that we grow
+old, and are soon to pass away!&nbsp; I hope with dignity; if
+not, with courage at least.&nbsp; I am myself very ready; or
+would be&mdash;will be&mdash;when I have made a little money for
+my folks.&nbsp; The blows that have fallen upon you are truly
+terrifying; I wish you strength to bear them.&nbsp; It is
+strange, I must seem to you to blaze in a Birmingham prosperity
+and happiness; and to myself I seem a failure.&nbsp; The truth
+is, I have never got over the last influenza yet, and am
+miserably out of heart and out of kilter.&nbsp; Lungs pretty
+right, stomach nowhere, spirits a good deal overshadowed; but
+we&rsquo;ll come through it yet, and cock our bonnets.&nbsp; (I
+confess with sorrow that I am not yet quite sure about the
+<i>intellects</i>; but I hope it is only one of my usual periods
+of non-work.&nbsp; They are more unbearable now, because I cannot
+rest.&nbsp; <i>No rest but the grave for Sir Walter</i>!&nbsp; O
+the words ring in a man&rsquo;s head.)</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><a name="page301"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+301</span><span class="smcap">to A. Conan Doyle</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>August</i>
+23<i>rd</i>, 1893.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR DR. CONAN DOYLE</span>,&mdash;I
+am reposing after a somewhat severe experience upon which I think
+it my duty to report to you.&nbsp; Immediately after dinner this
+evening it occurred to me to re-narrate to my native overseer
+Simel&egrave; your story of <i>The Engineer&rsquo;s
+Thumb</i>.&nbsp; And, sir, I have done it.&nbsp; It was
+necessary, I need hardly say, to go somewhat farther afield than
+you have done.&nbsp; To explain (for instance) what a railway is,
+what a steam hammer, what a coach and horse, what coining, what a
+criminal, and what the police.&nbsp; I pass over other and no
+less necessary explanations.&nbsp; But I did actually succeed;
+and if you could have seen the drawn, anxious features and the
+bright, feverish eyes of Simel&egrave;, you would have (for the
+moment at least) tasted glory.&nbsp; You might perhaps think
+that, were you to come to Samoa, you might be introduced as the
+Author of <i>The Engineer&rsquo;s Thumb</i>.&nbsp; Disabuse
+yourself.&nbsp; They do not know what it is to make up a
+story.&nbsp; <i>The Engineer&rsquo;s Thumb</i> (God forgive me)
+was narrated as a piece of actual and factual history.&nbsp; Nay,
+and more, I who write to you have had the indiscretion to
+perpetrate a trifling piece of fiction entitled <i>The Bottle
+Imp</i>.&nbsp; Parties who come up to visit my unpretentious
+mansion, after having admired the ceilings by Vanderputty and the
+tapestry by Gobbling, manifest towards the end a certain
+uneasiness which proves them to be fellows of an infinite
+delicacy.&nbsp; They may be seen to shrug a brown shoulder, to
+roll up a speaking eye, and at last secret bursts from them:
+&lsquo;Where is the bottle?&rsquo;&nbsp; Alas, my friends (I feel
+tempted to say), you will find it by the Engineer&rsquo;s
+Thumb!&nbsp; Talofa-soifuia.</p>
+<p>Oa&rsquo;u, O lau no moni, O Tusitala.</p>
+<p>More commonly known as,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
+class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p><a name="page302"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 302</span>Have
+read the <i>Refugees</i>; Cond&eacute; and old P. Murat very
+good; Louis <span class="GutSmall">XIV</span>. and Louvois with
+the letter bag very rich.&nbsp; You have reached a trifle wide
+perhaps; too <i>many</i> celebrities?&nbsp; Though I was
+delighted to re-encounter my old friend Du Chaylu.&nbsp; Old
+Murat is perhaps your high water mark; &rsquo;tis excellently
+human, cheerful and real.&nbsp; Do it again.&nbsp; Madame de
+Maintenon struck me as quite good.&nbsp; Have you any document
+for the decapitation?&nbsp; It sounds steepish.&nbsp; The devil
+of all that first part is that you see old Dumas; yet your Louis
+<span class="GutSmall">XIV</span>. is <i>distinctly
+good</i>.&nbsp; I am much interested with this book, which
+fulfils a good deal, and promises more.&nbsp; Question: How far a
+Historical Novel should be wholly episodic?&nbsp; I incline to
+that view, with trembling.&nbsp; I shake hands with you on old
+Murat.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to George Meredith</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Sept.</i> 5<i>th</i>, 1893,
+<i>Vailima Plantation</i>, <i>Upolu</i>, <i>Samoa</i>.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MEREDITH</span>,&mdash;I have
+again and again taken up the pen to write to you, and many
+beginnings have gone into the waste paper basket (I have one
+now&mdash;for the second time in my life&mdash;and feel a big man
+on the strength of it).&nbsp; And no doubt it requires some
+decision to break so long a silence.&nbsp; My health is vastly
+restored, and I am now living patriarchally in this place six
+hundred feet above the sea on the shoulder of a mountain of
+1500.&nbsp; Behind me, the unbroken bush slopes up to the
+backbone of the island (3 to 4000) without a house, with no
+inhabitants save a few runaway black boys, wild pigs and cattle,
+and wild doves and flying foxes, and many parti-coloured birds,
+and many black, and many white: a very eerie, dim, strange place
+and hard to travel.&nbsp; I am <a name="page303"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 303</span>the head of a household of five
+whites, and of twelve Samoans, to all of whom I am the chief and
+father: my cook comes to me and asks leave to marry&mdash;and his
+mother, a fine old chief woman, who has never lived here, does
+the same.&nbsp; You may be sure I granted the petition.&nbsp; It
+is a life of great interest, complicated by the Tower of Babel,
+that old enemy.&nbsp; And I have all the time on my hands for
+literary work.&nbsp; My house is a great place; we have a hall
+fifty feet long with a great red-wood stair ascending from it,
+where we dine in state&mdash;myself usually dressed in a singlet
+and a pair of trousers&mdash;and attended on by servants in a
+single garment, a kind of kilt&mdash;also flowers and
+leaves&mdash;and their hair often powdered with lime.&nbsp; The
+European who came upon it suddenly would think it was a
+dream.&nbsp; We have prayers on Sunday night&mdash;I am a perfect
+pariah in the island not to have them oftener, but the spirit is
+unwilling and the flesh proud, and I cannot go it more.&nbsp; It
+is strange to see the long line of the brown folk crouched along
+the wall with lanterns at intervals before them in the big
+shadowy hall, with an oak cabinet at one end of it and a group of
+Rodin&rsquo;s (which native taste regards as <i>prodigieusement
+leste</i>) presiding over all from the top&mdash;and to hear the
+long rambling Samoan hymn rolling up (God bless me, what
+style!&nbsp; But I am off business to-day, and this is not meant
+to be literature.).</p>
+<p>I have asked Colvin to send you a copy of <i>Catriona</i>,
+which I am sometimes tempted to think is about my best
+work.&nbsp; I hear word occasionally of the <i>Amazing
+Marriage</i>.&nbsp; It will be a brave day for me when I get hold
+of it.&nbsp; Gower Woodseer is now an ancient, lean, grim, exiled
+Scot, living and labouring as for a wager in the tropics; still
+active, still with lots of fire in him, but the youth&mdash;ah,
+the youth where is it?&nbsp; For years after I came here, the
+critics (those genial gentlemen) used to deplore the relaxation
+of my fibre and the idleness to which I had <a
+name="page304"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+304</span>succumbed.&nbsp; I hear less of this now; the next
+thing is they will tell me I am writing myself out! and that my
+unconscientious conduct is bringing their grey hairs with sorrow
+to the dust.&nbsp; I do not know&mdash;I mean I do know one
+thing.&nbsp; For fourteen years I have not had a day&rsquo;s real
+health; I have wakened sick and gone to bed weary; and I have
+done my work unflinchingly.&nbsp; I have written in bed, and
+written out of it, written in hemorrhages, written in sickness,
+written torn by coughing, written when my head swam for weakness;
+and for so long, it seems to me I have won my wager and recovered
+my glove.&nbsp; I am better now, have been rightly speaking since
+first I came to the Pacific; and still, few are the days when I
+am not in some physical distress.&nbsp; And the battle goes
+on&mdash;ill or well, is a trifle; so as it goes.&nbsp; I was
+made for a contest, and the Powers have so willed that my
+battlefield should be this dingy, inglorious one of the bed and
+the physic bottle.&nbsp; At least I have not failed, but I would
+have preferred a place of trumpetings and the open air over my
+head.</p>
+<p>This is a devilish egotistical yarn.&nbsp; Will you try to
+imitate me in that if the spirit ever moves you to reply?&nbsp;
+And meantime be sure that away in the midst of the Pacific there
+is a house on a wooded island where the name of George Meredith
+is very dear, and his memory (since it must be no more) is
+continually honoured.&mdash;Ever your friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p>Remember me to Mariette, if you please; and my wife sends her
+most kind remembrances to yourself.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><a name="page305"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+305</span><span class="smcap">to Augustus St. Gaudens</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>September</i>
+1893.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR ST. GAUDENS</span>,&mdash;I had
+determined not to write to you till I had seen the medallion, but
+it looks as if that might mean the Greek Kalends or the day after
+to-morrow.&nbsp; Reassure yourself, your part is done, it is ours
+that halts&mdash;the consideration of conveyance over our sweet
+little road on boys&rsquo; backs, for we cannot very well apply
+the horses to this work; there is only one; you cannot put it in
+a panier; to put it on the horse&rsquo;s back we have not the
+heart.&nbsp; Beneath the beauty of R. L. S., to say nothing of
+his verses, which the publishers find heavy enough, and the
+genius of the god-like sculptor, the spine would snap and the
+well-knit limbs of the (ahem) cart-horse would be loosed by
+death.&nbsp; So you are to conceive me, sitting in my house,
+dubitative, and the medallion chuckling in the warehouse of the
+German firm, for some days longer; and hear me meanwhile on the
+golden letters.</p>
+<p>Alas! they are all my fancy painted, but the price is
+prohibitive.&nbsp; I cannot do it.&nbsp; It is another day-dream
+burst.&nbsp; Another gable of Abbotsford has gone down,
+fortunately before it was builded, so there&rsquo;s nobody
+injured&mdash;except me.&nbsp; I had a strong conviction that I
+was a great hand at writing inscriptions, and meant to exhibit
+and test my genius on the walls of my house; and now I see I
+can&rsquo;t.&nbsp; It is generally thus.&nbsp; The Battle of the
+Golden Letters will never be delivered.&nbsp; On making
+preparation to open the campaign, the King found himself face to
+face with invincible difficulties, in which the rapacity of a
+mercenary soldiery and the complaints of an impoverished treasury
+played an equal part.&mdash;Ever yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p><a name="page306"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 306</span>I
+enclose a bill for the medallion; have been trying to find your
+letter, quite in vain, and therefore must request you to pay for
+the bronze letters yourself and let me know the damage.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to J. Horne Stevenson</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>November</i> 5<i>th</i>, 1893.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR STEVENSON</span>,&mdash;A
+thousand thanks for your voluminous and delightful
+collections.&nbsp; Baxter&mdash;so soon as it is ready&mdash;will
+let you see a proof of my introduction, which is only sent out as
+a sprat to catch whales.&nbsp; And you will find I have a good
+deal of what you have, only mine in a perfectly desultory manner,
+as is necessary to an exile.&nbsp; My uncle&rsquo;s pedigree is
+wrong; there was never a Stevenson of Caldwell, of course, but
+they were tenants of the Muirs; the farm held by them is in my
+introduction; and I have already written to Charles Baxter to
+have a search made in the Register House.&nbsp; I hope he will
+have had the inspiration to put it under your surveillance.&nbsp;
+Your information as to your own family is intensely interesting,
+and I should not wonder but what you and we and old John
+Stevenson, &lsquo;land labourer in the parish of Dailly,&rsquo;
+came all of the same stock.&nbsp; Ayrshire&mdash;and probably
+Cunningham&mdash;seems to be the home of the race&mdash;our part
+of it.&nbsp; From the distribution of the name&mdash;which your
+collections have so much extended without essentially changing my
+knowledge of&mdash;we seem rather pointed to a <a
+name="page307"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 307</span>British
+origin.&nbsp; What you say of the Engineers is fresh to me, and
+must be well thrashed out.&nbsp; This introduction of it will
+take a long while to walk about!&mdash;as perhaps I may be
+tempted to let it become long; after all, I am writing
+<i>this</i> for my own pleasure solely.&nbsp; Greetings to you
+and other Speculatives of our date, long bygone,
+alas!&mdash;Yours very sincerely,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;I have a different version of my
+grandfather&rsquo;s arms&mdash;or my father had if I could find
+it.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h2><span class="smcap">to John</span> P&mdash;N</h2>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>December</i> 3<i>rd</i>, 1893.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR JOHNNIE</span>,&mdash;Well, I must
+say you seem to be a tremendous fellow!&nbsp; Before I was eight
+I used to write stories&mdash;or dictate them at least&mdash;and
+I had produced an excellent history of Moses, for which I got
+&pound;1 from an uncle; but I had never gone the length of a
+play, so you have beaten me fairly on my own ground.&nbsp; I hope
+you may continue to do so, and thanking you heartily for your
+nice letter, I shall beg you to believe me yours truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Russell</span> P&mdash;N</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>December</i> 3<i>rd</i>, 1893.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR RUSSELL</span>,&mdash;I have to
+thank you very much for your capital letter, which came to hand
+here in Samoa <a name="page308"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+308</span>along with your mother&rsquo;s.&nbsp; When you
+&lsquo;grow up and write stories like me,&rsquo; you will be able
+to understand that there is scarce anything more painful than for
+an author to hold a pen; he has to do it so much that his heart
+sickens and his fingers ache at the sight or touch of it; so that
+you will excuse me if I do not write much, but remain (with
+compliments and greetings from one Scot to another&mdash;though I
+was not born in Ceylon&mdash;you&rsquo;re ahead of me
+there).&mdash;Yours very truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Alison Cunningham</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>December</i> 5,
+1893.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAREST CUMMY</span>,&mdash;This
+goes to you with a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.&nbsp;
+The Happy New Year anyway, for I think it should reach you about
+<i>Noor&rsquo;s Day</i>.&nbsp; I dare say it may be cold and
+frosty.&nbsp; Do you remember when you used to take me out of bed
+in the early morning, carry me to the back windows, show me the
+hills of Fife, and quote to me.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&lsquo;A&rsquo; the hills are covered wi&rsquo;
+snaw,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; An&rsquo; winter&rsquo;s noo come fairly&rsquo;?</p>
+<p>There is not much chance of that here!&nbsp; I wonder how my
+mother is going to stand the winter.&nbsp; If she can, it will be
+a very good thing for her.&nbsp; We are in that part of the year
+which I like the best&mdash;the Rainy or Hurricane Season.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;When it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is
+bad, it is horrid,&rsquo; and our fine days are certainly fine
+like heaven; such a blue of the sea, such green of the trees, and
+such crimson of the hibiscus flowers, you never saw; and the air
+as mild and gentle as a baby&rsquo;s breath, and yet not hot!</p>
+<p><a name="page309"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 309</span>The
+mail is on the move, and I must let up.&mdash;With much love, I
+am, your laddie,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Charles Baxter</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">6<i>th</i> <i>December</i> 1893.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&lsquo;<i>October</i> 25, 1685.&mdash;At Privy
+Council, George Murray, Lieutenant of the King&rsquo;s Guard, and
+others, did, on the 21st of September last, obtain a clandestine
+order of Privy Council to apprehend the person of Janet Pringle,
+daughter to the late Clifton, and she having retired out of the
+way upon information, he got an order against Andrew Pringle, her
+uncle, to produce her. . . . But she having married Andrew
+Pringle, her uncle&rsquo;s son (to disappoint all their designs
+of selling her), a boy of thirteen years old.&rsquo;&nbsp; But my
+boy is to be fourteen, so I extract no further.&mdash;<span
+class="smcap">Fountainhall</span>, i. 320.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;<i>May</i> 6, 1685.&mdash;Wappus Pringle of Clifton was
+still alive after all, and in prison for debt, and transacts with
+Lieutenant Murray, giving security for 7000
+marks.&rsquo;&mdash;i. 372.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>No, it seems to have been <i>her</i> brother who had
+succeeded.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;The above
+is my story, and I wonder if any light can be thrown on it.&nbsp;
+I prefer the girl&rsquo;s father dead; and the question is, How
+in that case could Lieutenant George Murray get his order to
+&lsquo;apprehend&rsquo; and his power to &lsquo;sell&rsquo; her
+in marriage?</p>
+<p><a name="page310"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+310</span>Or&mdash;might Lieutenant G. be her tutor, and she
+fugitive to the Pringles, and on the discovery of her whereabouts
+hastily married?</p>
+<p>A good legal note on these points is very ardently desired by
+me; it will be the corner-stone of my novel.</p>
+<p>This is for&mdash;I am quite wrong to tell you&mdash;for you
+will tell others&mdash;and nothing will teach you that all my
+schemes are in the air, and vanish and reappear again like shapes
+in the clouds&mdash;it is for <i>Heathercat</i>: whereof the
+first volume will be called <i>The Killing Time</i>, and I
+believe I have authorities ample for that.&nbsp; But the second
+volume is to be called (I believe) <i>Darien</i>, and for that I
+want, I fear, a good deal of truck:&mdash;</p>
+<p class="gutindent"><i>Darien Papers</i>,<br />
+<i>Carstairs Papers</i>,<br />
+<i>Marchmont Papers</i>,<br />
+<i>Jerviswoode Correspondence</i>,</p>
+<p>I hope may do me.&nbsp; Some sort of general history of the
+Darien affair (if there is a decent one, which I misdoubt), it
+would also be well to have&mdash;the one with most details, if
+possible.&nbsp; It is singular how obscure to me this decade of
+Scots history remains, 1690&ndash;1700&mdash;a deuce of a want of
+light and grouping to it!&nbsp; However, I believe I shall be
+mostly out of Scotland in my tale; first in Carolina, next in
+Darien.&nbsp; I want also&mdash;I am the daughter of the
+horse-leech truly&mdash;&lsquo;Black&rsquo;s new large map of
+Scotland,&rsquo; sheets 3, 4, and 5, a 7s. 6d. touch.&nbsp; I
+believe, if you can get the</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Caldwell Papers</i>,</p>
+<p>they had better come also; and if there be any reasonable
+work&mdash;but no, I must call a halt. . . .</p>
+<p>I fear the song looks doubtful, but I&rsquo;ll consider of it,
+and I can promise you some reminiscences which it will amuse me
+to write, whether or not it will amuse the public to read of
+them.&nbsp; But it&rsquo;s an unco business to <i>supply</i>
+deid-heid coapy.</p>
+<h3><a name="page311"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+311</span><span class="smcap">to J. M. Barrie</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>December</i> 7<i>th</i>, 1893.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BARRIE</span>,&mdash;I have
+received duly the <i>magnum opus</i>, and it really is a
+<i>magnum opus</i>. <a name="citation311"></a><a
+href="#footnote311" class="citation">[311]</a>&nbsp; It is a
+beautiful specimen of Clark&rsquo;s printing, paper sufficient,
+and the illustrations all my fancy painted.&nbsp; But the
+particular flower of the flock to whom I have hopelessly lost my
+heart is Tibby Birse.&nbsp; I must have known Tibby Birse when
+she was a servant&rsquo;s mantua-maker in Edinburgh and answered
+to the name of Miss <i>Broddie</i>.&nbsp; She used to come and
+sew with my nurse, sitting with her legs crossed in a masculine
+manner; and swinging her foot emphatically, she used to pour
+forth a perfectly unbroken stream of gossip.&nbsp; I didn&rsquo;t
+hear it, I was immersed in far more important business with a box
+of bricks, but the recollection of that thin, perpetual, shrill
+sound of a voice has echoed in my ears sinsyne.&nbsp; I am bound
+to say she was younger than Tibbie, but there is no mistaking
+that and the indescribable and eminently Scottish expression.</p>
+<p>I have been very much prevented of late, having carried out
+thoroughly to my own satisfaction two considerable illnesses, had
+a birthday, and visited Honolulu, where politics are (if
+possible) a shade more exasperating than they are with us.&nbsp;
+I am told that it was just when I was on the point of leaving
+that I received your superlative epistle about the cricket
+eleven.&nbsp; In that case it is impossible I should have
+answered it, which is inconsistent with my own recollection of
+the fact.&nbsp; What I remember is, that I sat down under your
+immediate inspiration and wrote an answer in every way
+worthy.&nbsp; If I didn&rsquo;t, as it seems proved that I
+couldn&rsquo;t, it will never be done now.&nbsp; However, I did
+the next best thing, I equipped my cousin Graham Balfour with a
+letter of introduction, and from him, if you know how&mdash;for
+he is rather of the Scottish <a name="page312"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 312</span>character&mdash;you may elicit all
+the information you can possibly wish to have as to us and
+ours.&nbsp; Do not be bluffed off by the somewhat stern and
+monumental first impression that he may make upon you.&nbsp; He
+is one of the best fellows in the world, and the same sort of
+fool that we are, only better-looking, with all the faults of
+Vailimans and some of his own&mdash;I say nothing about
+virtues.</p>
+<p>I have lately been returning to my wallowing in the
+mire.&nbsp; When I was a child, and indeed until I was nearly a
+man, I consistently read Covenanting books.&nbsp; Now that I am a
+grey-beard&mdash;or would be, if I could raise the beard&mdash;I
+have returned, and for weeks back have read little else but
+Wodrow, Walker, Shields, etc.&nbsp; Of course this is with an
+idea of a novel, but in the course of it I made a very curious
+discovery.&nbsp; I have been accustomed to hear refined and
+intelligent critics&mdash;those who know so much better what we
+are than we do ourselves,&mdash;trace down my literary descent
+from all sorts of people, including Addison, of whom I could
+never read a word.&nbsp; Well, laigh i&rsquo; your lug,
+sir&mdash;the clue was found.&nbsp; My style is from the
+Covenanting writers.&nbsp; Take a particular case&mdash;the
+fondness for rhymes.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t know of any English
+prose-writer who rhymes except by accident, and then a stone had
+better be tied around his neck and himself cast into the
+sea.&nbsp; But my Covenanting buckies rhyme all the time&mdash;a
+beautiful example of the unconscious rhyme above referred to.</p>
+<p>Do you know, and have you really tasted, these delightful
+works?&nbsp; If not, it should be remedied; there is enough of
+the Auld Licht in you to be ravished.</p>
+<p>I suppose you know that success has so far attended my
+banners&mdash;my political banners I mean, and not my
+literary.&nbsp; In conjunction with the Three Great Powers I have
+succeeded in getting rid of My President and My
+Chief-Justice.&nbsp; They&rsquo;ve gone home, the one to Germany,
+the other to Souwegia.&nbsp; I hear little echoes of footfalls <a
+name="page313"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 313</span>of their
+departing footsteps through the medium of the newspapers. . .
+.</p>
+<p>Whereupon I make you my salute with the firm remark that it is
+time to be done with trifling and give us a great book, and my
+ladies fall into line with me to pay you a most respectful
+courtesy, and we all join in the cry, &lsquo;Come to
+Vailima!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>My dear sir, your soul&rsquo;s health is in it&mdash;you will
+never do the great book, you will never cease to work in L.,
+etc., till you come to Vailima.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to R. Le Gallienne</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>December</i> 28<i>th</i>, 1893.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MR. LE GALLIENNE</span>,&mdash;I
+have received some time ago, through our friend Miss Taylor, a
+book of yours.&nbsp; But that was by no means my first
+introduction to your name.&nbsp; The same book had stood already
+on my shelves; I had read articles of yours in the
+<i>Academy</i>; and by a piece of constructive criticism (which I
+trust was sound) had arrived at the conclusion that you were
+&lsquo;Log-roller.&rsquo;&nbsp; Since then I have seen your
+beautiful verses to your wife.&nbsp; You are to conceive me,
+then, as only too ready to make the acquaintance of a man who
+loved good literature and could make it.&nbsp; I had to thank
+you, besides, for a triumphant exposure of a paradox of my own:
+the literary-prostitute disappeared from view at a phrase of
+yours&mdash;&lsquo;The essence is not in the pleasure but the
+sale.&rsquo;&nbsp; True: you are right, I was wrong; the author
+is not the whore, but the libertine; and yet I shall let the
+passage stand.&nbsp; It is an error, but it illustrated the truth
+for which I was contending, that
+literature&mdash;painting&mdash;all art, are no other than
+pleasures, which we turn into trades.</p>
+<p>And more than all this, I had, and I have to thank you for the
+intimate loyalty you have shown to myself; for the eager welcome
+you give to what is good&mdash;for the courtly tenderness with
+which you touch on my defects.&nbsp; <a name="page314"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 314</span>I begin to grow old; I have given my
+top note, I fancy;&mdash;and I have written too many books.&nbsp;
+The world begins to be weary of the old booth; and if not weary,
+familiar with the familiarity that breeds contempt.&nbsp; I do
+not know that I am sensitive to criticism, if it be hostile; I am
+sensitive indeed, when it is friendly; and when I read such
+criticism as yours, I am emboldened to go on and praise God.</p>
+<p>You are still young, and you may live to do much.&nbsp; The
+little, artificial popularity of style in England tends, I think,
+to die out; the British pig returns to his true love, the love of
+the styleless, of the shapeless, of the slapdash and the
+disorderly.&nbsp; There is trouble coming, I think; and you may
+have to hold the fort for us in evil days.</p>
+<p>Lastly, let me apologise for the crucifixion that I am
+inflicting on you (<i>bien &agrave; contre-c&oelig;ur</i>) by my
+bad writing.&nbsp; I was once the best of writers; landladies,
+puzzled as to my &lsquo;trade,&rsquo; used to have their honest
+bosoms set at rest by a sight of a page of
+manuscript.&mdash;&lsquo;Ah,&rsquo; they would say, &lsquo;no
+wonder they pay you for that&rsquo;;&mdash;and when I sent it in
+to the printers, it was given to the boys!&nbsp; I was about
+thirty-nine, I think, when I had a turn of scrivener&rsquo;s
+palsy; my hand got worse; and for the first time, I received
+clean proofs.&nbsp; But it has gone beyond that now, I know I am
+like my old friend James Payn, a terror to correspondents; and
+you would not believe the care with which this has been
+written.&mdash;Believe me to be, very sincerely yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. A. Baker</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>December</i> 1893.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MADAM</span>,&mdash;There is no
+trouble, and I wish I could help instead.&nbsp; As it is, I fear
+I am only going to put you <a name="page315"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 315</span>to trouble and vexation.&nbsp; This
+Braille writing is a kind of consecration, and I would like if I
+could to have your copy perfect.&nbsp; The two volumes are to be
+published as Vols. <span class="GutSmall">I</span>. and <span
+class="GutSmall">II</span>. of <i>The Adventures of David
+Balfour</i>.&nbsp; 1st, <i>Kidnapped</i>; 2nd,
+<i>Catriona</i>.&nbsp; I am just sending home a corrected
+<i>Kidnapped</i> for this purpose to Messrs. Cassell, and in
+order that I may if possible be in time, I send it to you first
+of all.&nbsp; Please, as soon as you have noted the changes,
+forward the same to Cassell and Co., La Belle Sauvage Yard,
+Ludgate Hill.</p>
+<p>I am writing to them by this mail to send you
+<i>Catriona</i>.</p>
+<p>You say, dear madam, you are good enough to say, it is
+&lsquo;a keen pleasure&rsquo; to you to bring my book within the
+reach of the blind.</p>
+<p>Conceive then what it is to me! and believe me, sincerely
+yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p class="poetry">I was a barren tree before,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I blew a quench&egrave;d coal,<br />
+I could not, on their midnight shore,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The lonely blind console.</p>
+<p class="poetry">A moment, lend your hand, I bring<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My sheaf for you to bind,<br />
+And you can teach my words to sing<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; In the darkness of the blind.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Henry James</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Apia</i>, <i>December</i>
+1893.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR HENRY JAMES</span>,&mdash;The
+mail has come upon me like an armed man three days earlier than
+was expected; and the Lord help me!&nbsp; It is impossible I
+should answer anybody the way they should be.&nbsp; Your
+jubilation over <i>Catriona</i> did me good, and still more the
+subtlety and truth of your remark on the starving of the visual
+sense <a name="page316"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 316</span>in
+that book.&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis true, and unless I make the greater
+effort&mdash;and am, as a step to that, convinced of its
+necessity&mdash;it will be more true I fear in the future.&nbsp;
+I <i>hear</i> people talking, and I <i>feel</i> them acting, and
+that seems to me to be fiction.&nbsp; My two aims may be
+described as&mdash;</p>
+<p class="gutindent">1<i>st</i>.&nbsp; War to the adjective.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">2<i>nd</i>.&nbsp; Death to the optic
+nerve.</p>
+<p>Admitted we live in an age of the optic nerve in
+literature.&nbsp; For how many centuries did literature get along
+without a sign of it?&nbsp; However, I&rsquo;ll consider your
+letter.</p>
+<p>How exquisite is your character of the critic in <i>Essays in
+London</i>!&nbsp; I doubt if you have done any single thing so
+satisfying as a piece of style and of insight.&mdash;Yours
+ever,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Charles Baxter</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">1<i>st</i> <i>January</i>
+&rsquo;94.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;I am
+delighted with your idea, and first, I will here give an amended
+plan and afterwards give you a note of some of the
+difficulties.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">[Plan of the Edinburgh
+edition&mdash;14 vols.]</p>
+<p>. . . It may be a question whether my <i>Times</i> letters
+might not be appended to the &lsquo;Footnote&rsquo; with a note
+of the dates of discharge of Cedercrantz and Pilsach.</p>
+<p>I am particularly pleased with this idea of yours, because I
+am come to a dead stop.&nbsp; I never can remember how bad I have
+been before, but at any rate I am bad enough just now, I mean as
+to literature; in health I am well and <a
+name="page317"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+317</span>strong.&nbsp; I take it I shall be six months before
+I&rsquo;m heard of again, and this time I could put in to some
+advantage in revising the text and (if it were thought desirable)
+writing prefaces.&nbsp; I do not know how many of them might be
+thought desirable.&nbsp; I have written a paper on <i>Treasure
+Island</i>, which is to appear shortly.&nbsp; <i>Master of
+Ballantrae</i>&mdash;I have one drafted.&nbsp; <i>The Wrecker</i>
+is quite sufficiently done already with the last chapter, but I
+suppose an historic introduction to <i>David Balfour</i> is quite
+unavoidable.&nbsp; <i>Prince Otto</i> I don&rsquo;t think I could
+say anything about, and <i>Black Arrow</i> don&rsquo;t want
+to.&nbsp; But it is probable I could say something to the volume
+of <i>Travels</i>.&nbsp; In the verse business I can do just what
+I like better than anything else, and extend <i>Underwoods</i>
+with a lot of unpublished stuff.&nbsp; <i>Apropos</i>, if I were
+to get printed off a very few poems which are somewhat too
+intimate for the public, could you get them run up in some
+luxuous manner, so that fools might be induced to buy them in
+just a sufficient quantity to pay expenses and the thing remain
+still in a manner private?&nbsp; We could supply photographs of
+the illustrations&mdash;and the poems are of Vailima and the
+family&mdash;I should much like to get this done as a surprise
+for Fanny.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to H. B. Baildon</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>January</i>
+15<i>th</i>, 1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BAILDON</span>,&mdash;Last mail
+brought your book and its Dedication.&nbsp; &lsquo;Frederick
+Street and the gardens, and the short-lived Jack o&rsquo;
+Lantern,&rsquo; are again with me&mdash;and the note of the east
+wind, and Froebel&rsquo;s voice, and the smell of soup in
+Thomson&rsquo;s stair.&nbsp; Truly, you had no need to put
+yourself under the protection of any other saint, were that saint
+our Tamate himself!&nbsp; Yourself were enough, and yourself
+coming with so rich a sheaf.</p>
+<p>For what is this that you say about the Muses?&nbsp; They have
+certainly never better inspired you than in &lsquo;Jael and <a
+name="page318"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+318</span>Sisera,&rsquo; and &lsquo;Herodias and John the
+Baptist,&rsquo; good stout poems, fiery and sound.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;&rsquo;Tis but a mask and behind it chuckles the God of
+the Garden,&rsquo; I shall never forget.&nbsp; By the by, an
+error of the press, page 49, line 4, &lsquo;No infant&rsquo;s
+lesson are the ways of God.&rsquo;&nbsp; <i>The</i> is
+dropped.</p>
+<p>And this reminds me you have a bad habit which is to be
+comminated in my theory of letters.&nbsp; Same page, two lines
+lower: &lsquo;But the vulture&rsquo;s track&rsquo; is surely as
+fine to the ear as &lsquo;But vulture&rsquo;s track,&rsquo; and
+this latter version has a dreadful baldness.&nbsp; The reader
+goes on with a sense of impoverishment, of unnecessary sacrifice;
+he has been robbed by footpads, and goes scouting for his lost
+article!&nbsp; Again, in the second Epode, these fine verses
+would surely sound much finer if they began, &lsquo;As a hardy
+climber who has set his heart,&rsquo; than with the jejune
+&lsquo;As hardy climber.&rsquo;&nbsp; I do not know why you
+permit yourself this license with grammar; you show, in so many
+pages, that you are superior to the paltry sense of rhythm which
+usually dictates it&mdash;as though some poetaster had been
+suffered to correct the poet&rsquo;s text.&nbsp; By the way, I
+confess to a heartfelt weakness for
+<i>Auriculas</i>.&mdash;Believe me the very grateful and
+characteristic pick-thank, but still sincere and
+affectionate,</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>Vailima</i>, <i>January</i> 15th,
+1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LOW</span>,&mdash;. . . Pray
+you, stoop your proud head, and sell yourself to some Jew
+magazine, and make the visit out.&nbsp; I assure you, this is the
+spot for a sculptor or painter.&nbsp; This, and no other&mdash;I
+don&rsquo;t say to stay there, but to come once and get the
+living colour into them.&nbsp; I am used to it; I do not notice
+it; rather prefer my grey, freezing recollections of Scotland;
+but there it is, and every morning is a thing to give thanks for,
+and every night another&mdash;bar when it rains, of course.</p>
+<p>About <i>The Wrecker</i>&mdash;rather late days, and I still
+suspect <a name="page319"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+319</span>I had somehow offended you; however, all&rsquo;s well
+that ends well, and I am glad I am forgiven&mdash;did you not
+fail to appreciate the attitude of Dodd?&nbsp; He was a fizzle
+and a stick, he knew it, he knew nothing else, and there is an
+undercurrent of bitterness in him.&nbsp; And then the problem
+that Pinkerton laid down: why the artist can <i>do nothing
+else</i>? is one that continually exercises myself.&nbsp; He
+cannot: granted.&nbsp; But Scott could.&nbsp; And
+Montaigne.&nbsp; And Julius C&aelig;sar.&nbsp; And many
+more.&nbsp; And why can&rsquo;t R. L. S.?&nbsp; Does it not amaze
+you?&nbsp; It does me.&nbsp; I think of the Renaissance fellows,
+and their all-round human sufficiency, and compare it with the
+ineffable smallness of the field in which we labour and in which
+we do so little.&nbsp; I think <i>David Balfour</i> a nice little
+book, and very artistic, and just the thing to occupy the leisure
+of a busy man; but for the top flower of a man&rsquo;s life it
+seems to me inadequate.&nbsp; Small is the word; it is a small
+age, and I am of it.&nbsp; I could have wished to be otherwise
+busy in this world.&nbsp; I ought to have been able to build
+lighthouses and write <i>David Balfours</i> too.&nbsp; <i>Hinc
+illae lacrymae</i>.&nbsp; I take my own case as most handy, but
+it is as illustrative of my quarrel with the age.&nbsp; We take
+all these pains, and we don&rsquo;t do as well as Michael Angelo
+or Leonardo, or even Fielding, who was an active magistrate, or
+Richardson, who was a busy bookseller.&nbsp; <i>J&rsquo;ai honte
+pour nous</i>; my ears burn.</p>
+<p>I am amazed at the effect which this Chicago exhibition has
+produced upon you and others.&nbsp; It set Mrs. Fairchild
+literally mad&mdash;to judge by her letters.&nbsp; And I wish I
+had seen anything so influential.&nbsp; I suppose there was an
+aura, a halo, some sort of effulgency about the place; for here I
+find you louder than the rest.&nbsp; Well, it may be there is a
+time coming; and I wonder, when it comes, whether it will be a
+time of little, exclusive, one-eyed rascals like you and me, or
+parties of the old stamp who can paint and fight, and write and
+keep books of double entry, and sculp, and scalp.&nbsp; It might
+be.&nbsp; You have a <a name="page320"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 320</span>lot of stuff in the kettle, and a
+great deal of it Celtic.&nbsp; I have changed my mind
+progressively about England, practically the whole of Scotland is
+Celtic, and the western half of England, and all Ireland, and the
+Celtic blood makes a rare blend for art.&nbsp; If it is stiffened
+up with Latin blood, you get the French.&nbsp; We were less
+lucky: we had only Scandinavians, themselves decidedly artistic,
+and the Low-German lot.&nbsp; However, that is a good
+starting-point, and with all the other elements in your crucible,
+it may come to something great very easily.&nbsp; I wish you
+would hurry up and let me see it.&nbsp; Here is a long while I
+have been waiting for something <i>good</i> in art; and what have
+I seen?&nbsp; Zola&rsquo;s <i>D&eacute;b&acirc;cle</i> and a few
+of Kipling&rsquo;s tales.&nbsp; Are you a reader of Barbey
+d&rsquo;Aurevilly?&nbsp; He is a never-failing source of pleasure
+to me, for my sins, I suppose.&nbsp; What a work is the <i>Rideau
+Cramoisi</i>! and <i>L&rsquo;Ensorcel&eacute;e</i>! and <i>Le
+Chevalier Des Touches</i>!</p>
+<p>This is degenerating into mere twaddle.&nbsp; So please
+remember us all most kindly to Mrs. Low, and believe me ever
+yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;Were all your privateers voiceless in the
+war of 1812?&nbsp; Did <i>no one</i> of them write memoirs?&nbsp;
+I shall have to do my privateer from chic, if you can&rsquo;t
+help me. <a name="citation320"></a><a href="#footnote320"
+class="citation">[320]</a>&nbsp; My application to Scribner has
+been quite in vain.&nbsp; See if you can get hold of some
+historic sharp in the club, and tap him; they must some of them
+have written memoirs or notes of some sort; perhaps still
+unprinted; if that be so, get them copied for me.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to H. B. Baildon</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>January</i>
+30<i>th</i>, 1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR
+BAILDON</span>,&mdash;&lsquo;Call not blessed.&rsquo;&mdash;Yes,
+if I could die just now, or say in half a year, I should have had
+a <a name="page321"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+321</span>splendid time of it on the whole.&nbsp; But it gets a
+little stale, and my work will begin to senesce; and parties to
+shy bricks at me; and now it begins to look as if I should
+survive to see myself impotent and forgotten.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s a
+pity suicide is not thought the ticket in the best circles.</p>
+<p>But your letter goes on to congratulate me on having done the
+one thing I am a little sorry for; a little&mdash;not
+much&mdash;for my father himself lived to think that I had been
+wiser than he.&nbsp; But the cream of the jest is that I have
+lived to change my mind; and think that he was wiser than
+I.&nbsp; Had I been an engineer, and literature my amusement, it
+would have been better perhaps.&nbsp; I pulled it off, of course,
+I won the wager, and it is pleasant while it lasts; but how long
+will it last?&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t know, say the Bells of Old
+Bow.</p>
+<p>All of which goes to show that nobody is quite sane in judging
+himself.&nbsp; Truly, had I given way and gone in for
+engineering, I should be dead by now.&nbsp; Well, the gods know
+best.</p>
+<p>. . . I hope you got my letter about the
+<i>Rescue</i>.&mdash;Adieu,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<p>True for you about the benefit: except by kisses, jests, song,
+<i>et hoc genus omne</i>, man <i>cannot</i> convey benefit to
+another.&nbsp; The universal benefactor has been there before
+him.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to J. H. Bates</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>March</i> 25<i>th</i>, 1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MR. JOE H.
+BATES</span>,&mdash;I shall have the greatest pleasure in
+acceding to your complimentary request.&nbsp; I shall think it an
+honour to be associated with your <a name="page322"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 322</span>chapter, and I need not remind you
+(for you have said it yourself) how much depends upon your own
+exertions whether to make it to me a real honour or only a
+derision.&nbsp; This is to let you know that I accept the
+position that you have seriously offered to me in a quite serious
+spirit.&nbsp; I need scarce tell you that I shall always be
+pleased to receive reports of your proceedings; and if I do not
+always acknowledge them, you are to remember that I am a man very
+much occupied otherwise, and not at all to suppose that I have
+lost interest in my chapter.</p>
+<p>In this world, which (as you justly say) is so full of sorrow
+and suffering, it will always please me to remember that my name
+is connected with some efforts after alleviation, nor less so
+with purposes of innocent recreation which, after all, are the
+only certain means at our disposal for bettering human life.</p>
+<p>With kind regards, to yourself, to Mr. L. C. Congdon, to E. M.
+G. Bates, and to Mr. Edward Hugh Higlee Bates, and the heartiest
+wishes for the future success of the chapter, believe me, yours
+cordially,</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>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>March</i> 27<i>th</i>, 1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR ARCHER</span>,&mdash;Many
+thanks for your <i>Theatrical World</i>.&nbsp; Do you know, it
+strikes me as being really very good?&nbsp; I have not yet read
+much of it, but so far as I have looked, there is not a dull and
+not an empty page in it.&nbsp; Hazlitt, whom you must often have
+thought of, would have been pleased.&nbsp; Come to think of it, I
+shall put this book upon the Hazlitt shelf.&nbsp; You have
+acquired a manner that I can only call august; otherwise, I
+should have to call it such amazing impudence.&nbsp; The
+<i>Bauble Shop</i> and <i>Becket</i> are examples of what I
+mean.&nbsp; But it &lsquo;sets you weel.&rsquo;</p>
+<p><a name="page323"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+323</span>Marjorie Fleming I have known, as you surmise, for
+long.&nbsp; She was possibly&mdash;no, I take back
+possibly&mdash;she was one of the greatest works of God.&nbsp;
+Your note about the resemblance of her verses to mine gave me
+great joy, though it only proved me a plagiarist.&nbsp; By the
+by, was it not over <i>The Child&rsquo;s Garden of Verses</i>
+that we first scraped acquaintance?&nbsp; I am sorry indeed to
+hear that my esteemed correspondent Tomarcher has such poor taste
+in literature. <a name="citation323"></a><a href="#footnote323"
+class="citation">[323]</a>&nbsp; I fear he cannot have inherited
+this trait from his dear papa.&nbsp; Indeed, I may say I know it,
+for I remember the energy of papa&rsquo;s disapproval when the
+work passed through his hands on its way to a second birth, which
+none regrets more than myself.&nbsp; It is an odd fact, or
+perhaps a very natural one; I find few greater pleasures than
+reading my own works, but I never, O I never read <i>The Black
+Arrow</i>.&nbsp; In that country Tomarcher reigns supreme.&nbsp;
+Well, and after all, if Tomarcher likes it, it has not been
+written in vain.</p>
+<p>We have just now a curious breath from Europe.&nbsp; A young
+fellow just beginning letters, and no fool, turned up here with a
+letter of introduction in the well-known blue ink and decorative
+hieroglyphs of George Meredith.&nbsp; His name may be known to
+you.&nbsp; It is Sidney Lysaght.&nbsp; He is staying with us but
+a day or two, and it is strange to me and not unpleasant to hear
+all the names, old and new, come up again.&nbsp; But oddly the
+new are so much more in number.&nbsp; If I revisited the glimpses
+of the moon on your side of the ocean, I should know
+comparatively few of them.</p>
+<p>My amanuensis deserts me&mdash;I should have said you, for
+yours is the loss, my script having lost all bond with
+humanity.&nbsp; One touch of nature makes the whole world kin:
+that nobody can read my hand.&nbsp; It is a humiliating
+circumstance that thus evens us with printers!</p>
+<p>You must sometimes think it strange&mdash;or perhaps it is
+only I that should so think it&mdash;to be following the old <a
+name="page324"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 324</span>round, in
+the gas lamps and the crowded theatres, when I am away here in
+the tropical forest and the vast silences!</p>
+<p>My dear Archer, my wife joins me in the best wishes to
+yourself and Mrs. Archer, not forgetting Tom; and I am yours very
+cordially,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to W. B. Yeats</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>April</i> 14, 1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR SIR</span>,&mdash;Long since when
+I was a boy I remember the emotions with which I repeated
+Swinburne&rsquo;s poems and ballads.&nbsp; Some ten years ago, a
+similar spell was cast upon me by Meredith&rsquo;s <i>Love in the
+Valley</i>; the stanzas beginning &lsquo;When her mother tends
+her&rsquo; haunted me and made me drunk like wine; and I remember
+waking with them all the echoes of the hills about
+Hy&egrave;res.&nbsp; It may interest you to hear that I have a
+third time fallen in slavery: this is to your poem called the
+<i>Lake Isle of Innisfrae</i>.&nbsp; It is so quaint and airy,
+simple, artful, and eloquent to the heart&mdash;but I seek words
+in vain.&nbsp; Enough that &lsquo;always night and day I hear
+lake water lapping with low sounds on the shore,&rsquo; and am,
+yours gratefully,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to George Meredith</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>April</i> 17<i>th</i>, 1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR MEREDITH</span>,&mdash;Many
+good things have the gods sent to me of late.&nbsp; First of all
+there was a letter from you by the kind hand of Mariette, if she
+is not too great a lady to be remembered in such a style; and
+then there came one Lysaght with a charming note of introduction
+<a name="page325"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 325</span>in the
+well-known hand itself.&nbsp; We had but a few days of him, and
+liked him well.&nbsp; There was a sort of geniality and inward
+fire about him at which I warmed my hands.&nbsp; It is long since
+I have seen a young man who has left in me such a favourable
+impression; and I find myself telling myself, &lsquo;O, I must
+tell this to Lysaght,&rsquo; or, &lsquo;This will interest
+him,&rsquo; in a manner very unusual after so brief an
+acquaintance.&nbsp; The whole of my family shared in this
+favourable impression, and my halls have re-echoed ever since, I
+am sure he will be amused to know, with <i>Widdicombe
+Fair</i>.</p>
+<p>He will have told you doubtless more of my news than I could
+tell you myself; he has your European perspective, a thing long
+lost to me.&nbsp; I heard with a great deal of interest the news
+of Box Hill.&nbsp; And so I understand it is to be
+enclosed!&nbsp; Allow me to remark, that seems a far more
+barbaric trait of manners than the most barbarous of ours.&nbsp;
+We content ourselves with cutting off an occasional head.</p>
+<p>I hear we may soon expect the <i>Amazing Marriage</i>.&nbsp;
+You know how long, and with how much curiosity, I have looked
+forward to the book.&nbsp; Now, in so far as you have adhered to
+your intention, Gower Woodsere will be a family portrait, age
+twenty-five, of the highly respectable and slightly influential
+and fairly aged <i>Tusitala</i>.&nbsp; You have not known that
+gentleman; console yourself, he is not worth knowing.&nbsp; At
+the same time, my dear Meredith, he is very sincerely
+yours&mdash;for what he is worth, for the memories of old times,
+and in the expectation of many pleasures still to come.&nbsp; I
+suppose we shall never see each other again; flitting youths of
+the Lysaght species may occasionally cover these unconscionable
+leagues and bear greetings to and fro.&nbsp; But we ourselves
+must be content to converse on an occasional sheet of notepaper,
+and I shall never see whether you have grown older, and you shall
+never deplore that Gower Woodsere should have declined into the
+pantaloon <i>Tusitala</i>.&nbsp; It is perhaps better <a
+name="page326"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 326</span>so.&nbsp;
+Let us continue to see each other as we were, and accept, my dear
+Meredith, my love and respect.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;My wife joins me in the kindest messages to
+yourself and Mariette.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Charles Baxter</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Vailima</i>], <i>April</i> 17,
+&rsquo;94.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;<i>St.
+Ives</i> is now well on its way into the second volume.&nbsp;
+There remains no mortal doubt that it will reach the three volume
+standard.</p>
+<p>I am very anxious that you should send me&mdash;</p>
+<p>1<i>st</i>.&nbsp; <i>Tom and Jerry</i>, a cheap edition.</p>
+<p>2nd.&nbsp; The book by Ashton&mdash;the <i>Dawn of the
+Century</i>, I think it was called&mdash;which Colvin sent me,
+and which has miscarried, and</p>
+<p>3rd.&nbsp; If it is possible, a file of the <i>Edinburgh
+Courant</i> for the years 1811, 1812, 1813, or 1814.&nbsp; I
+should not care for a whole year.&nbsp; If it were possible to
+find me three months, winter months by preference, it would do my
+business not only for <i>St. Ives</i>, but for the
+<i>Justice-Clerk</i> as well.&nbsp; Suppose this to be
+impossible, perhaps I could get the loan of it from somebody; or
+perhaps it would be possible to have some one read a file for me
+and make notes.&nbsp; This would be extremely bad, as unhappily
+one man&rsquo;s food is another man&rsquo;s poison, and the
+reader would probably leave out everything I should choose.&nbsp;
+But if you are reduced to that, you might mention to the man who
+is to read for me that balloon ascensions are in the order of the
+day.</p>
+<p>4th.&nbsp; It might be as well to get a book on balloon
+ascension, particularly in the early part of the century.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">. . . . .</p>
+<p>III.&nbsp; At last this book has come from Scribner, and,
+alas!&nbsp; I have the first six or seven chapters of <i>St.
+Ives</i> to recast entirely.&nbsp; Who could foresee that they
+clothed the French prisoners in yellow?&nbsp; But that one fatal
+fact&mdash;and <a name="page327"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+327</span>also that they shaved them twice a week&mdash;damns the
+whole beginning.&nbsp; If it had been sent in time, it would have
+saved me a deal of trouble. . . .</p>
+<p>I have had a long letter from Dr. Scott Dalgleish, 25 Mayfield
+Terrace, asking me to put my name down to the Ballantyne Memorial
+Committee.&nbsp; I have sent him a pretty sharp answer in favour
+of cutting down the memorial and giving more to the widow and
+children.&nbsp; If there is to be any foolery in the way of
+statues or other trash, please send them a guinea; but if they
+are going to take my advice and put up a simple tablet with a few
+heartfelt words, and really devote the bulk of the subscriptions
+to the wife and family, I will go to the length of twenty pounds,
+if you will allow me (and if the case of the family be at all
+urgent), and at least I direct you to send ten pounds.&nbsp; I
+suppose you had better see Scott Dalgleish himself on the
+matter.&nbsp; I take the opportunity here to warn you that my
+head is simply spinning with a multitude of affairs, and I shall
+probably forget a half of my business at last.</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>Vailima</i>, <i>April</i>
+1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR FRIEND</span>,&mdash;I have at
+last got some photographs, and hasten to send you, as you asked,
+a portrait of Tusitala.&nbsp; He is a strange person; not so
+lean, say experts, but infinitely battered; mighty active again
+on the whole; going up and down our break-neck road at all hours
+of the day and night on horseback; holding meetings with all
+manner of chiefs; quite a political personage&mdash;God save the
+mark!&mdash;in a small way, but at heart very conscious of the
+inevitable flat failure that awaits every one.&nbsp; I shall
+never do a better book than <i>Catriona</i>, that is my
+high-water mark, and the trouble of production increases on me at
+a great rate&mdash;and mighty anxious about how I am to leave my
+family: an elderly <a name="page328"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+328</span>man, with elderly preoccupations, whom I should be
+ashamed to show you for your old friend; but not a hope of my
+dying soon and cleanly, and &lsquo;winning off the
+stage.&rsquo;&nbsp; Rather I am daily better in physical
+health.&nbsp; I shall have to see this business out, after all;
+and I think, in that case, they should have&mdash;they might
+have&mdash;spared me all my ill-health this decade past, if it
+were not to unbar the doors.&nbsp; I have no taste for old age,
+and my nose is to be rubbed in it in spite of my face.&nbsp; I
+was meant to die young, and the gods do not love me.</p>
+<p>This is very like an epitaph, bar the handwriting, which is
+anything but monumental, and I dare say I had better stop.&nbsp;
+Fanny is down at her own cottage planting or deplanting or
+replanting, I know not which, and she will not be home till
+dinner, by which time the mail will be all closed, else she would
+join me in all good messages and remembrances of love.&nbsp; I
+hope you will congratulate Burne Jones from me on his
+baronetcy.&nbsp; I cannot make out to be anything but raspingly,
+harrowingly sad; so I will close, and not affect levity which I
+cannot feel.&nbsp; Do not altogether forget me; keep a corner of
+your memory for the exile</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>Vailima</i>, <i>May</i>
+1894.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;My dear
+fellow, I wish to assure you of the greatness of the pleasure
+that this Edinburgh Edition gives me.&nbsp; I suppose it was your
+idea to give it that name.&nbsp; No other would have affected me
+in the same manner.&nbsp; Do you remember, how many years
+ago&mdash;I would be afraid to hazard a guess&mdash;one night
+when I communicated to you certain intimations of early death and
+aspirations after fame?&nbsp; I was particularly maudlin; and my
+remorse the next morning on a review of my folly has written the
+matter very deeply in my mind; from yours it may easily have
+fled.&nbsp; If any one at that moment <a name="page329"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 329</span>could have shown me the Edinburgh
+Edition, I suppose I should have died.&nbsp; It is with gratitude
+and wonder that I consider &lsquo;the way in which I have been
+led.&rsquo;&nbsp; Could a more preposterous idea have occurred to
+us in those days when we used to search our pockets for coppers,
+too often in vain, and combine forces to produce the threepence
+necessary for two glasses of beer, or wander down the Lothian
+Road without any, than that I should be strong and well at the
+age of forty-three in the island of Upolu, and that you should be
+at home bringing out the Edinburgh Edition?&nbsp; If it had been
+possible, I should almost have preferred the Lothian Road
+Edition, say, with a picture of the old Dutch smuggler on the
+covers.&nbsp; I have now something heavy on my mind.&nbsp; I had
+always a great sense of kinship with poor Robert
+Fergusson&mdash;so clever a boy, so wild, of such a mixed strain,
+so unfortunate, born in the same town with me, and, as I always
+felt, rather by express intimation than from evidence, so like
+myself.&nbsp; Now the injustice with which the one Robert is
+rewarded and the other left out in the cold sits heavy on me, and
+I wish you could think of some way in which I could do honour to
+my unfortunate namesake.&nbsp; Do you think it would look like
+affectation to dedicate the whole edition to his memory?&nbsp; I
+think it would.&nbsp; The sentiment which would dictate it to me
+is too abstruse; and besides, I think my wife is the proper
+person to receive the dedication of my life&rsquo;s work.&nbsp;
+At the same time, it is very odd&mdash;it really looks like the
+transmigration of souls&mdash;I feel that I must do something for
+Fergusson; Burns has been before me with the gravestone.&nbsp; It
+occurs to me you might take a walk down the Canongate and see in
+what condition the stone is.&nbsp; If it be at all uncared for,
+we might repair it, and perhaps add a few words of
+inscription.</p>
+<p>I must tell you, what I just remembered in a flash as I was
+walking about dictating this letter&mdash;there was in the
+original plan of the <i>Master of Ballantrae</i> a sort of
+introduction <a name="page330"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+330</span>describing my arrival in Edinburgh on a visit to
+yourself and your placing in my hands the papers of the
+story.&nbsp; I actually wrote it, and then condemned the
+idea&mdash;as being a little too like Scott, I suppose.&nbsp; Now
+I must really find the <span class="GutSmall">MS</span>. and try
+to finish it for the E. E.&nbsp; It will give you, what I should
+so much like you to have, another corner of your own in that
+lofty monument.</p>
+<p>Suppose we do what I have proposed about Fergusson&rsquo;s
+monument, I wonder if an inscription like this would look
+arrogant&mdash;</p>
+<p class="gutindent">This stone originally erected<br />
+by Robert Burns has been<br />
+repaired at the<br />
+charges of Robert Louis Stevenson,<br />
+and is by him re-dedicated to<br />
+the memory of Robert Fergusson,<br />
+as the gift of one Edinburgh<br />
+lad to another.</p>
+<p>In spacing this inscription I would detach the names of
+Fergusson and Burns, but leave mine in the text.</p>
+<p>Or would that look like sham modesty, and is it better to
+bring out the three Roberts?</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to R. A. M. Stevenson</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>June</i>
+1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BOB</span>,&mdash;I must make
+out a letter this mail or perish in the attempt.&nbsp; All the
+same, I am deeply stupid, in bed with a cold, deprived of my
+amanuensis, and conscious of the wish but not the furnished
+will.&nbsp; You may be interested to hear how the family
+inquiries go.&nbsp; It is now quite certain that we are a
+second-rate lot, and came out of Cunningham or Clydesdale,
+therefore <i>British</i> folk; so that you are Cymry on both
+sides, and I Cymry and Pict.&nbsp; We may have fought with King
+Arthur and known Merlin.&nbsp; The first of the family, Stevenson
+of Stevenson, <a name="page331"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+331</span>was quite a great party, and dates back to the wars of
+Edward First.&nbsp; The last male heir of Stevenson of Stevenson
+died 1670, &pound;220, 10s. to the bad, from drink.&nbsp; About
+the same time the Stevensons, who were mostly in Cunningham
+before, crop up suddenly in the parish of Neilston, over the
+border in Renfrewshire.&nbsp; Of course, they may have been there
+before, but there is no word of them in that parish till 1675 in
+any extracts I have.&nbsp; Our first traceable ancestor was a
+tenant farmer of Muir of Cauldwells&mdash;James in
+Nether-Carsewell.&nbsp; Presently two families of maltmen are
+found in Glasgow, both, by re-duplicated proofs, related to James
+(the son of James) in Nether Carsewell.&nbsp; We descend by his
+second marriage from Robert; one of these died 1733.&nbsp; It is
+not very romantic up to now, but has interested me surprisingly
+to fish out, always hoping for more&mdash;and occasionally
+getting at least a little clearness and confirmation.&nbsp; But
+the earliest date, 1655, apparently the marriage of James in
+Nether Carsewell, cannot as yet be pushed back.&nbsp; From which
+of any number of dozen little families in Cunningham we should
+derive, God knows!&nbsp; Of course, it doesn&rsquo;t matter a
+hundred years hence, an argument fatal to all human enterprise,
+industry, or pleasure.&nbsp; And to me it will be a deadly
+disappointment if I cannot roll this stone away!&nbsp; One
+generation further might be nothing, but it is my present object
+of desire, and we are so near it!&nbsp; There is a man in the
+same parish called Constantine; if I could only trace to him, I
+could take you far afield by that one talisman of the strange
+Christian name of Constantine.&nbsp; But no such luck!&nbsp; And
+I kind of fear we shall stick at James.</p>
+<p>So much, though all inchoate, I trouble you with, knowing that
+you, at least, must take an interest in it.&nbsp; So much is
+certain of that strange Celtic descent, that the past has an
+interest for it apparently gratuitous, but fiercely strong.&nbsp;
+I wish to trace my ancestors a thousand years, if I trace them by
+gallowses.&nbsp; It is not love, not <a name="page332"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 332</span>pride, not admiration; it is an
+expansion of the identity, intimately pleasing, and wholly
+uncritical; I can expend myself in the person of an inglorious
+ancestor with perfect comfort; or a disgraced, if I could find
+one.&nbsp; I suppose, perhaps, it is more to me who am childless,
+and refrain with a certain shock from looking forwards.&nbsp;
+But, I am sure, in the solid grounds of race, that you have it
+also in some degree. <a name="citation332"></a><a
+href="#footnote332" class="citation">[332]</a></p>
+<p class="gutindent">I.&nbsp; <span class="smcap">James</span>, a
+tenant of the Muirs, in Nether-Carsewell, Neilston, married
+(1665?) Jean Keir.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">II.&nbsp; <span class="smcap">Robert</span>
+(Maltman in Glasgow), died 1733, married 1st; married second,
+Elizabeth Cumming.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">[Of <span class="smcap">Robert</span> and
+1st marriage: William (Maltman in Glasgow), of him: <span
+class="smcap">Robert</span>, <span class="smcap">Marion</span>
+and <span class="smcap">Elizabeth</span>]</p>
+<p class="gutindent">III. <span class="smcap">Robert</span> [of
+Robert and Elizabeth Cumming] (Maltman in Glasgow), married
+Margaret Fulton (had a large family).</p>
+<p class="gutindent">IV. <span class="smcap">Alan</span>, West
+India merchant, married Jean Lillie.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">V.&nbsp; <span class="smcap">Robert</span>,
+married Jean Smith.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">VI.&nbsp; <span
+class="smcap">Alan</span>.&mdash;Margaret Jones.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">VII.&nbsp; R. A. M. S.</p>
+<p class="gutindent"><span
+class="smcap">Note</span>.&mdash;Between 1730&ndash;1766
+flourished in Glasgow Alan the Coppersmith, who acts as a kind of
+a pin to the whole Stevenson system there.&nbsp; He was caution
+to Robert the Second&rsquo;s will, and to William&rsquo;s will,
+and to the will of a John, another maltman.</p>
+<p>Enough genealogy.&nbsp; I do not know if you will be able to
+read my hand.&nbsp; Unhappily, Belle, who is my amanuensis, is
+out of the way on other affairs, and I have to make the unwelcome
+effort.&nbsp; (O this is beautiful, I am quite pleased with
+myself.)&nbsp; Graham has just arrived last night (my mother is
+coming by the other steamer in three days), and has told me of
+your meeting, and he said you looked a little older than I did;
+so that I suppose we keep step fairly on the downward side of the
+hill.&nbsp; He thought you looked harassed, and I could imagine
+that too.&nbsp; I sometimes <a name="page333"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 333</span>feel harassed.&nbsp; I have a great
+family here about me, a great anxiety.&nbsp; The loss (to use my
+grandfather&rsquo;s expression), the &lsquo;loss&rsquo; of our
+family is that we are disbelievers in the morrow&mdash;perhaps I
+should say, rather, in next year.&nbsp; The future is
+<i>always</i> black to us; it was to Robert Stevenson; to Thomas;
+I suspect to Alan; to R. A. M. S. it was so almost to his ruin in
+youth; to R. L. S., who had a hard hopeful strain in him from his
+mother, it was not so much so once, but becomes daily more
+so.&nbsp; Daily so much more so, that I have a painful difficulty
+in believing I can ever finish another book, or that the public
+will ever read it.</p>
+<p>I have so huge a desire to know exactly what you are doing,
+that I suppose I should tell you what I am doing by way of an
+example.&nbsp; I have a room now, a part of the twelve-foot
+verandah sparred in, at the most inaccessible end of the
+house.&nbsp; Daily I see the sunrise out of my bed, which I still
+value as a tonic, a perpetual tuning fork, a look of God&rsquo;s
+face once in the day.&nbsp; At six my breakfast comes up to me
+here, and I work till eleven.&nbsp; If I am quite well, I
+sometimes go out and bathe in the river before lunch,
+twelve.&nbsp; In the afternoon I generally work again, now alone
+drafting, now with Belle dictating.&nbsp; Dinner is at six, and I
+am often in bed by eight.&nbsp; This is supposing me to stay at
+home.&nbsp; But I must often be away, sometimes all day long,
+sometimes till twelve, one, or two at night, when you might see
+me coming home to the sleeping house, sometimes in a trackless
+darkness, sometimes with a glorious tropic moon, everything
+drenched with dew&mdash;unsaddling and creeping to bed; and you
+would no longer be surprised that I live out in this country, and
+not in Bournemouth&mdash;in bed.</p>
+<p>My great recent interruptions have (as you know) come from
+politics; not much in my line, you will say.&nbsp; But it is
+impossible to live here and not feel very sorely the consequences
+of the horrid white mismanagement.&nbsp; I tried standing by and
+looking on, and it became too much for <a
+name="page334"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 334</span>me.&nbsp;
+They are such illogical fools; a logical fool in an office, with
+a lot of red tape, is conceivable.&nbsp; Furthermore, he is as
+much as we have any reason to expect of officials&mdash;a
+thoroughly common-place, unintellectual lot.&nbsp; But these
+people are wholly on wires; laying their ears down, skimming
+away, pausing as though shot, and presto! full spread on the
+other tack.&nbsp; I observe in the official class mostly an
+insane jealousy of the smallest kind, as compared to which the
+artist&rsquo;s is of a grave, modest character&mdash;the
+actor&rsquo;s, even; a desire to extend his little authority, and
+to relish it like a glass of wine, that is
+<i>impayable</i>.&nbsp; Sometimes, when I see one of these little
+kings strutting over one of his victories&mdash;wholly illegal,
+perhaps, and certain to be reversed to his shame if his superiors
+ever heard of it&mdash;I could weep.&nbsp; The strange thing is
+that they <i>have nothing else</i>.&nbsp; I auscultate them in
+vain; no real sense of duty, no real comprehension, no real
+attempt to comprehend, no wish for information&mdash;you cannot
+offend one of them more bitterly than by offering information,
+though it is certain that you have <i>more</i>, and obvious that
+you have <i>other</i>, information than they have; and talking of
+policy, they could not play a better stroke than by listening to
+you, and it need by no means influence their action.&nbsp;
+<i>Tenez</i>, you know what a French post office or railway
+official is?&nbsp; That is the diplomatic card to the life.&nbsp;
+Dickens is not in it; caricature fails.</p>
+<p>All this keeps me from my work, and gives me the unpleasant
+side of the world.&nbsp; When your letters are disbelieved it
+makes you angry, and that is rot; and I wish I could keep out of
+it with all my soul.&nbsp; But I have just got into it again, and
+farewell peace!</p>
+<p>My work goes along but slowly.&nbsp; I have got to a crossing
+place, I suppose; the present book, <i>Saint Ives</i>, is
+nothing; it is in no style in particular, a tissue of adventures,
+the central character not very well done, no philosophic pith
+under the yarn; and, in short, if people will read it,
+that&rsquo;s all I ask; and if they won&rsquo;t, damn them!&nbsp;
+I like <a name="page335"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+335</span>doing it though; and if you ask me why!&mdash;after
+that I am on <i>Weir of Hermiston</i> and <i>Heathercat</i>, two
+Scotch stories, which will either be something different, or I
+shall have failed.&nbsp; The first is generally designed, and is
+a private story of two or three characters in a very grim
+vein.&nbsp; The second&mdash;alas! the thought&mdash;is an
+attempt at a real historical novel, to present a whole field of
+time; the race&mdash;our own race&mdash;the west land and
+Clydesdale blue bonnets, under the influence of their last trial,
+when they got to a pitch of organisation in madness that no other
+peasantry has ever made an offer at.&nbsp; I was going to call it
+<i>The Killing Time</i>, but this man Crockett has forestalled me
+in that.&nbsp; Well, it&rsquo;ll be a big smash if I fail in it;
+but a gallant attempt.&nbsp; All my weary reading as a boy, which
+you remember well enough, will come to bear on it; and if my mind
+will keep up to the point it was in a while back, perhaps I can
+pull it through.</p>
+<p>For two months past, Fanny, Belle, Austin (her child), and I
+have been alone; but yesterday, as I mentioned, Graham Balfour
+arrived, and on Wednesday my mother and Lloyd will make up the
+party to its full strength.&nbsp; I wish you could drop in for a
+month or a week, or two hours.&nbsp; That is my chief want.&nbsp;
+On the whole, it is an unexpectedly pleasant corner I have
+dropped into for an end of it, which I could scarcely have
+foreseen from Wilson&rsquo;s shop, or the Princes Street Gardens,
+or the Portobello Road.&nbsp; Still, I would like to hear what my
+<i>alter ego</i> thought of it; and I would sometimes like to
+have my old <i>ma&icirc;tre &egrave;s arts</i> express an opinion
+on what I do.&nbsp; I put this very tamely, being on the whole a
+quiet elderly man; but it is a strong passion with me, though
+intermittent.&nbsp; Now, try to follow my example and tell me
+something about yourself, Louisa, the Bab, and your work; and
+kindly send me some specimens of what you&rsquo;re about.&nbsp; I
+have only seen one thing by you, about Notre Dame in the
+<i>Westminster</i> or <i>St. James&rsquo;s</i>, since I left
+England, now I suppose six years ago.</p>
+<p><a name="page336"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 336</span>I
+have looked this trash over, and it is not at all the letter I
+wanted to write&mdash;not truck about officials, ancestors, and
+the like rancidness&mdash;but you have to let your pen go in its
+own broken-down gait, like an old butcher&rsquo;s pony, stop when
+it pleases, and go on again as it will.&mdash;Ever, my dear Bob,
+your affectionate cousin,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
+class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Henry James</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>July</i>
+7<i>th</i>, 1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR HENRY JAMES</span>,&mdash;I am
+going to try and dictate to you a letter or a note, and begin the
+same without any spark of hope, my mind being entirely in
+abeyance.&nbsp; This malady is very bitter on the literary
+man.&nbsp; I have had it now coming on for a month, and it seems
+to get worse instead of better.&nbsp; If it should prove to be
+softening of the brain, a melancholy interest will attach to the
+present document.&nbsp; I heard a great deal about you from my
+mother and Graham Balfour; the latter declares that you could
+take a First in any Samoan subject.&nbsp; If that be so, I should
+like to hear you on the theory of the constitution.&nbsp; Also to
+consult you on the force of the particles <i>o lo &rsquo;o</i>
+and <i>ua</i>, which are the subject of a dispute among local
+pundits.&nbsp; You might, if you ever answer this, give me your
+opinion on the origin of the Samoan race, just to complete the
+favour.</p>
+<p>They both say that you are looking well, and I suppose I may
+conclude from that that you are feeling passably.&nbsp; I wish I
+was.&nbsp; Do not suppose from this that I am ill in body; it is
+the numskull that I complain of.&nbsp; And when that is wrong, as
+you must be very keenly aware, you begin every day with a
+smarting disappointment, which is not good for the temper.&nbsp;
+I am in one of the humours when a man wonders how any one can be
+such an ass as to embrace the profession of letters, and not get
+apprenticed <a name="page337"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+337</span>to a barber or keep a baked-potato stall.&nbsp; But I
+have no doubt in the course of a week, or perhaps to-morrow,
+things will look better.</p>
+<p>We have at present in port the model warship of Great
+Britain.&nbsp; She is called the <i>Cura&ccedil;oa</i>, and has
+the nicest set of officers and men conceivable.&nbsp; They, the
+officers, are all very intimate with us, and the front verandah
+is known as the Cura&ccedil;oa Club, and the road up to Vailima
+is known as the Cura&ccedil;oa Track.&nbsp; It was rather a
+surprise to me; many naval officers have I known, and somehow had
+not learned to think entirely well of them, and perhaps sometimes
+ask myself a little uneasily how that kind of men could do great
+actions? and behold! the answer comes to me, and I see a ship
+that I would guarantee to go anywhere it was possible for men to
+go, and accomplish anything it was permitted man to
+attempt.&nbsp; I had a cruise on board of her not long ago to
+Manu&rsquo;a, and was delighted.&nbsp; The goodwill of all on
+board; the grim playfulness of &mdash; <a
+name="citation337"></a><a href="#footnote337"
+class="citation">[337]</a> quarters, with the wounded falling
+down at the word; the ambulances hastening up and carrying them
+away; the Captain suddenly crying, &lsquo;Fire in the
+ward-room!&rsquo; and the squad hastening forward with the hose;
+and, last and most curious spectacle of all, all the men in their
+dust-coloured fatigue clothes, at a note of the bugle, falling
+simultaneously flat on deck, and the ship proceeding with its
+prostrate crew&mdash;<i>quasi</i> to ram an enemy; our dinner at
+night in a wild open anchorage, the ship rolling almost to her
+gunwales, and showing us alternately her bulwarks up in the sky,
+and then the wild broken cliffy palm-crested shores of the island
+with the surf thundering and leaping close aboard.&nbsp; We had
+the ward-room mess on deck, lit by pink wax tapers, everybody, of
+course, in uniform but myself, and the first lieutenant (who is a
+rheumaticky body) wrapped in a boat cloak.&nbsp; Gradually the
+sunset faded out, the island disappeared from the eye, though it
+remained menacingly present to the ear with <a
+name="page338"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 338</span>the voice
+of the surf; and then the captain turned on the searchlight and
+gave us the coast, the beach, the trees, the native houses, and
+the cliffs by glimpses of daylight, a kind of deliberate
+lightning.&nbsp; About which time, I suppose, we must have come
+as far as the dessert, and were probably drinking our first glass
+of port to Her Majesty.&nbsp; We stayed two days at the island,
+and had, in addition, a very picturesque snapshot at the native
+life.&nbsp; The three islands of Manu&rsquo;a are independent,
+and are ruled over by a little slip of a half-caste girl about
+twenty, who sits all day in a pink gown, in a little white
+European house with about a quarter of an acre of roses in front
+of it, looking at the palm-trees on the village street, and
+listening to the surf.&nbsp; This, so far as I could discover,
+was all she had to do.&nbsp; &lsquo;This is a very dull
+place,&rsquo; she said.&nbsp; It appears she could go to no other
+village for fear of raising the jealousy of her own people in the
+capital.&nbsp; And as for going about &lsquo;tafatafaoing,&rsquo;
+as we say here, its cost was too enormous.&nbsp; A strong
+able-bodied native must walk in front of her and blow the conch
+shell continuously from the moment she leaves one house until the
+moment she enters another.&nbsp; Did you ever blow the conch
+shell?&nbsp; I presume not; but the sweat literally hailed off
+that man, and I expected every moment to see him burst a
+blood-vessel.&nbsp; We were entertained to kava in the
+guest-house with some very original features.&nbsp; The young men
+who run for the <i>kava</i> have a right to misconduct themselves
+<i>ad libitum</i> on the way back; and though they were told to
+restrain themselves on the occasion of our visit, there was a
+strange hurly-burly at their return, when they came beating the
+trees and the posts of the houses, leaping, shouting, and yelling
+like Bacchants.</p>
+<p>I tasted on that occasion what it is to be great.&nbsp; My
+name was called next after the captain&rsquo;s, and several
+chiefs (a thing quite new to me, and not at all Samoan practice)
+drank to me by name.</p>
+<p>And now, if you are not sick of the <i>Cura&ccedil;oa</i> and
+Manu&rsquo;a, <a name="page339"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+339</span>I am, at least on paper.&nbsp; And I decline any longer
+to give you examples of how not to write.</p>
+<p>By the by, you sent me long ago a work by Anatole France,
+which I confess I did not <i>taste</i>.&nbsp; Since then I have
+made the acquaintance of the <i>Abb&eacute; Coignard</i>, and
+have become a faithful adorer.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t think a better
+book was ever written.</p>
+<p>And I have no idea what I have said, and I have no idea what I
+ought to have said, and I am a total ass, but my heart is in the
+right place, and I am, my dear Henry James, yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Mr. Marcel Schwob</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Upolu</i>,
+<i>Samoa</i>, <i>July</i> 7, 1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MR. MARCEL
+SCHWOB</span>,&mdash;Thank you for having remembered me in my
+exile.&nbsp; I have read <i>Mimes</i> twice as a whole; and now,
+as I write, I am reading it again as it were by accident, and a
+piece at a time, my eye catching a word and travelling obediently
+on through the whole number.&nbsp; It is a graceful book,
+essentially graceful, with its haunting agreeable melancholy, its
+pleasing savour of antiquity.&nbsp; At the same time, by its
+merits, it shows itself rather as the promise of something else
+to come than a thing final in itself.&nbsp; You have yet to give
+us&mdash;and I am expecting it with impatience&mdash;something of
+a larger gait; something daylit, not twilit; something with the
+colours of life, not the flat tints of a temple illumination;
+something that shall be <i>said</i> with all the clearnesses and
+the trivialities of speech, not <i>sung</i> like a
+semi-articulate lullaby.&nbsp; It will not please yourself as
+well, when you come to give it us, but it will please others
+better.&nbsp; It will be more of a whole, more worldly, more
+nourished, more commonplace&mdash;and not so pretty, perhaps not
+even so beautiful.&nbsp; No man knows better than I that, as we
+go on in life, we must part from prettiness and the graces.&nbsp;
+We but attain qualities to lose them; life is a series of <a
+name="page340"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 340</span>farewells,
+even in art; even our proficiencies are deciduous and
+evanescent.&nbsp; So here with these exquisite pieces the <span
+class="GutSmall">XVII</span>th, <span
+class="GutSmall">XVIII</span>th, and <span
+class="GutSmall">IV</span>th of the present collection.&nbsp; You
+will perhaps never excel them; I should think the
+&lsquo;Hermes,&rsquo; never.&nbsp; Well, you will do something
+else, and of that I am in expectation.&mdash;Yours cordially,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to A. St. Gaudens</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>July</i> 8, 1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR ST. GAUDENS</span>,&mdash;This
+is to tell you that the medallion has been at last triumphantly
+transported up the hill and placed over my smoking-room
+mantelpiece.&nbsp; It is considered by everybody a first-rate but
+flattering portrait.&nbsp; We have it in a very good light, which
+brings out the artistic merits of the god-like sculptor to great
+advantage.&nbsp; As for my own opinion, I believe it to be a
+speaking likeness, and not flattered at all; possibly a little
+the reverse.&nbsp; The verses (curse the rhyme) look remarkably
+well.</p>
+<p>Please do not longer delay, but send me an account for the
+expense of the gilt letters.&nbsp; I was sorry indeed that they
+proved beyond the means of a small farmer.&mdash;Yours very
+sincerely,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Miss Adelaide Boodle</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>July</i> 14,
+1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR ADELAIDE</span>,&mdash;. . .
+So, at last, you are going into mission work? where I think your
+heart always was.&nbsp; You will like it in a way, but remember
+it is dreary long.&nbsp; Do you know the story of the American
+tramp who was offered meals and a day&rsquo;s wage to chop with
+the back of an axe on a fallen trunk.&nbsp; &lsquo;Damned if I
+can go on chopping when I can&rsquo;t see the chips
+fly!&rsquo;&nbsp; You will never see the chips fly in mission
+work, never; and be sure you know it beforehand.&nbsp; The work
+is one long dull disappointment, <a name="page341"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 341</span>varied by acute revulsions; and
+those who are by nature courageous and cheerful and have grown
+old in experience, learn to rub their hands over infinitesimal
+successes.&nbsp; However, as I really believe there is some good
+done in the long run&mdash;<i>gutta cavat lapidem non vi</i> in
+this business&mdash;it is a useful and honourable career in which
+no one should be ashamed to embark.&nbsp; Always remember the
+fable of the sun, the storm, and the traveller&rsquo;s
+cloak.&nbsp; Forget wholly and for ever all small pruderies, and
+remember that <i>you cannot change ancestral feelings of right
+and wrong without what is practically soul-murder</i>.&nbsp;
+Barbarous as the customs may seem, always hear them with
+patience, always judge them with gentleness, always find in them
+some seed of good; see that you always develop them; remember
+that all you can do is to civilise the man in the line of his own
+civilisation, such as it is.&nbsp; And never expect, never
+believe in, thaumaturgic conversions.&nbsp; They may do very well
+for St. Paul; in the case of an Andaman islander they mean less
+than nothing.&nbsp; In fact, what you have to do is to teach the
+parents in the interests of their great-grandchildren.</p>
+<p>Now, my dear Adelaide, dismiss from your mind the least idea
+of fault upon your side; nothing is further from the fact.&nbsp;
+I cannot forgive you, for I do not know your fault.&nbsp; My own
+is plain enough, and the name of it is cold-hearted neglect; and
+you may busy yourself more usefully in trying to forgive
+me.&nbsp; But ugly as my fault is, you must not suppose it to
+mean more than it does; it does not mean that we have at all
+forgotten you, that we have become at all indifferent to the
+thought of you.&nbsp; See, in my life of Jenkin, a remark of his,
+very well expressed, on the friendships of men who do not write
+to each other.&nbsp; I can honestly say that I have not changed
+to you in any way; though I have behaved thus ill, thus
+cruelly.&nbsp; Evil is done by want of&mdash;well, principally by
+want of industry.&nbsp; You can imagine what I would say (in a
+novel) of any one who had behaved as <a name="page342"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 342</span>I have done.&nbsp; <i>Deteriora
+sequor</i>.&nbsp; And you must somehow manage to forgive your old
+friend; and if you will be so very good, continue to give us news
+of you, and let us share the knowledge of your adventures, sure
+that it will be always followed with interest&mdash;even if it is
+answered with the silence of ingratitude.&nbsp; For I am not a
+fool; I know my faults, I know they are ineluctable, I know they
+are growing on me.&nbsp; I know I may offend again, and I warn
+you of it.&nbsp; But the next time I offend, tell me so plainly
+and frankly like a lady, and don&rsquo;t lacerate my heart and
+bludgeon my vanity with imaginary faults of your own and purely
+gratuitous penitence.&nbsp; I might suspect you of irony!</p>
+<p>We are all fairly well, though I have been off work and
+off&mdash;as you know very well&mdash;letter-writing.&nbsp; Yet I
+have sometimes more than twenty letters, and sometimes more than
+thirty, going out each mail.&nbsp; And Fanny has had a most
+distressing bronchitis for some time, which she is only now
+beginning to get over.&nbsp; I have just been to see her; she is
+lying&mdash;though she had breakfast an hour ago, about
+seven&mdash;in her big cool, mosquito-proof room, ingloriously
+asleep.&nbsp; As for me, you see that a doom has come upon me: I
+cannot make marks with a pen&mdash;witness
+&lsquo;ingloriously&rsquo; above; and my amanuensis not appearing
+so early in the day, for she is then immersed in household
+affairs, and I can hear her &lsquo;steering the boys&rsquo; up
+and down the verandahs&mdash;you must decipher this unhappy
+letter for yourself and, I fully admit, with everything against
+you.&nbsp; A letter should be always well written; how much more
+a letter of apology!&nbsp; Legibility is the politeness of men of
+letters, as punctuality of kings and beggars.&nbsp; By the
+punctuality of my replies, and the beauty of my hand-writing,
+judge what a fine conscience I must have!</p>
+<p>Now, my dear gamekeeper, I must really draw to a close.&nbsp;
+For I have much else to write before the mail goes out three days
+hence.&nbsp; Fanny being asleep, it would not be conscientious to
+invent a message from her, so you <a name="page343"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 343</span>must just imagine her
+sentiments.&nbsp; I find I have not the heart to speak of your
+recent loss.&nbsp; You remember perhaps, when my father died, you
+told me those ugly images of sickness, decline, and impaired
+reason, which then haunted me day and night, would pass away and
+be succeeded by things more happily characteristic.&nbsp; I have
+found it so.&nbsp; He now haunts me, strangely enough, in two
+guises; as a man of fifty, lying on a hillside and carving
+mottoes on a stick, strong and well; and as a younger man,
+running down the sands into the sea near North Berwick,
+myself&mdash;<i>&aelig;tat</i>. 11&mdash;somewhat horrified at
+finding him so beautiful when stripped!&nbsp; I hand on your own
+advice to you in case you have forgotten it, as I know one is apt
+to do in seasons of bereavement.&mdash;Ever yours, with much love
+and sympathy,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Mrs. Baker</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>July</i> 16, 1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MRS. BAKER</span>,&mdash;I am very
+much obliged to you for your letter and the enclosure from Mr.
+Skinner.&nbsp; Mr. Skinner says he &lsquo;thinks Mr. Stevenson
+must be a very kind man&rsquo;; he little knows me.&nbsp; But I
+am very sure of one thing, that you are a very kind woman.&nbsp;
+I envy you&mdash;my amanuensis being called away, I continue in
+my own hand, or what is left of it&mdash;unusually legible, I am
+thankful to see&mdash;I envy you your beautiful choice of an
+employment.&nbsp; There must be no regrets at least for a day so
+spent; and when the night falls you need ask no blessing on your
+work.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of
+these.&rsquo;&mdash;Yours truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to J. M. Barrie</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><a name="page344"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 344</span><i>Vailima</i>, <i>July</i> 13,
+1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR BARRIE</span>,&mdash;This is
+the last effort of an ulcerated conscience.&nbsp; I have been so
+long owing you a letter, I have heard so much of you, fresh from
+the press, from my mother and Graham Balfour, that I have to
+write a letter no later than to-day, or perish in my shame.&nbsp;
+But the deuce of it is, my dear fellow, that you write such a
+very good letter that I am ashamed to exhibit myself before my
+junior (which you are, after all) in the light of the dreary
+idiot I feel.&nbsp; Understand that there will be nothing funny
+in the following pages.&nbsp; If I can manage to be rationally
+coherent, I shall be more than satisfied.</p>
+<p>In the first place, I have had the extreme satisfaction to be
+shown that photograph of your mother.&nbsp; It bears evident
+traces of the hand of an amateur.&nbsp; How is it that amateurs
+invariably take better photographs than professionals?&nbsp; I
+must qualify invariably.&nbsp; My own negatives have always
+represented a province of chaos and old night in which you might
+dimly perceive fleecy spots of twilight, representing nothing; so
+that, if I am right in supposing the portrait of your mother to
+be yours, I must salute you as my superior.&nbsp; Is that your
+mother&rsquo;s breakfast?&nbsp; Or is it only afternoon
+tea?&nbsp; If the first, do let me recommend to Mrs. Barrie to
+add an egg to her ordinary.&nbsp; Which, if you please, I will
+ask her to eat to the honour of her son, and I am sure she will
+live much longer for it, to enjoy his fresh successes.&nbsp; I
+never in my life saw anything more deliciously
+characteristic.&nbsp; I declare I can hear her speak.&nbsp; I
+wonder my mother could resist the temptation of your proposed
+visit to Kirriemuir, which it was like your kindness to
+propose.&nbsp; By the way, I was twice in Kirriemuir, I believe
+in the year &rsquo;71, when I was going on a visit to
+Glenogil.&nbsp; It was Kirriemuir, was it not?&nbsp; I have a
+distinct recollection of an inn at the end&mdash;I think the
+upper end&mdash;of an irregular open place or square, in which I
+<a name="page345"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 345</span>always
+see your characters evolve.&nbsp; But, indeed, I did not pay much
+attention; being all bent upon my visit to a shooting-box, where
+I should fish a real trout-stream, and I believe preserved.&nbsp;
+I did, too, and it was a charming stream, clear as crystal,
+without a trace of peat&mdash;a strange thing in
+Scotland&mdash;and alive with trout; the name of it I cannot
+remember, it was something like the Queen&rsquo;s River, and in
+some hazy way connected with memories of Mary Queen of
+Scots.&nbsp; It formed an epoch in my life, being the end of all
+my trout-fishing.&nbsp; I had always been accustomed to pause and
+very laboriously to kill every fish as I took it.&nbsp; But in
+the Queen&rsquo;s River I took so good a basket that I forgot
+these niceties; and when I sat down, in a hard rain shower, under
+a bank, to take my sandwiches and sherry, lo! and behold, there
+was the basketful of trouts still kicking in their agony.&nbsp; I
+had a very unpleasant conversation with my conscience.&nbsp; All
+that afternoon I persevered in fishing, brought home my basket in
+triumph, and sometime that night, &lsquo;in the wee sma&rsquo;
+hours ayont the twal,&rsquo; I finally forswore the gentle craft
+of fishing.&nbsp; I dare say your local knowledge may identify
+this historic river; I wish it could go farther and identify also
+that particular Free kirk in which I sat and groaned on
+Sunday.&nbsp; While my hand is in I must tell you a story.&nbsp;
+At that antique epoch you must not fall into the vulgar error
+that I was myself ancient.&nbsp; I was, on the contrary, very
+young, very green, and (what you will appreciate, Mr. Barrie)
+very shy.&nbsp; There came one day to lunch at the house two very
+formidable old ladies&mdash;or one very formidable, and the other
+what you please&mdash;answering to the honoured and historic name
+of the Miss C&mdash; A&mdash;&rsquo;s of Balnamoon.&nbsp; At
+table I was exceedingly funny, and entertained the company with
+tales of geese and bubbly-jocks.&nbsp; I was great in the
+expression of my terror for these bipeds, and suddenly this
+horrid, severe, and eminently matronly old lady put up a pair of
+gold eye-glasses, looked at me awhile in silence, and pronounced
+in a clangorous voice <a name="page346"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 346</span>her verdict.&nbsp; &lsquo;You give
+me very much the effect of a coward, Mr. Stevenson!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+I had very nearly left two vices behind me at
+Glenogil&mdash;fishing and jesting at table.&nbsp; And of one
+thing you may be very sure, my lips were no more opened at that
+meal.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>July</i> 29<i>th</i></p>
+<p>No, Barrie, &rsquo;tis in vain they try to alarm me with their
+bulletins.&nbsp; No doubt, you&rsquo;re ill, and unco ill, I
+believe; but I have been so often in the same case that I know
+pleurisy and pneumonia are in vain against Scotsmen who can
+write, (I once could.)&nbsp; You cannot imagine probably how near
+me this common calamity brings you.&nbsp; <i>Ce que j&rsquo;ai
+touss&eacute; dans ma vie</i>!&nbsp; How often and how long have
+I been on the rack at night and learned to appreciate that noble
+passage in the Psalms when somebody or other is said to be more
+set on something than they &lsquo;who dig for hid
+treasures&mdash;yea, than those who long for the
+morning&rsquo;&mdash;for all the world, as you have been racked
+and you have longed.&nbsp; Keep your heart up, and you&rsquo;ll
+do.&nbsp; Tell that to your mother, if you are still in any
+danger or suffering.&nbsp; And by the way, if you are at all like
+me&mdash;and I tell myself you are very like me&mdash;be sure
+there is only one thing good for you, and that is the sea in hot
+climates.&nbsp; Mount, sir, into &lsquo;a little frigot&rsquo; of
+5000 tons or so, and steer peremptorily for the tropics; and what
+if the ancient mariner, who guides your frigot, should startle
+the silence of the ocean with the cry of land ho!&mdash;say, when
+the day is dawning&mdash;and you should see the turquoise
+mountain tops of Upolu coming hand over fist above the
+horizon?&nbsp; Mr. Barrie, sir, &rsquo;tis then there would be
+larks!&nbsp; And though I cannot be certain that our climate
+would suit you (for it does not suit some), I am sure as death
+the voyage would do you good&mdash;would do you
+<i>Best</i>&mdash;and if Samoa didn&rsquo;t do, you needn&rsquo;t
+stay beyond the month, and I should have had another pleasure in
+my life, which is a serious consideration for me.&nbsp; I take
+this as the hand of the Lord preparing your way to
+Vailima&mdash;in the desert, certainly&mdash;in the desert of
+Cough and by <a name="page347"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+347</span>the ghoul-haunted woodland of Fever&mdash;but whither
+that way points there can be no question&mdash;and there will be
+a meeting of the twa Hoasting Scots Makers in spite of fate,
+fortune, and the Devil.&nbsp; <i>Absit omen</i>!</p>
+<p>My dear Barrie, I am a little in the dark about this new work
+of yours <a name="citation347"></a><a href="#footnote347"
+class="citation">[347]</a>: what is to become of me
+afterwards?&nbsp; You say carefully&mdash;methought
+anxiously&mdash;that I was no longer me when I grew up?&nbsp; I
+cannot bear this suspense: what is it?&nbsp; It&rsquo;s no
+forgery?&nbsp; And <span class="GutSmall">AM I
+HANGIT</span>?&nbsp; These are the elements of a very pretty
+lawsuit which you had better come to Samoa to compromise.&nbsp; I
+am enjoying a great pleasure that I had long looked forward to,
+reading Orme&rsquo;s <i>History of Indostan</i>; I had been
+looking out for it everywhere; but at last, in four volumes,
+large quarto, beautiful type and page, and with a delectable set
+of maps and plans, and all the names of the places wrongly
+spelled&mdash;it came to Samoa, little Barrie.&nbsp; I tell you
+frankly, you had better come soon.&nbsp; I am sair failed
+a&rsquo;ready; and what I may be if you continue to dally, I
+dread to conceive.&nbsp; I may be speechless; already, or at
+least for a month or so, I&rsquo;m little better than a
+teetoller&mdash;I beg pardon, a teetotaller.&nbsp; It is not
+exactly physical, for I am in good health, working four or five
+hours a day in my plantation, and intending to ride a paper-chase
+next Sunday&mdash;ay, man, that&rsquo;s a fact, and I havena had
+the hert to breathe it to my mother yet&mdash;the
+obligation&rsquo;s poleetical, for I am trying every means to
+live well with my German neighbours&mdash;and, O Barrie, but
+it&rsquo;s no easy!&nbsp; To be sure, there are many
+exceptions.&nbsp; And the whole of the above must be regarded as
+private&mdash;strictly private.&nbsp; Breathe it not in
+Kirriemuir: tell it not to the daughters of Dundee!&nbsp; What a
+nice extract this would make for the daily papers! and how it
+would facilitate my position here! . . .</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>August</i> 5<i>th</i>.</p>
+<p>This is Sunday, the Lord&rsquo;s Day.&nbsp; &lsquo;The hour of
+attack approaches.&rsquo;&nbsp; And it is a singular
+consideration what I <a name="page348"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 348</span>risk; I may yet be the subject of a
+tract, and a good tract too&mdash;such as one which I remember
+reading with recreant awe and rising hair in my youth, of a boy
+who was a very good boy, and went to Sunday Schule, and one day
+kipped from it, and went and actually bathed, and was dashed over
+a waterfall, and he was the only son of his mother, and she was a
+widow.&nbsp; A dangerous trade, that, and one that I have to
+practise.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll put in a word when I get home again,
+to tell you whether I&rsquo;m killed or not.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Accident in the (Paper) Hunting Field: death of a
+notorious author.&nbsp; We deeply regret to announce the death of
+the most unpopular man in Samoa, who broke his neck at the
+descent of Magagi, from the misconduct of his little raving
+lunatic of an old beast of a pony.&nbsp; It is proposed to
+commemorate the incident by the erection of a suitable
+pile.&nbsp; The design (by our local architect, Mr. Walker) is
+highly artificial, with a rich and voluminous Crockett at each
+corner, a small but impervious Barri&egrave;er at the entrance,
+an arch at the top, an Archer of a pleasing but solid character
+at the bottom; the colour will be genuine William-Black; and
+Lang, lang may the ladies sit wi&rsquo; their fans in their
+hands.&rsquo;&nbsp; Well, well, they may sit as they sat for me,
+and little they&rsquo;ll reck, the ungrateful jauds!&nbsp; Muckle
+they cared about Tusitala when they had him!&nbsp; But now ye can
+see the difference; now, leddies, ye can repent, when ower late,
+o&rsquo; your former cauldness and what ye&rsquo;ll perhaps allow
+me to ca&rsquo; your <i>tepeedity</i>!&nbsp; He was beautiful as
+the day, but his day is done!&nbsp; And perhaps, as he was maybe
+gettin&rsquo; a wee thing fly-blawn, it&rsquo;s nane too
+sh&uuml;ne.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Monday</i>, <i>August</i>
+6<i>th</i>.</p>
+<p>Well, sir, I have escaped the dangerous conjunction of the
+widow&rsquo;s only son and the Sabbath Day.&nbsp; We had a most
+enjoyable time, and Lloyd and I were 3 and 4 to arrive; I will
+not tell here what interval had elapsed between our arrival and
+the arrival of 1 and 2; the <a name="page349"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 349</span>question, sir, is otiose and malign;
+it deserves, it shall have no answer.&nbsp; And now without
+further delay to the main purpose of this hasty note.&nbsp; We
+received and we have already in fact distributed the gorgeous
+fahbrics of Kirriemuir.&nbsp; Whether from the splendour of the
+robes themselves, or from the direct nature of the compliments
+with which you had directed us to accompany the presentations,
+one young lady blushed as she received the proofs of your
+munificence. . . . Bad ink, and the dregs of it at that, but the
+heart in the right place.&nbsp; Still very cordially interested
+in my Barrie and wishing him well through his sickness, which is
+of the body, and long defended from mine, which is of the head,
+and by the impolite might be described as idiocy.&nbsp; The whole
+head is useless, and the whole sitting part painful: reason, the
+recent Paper Chase.</p>
+<p class="poetry">There was racing and chasing in Vailile
+plantation,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And vastly we enjoyed it,<br />
+But, alas! for the state of my foundation,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For it wholly has destroyed
+it.</p>
+<p>Come, my mind is looking up.&nbsp; The above is wholly
+impromptu.&mdash;On oath,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">Tusitala</span>.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>August</i> 12, 1894</p>
+<p>And here, Mr. Barrie, is news with a vengeance.&nbsp; Mother
+Hubbard&rsquo;s dog is well again&mdash;what did I tell
+you?&nbsp; Pleurisy, pneumonia, and all that kind of truck is
+quite unavailing against a Scotchman who can write&mdash;and not
+only that, but it appears the perfidious dog is married.&nbsp;
+This incident, so far as I remember, is omitted from the original
+epic&mdash;</p>
+<p class="poetry">She went to the graveyard<br />
+To see him get him buried,<br />
+And when she came back<br />
+The Deil had got merried.</p>
+<p>It now remains to inform you that I have taken what we call
+here &lsquo;German offence&rsquo; at not receiving cards, and
+that the only reparation I will accept is that Mrs. Barrie <a
+name="page350"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 350</span>shall
+incontinently upon the receipt of this Take and Bring you to
+Vailima in order to apologise and be pardoned for this
+offence.&nbsp; The commentary of Tamaitai upon the event was
+brief but pregnant: &lsquo;Well, it&rsquo;s a comfort our
+guest-room is furnished for two.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>This letter, about nothing, has already endured too
+long.&nbsp; I shall just present the family to Mrs.
+Barrie&mdash;Tamaitai, Tamaitai Matua, Teuila, Palema, Loia, and
+with an extra low bow, Yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">Tusitala</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Dr. Bakewell</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>August</i> 7,
+1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR DR. BAKEWELL</span>,&mdash;I am
+not more than human.&nbsp; I am more human than is wholly
+convenient, and your anecdote was welcome.&nbsp; What you say
+about <i>unwilling work</i>, my dear sir, is a consideration
+always present with me, and yet not easy to give its due weight
+to.&nbsp; You grow gradually into a certain income; without
+spending a penny more, with the same sense of restriction as
+before when you painfully scraped two hundred a year together,
+you find you have spent, and you cannot well stop spending, a far
+larger sum; and this expense can only be supported by a certain
+production.&nbsp; However, I am off work this month, and occupy
+myself instead in weeding my cacao, paper chases, and the
+like.&nbsp; I may tell you, my average of work in favourable
+circumstances is far greater than you suppose: from six
+o&rsquo;clock till eleven at latest, <a name="citation350"></a><a
+href="#footnote350" class="citation">[350]</a> and often till
+twelve, and again in the afternoon from two to four.&nbsp; My
+hand is quite destroyed, as you may perceive, to-day to a really
+unusual extent.&nbsp; I can sometimes write a decent fist still;
+but I have just returned with my arms all stung from three
+hours&rsquo; work in the cacao.&mdash;Yours, etc.,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><a name="page351"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+351</span><span class="smcap">to James Payn</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Upolu</i>,
+<i>Samoa</i> [<i>August</i> 11, 1894].</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR JAMES PAYN</span>,&mdash;I hear
+from Lang that you are unwell, and it reminds me of two
+circumstances: First, that it is a very long time since you had
+the exquisite pleasure of hearing from me; and second, that I
+have been very often unwell myself, and sometimes had to thank
+you for a grateful anodyne.</p>
+<p>They are not good, the circumstances, to write an anodyne
+letter.&nbsp; The hills and my house at less than (boom) a
+minute&rsquo;s interval quake with thunder; and though I cannot
+hear that part of it, shells are falling thick into the fort of
+Luatuanu&rsquo;u (boom).&nbsp; It is my friends of the
+<i>Cura&ccedil;oa</i>, the <i>Falke</i>, and the <i>Bussard</i>
+bombarding (after all these&mdash;boom&mdash;months) the rebels
+of Atua.&nbsp; (Boom-boom.)&nbsp; It is most distracting in
+itself; and the thought of the poor devils in their fort (boom)
+with their bits of rifles far from pleasant.&nbsp;
+(Boom-boom.)&nbsp; You can see how quick it goes, and I&rsquo;ll
+say no more about Mr. Bow-wow, only you must understand the
+perpetual accompaniment of this discomfortable sound, and make
+allowances for the value of my copy.&nbsp; It is odd, though, I
+can well remember, when the Franco-Prussian war began, and I was
+in Eilean Earraid, far enough from the sound of the loudest
+cannonade, I could <i>hear</i> the shots fired, and I felt the
+pang in my breast of a man struck.&nbsp; It was sometimes so
+distressing, so instant, that I lay in the heather on the top of
+the island, with my face hid, kicking my heels for agony.&nbsp;
+And now, when I can hear the actual concussion of the air and
+hills, when I <i>know</i> personally the people who stand exposed
+to it, I am able to go on <i>tant bien que mal</i> with a letter
+to James Payn!&nbsp; The blessings of age, though mighty small,
+are tangible.&nbsp; I have heard a great deal of them since I
+came into the world, and now that I begin to taste of
+them&mdash;Well!&nbsp; But this is one, that people do get cured
+of the excess of sensibility; and I had <a
+name="page352"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 352</span>as lief
+these people were shot at as myself&mdash;or almost, for then I
+should have some of the fun, such as it is.</p>
+<p>You are to conceive me, then, sitting in my little gallery
+room, shaken by these continual spasms of cannon, and with my eye
+more or less singly fixed on the imaginary figure of my dear
+James Payn.&nbsp; I try to see him in bed; no go.&nbsp; I see him
+instead jumping up in his room in Waterloo Place (where <i>ex
+hypothesi</i> he is not), sitting on the table, drawing out a
+very black briar-root pipe, and beginning to talk to a slim and
+ill-dressed visitor in a voice that is good to hear and with a
+smile that is pleasant to see.&nbsp; (After a little more than
+half an hour, the voice that was ill to hear has ceased, the
+cannonade is over.)&nbsp; And I am thinking how I can get an
+answering smile wafted over so many leagues of land and water,
+and can find no way.</p>
+<p>I have always been a great visitor of the sick; and one of the
+sick I visited was W. E. Henley, which did not make very tedious
+visits, so I&rsquo;ll not get off much purgatory for them.&nbsp;
+That was in the Edinburgh Infirmary, the old one, the true one,
+with Georgius Secundus standing and pointing his toe in a niche
+of the fa&ccedil;ade; and a mighty fine building it was!&nbsp;
+And I remember one winter&rsquo;s afternoon, in that place of
+misery, that Henley and I chanced to fall in talk about James
+Payn himself.&nbsp; I am wishing you could have heard that
+talk!&nbsp; I think that would make you smile.&nbsp; We had mixed
+you up with John Payne, for one thing, and stood amazed at your
+extraordinary, even painful, versatility; and for another, we
+found ourselves each students so well prepared for examinations
+on the novels of the real Mackay.&nbsp; Perhaps, after all, this
+is worth something in life&mdash;to have given so much pleasure
+to a pair so different in every way as were Henley and I, and to
+be talked of with so much interest by two such (beg pardon)
+clever lads!</p>
+<p>The cheerful Lang has neglected to tell me what is the matter
+with you; so, I&rsquo;m sorry to say, I am cut off from all the
+customary consolations.&nbsp; I can&rsquo;t say, &lsquo;Think how
+<a name="page353"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 353</span>much
+worse it would be if you had a broken leg!&rsquo; when you may
+have the crushing repartee up your sleeve, &lsquo;But it is my
+leg that is broken.&rsquo;&nbsp; This is a pity.&nbsp; But there
+are consolations.&nbsp; You are an Englishman (I believe); you
+are a man of letters; you have never been made C.B.; your hair
+was not red; you have played cribbage and whist; you did not play
+either the fiddle or the banjo; you were never an &aelig;sthete;
+you never contributed to &mdash;<i>&rsquo;s Journal</i>; your
+name is not Jabez Balfour; you are totally unconnected with the
+Army and Navy departments; I understand you to have lived within
+your income&mdash;why, cheer up! here are many legitimate causes
+of congratulation.&nbsp; I seem to be writing an obituary
+notice.&nbsp; <i>Absit omen</i>!&nbsp; But I feel very sure that
+these considerations will have done you more good than
+medicine.</p>
+<p>By the by, did you ever play piquet?&nbsp; I have fallen a
+victim to this debilitating game.&nbsp; It is supposed to be
+scientific; God save the mark, what self-deceivers men are!&nbsp;
+It is distinctly less so than cribbage.&nbsp; But how
+fascinating!&nbsp; There is such material opulence about it, such
+vast ambitions may be realised&mdash;and are not; it may be
+called the Monte Cristo of games.&nbsp; And the thrill with which
+you take five cards partakes of the nature of lust&mdash;and you
+draw four sevens and a nine, and the seven and nine of a suit
+that you discarded, and O! but the world is a desert!&nbsp; You
+may see traces of discouragement in my letter: all due to
+piquet!&nbsp; There has been a disastrous turn of the luck
+against me; a month or two ago I was two thousand ahead; now, and
+for a week back, I have been anything from four thousand eight
+hundred to five thousand two hundred astern.&nbsp; If I have a
+sixi&egrave;me, my beast of a partner has a septi&egrave;me; and
+if I have three aces, three kings, three queens, and three knaves
+(excuse the slight exaggeration), the devil holds quatorze of
+tens!&mdash;I remain, my dear James Payn, your sincere and
+obliged friend&mdash;old friend let me say,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><a name="page354"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+354</span><span class="smcap">to Miss Middleton</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>September</i> 9, 1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR MISS MIDDLETON</span>,&mdash;Your
+letter has been like the drawing up of a curtain.&nbsp; Of course
+I remember you very well, and the Skye terrier to which you
+refer&mdash;a heavy, dull, fatted, graceless creature he grew up
+to be&mdash;was my own particular pet.&nbsp; It may amuse you,
+perhaps, as much as &lsquo;The Inn&rsquo; amused me, if I tell
+you what made this dog particularly mine.&nbsp; My father was the
+natural god of all the dogs in our house, and poor Jura took to
+him of course.&nbsp; Jura was stolen, and kept in prison
+somewhere for more than a week, as I remember.&nbsp; When he came
+back Smeoroch had come and taken my father&rsquo;s heart from
+him.&nbsp; He took his stand like a man, and positively never
+spoke to my father again from that day until the day of his
+death.&nbsp; It was the only sign of character he ever
+showed.&nbsp; I took him up to my room and to be my dog in
+consequence, partly because I was sorry for him, and partly
+because I admired his dignity in misfortune.</p>
+<p>With best regards and thanks for having reminded me of so many
+pleasant days, old acquaintances, dead friends, and&mdash;what is
+perhaps as pathetic as any of them&mdash;dead dogs, I remain,
+yours truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to A. Conan Doyle</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>September</i> 9, 1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CONAN DOYLE</span>,&mdash;If
+you found anything to entertain you in my <i>Treasure Island</i>
+article, it may amuse <a name="page355"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 355</span>you to know that you owe it entirely
+to yourself.&nbsp; <i>Your</i> &lsquo;First Book&rsquo; was by
+some accident read aloud one night in my Baronial
+&rsquo;All.&nbsp; I was consumedly amused by it, so was the whole
+family, and we proceeded to hunt up back <i>Idlers</i> and read
+the whole series.&nbsp; It is a rattling good series, even people
+whom you would not expect came in quite the proper
+tone&mdash;Miss Braddon, for instance, who was really one of the
+best where all are good&mdash;or all but one! . . .&nbsp; In
+short, I fell in love with &lsquo;The First Book&rsquo; series,
+and determined that it should be all our first books, and that I
+could not hold back where the white plume of Conan Doyle waved
+gallantly in the front.&nbsp; I hope they will republish them,
+though it&rsquo;s a grievous thought to me that that effigy in
+the German cap&mdash;likewise the other effigy of the noisome old
+man with the long hair, telling indelicate stories to a couple of
+deformed negresses in a rancid shanty full of
+wreckage&mdash;should be perpetuated.&nbsp; I may seem to speak
+in pleasantry&mdash;it is only a seeming&mdash;that German cap,
+sir, would be found, when I come to die, imprinted on my
+heart.&nbsp; Enough&mdash;my heart is too full.&nbsp;
+Adieu.&mdash;Yours very truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span><br />
+(in a German cap, damn &rsquo;em!)</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Charles Baxter</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Vailima</i>, <i>September</i>
+1894.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CHARLES</span>,&mdash;. . .
+Well, there is no more Edmund Baxter now; and I think I may say I
+know how you feel.&nbsp; He was one of the best, the kindest, and
+the most genial men I ever knew.&nbsp; I shall always remember
+his brisk, cordial ways and the essential goodness which he
+showed me whenever we met with gratitude.&nbsp; And the always is
+such a little while now!&nbsp; He is another of the landmarks
+gone; when it comes to my own turn to <a name="page356"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 356</span>lay my weapons down, I shall do so
+with thankfulness and fatigue; and whatever be my destiny
+afterward, I shall be glad to lie down with my fathers in
+honour.&nbsp; It is human at least, if not divine.&nbsp; And
+these deaths make me think of it with an ever greater
+readiness.&nbsp; Strange that you should be beginning a new life,
+when I, who am a little your junior, am thinking of the end of
+mine.&nbsp; But I have had hard lines; I have been so long
+waiting for death, I have unwrapped my thoughts from about life
+so long, that I have not a filament left to hold by; I have done
+my fiddling so long under Vesuvius, that I have almost forgotten
+to play, and can only wait for the eruption, and think it long of
+coming.&nbsp; Literally, no man has more wholly outlived life
+than I.&nbsp; And still it&rsquo;s good fun.</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>Vailima</i>, <i>September</i>
+1894.]</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR BOB</span>,&mdash;You are in error
+about the Picts.&nbsp; They were a Gaelic race, spoke a Celtic
+tongue, and we have no evidence that I know of that they were
+blacker than other Celts.&nbsp; The Balfours, I take it, were
+plainly Celts; their name shows it&mdash;the &lsquo;cold
+croft,&rsquo; it means; so does their country.&nbsp; Where the
+<i>black</i> Scotch come from nobody knows; but I recognise with
+you the fact that the whole of Britain is rapidly and
+progressively becoming more pigmented; already in one man&rsquo;s
+life I can decidedly <a name="page357"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 357</span>trace a difference in the children
+about a school door.&nbsp; But colour is not an essential part of
+a man or a race.&nbsp; Take my Polynesians, an Asiatic people
+probably from the neighbourhood of the Persian gulf.&nbsp; They
+range through any amount of shades, from the burnt hue of the Low
+Archipelago islander, which seems half negro, to the
+&lsquo;bleached&rsquo; pretty women of the Marquesas (close by on
+the map), who come out for a festival no darker than an Italian;
+their colour seems to vary directly with the degree of exposure
+to the sun.&nbsp; And, as with negroes, the babes are born white;
+only it should seem a <i>little sack</i> of pigment at the lower
+part of the spine, which presently spreads over the whole
+field.&nbsp; Very puzzling.&nbsp; But to return.&nbsp; The Picts
+furnish to-day perhaps a third of the population of Scotland, say
+another third for Scots and Britons, and the third for Norse and
+Angles is a bad third.&nbsp; Edinburgh was a Pictish place.&nbsp;
+But the fact is, we don&rsquo;t know their frontiers.&nbsp; Tell
+some of your journalist friends with a good style to popularise
+old Skene; or say your prayers, and read him for yourself; he was
+a Great Historian, and I was his blessed clerk, and did not know
+it; and you will not be in a state of grace about the Picts till
+you have studied him.&nbsp; J. Horne Stevenson (do you know him?)
+is working this up with me, and the fact is&mdash;it&rsquo;s not
+interesting to the public&mdash;but it&rsquo;s interesting, and
+very interesting, in itself, and just now very
+embarrassing&mdash;this rural parish supplied Glasgow with such a
+quantity of Stevensons in the beginning of last century!&nbsp;
+There is just a link wanting; and we might be able to go back to
+the eleventh century, always undistinguished, but clearly
+traceable.&nbsp; When I say just a link, I guess I may be taken
+to mean a dozen.&nbsp; What a singular thing is this
+undistinguished perpetuation of a family throughout the
+centuries, and the sudden bursting forth of character and
+capacity that began with our grandfather!&nbsp; But as I go on in
+life, day by day, I become more of a bewildered child; I cannot
+get used <a name="page358"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+358</span>to this world, to procreation, to heredity, to sight,
+to hearing; the commonest things are a burthen.&nbsp; The prim
+obliterated polite face of life, and the broad, bawdy, and
+orgiastic&mdash;or m&aelig;nadic&mdash;foundations, form a
+spectacle to which no habit reconciles me; and &lsquo;I could
+wish my days to be bound each to each&rsquo; by the same
+open-mouthed wonder.&nbsp; They <i>are</i> anyway, and whether I
+wish it or not.</p>
+<p>I remember very well your attitude to life, this conventional
+surface of it.&nbsp; You had none of that curiosity for the
+social stage directions, the trivial <i>ficelles</i> of the
+business; it is simian, but that is how the wild youth of man is
+captured; you wouldn&rsquo;t imitate, hence you kept free&mdash;a
+wild dog, outside the kennel&mdash;and came dam&rsquo; near
+starving for your pains.&nbsp; The key to the business is of
+course the belly; difficult as it is to keep that in view in the
+zone of three miraculous meals a day in which we were brought
+up.&nbsp; Civilisation has become reflex with us; you might think
+that hunger was the name of the best sauce; but hunger to the
+cold solitary under a bush of a rainy night is the name of
+something quite different.&nbsp; I defend civilisation for the
+thing it is, for the thing it has <i>come</i> to be, the
+standpoint of a real old Tory.&nbsp; My ideal would be the Female
+Clan.&nbsp; But how can you turn these crowding dumb multitudes
+<i>back</i>?&nbsp; They don&rsquo;t do anything <i>because</i>;
+they do things, write able articles, stitch shoes, dig, from the
+purely simian impulse.&nbsp; Go and reason with monkeys!</p>
+<p>No, I am right about Jean Lillie.&nbsp; Jean Lillie, our
+double great-grandmother, the daughter of David Lillie, sometime
+Deacon of the Wrights, married, first, Alan Stevenson, who died
+May 26, 1774, &lsquo;at Santt Kittes of a fiver,&rsquo; by whom
+she had Robert Stevenson, born 8th June 1772; and, second, in May
+or June 1787, Thomas Smith, a widower, and already the father of
+our grandmother.&nbsp; This improbable double connection always
+tends to confuse a student of the family, Thomas Smith being
+doubly our great-grandfather.</p>
+<p><a name="page359"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 359</span>I
+looked on the perpetuation of our honoured name with
+veneration.&nbsp; My mother collared one of the photos, of
+course; the other is stuck up on my wall as the chief of our
+sept.&nbsp; Do you know any of the Gaelic-Celtic sharps? you
+might ask what the name means.&nbsp; It puzzles me.&nbsp; I find
+a <i>M&lsquo;Stein</i> and a <i>MacStephane</i>; and our own
+great-grandfather always called himself Steenson, though he wrote
+it Stevenson.&nbsp; There are at least three <i>places</i> called
+Stevenson&mdash;<i>Stevenson</i> in Cunningham, <i>Stevenson</i>
+in Peebles, and <i>Stevenson</i> in Haddington.&nbsp; And it was
+not the Celtic trick, I understand, to call places after
+people.&nbsp; I am going to write to Sir Herbert Maxwell about
+the name, but you might find some one.</p>
+<p>Get the Anglo-Saxon heresy out of your head; they superimposed
+their language, they scarce modified the race; only in
+Berwickshire and Roxburgh have they very largely affected the
+place names.&nbsp; The Scandinavians did much more to Scotland
+than the Angles.&nbsp; The Saxons didn&rsquo;t come.</p>
+<p>Enough of this sham antiquarianism.&nbsp; Yes, it is in the
+matter of the book, <a name="citation359"></a><a
+href="#footnote359" class="citation">[359]</a> of course, that
+collaboration shows; as for the manner, it is superficially all
+mine, in the sense that the last copy is all in my hand.&nbsp;
+Lloyd did not even put pen to paper in the Paris scenes or the
+Barbizon scene; it was no good; he wrote and often rewrote all
+the rest; I had the best service from him on the character of
+Nares.&nbsp; You see, we had been just meeting the man, and his
+memory was full of the man&rsquo;s words and ways.&nbsp; And
+Lloyd is an impressionist, pure and simple.&nbsp; The great
+difficulty of collaboration is that you can&rsquo;t explain what
+you mean.&nbsp; I know what kind of effect I mean a character to
+give&mdash;what kind of <i>tache</i> he is to make; but how am I
+to tell my collaborator in words?&nbsp; Hence it was necessary to
+say, &lsquo;Make him So-and-so&rsquo;; and this was all right for
+Nares and Pinkerton and Loudon Dodd, whom we both knew, but for
+Bellairs, for instance&mdash;a man with whom I <a
+name="page360"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 360</span>passed ten
+minutes fifteen years ago&mdash;what was I to say? and what could
+Lloyd do?&nbsp; I, as a personal artist, can begin a character
+with only a haze in my head, but how if I have to translate the
+haze into words before I begin?&nbsp; In our manner of
+collaboration (which I think the only possible&mdash;I mean that
+of one person being responsible, and giving the <i>coup de
+pouce</i> to every part of the work) I was spared the obviously
+hopeless business of trying to explain to my collaborator what
+<i>style</i> I wished a passage to be treated in.&nbsp; These are
+the times that illustrate to a man the inadequacy of spoken
+language.&nbsp; Now&mdash;to be just to written language&mdash;I
+can (or could) find a language for my every mood, but how could I
+<i>tell</i> any one beforehand what this effect was to be, which
+it would take every art that I possessed, and hours and hours of
+deliberate labour and selection and rejection, to produce?&nbsp;
+These are the impossibilities of collaboration.&nbsp; Its
+immediate advantage is to focus two minds together on the stuff,
+and to produce in consequence an extraordinarily greater richness
+of purview, consideration, and invention.&nbsp; The hardest
+chapter of all was &lsquo;Cross Questions and Crooked
+Answers.&rsquo;&nbsp; You would not believe what that cost us
+before it assumed the least unity and colour.&nbsp; Lloyd wrote
+it at least thrice, and I at least five times&mdash;this is from
+memory.&nbsp; And was that last chapter worth the trouble it
+cost?&nbsp; Alas, that I should ask the question!&nbsp; Two
+classes of men&mdash;the artist and the educationalist&mdash;are
+sworn, on soul and conscience, not to ask it.&nbsp; You get an
+ordinary, grinning, red-headed boy, and you have to educate
+him.&nbsp; Faith supports you; you give your valuable hours, the
+boy does not seem to profit, but that way your duty lies, for
+which you are paid, and you must persevere.&nbsp; Education has
+always seemed to me one of the few possible and dignified ways of
+life.&nbsp; A sailor, a shepherd, a schoolmaster&mdash;to a less
+degree, a soldier&mdash;and (I don&rsquo;t know why, upon my
+soul, except as a sort of schoolmaster&rsquo;s unofficial
+assistant, and a kind of acrobat in tights) an artist, almost
+exhaust the category.</p>
+<p><a name="page361"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 361</span>If I
+had to begin again&mdash;I know not&mdash;<i>si jeunesse
+savait</i>, <i>si vieillesse pouvait</i> . . . I know not at
+all&mdash;I believe I should try to honour Sex more
+religiously.&nbsp; The worst of our education is that
+Christianity does not recognise and hallow Sex.&nbsp; It looks
+askance at it, over its shoulder, oppressed as it is by
+reminiscences of hermits and Asiatic self-tortures.&nbsp; It is a
+terrible hiatus in our modern religions that they cannot see and
+make venerable that which they ought to see first and hallow
+most.&nbsp; Well, it is so; I cannot be wiser than my
+generation.</p>
+<p>But no doubt there is something great in the half-success that
+has attended the effort of turning into an emotional religion,
+Bald Conduct, without any appeal, or almost none, to the
+figurative, mysterious, and constitutive facts of life.&nbsp; Not
+that conduct is not constitutive, but dear! it&rsquo;s
+dreary!&nbsp; On the whole, conduct is better dealt with on the
+cast-iron &lsquo;gentleman&rsquo; and duty formula, with as
+little fervour and poetry as possible; stoical and short.</p>
+<p>. . . There is a new something or other in the wind, which
+exercises me hugely: anarchy,&mdash;I mean, anarchism.&nbsp;
+People who (for pity&rsquo;s sake) commit dastardly murders very
+basely, die like saints, and leave beautiful letters behind
+&rsquo;em (did you see Vaillant to his daughter? it was the New
+Testament over again); people whose conduct is inexplicable to
+me, and yet their spiritual life higher than that of most.&nbsp;
+This is just what the early Christians must have seemed to the
+Romans.&nbsp; Is this, then, a new <i>drive</i> <a
+name="citation361"></a><a href="#footnote361"
+class="citation">[361]</a> among the monkeys?&nbsp; Mind you,
+Bob, if they go on being martyred a few years more, the gross,
+dull, not unkindly bourgeois may get tired or ashamed or afraid
+of going on martyring; and the anarchists come out at the top
+just like the early Christians.&nbsp; That is, of course, they
+will step into power as a <i>personnel</i>, but God knows what
+they may believe when they come to do so; it can&rsquo;t be
+stranger or more improbable than what Christianity had come to be
+by the same time.</p>
+<p><a name="page362"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 362</span>Your
+letter was easily read, the pagination presented no difficulty,
+and I read it with much edification and gusto.&nbsp; To look
+back, and to stereotype one bygone humour&mdash;what a hopeless
+thing!&nbsp; The mind runs ever in a thousand eddies like a river
+between cliffs.&nbsp; You (the ego) are always spinning round in
+it, east, west, north, and south.&nbsp; You are twenty years old,
+and forty, and five, and the next moment you are freezing at an
+imaginary eighty; you are never the plain forty-four that you
+should be by dates.&nbsp; (The most philosophical language is the
+Gaelic, which has <i>no present tense</i>&mdash;and the most
+useless.)&nbsp; How, then, to choose some former age, and stick
+there?</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Sir Herbert Maxwell</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>September</i> 10, 1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR SIR HERBERT
+MAXWELL</span>,&mdash;I am emboldened by reading your very
+interesting Rhind Lectures to put to you a question: What is my
+name, Stevenson?</p>
+<p>I find it in the forms Stevinetoun, Stevensoune, Stevensonne,
+Stenesone, Stewinsoune, M&rsquo;Stein, and MacStephane.&nbsp; My
+family, and (as far as I can gather) the majority of the
+inglorious clan, hailed from the borders of Cunningham and
+Renfrew, and the upper waters of the Clyde.&nbsp; In the Barony
+of Bothwell was the seat of the laird Stevenson of Stevenson;
+but, as of course you know, there is a parish in Cunningham and
+places in Peebles and Haddington bearing the same name.</p>
+<p>If you can at all help me, you will render me a real service
+which I wish I could think of some manner to repay.&mdash;Believe
+me, yours truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;I should have added that I have perfect
+evidence before me that (for some obscure reason) Stevenson was a
+favourite alias with the M&lsquo;Gregors.</p>
+<h3><a name="page363"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+363</span><span class="smcap">to Alison Cunningham</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Vailima</i>], <i>October</i>
+8<i>th</i> 1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR CUMMY</span>,&mdash;So I hear
+you are ailing?&nbsp; Think shame to yourself!&nbsp; So you think
+there is nothing better to be done with time than that? and be
+sure we can all do much ourselves to decide whether we are to be
+ill or well! like a man on the gymnastic bars.&nbsp; We are all
+pretty well.&nbsp; As for me, there is nothing the matter with me
+in the world, beyond the disgusting circumstance that I am not so
+young as once I was.&nbsp; Lloyd has a gymnastic machine, and
+practises upon it every morning for an hour: he is beginning to
+be a kind of young Samson.&nbsp; Austin grows fat and brown, and
+gets on not so ill with his lessons, and my mother is in great
+price.&nbsp; We are having knock-me-down weather for heat; I
+never remember it so hot before, and I fancy it means we are to
+have a hurricane again this year, I think; since we came here, we
+have not had a single gale of wind!&nbsp; The Pacific is but a
+child to the North Sea; but when she does get excited, and gets
+up and girds herself, she can do something good.&nbsp; We have
+had a very interesting business here.&nbsp; I helped the chiefs
+who were in prison; and when they were set free, what should they
+do but offer to make a part of my road for me out of
+gratitude?&nbsp; Well, I was ashamed to refuse, and the trumps
+dug my road for me, and put up this inscription on a
+board:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;<i>Considering the great love of His Excellency
+Tusitala in his loving care of us in our tribulation in the
+prison we have made this great gift</i>; <i>it shall never be
+muddy</i>, <i>it shall go on for ever</i>, <i>this road that we
+have dug</i>!&rsquo;&nbsp; We had a great feast when it was done,
+and I read them a kind of lecture, which I dare say Auntie will
+have, and can let you see.&nbsp; Weel, guid bye to ye, and joy be
+wi&rsquo; ye!&nbsp; I <a name="page364"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 364</span>hae nae time to say mair.&nbsp; They
+say I&rsquo;m gettin&rsquo; <i>fat</i>&mdash;a fact!&mdash;Your
+laddie, with all love,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to James Payn</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>Nov.</i> 4, 1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR JAMES PAYN</span>,&mdash;I am
+asked to relate to you a little incident of domestic life at
+Vailima.&nbsp; I had read your <i>Gleams of Memory</i>, No. 1; it
+then went to my wife, to Osbourne, to the cousin that is within
+my gates, and to my respected amanuensis, Mrs. Strong.&nbsp;
+Sunday approached.&nbsp; In the course of the afternoon I was
+attracted to the great &rsquo;all&mdash;the winders is by
+Vanderputty, which upon entering I beheld a memorable
+scene.&nbsp; The floor was bestrewn with the forms of midshipmen
+from the <i>Cura&ccedil;oa</i>&mdash;&lsquo;boldly say a
+wilderness of gunroom&rsquo;&mdash;and in the midst of this sat
+Mrs. Strong throned on the sofa and reading aloud <i>Gleams of
+Memory</i>.&nbsp; They had just come the length of your immortal
+definition of boyhood in the concrete, and I had the pleasure to
+see the whole party dissolve under its influence with
+inextinguishable laughter.&nbsp; I thought this was not half bad
+for arthritic gout!&nbsp; Depend upon it, sir, when I go into the
+arthritic gout business, I shall be done with literature, or at
+least with the funny business.&nbsp; It is quite true I have my
+battlefields behind me.&nbsp; I have done perhaps as much work as
+anybody else under the most deplorable conditions.&nbsp; But two
+things fall to be noticed: In the first place, I never was in
+actual pain; and in the second, I was never funny.&nbsp;
+I&rsquo;ll tell you the worst day that I remember.&nbsp; I had a
+h&aelig;morrhage, and was not allowed to speak; then, induced by
+the devil, or an errant doctor, I was led to partake of that bowl
+which neither cheers nor inebriates&mdash;the castor-oil
+bowl.&nbsp; Now, when castor-oil goes right, it is one thing; but
+when it goes wrong, it is another.&nbsp; And it went <i>wrong</i>
+with me that day.&nbsp; <a name="page365"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 365</span>The waves of faintness and nausea
+succeeded each other for twelve hours, and I do feel a legitimate
+pride in thinking that I stuck to my work all through and wrote a
+good deal of Admiral Guinea (which I might just as well not have
+written for all the reward it ever brought me) in spite of the
+barbarous bad conditions.&nbsp; I think that is my great boast;
+and it seems a little thing alongside of your <i>Gleams of
+Memory</i> illustrated by spasms of arthritic gout.&nbsp; We
+really should have an order of merit in the trade of
+letters.&nbsp; For valour, Scott would have had it; Pope too;
+myself on the strength of that castor-oil; and James Payn would
+be a Knight Commander.&nbsp; The worst of it is, though Lang
+tells me you exhibit the courage of Huish, that not even an order
+can alleviate the wretched annoyance of the business.&nbsp; I
+have always said that there is nothing like pain; toothache,
+dumb-ague, arthritic gout, it does not matter what you call it,
+if the screw is put upon the nerves sufficiently strong, there is
+nothing left in heaven or in earth that can interest the
+sufferer.&nbsp; Still, even to this there is the consolation that
+it cannot last for ever.&nbsp; Either you will be relieved and
+have a good hour again before the sun goes down, or else you will
+be liberated.&nbsp; It is something after all (although not much)
+to think that you are leaving a brave example; that other
+literary men love to remember, as I am sure they will love to
+remember, everything about you&mdash;your sweetness, your
+brightness, your helpfulness to all of us, and in particular
+those one or two really adequate and noble papers which you have
+been privileged to write during these last years.&mdash;With the
+heartiest and kindest good-will, I remain, yours ever,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Lieutenant Eeles</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>November</i> 24, 1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR EELES</span>,&mdash;The hand,
+as you will perceive (and also the spelling!), is Teuila&rsquo;s,
+but the scrannel voice is <a name="page366"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 366</span>what remains of
+Tusitala&rsquo;s.&nbsp; First of all, for business.&nbsp; When
+you go to London you are to charter a hansom cab and proceed to
+the Museum.&nbsp; It is particular fun to do this on Sundays when
+the Monument is shut up.&nbsp; Your cabman expostulates with you,
+you persist.&nbsp; The cabman drives up in front of the closed
+gates and says, &lsquo;I told you so, sir.&rsquo;&nbsp; You
+breathe in the porter&rsquo;s ears the mystic name of
+<i>Colvin</i>, and he immediately unfolds the iron barrier.&nbsp;
+You drive in, and doesn&rsquo;t your cabman think you&rsquo;re a
+swell.&nbsp; A lord mayor is nothing to it.&nbsp; Colvin&rsquo;s
+door is the only one in the eastern gable of the building.&nbsp;
+Send in your card to him with &lsquo;From R. L. S.&rsquo; in the
+corner, and the machinery will do the rest.&nbsp; Henry
+James&rsquo;s address is 34 De Vere Mansions West.&nbsp; I cannot
+remember where the place is; I cannot even remember on which side
+of the park.&nbsp; But it&rsquo;s one of those big Cromwell
+Road-looking deserted thoroughfares out west in Kensington or
+Bayswater, or between the two; and anyway, Colvin will be able to
+put you on the direct track for Henry James.&nbsp; I do not send
+formal introductions, as I have taken the liberty to prepare both
+of them for seeing you already.</p>
+<p>Hoskyn is staying with us.</p>
+<p>It is raining dismally.&nbsp; The Cura&ccedil;oa track is
+hardly passable, but it must be trod to-morrow by the degenerate
+feet of their successor the Wallaroos.&nbsp; I think it a very
+good account of these last that we don&rsquo;t think them either
+deformed or habitual criminals&mdash;they seem to be a kindly
+lot.</p>
+<p>The doctor will give you all the gossip.&nbsp; I have
+preferred in this letter to stick to the strictly solid and
+necessary.&nbsp; With kind messages from all in the house to all
+in the wardroom, all in the gunroom, and (may we dare to breathe
+it) to him who walks abaft, believe me, my dear Eeles, yours
+ever,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. <span
+class="smcap">Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><a name="page367"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+367</span><span class="smcap">to Sir Herbert Maxwell</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>December</i> 1, 1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">DEAR SIR HERBERT</span>,&mdash;Thank
+you very much for your long and kind letter.&nbsp; I shall
+certainly take your advice and call my cousin, the Lyon King,
+into council.&nbsp; It is certainly a very interesting subject,
+though I don&rsquo;t suppose it can possibly lead to anything,
+this connection between the Stevensons and M&rsquo;Gregors.&nbsp;
+Alas! your invitation is to me a mere derision.&nbsp; My chances
+of visiting Heaven are about as valid as my chances of visiting
+Monreith.&nbsp; Though I should like well to see you, shrunken
+into a cottage, a literary Lord of Ravenscraig.&nbsp; I suppose
+it is the inevitable doom of all those who dabble in Scotch soil;
+but really your fate is the more blessed.&nbsp; I cannot conceive
+anything more grateful to me, or more amusing or more
+picturesque, than to live in a cottage outside your own
+park-walls.&mdash;With renewed thanks, believe me, dear Sir
+Herbert, yours very truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis
+Stevenson</span>.</p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">to Andrew Lang</span></h3>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>December</i> 1, 1894.</p>
+<p><span class="GutSmall">MY DEAR LANG</span>,&mdash;For the
+portrait of Braxfield, much thanks!&nbsp; It is engraved from the
+same Raeburn portrait that I saw in &rsquo;76 or &rsquo;77 with
+so extreme a gusto that I have ever since been Braxfield&rsquo;s
+humble servant, and am now trying, as you know, to stick him into
+a novel.&nbsp; Alas! one might as well try to stick in
+Napoleon.&nbsp; The picture shall be framed and hung up in my
+study.&nbsp; Not only as a memento of you, but as a perpetual
+encouragement to do better with his Lordship.&nbsp; I have not
+yet received the <a name="page368"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+368</span>transcripts.&nbsp; They must be very interesting.&nbsp;
+Do you know, I picked up the other day an old
+<i>Longman&rsquo;s</i>, where I found an article of yours that I
+had missed, about Christie&rsquo;s?&nbsp; I read it with great
+delight.&nbsp; The year ends with us pretty much as it began,
+among wars and rumours of wars, and a vast and splendid
+exhibition of official incompetence.&mdash;Yours ever,</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>Vailima</i>, <i>Samoa</i>,
+<i>December</i> 1, 1894.</p>
+<p>I <span class="GutSmall">AM</span> afraid, <span
+class="GutSmall">MY DEAR WEG</span>, that this must be the result
+of bribery and corruption!&nbsp; The volume to which the
+dedication stands as preface seems to me to stand alone in your
+work; it is so natural, so personal, so sincere, so articulate in
+substance, and what you always were sure of&mdash;so rich in
+adornment.</p>
+<p>Let me speak first of the dedication.&nbsp; I thank you for it
+from the heart.&nbsp; It is beautifully said, beautifully and
+kindly felt; and I should be a churl indeed if I were not
+grateful, and an ass if I were not proud.&nbsp; I remember when
+Symonds dedicated a book to me; I wrote and told him of
+&lsquo;the pang of gratified vanity&rsquo; with which I had read
+it.&nbsp; The pang was present again, but how much more sober and
+autumnal&mdash;like your volume.&nbsp; Let me tell you a story,
+or remind you of a story.&nbsp; In the year of grace something or
+other, anything between &rsquo;76 and &rsquo;78 I mentioned to
+you in my usual autobiographical and inconsiderate manner that I
+was hard up.&nbsp; You said promptly that you had a balance at
+your banker&rsquo;s, and could make it convenient to let me have
+a cheque, and I accepted and got the money&mdash;how much was
+it?&mdash;twenty or perhaps thirty pounds?&nbsp; I know
+not&mdash;but it was a great convenience.&nbsp; The same evening,
+or the next day, I <a name="page369"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+369</span>fell in conversation (in my usual autobiographical and
+. . . see above) with a denizen of the Savile Club, name now gone
+from me, only his figure and a dim three-quarter view of his face
+remaining.&nbsp; To him I mentioned that you had given me a loan,
+remarking easily that of course it didn&rsquo;t matter to
+you.&nbsp; Whereupon he read me a lecture, and told me how it
+really stood with you financially.&nbsp; He was pretty serious;
+fearing, as I could not help perceiving, that I should take too
+light a view of the responsibility and the service (I was always
+thought too light&mdash;the irresponsible jester&mdash;you
+remember.&nbsp; O, <i>quantum mutatus ab illo</i>!)&nbsp; If I
+remember rightly, the money was repaid before the end of the
+week&mdash;or, to be more exact and a trifle pedantic, the
+sennight&mdash;but the service has never been forgotten; and I
+send you back this piece of ancient history, <i>consule
+Planco</i>, as a salute for your dedication, and propose that we
+should drink the health of the nameless one, who opened my eyes
+as to the true nature of what you did for me on that
+occasion.</p>
+<p>But here comes my Amanuensis, so we&rsquo;ll get on more
+swimmingly now.&nbsp; You will understand perhaps that what so
+particularly pleased me in the new volume, what seems to me to
+have so personal and original a note, are the middle-aged pieces
+in the beginning.&nbsp; The whole of them, I may say, though I
+must own an especial liking to&mdash;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&lsquo;I yearn not for the fighting fate,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That holds and hath achieved;<br />
+I live to watch and meditate<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And dream&mdash;and be deceived.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>You take the change gallantly.&nbsp; Not I, I must
+confess.&nbsp; It is all very well to talk of renunciation, and
+of course it has to be done.&nbsp; But, for my part, give me a
+roaring toothache!&nbsp; I do like to be deceived and to dream,
+but I have very little use for either watching or
+meditation.&nbsp; I was not born for age.&nbsp; And, curiously
+enough, I seem <a name="page370"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+370</span>to see a contrary drift in my work from that which is
+so remarkable in yours.&nbsp; You are going on sedately
+travelling through your ages, decently changing with the years to
+the proper tune.&nbsp; And here am I, quite out of my true
+course, and with nothing in my foolish elderly head but
+love-stories.&nbsp; This must repose upon some curious
+distinction of temperaments.&nbsp; I gather from a phrase, boldly
+autobiographical, that you are&mdash;well, not precisely growing
+thin.&nbsp; Can that be the difference?</p>
+<p>It is rather funny that this matter should come up just now,
+as I am at present engaged in treating a severe case of middle
+age in one of my stories&mdash;&lsquo;The
+Justice-Clerk.&rsquo;&nbsp; The case is that of a woman, and I
+think that I am doing her justice.&nbsp; You will be interested,
+I believe, to see the difference in our treatments.&nbsp;
+<i>Secreta Vit&aelig;</i>, comes nearer to the case of my poor
+Kirstie.&nbsp; Come to think of it, Gosse, I believe the main
+distinction is that you have a family growing up around you, and
+I am a childless, rather bitter, very clear-eyed, blighted
+youth.&nbsp; I have, in fact, lost the path that makes it easy
+and natural for you to descend the hill.&nbsp; I am going at it
+straight.&nbsp; And where I have to go down it is a
+precipice.</p>
+<p>I must not forget to give you a word of thanks for <i>An
+English Village</i>.&nbsp; It reminds me strongly of Keats, which
+is enough to say; and I was particularly pleased with the
+petulant sincerity of the concluding sentiment.</p>
+<p>Well, my dear Gosse, here&rsquo;s wishing you all health and
+prosperity, as well as to the mistress and the bairns.&nbsp; May
+you live long, since it seems as if you would continue to enjoy
+life.&nbsp; May you write many more books as good as this
+one&mdash;only there&rsquo;s one thing impossible, you can never
+write another dedication that can give the same pleasure to the
+vanished</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">Tusitala</span>.</p>
+<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2>
+<p><a name="footnote11"></a><a href="#citation11"
+class="footnote">[11]</a>&nbsp; In <i>Underwoods</i> the lines
+thus queried stand with the change: &lsquo;Life is over; life was
+gay.&rsquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote12"></a><a href="#citation12"
+class="footnote">[12]</a>&nbsp; <i>Prince Otto</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote20"></a><a href="#citation20"
+class="footnote">[20]</a>&nbsp; The name of the hero in
+Dostoieffsky&rsquo;s <i>Le Crime et le Ch&acirc;timent</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote37"></a><a href="#citation37"
+class="footnote">[37]</a>&nbsp; <i>Suite anglaise</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote48a"></a><a href="#citation48a"
+class="footnote">[48a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Merry Men</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote48b"></a><a href="#citation48b"
+class="footnote">[48b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Memories and
+Portraits</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote48c"></a><a href="#citation48c"
+class="footnote">[48c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Underwoods</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote66"></a><a href="#citation66"
+class="footnote">[66]</a>&nbsp; The sum was really
+&pound;700.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote70"></a><a href="#citation70"
+class="footnote">[70]</a>&nbsp; &lsquo;But she was more than
+usual calm,<br />
+She did not give a single dam.&rsquo;&mdash;<i>Marjorie
+Fleming</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote83"></a><a href="#citation83"
+class="footnote">[83]</a>&nbsp; The secretary was really, I
+believe, Lord Pollington.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote86"></a><a href="#citation86"
+class="footnote">[86]</a>&nbsp; &lsquo;Smith opens out his cauld
+harangues<br />
+On practice and on morals.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The Rev. George Smith of Galston, the minister thus referred
+to by Burns (in the <i>Holy Fair</i>), was a great-grandfather of
+Stevenson on the mother&rsquo;s side; and against Stevenson
+himself, in his didactic moods, the passage was often quoted by
+his friends when they wished to tease him.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote114"></a><a href="#citation114"
+class="footnote">[114]</a>&nbsp; The French; the Marquesas,
+Paumotus, and Tahiti being all dependencies of France.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote132"></a><a href="#citation132"
+class="footnote">[132]</a>&nbsp; King Kalakaua.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote133"></a><a href="#citation133"
+class="footnote">[133]</a>&nbsp; This is the Canadian poet Mr.
+Archibald Lampman, the news of whose death reaches England as
+these sheets are preparing for the press.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote137"></a><a href="#citation137"
+class="footnote">[137]</a>&nbsp; Stevenson&rsquo;s stepdaughter,
+Mrs. Strong, who was at this time living at Honolulu, and joined
+his party and family for good when they continued their voyage
+from thence in the following June.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote141"></a><a href="#citation141"
+class="footnote">[141]</a>&nbsp; The following is the letter in
+question:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&lsquo;I make you to know my great
+affection.&nbsp; At the hour when you left us, I was filled with
+tears; my wife, Rui Telime, also, and all of my household.&nbsp;
+When you embarked I felt a great sorrow.&nbsp; It is for this
+that I went upon the road, and you looked from that ship, and I
+looked at you on the ship with great grief until you had raised
+the anchor and hoisted the sails.&nbsp; When the ship started I
+ran along the beach to see you still; and when you were on the
+open sea I cried out to you, &ldquo;Farewell Louis&rdquo;; and
+when I was coming back to my house I seemed to hear your voice
+crying &ldquo;Rui farewell.&rdquo;&nbsp; Afterwards I watched the
+ship as long as I could until the night fell; and when it was
+dark I said to myself, &ldquo;If I had wings I should fly to the
+ship to meet you, and to sleep amongst you, so that I might be
+able to come back to shore and to tell Rui Telime, &lsquo;I have
+slept upon the ship of Teriitera.&rsquo;&rdquo;&nbsp; After that
+we passed that night in the impatience of grief.&nbsp; Towards
+eight o&rsquo;clock I seemed to hear your voice,
+&ldquo;Teriitera&mdash;Rui&mdash;here is the hour for
+<i>putter</i> and <i>tiro</i>&rdquo; (cheese and syrup).&nbsp; I
+did not sleep that night, thinking continually of you, my very
+dear friend, until the morning; being then still awake, I went to
+see Tapina Tutu on her bed, and alas, she was not there.&nbsp;
+Afterwards I looked into your rooms; they did not please me as
+they used to do. I did not hear your voice saying, &ldquo;Hail
+Rui&rdquo;; I thought then that you had gone, and that you had
+left me.&nbsp; Rising up, I went to the beach to see your ship,
+and I could not see it.&nbsp; I wept, then, until the night,
+telling myself continually, &ldquo;Teriitera returns into his own
+country and leaves his dear Rui in grief, so that I suffer for
+him, and weep for him.&rdquo;&nbsp; I will not forget you in my
+memory.&nbsp; Here is the thought: I desire to meet you
+again.&nbsp; It is my dear Teriitera makes the only riches I
+desire in this world.&nbsp; It is your eyes that I desire to see
+again.&nbsp; It must be that your body and my body shall eat
+together at one table: there is what would make my heart
+content.&nbsp; But now we are separated.&nbsp; May God be with
+you all.&nbsp; May His word and His mercy go with you, so that
+you may be well and we also, according to the words of Paul.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Ori</span> A <span
+class="smcap">Ori</span>, that is to say, <span
+class="smcap">Rui</span>.&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><a name="footnote152"></a><a href="#citation152"
+class="footnote">[152]</a>&nbsp; The Polynesian name for white
+men.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote170"></a><a href="#citation170"
+class="footnote">[170]</a>&nbsp; Table of chapter headings
+follows.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote187"></a><a href="#citation187"
+class="footnote">[187]</a>&nbsp; French <i>b&acirc;tons
+rompus</i>: disconnected thoughts or studies.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote190"></a><a href="#citation190"
+class="footnote">[190]</a>&nbsp; The Rev. Dr. Hyde, of Honolulu:
+in reference to Stevenson&rsquo;s letter on Father Damien.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote198"></a><a href="#citation198"
+class="footnote">[198]</a>&nbsp; Afterwards re-named <i>The Ebb
+Tide</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote201"></a><a href="#citation201"
+class="footnote">[201]</a>&nbsp; His letters.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote220"></a><a href="#citation220"
+class="footnote">[220]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Misadventures of John
+Nicholson</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote245"></a><a href="#citation245"
+class="footnote">[245]</a>&nbsp; <i>i.e.</i> On the stage.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote271"></a><a href="#citation271"
+class="footnote">[271]</a>&nbsp; A character in <i>The
+Wrecker</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote272"></a><a href="#citation272"
+class="footnote">[272]</a>&nbsp; The lad Austin Strong.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote292"></a><a href="#citation292"
+class="footnote">[292]</a>&nbsp; John Addington Symonds.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote298a"></a><a href="#citation298a"
+class="footnote">[298a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Across the Plains</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote298b"></a><a href="#citation298b"
+class="footnote">[298b]</a>&nbsp; Volume of Sonnets by
+Jos&eacute; Maria de H&eacute;r&eacute;dia.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote311"></a><a href="#citation311"
+class="footnote">[311]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Window in Thrums</i>,
+with illustrations by W. Hole, R.S.A. Hodder and Stoughton.
+1892.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote320"></a><a href="#citation320"
+class="footnote">[320]</a>&nbsp; This question is with a view to
+the adventures of the hero in <i>St. Ives</i>, who, according to
+Stevenson&rsquo;s original plan, was to have been picked up from
+his foundered balloon by an American privateer.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote323"></a><a href="#citation323"
+class="footnote">[323]</a>&nbsp; As to admire <i>The Black
+Arrow</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote332"></a><a href="#citation332"
+class="footnote">[332]</a>&nbsp; In the book the genealogy is
+given as a diagram.&nbsp; It has been converted to text for this
+transcription so it&rsquo;s available for everyone, with the
+original diagram below.&mdash;DP.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p332b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"The Genealogy"
+title=
+"The Genealogy"
+ src="images/p332s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p><a name="footnote337"></a><a href="#citation337"
+class="footnote">[337]</a>&nbsp; Word omitted in <span
+class="GutSmall">MS</span>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote347"></a><a href="#citation347"
+class="footnote">[347]</a>&nbsp; <i>Sentimental Tommy</i>: whose
+chief likeness to R. L. S. was meant to be in the literary
+temperament and passion for the <i>mot propre</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote350"></a><a href="#citation350"
+class="footnote">[350]</a>&nbsp; <i>Sic</i>: query
+&lsquo;least&rsquo;?</p>
+<p><a name="footnote359"></a><a href="#citation359"
+class="footnote">[359]</a>&nbsp; Of <i>The Wrecker</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote361"></a><a href="#citation361"
+class="footnote">[361]</a>&nbsp; <i>Trieb</i>, impulse</p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LETTERS OF ROBERT LOUIS
+STEVENSON TO HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS - VOLUME 2 [OF 2]***</p>
+<pre>
+
+
+***** This file should be named 637-h.htm or 637-h.zip******
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+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume II
+Scanned and proofed by David Price
+ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume II
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII - LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH, CONTINUED, JANUARY 1886-JULY 1887
+
+
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MRS. DE MATTOS
+
+
+
+[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH], JANUARY 1ST, 1886.
+
+DEAREST KATHARINE, - Here, on a very little book and accompanied 
+with lame verses, I have put your name.  Our kindness is now 
+getting well on in years; it must be nearly of age; and it gets 
+more valuable to me with every time I see you.  It is not possible 
+to express any sentiment, and it is not necessary to try, at least 
+between us.  You know very well that I love you dearly, and that I 
+always will.  I only wish the verses were better, but at least you 
+like the story; and it is sent to you by the one that loves you - 
+Jekyll, and not Hyde.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+AVE!
+
+Bells upon the city are ringing in the night;
+High above the gardens are the houses full of light;
+On the heathy Pentlands is the curlew flying free;
+And the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie.
+
+We cannae break the bonds that God decreed to bind,
+Still we'll be the children of the heather and the wind;
+Far away from home, O, it's still for you and me
+That the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie!
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
+
+
+
+[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH], 1ST, 1886.
+
+MY DEAR KINNICUM, - I am a very bad dog, but not for the first 
+time.  Your book, which is very interesting, came duly; and I 
+immediately got a very bad cold indeed, and have been fit for 
+nothing whatever.  I am a bit better now, and aye on the mend; so I 
+write to tell you, I thought of you on New Year's Day; though, I 
+own, it would have been more decent if I had thought in time for 
+you to get my letter then.  Well, what can't be cured must be 
+endured, Mr. Lawrie; and you must be content with what I give.  If 
+I wrote all the letters I ought to write, and at the proper time, I 
+should be very good and very happy; but I doubt if I should do 
+anything else.
+
+I suppose you will be in town for the New Year; and I hope your 
+health is pretty good.  What you want is diet; but it is as much 
+use to tell you that as it is to tell my father.  And I quite admit 
+a diet is a beastly thing.  I doubt, however, if it be as bad as 
+not being allowed to speak, which I have tried fully, and do not 
+like.  When, at the same time, I was not allowed to read, it passed 
+a joke.  But these are troubles of the past, and on this day, at 
+least, it is proper to suppose they won't return.  But we are not 
+put here to enjoy ourselves:  it was not God's purpose; and I am 
+prepared to argue, it is not our sincere wish.  As for our deserts, 
+the less said of them the better, for somebody might hear, and 
+nobody cares to be laughed at.  A good man is a very noble thing to 
+see, but not to himself; what he seems to God is, fortunately, not 
+our business; that is the domain of faith; and whether on the first 
+of January or the thirty-first of December, faith is a good word to 
+end on.
+
+My dear Cummy, many happy returns to you and my best love. - The 
+worst correspondent in the world,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
+
+
+
+[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH], JANUARY 1ST, 1886.
+
+MY DEAR PEOPLE, - Many happy returns of the day to you all; I am 
+fairly well and in good spirits; and much and hopefully occupied 
+with dear Jenkin's life.  The inquiry in every detail, every letter 
+that I read, makes me think of him more nobly.  I cannot imagine 
+how I got his friendship; I did not deserve it.  I believe the 
+notice will be interesting and useful.
+
+My father's last letter, owing to the use of a quill pen and the 
+neglect of blotting-paper, was hopelessly illegible.  Every one 
+tried, and every one failed to decipher an important word on which 
+the interest of one whole clause (and the letter consisted of two) 
+depended.
+
+I find I can make little more of this; but I'll spare the blots. - 
+Dear people, ever your loving son,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+I will try again, being a giant refreshed by the house being empty.  
+The presence of people is the great obstacle to letter-writing.  I 
+deny that letters should contain news (I mean mine; those of other 
+people should).  But mine should contain appropriate sentiments and 
+humorous nonsense, or nonsense without the humour.  When the house 
+is empty, the mind is seized with a desire - no, that is too strong 
+- a willingness to pour forth unmitigated rot, which constitutes 
+(in me) the true spirit of correspondence.  When I have no remarks 
+to offer (and nobody to offer them to), my pen flies, and you see 
+the remarkable consequence of a page literally covered with words 
+and genuinely devoid of sense.  I can always do that, if quite 
+alone, and I like doing it; but I have yet to learn that it is 
+beloved by correspondents.  The deuce of it is, that there is no 
+end possible but the end of the paper; and as there is very little 
+left of that - if I cannot stop writing - suppose you give up 
+reading.  It would all come to the same thing; and I think we 
+should all be happier...
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO W. H. LOW
+
+
+
+[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH], JAN. 2ND, 1886.
+
+MY DEAR LOW, - LAMIA has come, and I do not know how to thank you, 
+not only for the beautiful art of the designs, but for the handsome 
+and apt words of the dedication.  My favourite is 'Bathes unseen,' 
+which is a masterpiece; and the next, 'Into the green recessed 
+woods,' is perhaps more remarkable, though it does not take my 
+fancy so imperiously.  The night scene at Corinth pleases me also.  
+The second part offers fewer opportunities.  I own I should like to 
+see both ISABELLA and the EVE thus illustrated; and then there's 
+HYPERION - O, yes, and ENDYMION!  I should like to see the lot:  
+beautiful pictures dance before me by hundreds:  I believe ENDYMION 
+would suit you best.  It also is in faery-land; and I see a hundred 
+opportunities, cloudy and flowery glories, things as delicate as 
+the cobweb in the bush; actions, not in themselves of any mighty 
+purport, but made for the pencil:  the feast of Pan, Peona's isle, 
+the 'slabbed margin of a well,' the chase of the butterfly, the 
+nymph, Glaucus, Cybele, Sleep on his couch, a farrago of 
+unconnected beauties.  But I divagate; and all this sits in the 
+bosom of the publisher.
+
+What is more important, I accept the terms of the dedication with a 
+frank heart, and the terms of your Latin legend fairly.  The sight 
+of your pictures has once more awakened me to my right mind; 
+something may come of it; yet one more bold push to get free of 
+this prisonyard of the abominably ugly, where I take my daily 
+exercise with my contemporaries.  I do not know, I have a feeling 
+in my bones, a sentiment which may take on the forms of 
+imagination, or may not.  If it does, I shall owe it to you; and 
+the thing will thus descend from Keats even if on the wrong side of 
+the blanket.  If it can be done in prose - that is the puzzle - I 
+divagate again.  Thank you again:  you can draw and yet you do not 
+love the ugly:  what are you doing in this age?  Flee, while it is 
+yet time; they will have your four limbs pinned upon a stable door 
+to scare witches.  The ugly, my unhappy friend, is DE RIGUEUR:  it 
+is the only wear!  What a chance you threw away with the serpent!  
+Why had Apollonius no pimples?  Heavens, my dear Low, you do not 
+know your business....
+
+I send you herewith a Gothic gnome for your Greek nymph; but the 
+gnome is interesting, I think, and he came out of a deep mine, 
+where he guards the fountain of tears.  It is not always the time 
+to rejoice. - Yours ever,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+The gnome's name is JEKYLL & HYDE; I believe you will find he is 
+likewise quite willing to answer to the name of Low or Stevenson.
+
+SAME DAY. - I have copied out on the other sheet some bad verses, 
+which somehow your picture suggested; as a kind of image of things 
+that I pursue and cannot reach, and that you seem - no, not to have 
+reached - but to have come a thought nearer to than I.  This is the 
+life we have chosen:  well, the choice was mad, but I should make 
+it again.
+
+What occurs to me is this:  perhaps they might be printed in (say) 
+the CENTURY for the sake of my name; and if that were possible, 
+they might advertise your book.  It might be headed as sent in 
+acknowledgment of your LAMIA.  Or perhaps it might be introduced by 
+the phrases I have marked above.  I dare say they would stick it 
+in:  I want no payment, being well paid by LAMIA.  If they are not, 
+keep them to yourself.
+
+
+TO WILL H. LOW
+
+
+DAMNED BAD LINES IN RETURN FOR A BEAUTIFUL BOOK
+
+Youth now flees on feathered foot.
+Faint and fainter sounds the flute;
+Rarer songs of Gods.
+And still,
+Somewhere on the sunny hill,
+Or along the winding stream,
+Through the willows, flits a dream;
+Flits, but shows a smiling face,
+Flees, but with so quaint a grace,
+None can choose to stay at home,
+All must follow - all must roam.
+This is unborn beauty:  she
+Now in air floats high and free,
+Takes the sun, and breaks the blue; -
+Late, with stooping pinion flew
+Raking hedgerow trees, and wet
+Her wing in silver streams, and set
+Shining foot on temple roof.
+Now again she flies aloof,
+Coasting mountain clouds, and kissed
+By the evening's amethyst.
+In wet wood and miry lane
+Still we pound and pant in vain;
+Still with earthy foot we chase
+Waning pinion, fainting face;
+Still, with grey hair, we stumble on
+Till - behold! - the vision gone!
+Where has fleeting beauty led?
+To the doorway of the dead!
+qy. omit? [Life is gone, but life was gay:
+We have come the primrose way!]
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO EDMUND GOSSE
+
+
+
+SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, JAN. 2ND, 1886.
+
+MY DEAR GOSSE, - Thank you for your letter, so interesting to my 
+vanity.  There is a review in the St. James's, which, as it seems 
+to hold somewhat of your opinions, and is besides written with a 
+pen and not a poker, we think may possibly be yours.  The PRINCE 
+has done fairly well in spite of the reviews, which have been bad:  
+he was, as you doubtless saw, well slated in the SATURDAY; one 
+paper received it as a child's story; another (picture my agony) 
+described it as a 'Gilbert comedy.'  It was amusing to see the race 
+between me and Justin M'Carthy:  the Milesian has won by a length.
+
+That is the hard part of literature.  You aim high, and you take 
+longer over your work, and it will not be so successful as if you 
+had aimed low and rushed it.  What the public likes is work (of any 
+kind) a little loosely executed; so long as it is a little wordy, a 
+little slack, a little dim and knotless, the dear public likes it; 
+it should (if possible) be a little dull into the bargain.  I know 
+that good work sometimes hits; but, with my hand on my heart, I 
+think it is by an accident.  And I know also that good work must 
+succeed at last; but that is not the doing of the public; they are 
+only shamed into silence or affectation.  I do not write for the 
+public; I do write for money, a nobler deity; and most of all for 
+myself, not perhaps any more noble, but both more intelligent and 
+nearer home.
+
+Let us tell each other sad stories of the bestiality of the beast 
+whom we feed.  What he likes is the newspaper; and to me the press 
+is the mouth of a sewer, where lying is professed as from an 
+university chair, and everything prurient, and ignoble, and 
+essentially dull, finds its abode and pulpit.  I do not like 
+mankind; but men, and not all of these - and fewer women.  As for 
+respecting the race, and, above all, that fatuous rabble of 
+burgesses called 'the public,' God save me from such irreligion! - 
+that way lies disgrace and dishonour.  There must be something 
+wrong in me, or I would not be popular.
+
+This is perhaps a trifle stronger than my sedate and permanent 
+opinion.  Not much, I think.  As for the art that we practise, I 
+have never been able to see why its professors should be respected.  
+They chose the primrose path; when they found it was not all 
+primroses, but some of it brambly, and much of it uphill, they 
+began to think and to speak of themselves as holy martyrs.  But a 
+man is never martyred in any honest sense in the pursuit of his 
+pleasure; and DELIRIUM TREMENS has more of the honour of the cross.  
+We were full of the pride of life, and chose, like prostitutes, to 
+live by a pleasure.  We should be paid if we give the pleasure we 
+pretend to give; but why should we be honoured?
+
+I hope some day you and Mrs. Gosse will come for a Sunday; but we 
+must wait till I am able to see people.  I am very full of Jenkin's 
+life; it is painful, yet very pleasant, to dig into the past of a 
+dead friend, and find him, at every spadeful, shine brighter.  I 
+own, as I read, I wonder more and more why he should have taken me 
+to be a friend.  He had many and obvious faults upon the face of 
+him; the heart was pure gold.  I feel it little pain to have lost 
+him, for it is a loss in which I cannot believe; I take it, against 
+reason, for an absence; if not to-day, then to-morrow, I still 
+fancy I shall see him in the door; and then, now when I know him 
+better, how glad a meeting!  Yes, if I could believe in the 
+immortality business, the world would indeed be too good to be 
+true; but we were put here to do what service we can, for honour 
+and not for hire:  the sods cover us, and the worm that never dies, 
+the conscience, sleeps well at last; these are the wages, besides 
+what we receive so lavishly day by day; and they are enough for a 
+man who knows his own frailty and sees all things in the proportion 
+of reality.  The soul of piety was killed long ago by that idea of 
+reward.  Nor is happiness, whether eternal or temporal, the reward 
+that mankind seeks.  Happinesses are but his wayside campings; his 
+soul is in the journey; he was born for the struggle, and only 
+tastes his life in effort and on the condition that he is opposed.  
+How, then, is such a creature, so fiery, so pugnacious, so made up 
+of discontent and aspiration, and such noble and uneasy passions - 
+how can he be rewarded but by rest?  I would not say it aloud; for 
+man's cherished belief is that he loves that happiness which he 
+continually spurns and passes by; and this belief in some ulterior 
+happiness exactly fits him.  He does not require to stop and taste 
+it; he can be about the rugged and bitter business where his heart 
+lies; and yet he can tell himself this fairy tale of an eternal 
+tea-party, and enjoy the notion that he is both himself and 
+something else; and that his friends will yet meet him, all ironed 
+out and emasculate, and still be lovable, - as if love did not live 
+in the faults of the beloved only, and draw its breath in an 
+unbroken round of forgiveness!  But the truth is, we must fight 
+until we die; and when we die there can be no quiet for mankind but 
+complete resumption into - what? - God, let us say - when all these 
+desperate tricks will lie spellbound at last.
+
+Here came my dinner and cut this sermon short - EXCUSEZ.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO JAMES PAYN
+
+
+
+SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, JAN. 2ND, 1886.
+
+DEAR JAMES PAYN, - Your very kind letter came very welcome; and 
+still more welcome the news that you see -'s tale.  I will now tell 
+you (and it was very good and very wise of me not to tell it 
+before) that he is one of the most unlucky men I know, having put 
+all his money into a pharmacy at Hyeres, when the cholera 
+(certainly not his fault) swept away his customers in a body.  Thus 
+you can imagine the pleasure I have to announce to him a spark of 
+hope, for he sits to-day in his pharmacy, doing nothing and taking 
+nothing, and watching his debts inexorably mount up.
+
+To pass to other matters:  your hand, you are perhaps aware, is not 
+one of those that can be read running; and the name of your 
+daughter remains for me undecipherable.  I call her, then, your 
+daughter - and a very good name too - and I beg to explain how it 
+came about that I took her house.  The hospital was a point in my 
+tale; but there is a house on each side.  Now the true house is the 
+one before the hospital:  is that No. 11?  If not, what do you 
+complain of?  If it is, how can I help what is true?  Everything in 
+the DYNAMITER is not true; but the story of the Brown Box is, in 
+almost every particular; I lay my hand on my heart and swear to it.  
+It took place in that house in 1884; and if your daughter was in 
+that house at the time, all I can say is she must have kept very 
+bad society.
+
+But I see you coming.  Perhaps your daughter's house has not a 
+balcony at the back?  I cannot answer for that; I only know that 
+side of Queen Square from the pavement and the back windows of 
+Brunswick Row.  Thence I saw plenty of balconies (terraces rather); 
+and if there is none to the particular house in question, it must 
+have been so arranged to spite me.
+
+I now come to the conclusion of this matter.  I address three 
+questions to your daughter:-
+
+1st Has her house the proper terrace?
+
+2nd.  Is it on the proper side of the hospital?
+
+3rd.  Was she there in the summer of 1884?
+
+You see, I begin to fear that Mrs. Desborough may have deceived me 
+on some trifling points, for she is not a lady of peddling 
+exactitude.  If this should prove to be so, I will give your 
+daughter a proper certificate, and her house property will return 
+to its original value.
+
+Can man say more? - Yours very truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+I saw the other day that the Eternal had plagiarised from LOST SIR 
+MASSINGBERD:  good again, sir!  I wish he would plagiarise the 
+death of Zero.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO W. H. LOW
+
+
+
+SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, JAN. SOMETHINGOROTHER-TH, 1886.
+
+MY DEAR LOW, - I send you two photographs:  they are both done by 
+Sir Percy Shelley, the poet's son, which may interest.  The sitting 
+down one is, I think, the best; but if they choose that, see that 
+the little reflected light on the nose does not give me a turn-up; 
+that would be tragic.  Don't forget 'Baronet' to Sir Percy's name.
+
+We all think a heap of your book; and I am well pleased with my 
+dedication. - Yours ever,
+
+R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+P.S. - APROPOS of the odd controversy about Shelley's nose:  I have 
+before me four photographs of myself, done by Shelley's son:  my 
+nose is hooked, not like the eagle, indeed, but like the 
+accipitrine family in man:  well, out of these four, only one marks 
+the bend, one makes it straight, and one suggests a turn-up.  This 
+throws a flood of light on calumnious man - and the scandal-
+mongering sun.  For personally I cling to my curve.  To continue 
+the Shelley controversy:  I have a look of him, all his sisters had 
+noses like mine; Sir Percy has a marked hook; all the family had 
+high cheek-bones like mine; what doubt, then, but that this turn-up 
+(of which Jeaffreson accuses the poet, along with much other 
+FATRAS) is the result of some accident similar to what has happened 
+in my photographs by his son?
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO THOMAS STEVENSON
+
+
+
+[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, JANUARY 25, 1886.]
+
+MY DEAR FATHER, - Many thanks for a letter quite like yourself.  I 
+quite agree with you, and had already planned a scene of religion 
+in BALFOUR; the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge 
+furnishes me with a catechist whom I shall try to make the man.  I 
+have another catechist, the blind, pistol-carrying highway robber, 
+whom I have transferred from the Long Island to Mull.  I find it a 
+most picturesque period, and wonder Scott let it escape.  The 
+COVENANT is lost on one of the Tarrans, and David is cast on 
+Earraid, where (being from inland) he is nearly starved before he 
+finds out the island is tidal; then he crosses Mull to Toronsay, 
+meeting the blind catechist by the way; then crosses Morven from 
+Kinlochaline to Kingairloch, where he stays the night with the good 
+catechist; that is where I am; next day he is to be put ashore in 
+Appin, and be present at Colin Campbell's death.  To-day I rest, 
+being a little run down.  Strange how liable we are to brain fag in 
+this scooty family!  But as far as I have got, all but the last 
+chapter, I think David is on his feet, and (to my mind) a far 
+better story and far sounder at heart than TREASURE ISLAND.
+
+I have no earthly news, living entirely in my story, and only 
+coming out of it to play patience.  The Shelleys are gone; the 
+Taylors kinder than can be imagined.  The other day, Lady Taylor 
+drove over and called on me; she is a delightful old lady, and 
+great fun.  I mentioned a story about the Duchess of Wellington 
+which I had heard Sir Henry tell; and though he was very tired, he 
+looked it up and copied it out for me in his own hand. - Your most 
+affectionate son,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO C. W. STODDARD
+
+
+
+SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, FEB. 13TH, 1886.
+
+MY DEAR STODDARD, - I am a dreadful character; but, you see, I have 
+at last taken pen in hand; how long I may hold it, God knows.  This 
+is already my sixth letter to-day, and I have many more waiting; 
+and my wrist gives me a jog on the subject of scrivener's cramp, 
+which is not encouraging.
+
+I gather you were a little down in the jaw when you wrote your 
+last.  I am as usual pretty cheerful, but not very strong.  I stay 
+in the house all winter, which is base; but, as you continue to 
+see, the pen goes from time to time, though neither fast enough nor 
+constantly enough to please me.
+
+My wife is at Bath with my father and mother, and the interval of 
+widowery explains my writing.  Another person writing for you when 
+you have done work is a great enemy to correspondence.  To-day I 
+feel out of health, and shan't work; and hence this so much overdue 
+reply.
+
+I was re-reading some of your South Sea Idyls the other day:  some 
+of the chapters are very good indeed; some pages as good as they 
+can be.
+
+How does your class get along?  If you like to touch on OTTO, any 
+day in a by-hour, you may tell them - as the author's last dying 
+confession - that it is a strange example of the difficulty of 
+being ideal in an age of realism; that the unpleasant giddy-
+mindedness, which spoils the book and often gives it a wanton air 
+of unreality and juggling with air-bells, comes from unsteadiness 
+of key; from the too great realism of some chapters and passages - 
+some of which I have now spotted, others I dare say I shall never 
+spot - which disprepares the imagination for the cast of the 
+remainder.
+
+Any story can be made TRUE in its own key; any story can be made 
+FALSE by the choice of a wrong key of detail or style:  Otto is 
+made to reel like a drunken - I was going to say man, but let us 
+substitute cipher - by the variations of the key.  Have you 
+observed that the famous problem of realism and idealism is one 
+purely of detail?  Have you seen my 'Note on Realism' in Cassell's 
+MAGAZINE OF ART; and 'Elements of Style' in the CONTEMPORARY; and 
+'Romance' and 'Humble Apology' in LONGMAN'S?  They are all in your 
+line of business; let me know what you have not seen and I'll send 
+'em.
+
+I am glad I brought the old house up to you.  It was a pleasant old 
+spot, and I remember you there, though still more dearly in your 
+own strange den upon a hill in San Francisco; and one of the most 
+San Francisco-y parts of San Francisco.
+
+Good-bye, my dear fellow, and believe me your friend,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO J. A. SYMONDS
+
+
+
+SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH [SPRING 1886].
+
+MY DEAR SYMONDS, - If we have lost touch, it is (I think) only in a 
+material sense; a question of letters, not hearts.  You will find a 
+warm welcome at Skerryvore from both the lightkeepers; and, indeed, 
+we never tell ourselves one of our financial fairy tales, but a run 
+to Davos is a prime feature.  I am not changeable in friendship; 
+and I think I can promise you you have a pair of trusty well-
+wishers and friends in Bournemouth:  whether they write or not is 
+but a small thing; the flag may not be waved, but it is there.
+
+Jekyll is a dreadful thing, I own; but the only thing I feel 
+dreadful about is that damned old business of the war in the 
+members.  This time it came out; I hope it will stay in, in future.
+
+Raskolnikoff is easily the greatest book I have read in ten years; 
+I am glad you took to it.  Many find it dull:  Henry James could 
+not finish it:  all I can say is, it nearly finished me.  It was 
+like having an illness.  James did not care for it because the 
+character of Raskolnikoff was not objective; and at that I divined 
+a great gulf between us, and, on further reflection, the existence 
+of a certain impotence in many minds of to-day, which prevents them 
+from living IN a book or a character, and keeps them standing afar 
+off, spectators of a puppet show.  To such I suppose the book may 
+seem empty in the centre; to the others it is a room, a house of 
+life, into which they themselves enter, and are tortured and 
+purified.  The Juge d'Instruction I thought a wonderful, weird, 
+touching, ingenious creation:  the drunken father, and Sonia, and 
+the student friend, and the uncircumscribed, protaplasmic humanity 
+of Raskolnikoff, all upon a level that filled me with wonder:  the 
+execution also, superb in places.  Another has been translated - 
+HUMILIES ET OFFENSES.  It is even more incoherent than LE CRIME ET 
+LE CHATIMENT, but breathes much of the same lovely goodness, and 
+has passages of power.  Dostoieffsky is a devil of a swell, to be 
+sure.  Have you heard that he became a stout, imperialist 
+conservative?  It is interesting to know.  To something of that 
+side, the balance leans with me also in view of the incoherency and 
+incapacity of all.  The old boyish idea of the march on Paradise 
+being now out of season, and all plans and ideas that I hear 
+debated being built on a superb indifference to the first 
+principles of human character, a helpless desire to acquiesce in 
+anything of which I know the worst assails me.  Fundamental errors 
+in human nature of two sorts stand on the skyline of all this modem 
+world of aspirations.  First, that it is happiness that men want; 
+and second, that happiness consists of anything but an internal 
+harmony.  Men do not want, and I do not think they would accept, 
+happiness; what they live for is rivalry, effort, success - the 
+elements our friends wish to eliminate.  And, on the other hand, 
+happiness is a question of morality - or of immorality, there is no 
+difference - and conviction.  Gordon was happy in Khartoum, in his 
+worst hours of danger and fatigue; Marat was happy, I suppose, in 
+his ugliest frenzy; Marcus Aurelius was happy in the detested camp; 
+Pepys was pretty happy, and I am pretty happy on the whole, because 
+we both somewhat crowingly accepted a VIA MEDIA, both liked to 
+attend to our affairs, and both had some success in managing the 
+same.  It is quite an open question whether Pepys and I ought to be 
+happy; on the other hand, there is no doubt that Marat had better 
+be unhappy.  He was right (if he said it) that he was LA MISERE 
+HUMAINE, cureless misery - unless perhaps by the gallows.  Death is 
+a great and gentle solvent; it has never had justice done it, no, 
+not by Whitman.  As for those crockery chimney-piece ornaments, the 
+bourgeois (QUORUM PARS), and their cowardly dislike of dying and 
+killing, it is merely one symptom of a thousand how utterly they 
+have got out of touch of life.  Their dislike of capital punishment 
+and their treatment of their domestic servants are for me the two 
+flaunting emblems of their hollowness.
+
+God knows where I am driving to.  But here comes my lunch.
+
+Which interruption, happily for you, seems to have stayed the 
+issue.  I have now nothing to say, that had formerly such a 
+pressure of twaddle.  Pray don't fail to come this summer.  It will 
+be a great disappointment, now it has been spoken of, if you do. - 
+Yours ever,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO W. H. LOW
+
+
+
+[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, MARCH 1886.]
+
+MY DEAR LOW, - This is the most enchanting picture.  Now understand 
+my state:  I am really an invalid, but of a mysterious order.  I 
+might be a MALADE IMAGINAIRE, but for one too tangible symptom, my 
+tendency to bleed from the lungs.  If we could go, (1ST)  We must 
+have money enough to travel with LEISURE AND COMFORT - especially 
+the first.  (2ND)  You must be prepared for a comrade who would go 
+to bed some part of every day and often stay silent (3RD)  You 
+would have to play the part of a thoughtful courier, sparing me 
+fatigue, looking out that my bed was warmed, etc. (4TH)  If you are 
+very nervous, you must recollect a bad haemorrhage is always on the 
+cards, with its concomitants of anxiety and horror for those who 
+are beside me.
+
+Do you blench?  If so, let us say no more about it.
+
+If you are still unafraid, and the money were forthcoming, I 
+believe the trip might do me good, and I feel sure that, working 
+together, we might produce a fine book.  The Rhone is the river of 
+Angels.  I adore it:  have adored it since I was twelve, and first 
+saw it from the train.
+
+Lastly, it would depend on how I keep from now on.  I have stood 
+the winter hitherto with some credit, but the dreadful weather 
+still continues, and I cannot holloa till I am through the wood.
+
+Subject to these numerous and gloomy provisos, I embrace the 
+prospect with glorious feelings.
+
+I write this from bed, snow pouring without, and no circumstance of 
+pleasure except your letter.  That, however, counts for much.  I am 
+glad you liked the doggerel:  I have already had a liberal cheque, 
+over which I licked my fingers with a sound conscience.  I had not 
+meant to make money by these stumbling feet, but if it comes, it is 
+only too welcome in my handsome but impecunious house.
+
+Let me know soon what is to be expected - as far as it does not 
+hang by that inconstant quantity, my want of health.  Remember me 
+to Madam with the best thanks and wishes; and believe me your 
+friend,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN
+
+
+
+[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, APRIL 1886.]
+
+MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN, - I try to tell myself it is good nature, but 
+I know it is vanity that makes me write.
+
+I have drafted the first part of Chapter VI., Fleeming and his 
+friends, his influence on me, his views on religion and literature, 
+his part at the Savile; it should boil down to about ten pages, and 
+I really do think it admirably good.  It has so much evoked 
+Fleeming for myself that I found my conscience stirred just as it 
+used to be after a serious talk with him:  surely that means it is 
+good?  I had to write and tell you, being alone.
+
+I have excellent news of Fanny, who is much better for the change.  
+My father is still very yellow, and very old, and very weak, but 
+yesterday he seemed happier, and smiled, and followed what was 
+said; even laughed, I think.  When he came away, he said to me, 
+'Take care of yourself, my dearie,' which had a strange sound of 
+childish days, and will not leave my mind.
+
+You must get Litolf's GAVOTTES CELEBRES:  I have made another 
+trover there:  a musette of Lully's.  The second part of it I have 
+not yet got the hang of; but the first - only a few bars!  The 
+gavotte is beautiful and pretty hard, I think, and very much of the 
+period; and at the end of it, this musette enters with the most 
+really thrilling effect of simple beauty.  O - it's first-rate.  I 
+am quite mad over it.  If you find other books containing Lully, 
+Rameau, Martini, please let me know; also you might tell me, you 
+who know Bach, where the easiest is to be found.  I write all 
+morning, come down, and never leave the piano till about five; 
+write letters, dine, get down again about eight, and never leave 
+the piano till I go to bed.  This is a fine life. - Yours most 
+sincerely,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+If you get the musette (Lully's), please tell me if I am right, and 
+it was probably written for strings.  Anyway, it is as neat as - as 
+neat as Bach - on the piano; or seems so to my ignorance.
+
+I play much of the Rigadoon but it is strange, it don't come off 
+QUITE so well with me!
+
+[Musical score which cannot be reproduced]
+
+There is the first part of the musette copied (from memory, so I 
+hope there's nothing wrong).  Is it not angelic?  But it ought, of 
+course, to have the gavotte before.  The gavotte is in G, and ends 
+on the keynote thus (if I remember):-
+
+[Musical score which cannot be reproduced]
+
+staccato, I think.  Then you sail into the musette.
+
+N.B. - Where I have put an 'A,' is that a dominant eleventh, or 
+what? or just a seventh on the D? and if the latter, is that 
+allowed?  It sounds very funny.  Never mind all my questions; if I 
+begin about music (which is my leading ignorance and curiosity), I 
+have always to babble questions:  all my friends know me now, and 
+take no notice whatever.  The whole piece is marked allegro; but 
+surely could easily be played too fast?  The dignity must not be 
+lost; the periwig feeling.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO THOMAS STEVENSON
+
+
+
+[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, March 1886.]
+
+MY DEAR FATHER, - The David problem has to-day been decided.  I am 
+to leave the door open for a sequel if the public take to it, and 
+this will save me from butchering a lot of good material to no 
+purpose.  Your letter from Carlisle was pretty like yourself, sir, 
+as I was pleased to see; the hand of Jekyll, not the hand of Hyde.  
+I am for action quite unfit, and even a letter is beyond me; so 
+pray take these scraps at a vast deal more than their intrinsic 
+worth.  I am in great spirits about David, Colvin agreeing with 
+Henley, Fanny, and myself in thinking it far the most human of my 
+labours hitherto.  As to whether the long-eared British public may 
+take to it, all think it more than doubtful; I wish they would, for 
+I could do a second volume with ease and pleasure, and Colvin 
+thinks it sin and folly to throw away David and Alan Breck upon so 
+small a field as this one. - Ever your affectionate son,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN
+
+
+
+[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH], APRIL 15 OR 16 (THE HOUR NOT BEING 
+KNOWN), 1886.
+
+MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN, - It is I know not what hour of the night; but 
+I cannot sleep, have lit the gas, and here goes.
+
+First, all your packet arrived:  I have dipped into the Schumann 
+already with great pleasure.  Surely, in what concerns us there is 
+a sweet little chirrup; the GOOD WORDS arrived in the morning just 
+when I needed it, and the famous notes that I had lost were 
+recovered also in the nick of time.
+
+And now I am going to bother you with my affairs:  premising, 
+first, that this is PRIVATE; second, that whatever I do the LIFE 
+shall be done first, and I am getting on with it well; and third, 
+that I do not quite know why I consult you, but something tells me 
+you will hear with fairness.
+
+Here is my problem.  The Curtin women are still miserable 
+prisoners; no one dare buy their farm of them, all the manhood of 
+England and the world stands aghast before a threat of murder.  (1) 
+Now, my work can be done anywhere; hence I can take up without loss 
+a back-going Irish farm, and live on, though not (as I had 
+originally written) in it:  First Reason.  (2) If I should be 
+killed, there are a good many who would feel it:  writers are so 
+much in the public eye, that a writer being murdered would attract 
+attention, throw a bull's-eye light upon this cowardly business:  
+Second Reason.  (3) I am not unknown in the States, from which the 
+funds come that pay for these brutalities:  to some faint extent, 
+my death (if I should be killed) would tell there:  Third Reason.  
+(4) NOBODY ELSE IS TAKING UP THIS OBVIOUS AND CRYING DULY:  Fourth 
+Reason.  (5) I have a crazy health and may die at any moment, my 
+life is of no purchase in an insurance office, it is the less 
+account to husband it, and the business of husbanding a life is 
+dreary and demoralising:  Fifth Reason.
+
+I state these in no order, but as they occur to me.  And I shall do 
+the like with the objections.
+
+First Objection:  It will do no good; you have seen Gordon die and 
+nobody minded; nobody will mind if you die.  This is plainly of the 
+devil.  Second Objection:  You will not even be murdered, the 
+climate will miserably kill you, you will strangle out in a rotten 
+damp heat, in congestion, etc.  Well, what then?  It changes 
+nothing:  the purpose is to brave crime; let me brave it, for such 
+time and to such an extent as God allows.  Third Objection:  The 
+Curtin women are probably highly uninteresting females.  I haven't 
+a doubt of it.  But the Government cannot, men will not, protect 
+them.  If I am the only one to see this public duty, it is to the 
+public and the Right I should perform it - not to Mesdames Curtin.  
+Fourth Objection:  I am married.  'I have married a wife!'  I seem 
+to have heard it before.  It smells ancient! what was the context?  
+Fifth Objection:  My wife has had a mean life (1), loves me (2), 
+could not bear to lose me (3).  (1) I admit:  I am sorry.  (2) But 
+what does she love me for? and (3) she must lose me soon or late.  
+And after all, because we run this risk, it does not follow we 
+should fail.  Sixth Objection:  My wife wouldn't like it.  No, she 
+wouldn't.  Who would?  But the Curtins don't like it.  And all 
+those who are to suffer if this goes on, won't like it.  And if 
+there is a great wrong, somebody must suffer.  Seventh Objection:  
+I won't like it.  No, I will not; I have thought it through, and I 
+will not.  But what of that?  And both she and I may like it more 
+than we suppose.  We shall lose friends, all comforts, all society:  
+so has everybody who has ever done anything; but we shall have some 
+excitement, and that's a fine thing; and we shall be trying to do 
+the right, and that's not to be despised.  Eighth Objection:  I am 
+an author with my work before me.  See Second Reason.  Ninth 
+Objection:  But am I not taken with the hope of excitement?  I was 
+at first.  I am not much now.  I see what a dreary, friendless, 
+miserable, God-forgotten business it will be.  And anyway, is not 
+excitement the proper reward of doing anything both right and a 
+little dangerous?  Tenth Objection:  But am I not taken with a 
+notion of glory?  I dare say I am.  Yet I see quite clearly how all 
+points to nothing coming, to a quite inglorious death by disease 
+and from the lack of attendance; or even if I should be knocked on 
+the head, as these poor Irish promise, how little any one will 
+care.  It will be a smile at a thousand breakfast-tables.  I am 
+nearly forty now; I have not many illusions.  And if I had?  I do 
+not love this health-tending, housekeeping life of mine.  I have a 
+taste for danger, which is human, like the fear of it.  Here is a 
+fair cause; a just cause; no knight ever set lance in rest for a 
+juster.  Yet it needs not the strength I have not, only the passive 
+courage that I hope I could muster, and the watchfulness that I am 
+sure I could learn.
+
+Here is a long midnight dissertation; with myself; with you.  
+Please let me hear.  But I charge you this:  if you see in this 
+idea of mine the finger of duty, do not dissuade me.  I am nearing 
+forty, I begin to love my ease and my home and my habits, I never 
+knew how much till this arose; do not falsely counsel me to put my 
+head under the bed-clothes.  And I will say this to you:  my wife, 
+who hates the idea, does not refuse.  'It is nonsense,' says she, 
+'but if you go, I will go.'  Poor girl, and her home and her garden 
+that she was so proud of!  I feel her garden most of all, because 
+it is a pleasure (I suppose) that I do not feel myself to share.
+
+1. Here is a great wrong.
+2. " growing wrong.
+3. " wrong founded on crime.
+4. " crime that the Government cannot prevent.
+5. " crime that it occurs to no man to defy.
+6. But it has occurred to me.
+7. Being a known person, some will notice my defiance.
+8. Being a writer, I can MAKE people notice it.
+9. And, I think, MAKE people imitate me.
+10. Which would destroy in time this whole scaffolding of 
+oppression.
+11. And if I fail, however ignominiously, that is not my concern.  
+It is, with an odd mixture of reverence and humorous remembrances 
+of Dickens, be it said - it is A-nother's.
+
+And here, at I cannot think what hour of the morning, I shall dry 
+up, and remain, - Yours, really in want of a little help,
+
+R. L S.
+
+Sleepless at midnight's dewy hour.
+     "          "       witching "
+     "          "       maudlin "
+     "          "       etc.
+
+NEXT MORNING. - Eleventh Objection:  I have a father and mother.  
+And who has not?  Macduff's was a rare case; if we must wait for a 
+Macduff.  Besides, my father will not perhaps be long here.  
+Twelfth Objection:  The cause of England in Ireland is not worth 
+supporting.  A QUI LE DITES-VOUS?  And I am not supporting that.  
+Home Rule, if you like.  Cause of decency, the idea that 
+populations should not be taught to gain public ends by private 
+crime, the idea that for all men to bow before a threat of crime is 
+to loosen and degrade beyond redemption the whole fabric of man's 
+decency.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN
+
+
+
+[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, APRIL 1886.]
+
+MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN, - The Book - It is all drafted:  I hope soon 
+to send you for comments Chapters III., IV., and V.  Chapter VII. 
+is roughly but satisfactorily drafted:  a very little work should 
+put that to rights.  But Chapter VI. is no joke; it is a MARE 
+MAGNUM:  I swim and drown and come up again; and it is all broken 
+ends and mystification:  moreover, I perceive I am in want of more 
+matter.  I must have, first of all, a little letter from Mr. Ewing 
+about the phonograph work:  IF you think he would understand it is 
+quite a matter of chance whether I use a word or a fact out of it.  
+If you think he would not:  I will go without.  Also, could I have 
+a look at Ewing's PRECIS?  And lastly, I perceive I must interview 
+you again about a few points; they are very few, and might come to 
+little; and I propose to go on getting things as well together as I 
+can in the meanwhile, and rather have a final time when all is 
+ready and only to be criticised.  I do still think it will be good.  
+I wonder if Trelat would let me cut?  But no, I think I wouldn't 
+after all; 'tis so quaint and pretty and clever and simple and 
+French, and gives such a good sight of Fleeming:  the plum of the 
+book, I think.
+
+You misunderstood me in one point:  I always hoped to found such a 
+society; that was the outside of my dream, and would mean entire 
+success.  BUT - I cannot play Peter the Hermit.  In these days of 
+the Fleet Street journalist, I cannot send out better men than 
+myself, with wives or mothers just as good as mine, and sisters (I 
+may at least say) better, to a danger and a long-drawn dreariness 
+that I do not share.  My wife says it's cowardice; what brave men 
+are the leader-writers!  Call it cowardice; it is mine.  Mind you, 
+I may end by trying to do it by the pen only:  I shall not love 
+myself if I do; and is it ever a good thing to do a thing for which 
+you despise yourself? - even in the doing?  And if the thing you do 
+is to call upon others to do the thing you neglect?  I have never 
+dared to say what I feel about men's lives, because my own was in 
+the wrong:  shall I dare to send them to death?  The physician must 
+heal himself; he must honestly TRY the path he recommends:  if he 
+does not even try, should he not be silent?
+
+I thank you very heartily for your letter, and for the seriousness 
+you brought to it.  You know, I think when a serious thing is your 
+own, you keep a saner man by laughing at it and yourself as you go.  
+So I do not write possibly with all the really somewhat sickened 
+gravity I feel.  And indeed, what with the book, and this business 
+to which I referred, and Ireland, I am scarcely in an enviable 
+state.  Well, I ought to be glad, after ten years of the worst 
+training on earth - valetudinarianism - that I can still be 
+troubled by a duty.  You shall hear more in time; so far, I am at 
+least decided:  I will go and see Balfour when I get to London.
+
+We have all had a great pleasure:  a Mrs. Rawlinson came and 
+brought with her a nineteen-year-old daughter, simple, human, as 
+beautiful as - herself; I never admired a girl before, you know it 
+was my weakness:  we are all three dead in love with her.  How nice 
+to be able to do so much good to harassed people by - yourself!  
+Ever yours,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MISS RAWLINSON
+
+
+
+[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, APRIL 1886.]
+
+OF the many flowers you brought me,
+Only some were meant to stay,
+And the flower I thought the sweetest
+Was the flower that went away.
+
+Of the many flowers you brought me,
+All were fair and fresh and gay,
+But the flower I thought the sweetest
+Was the blossom of the May.
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MISS MONROE
+
+
+
+SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, MAY 25TH, 1886.
+
+DEAR MISS MONROE, - (I hope I have this rightly) I must lose no 
+time in thanking you for a letter singularly pleasant to receive.  
+It may interest you to know that I read to the signature without 
+suspecting my correspondent was a woman; though in one point (a 
+reference to the Countess) I might have found a hint of the truth.  
+You are not pleased with Otto; since I judge you do not like 
+weakness; and no more do I.  And yet I have more than tolerance for 
+Otto, whose faults are the faults of weakness, but never of ignoble 
+weakness, and who seeks before all to be both kind and just.  
+Seeks, not succeeds.  But what is man?  So much of cynicism to 
+recognise that nobody does right is the best equipment for those 
+who do not wish to be cynics in good earnest.  Think better of 
+Otto, if my plea can influence you; and this I mean for your own 
+sake - not his, poor fellow, as he will never learn your opinion; 
+but for yours, because, as men go in this world (and women too), 
+you will not go far wrong if you light upon so fine a fellow; and 
+to light upon one and not perceive his merits is a calamity.  In 
+the flesh, of course, I mean; in the book the fault, of course, is 
+with my stumbling pen.  Seraphina made a mistake about her Otto; it 
+begins to swim before me dimly that you may have some traits of 
+Seraphina?
+
+With true ingratitude you see me pitch upon your exception; but it 
+is easier to defend oneself gracefully than to acknowledge praise.  
+I am truly glad that you should like my books; for I think I see 
+from what you write that you are a reader worth convincing.  Your 
+name, if I have properly deciphered it, suggests that you may be 
+also something of my countrywoman; for it is hard to see where 
+Monroe came from, if not from Scotland.  I seem to have here a 
+double claim on your good nature:  being myself pure Scotch and 
+having appreciated your letter, make up two undeniable merits 
+which, perhaps, if it should be quite without trouble, you might 
+reward with your photograph. - Yours truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MISS MONROE
+
+
+
+[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, JUNE 1886.]
+
+MY DEAR MISS MONROE, - I am ill in bed and stupid, incoherently 
+stupid; yet I have to answer your letter, and if the answer is 
+incomprehensible you must forgive me.  You say my letter caused you 
+pleasure; I am sure, as it fell out, not near so much as yours has 
+brought to me.  The interest taken in an author is fragile:  his 
+next book, or your next year of culture, might see the interest 
+frosted or outgrown; and himself, in spite of all, you might 
+probably find the most distasteful person upon earth.  My case is 
+different.  I have bad health, am often condemned to silence for 
+days together - was so once for six weeks, so that my voice was 
+awful to hear when I first used it, like the whisper of a shadow - 
+have outlived all my chief pleasures, which were active and 
+adventurous, and ran in the open air:  and being a person who 
+prefers life to art, and who knows it is a far finer thing to be in 
+love, or to risk a danger, than to paint the finest picture or 
+write the noblest book, I begin to regard what remains to me of my 
+life as very shadowy.  From a variety of reasons, I am ashamed to 
+confess I was much in this humour when your letter came.  I had a 
+good many troubles; was regretting a high average of sins; had been 
+recently reminded that I had outlived some friends, and wondering 
+if I had not outlived some friendships; and had just, while 
+boasting of better health, been struck down again by my haunting 
+enemy, an enemy who was exciting at first, but has now, by the 
+iteration of his strokes, become merely annoying and inexpressibly 
+irksome.  Can you fancy that to a person drawing towards the 
+elderly this sort of conjunction of circumstances brings a rather 
+aching sense of the past and the future?  Well, it was just then 
+that your letter and your photograph were brought to me in bed; and 
+there came to me at once the most agreeable sense of triumph.  My 
+books were still young; my words had their good health and could go 
+about the world and make themselves welcome; and even (in a shadowy 
+and distant sense) make something in the nature of friends for the 
+sheer hulk that stays at home and bites his pen over the 
+manuscripts.  It amused me very much to remember that I had been in 
+Chicago, not so many years ago, in my proper person; where I had 
+failed to awaken much remark, except from the ticket collector; and 
+to think how much more gallant and persuasive were the fellows that 
+I now send instead of me, and how these are welcome in that quarter 
+to the sitter of Herr Platz, while their author was not very 
+welcome even in the villainous restaurant where he tried to eat a 
+meal and rather failed.
+
+And this leads me directly to a confession.  The photograph which 
+shall accompany this is not chosen as the most like, but the best-
+looking.  Put yourself in my place, and you will call this 
+pardonable.  Even as it is, even putting forth a flattered 
+presentment, I am a little pained; and very glad it is a photograph 
+and not myself that has to go; for in this case, if it please you, 
+you can tell yourself it is my image - and if it displeased you, 
+you can lay the blame on the photographer; but in that, there were 
+no help, and the poor author might belie his labours.
+
+KIDNAPPED should soon appear; I am afraid you may not like it, as 
+it is very unlike PRINCE OTTO in every way; but I am myself a great 
+admirer of the two chief characters, Alan and David.  VIRGINIBUS 
+PUERISQUE has never been issued in the States.  I do not think it 
+is a book that has much charm for publishers in any land; but I am 
+to bring out a new edition in England shortly, a copy of which I 
+must try to remember to send you.  I say try to remember, because I 
+have some superficial acquaintance with myself:  and I have 
+determined, after a galling discipline, to promise nothing more 
+until the day of my death:  at least, in this way, I shall no more 
+break my word, and I must now try being churlish instead of being 
+false.
+
+I do not believe you to be the least like Seraphina.  Your 
+photograph has no trace of her, which somewhat relieves me, as I am 
+a good deal afraid of Seraphinas - they do not always go into the 
+woods and see the sunrise, and some are so well-mailed that even 
+that experience would leave them unaffected and unsoftened.  The 
+'hair and eyes of several complexions' was a trait taken from 
+myself; and I do not bind myself to the opinions of Sir John.  In 
+this case, perhaps - but no, if the peculiarity is shared by two 
+such pleasant persons as you and I (as you and me - the grammatical 
+nut is hard), it must be a very good thing indeed, and Sir John 
+must be an ass.
+
+The BOOK READER notice was a strange jumble of fact and fancy.  I 
+wish you could have seen my father's old assistant and present 
+partner when he heard my father described as an 'inspector of 
+lighthouses,' for we are all very proud of the family achievements, 
+and the name of my house here in Bournemouth is stolen from one of 
+the sea-towers of the Hebrides which are our pyramids and 
+monuments.  I was never at Cambridge, again; but neglected a 
+considerable succession of classes at Edinburgh.  But to correct 
+that friendly blunderer were to write an autobiography. - And so 
+now, with many thanks, believe me yours sincerely,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO R. A. M. STEVENSON
+
+
+
+SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, JULY 1886.
+
+SIR, - Your foolish letter was unduly received.  There may be 
+hidden fifths, and if there are, it shows how dam spontaneous the 
+thing was.  I could tinker and tic-tac-toe on a piece of paper, but 
+scorned the act with a Threnody, which was poured forth like blood 
+and water on the groaning organ.  If your heart (which was what I 
+addressed) remained unmoved, let us refer to the affair no more:  
+crystallised emotion, the statement and the reconciliation of the 
+sorrows of the race and the individual, is obviously no more to you 
+than supping sawdust.  Well, well.  If ever I write another 
+Threnody!  My next op. will probably be a Passepied and fugue in G 
+(or D).
+
+The mind is in my case shrunk to the size and sp. gr. of an aged 
+Spanish filbert.  O, I am so jolly silly.  I now pickle with some 
+freedom (1) the refrain of MARTINI'S MOUTONS; (2) SUL MARGINE D'UN 
+RIO, arranged for the infant school by the Aged Statesman; (3) the 
+first phrase of Bach's musette (Sweet Englishwoman, No. 3), the 
+rest of the musette being one prolonged cropper, which I take daily 
+for the benefit of my health.  All my other works (of which there 
+are many) are either arranged (by R. L. Stevenson) for the manly 
+and melodious forefinger, or else prolonged and melancholy 
+croppers. . . . I find one can get a notion of music very nicely.  
+I have been pickling deeply in the Magic Flute; and have arranged 
+LA DOVE PRENDE, almost to the end, for two melodious forefingers.  
+I am next going to score the really nobler COLOMBA O TORTORELLA for 
+the same instruments.
+
+This day is published
+The works of Ludwig van Beethoven
+arranged
+and wiederdurchgearbeiteted
+for two melodious forefingers
+by,
+Sir, - Your obedient servant,
+
+PIMPERLY STIPPLE.
+
+That's a good idea?  There's a person called Lenz who actually does 
+it - beware his den; I lost eighteenpennies on him, and found the 
+bleeding corpses of pieces of music divorced from their keys, 
+despoiled of their graces, and even changed in time; I do not wish 
+to regard music (nor to be regarded) through that bony Lenz.  You 
+say you are 'a spumfed idiot'; but how about Lenz?  And how about 
+me, sir, me?
+
+I yesterday sent Lloyd by parcel post, at great expense, an empty 
+matchbox and empty cigarette-paper book, a bell from a cat's 
+collar, an iron kitchen spoon, and a piece of coal more than half 
+the superficies of this sheet of paper.  They are now 
+(appropriately enough) speeding towards the Silly Isles; I hope he 
+will find them useful.  By that, and my telegram with prepaid 
+answer to yourself, you may judge of my spiritual state.  The 
+finances have much brightened; and if KIDNAPPED keeps on as it has 
+begun, I may be solvent. - Yours,
+
+THRENODIAE AVCTOR
+
+(The authour of ane Threnodie).
+
+Op. 2:  Scherzo (in G Major) expressive of the Sense of favours to 
+come.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO R. A. M. STEVENSON
+
+
+
+SKERRYVORE [BOURNEMOUTH, JULY 1886].
+
+DEAR BOB, - Herewith another shy; more melancholy than before, but 
+I think not so abjectly idiotic.  The musical terms seem to be as 
+good as in Beethoven, and that, after all, is the great affair.  
+Bar the dam bareness of the base, it looks like a piece of real 
+music from a distance.  I am proud to say it was not made one hand 
+at a time; the base was of synchronous birth with the treble; they 
+are of the same age, sir, and may God have mercy on their souls! - 
+Yours,
+
+THE MAESTRO.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
+
+
+
+SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, JULY 7TH, 1886.
+
+MY DEAR PEOPLE, - It is probably my fault, and not yours, that I 
+did not understand.  I think it would be well worth trying the 
+winter in Bournemouth; but I would only take the house by the month 
+- this after mature discussion.  My leakage still pursues its 
+course; if I were only well, I have a notion to go north and get in 
+(if I could) at the inn at Kirkmichael, which has always smiled 
+upon me much.  If I did well there, we might then meet and do what 
+should most smile at the time.
+
+Meanwhile, of course, I must not move, and am in a rancid box here, 
+feeling the heat a great deal, and pretty tired of things.  
+Alexander did a good thing of me at last; it looks like a mixture 
+of an aztec idol, a lion, an Indian Rajah, and a woman; and 
+certainly represents a mighty comic figure.  F. and Lloyd both 
+think it is the best thing that has been done of me up to now.
+
+You should hear Lloyd on the penny whistle, and me on the piano!  
+Dear powers, what a concerto!  I now live entirely for the piano, 
+he for the whistle; the neighbours, in a radius of a furlong and a 
+half, are packing up in quest of brighter climes. - Ever yours,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+P.S. - Please say if you can afford to let us have money for this 
+trip, and if so, how much.  I can see the year through without 
+help, I believe, and supposing my health to keep up; but can scarce 
+make this change on my own metal.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, JULY 1886].
+
+DEAR CHARLES, - Doubtless, if all goes well, towards the 1st of 
+August we shall be begging at your door.  Thanks for a sight of the 
+papers, which I return (you see) at once, fearing further 
+responsibility.
+
+Glad you like Dauvit; but eh, man, yon's terrible strange conduc' 
+o' thon man Rankeillor.  Ca' him a legal adviser!  It would make a 
+bonny law-shuit, the Shaws case; and yon paper they signed, I'm 
+thinking, wouldnae be muckle thought o' by Puggy Deas. - Yours 
+ever,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO THOMAS STEVENSON
+
+
+
+[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH], JULY 28, 1886.
+
+MY DEAR FATHER, - We have decided not to come to Scotland, but just 
+to do as Dobell wished, and take an outing.  I believe this is 
+wiser in all ways; but I own it is a disappointment.  I am weary of 
+England; like Alan, 'I weary for the heather,' if not for the deer.  
+Lloyd has gone to Scilly with Katharine and C., where and with whom 
+he should have a good time.  David seems really to be going to 
+succeed, which is a pleasant prospect on all sides.  I am, I 
+believe, floated financially; a book that sells will be a pleasant 
+novelty.  I enclose another review; mighty complimentary, and 
+calculated to sell the book too.
+
+Coolin's tombstone has been got out, honest man! and it is to be 
+polished, for it has got scratched, and have a touch of gilding in 
+the letters, and be sunk in the front of the house.  Worthy man, 
+he, too, will maybe weary for the heather, and the bents of 
+Gullane, where (as I dare say you remember) he gaed clean gyte, and 
+jumped on to his crown from a gig, in hot and hopeless chase of 
+many thousand rabbits.  I can still hear the little cries of the 
+honest fellow as he disappeared; and my mother will correct me, but 
+I believe it was two days before he turned up again at North 
+Berwick:  to judge by his belly, he had caught not one out of these 
+thousands, but he had had some exercise.
+
+I keep well. - Ever your affectionate son,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
+
+
+
+BRITISH MUSEUM [AUGUST 10TH, 1886].
+
+MY DEAR MOTHER, - We are having a capital holiday, and I am much 
+better, and enjoying myself to the nines.  Richmond is painting my 
+portrait.  To-day I lunch with him, and meet Burne-Jones; to-night 
+Browning dines with us.  That sounds rather lofty work, does it 
+not?  His path was paved with celebrities.  To-morrow we leave for 
+Paris, and next week, I suppose, or the week after, come home.  
+Address here, as we may not reach Paris.  I am really very well. - 
+Ever your affectionate son,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO T. WATTS-DUNTON
+
+
+
+SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH [SEPTEMBER 1886].
+
+DEAR MR. WATTS, The sight of the last ATHENAEUM reminds me of you, 
+and of my debt, now too long due.  I wish to thank you for your 
+notice of KIDNAPPED; and that not because it was kind, though for 
+that also I valued it, but in the same sense as I have thanked you 
+before now for a hundred articles on a hundred different writers.  
+A critic like you is one who fights the good fight, contending with 
+stupidity, and I would fain hope not all in vain; in my own case, 
+for instance, surely not in vain.
+
+What you say of the two parts in KIDNAPPED was felt by no one more 
+painfully than by myself.  I began it partly as a lark, partly as a 
+pot-boiler; and suddenly it moved, David and Alan stepped out from 
+the canvas, and I found I was in another world.  But there was the 
+cursed beginning, and a cursed end must be appended; and our old 
+friend Byles the butcher was plainly audible tapping at the back 
+door.  So it had to go into the world, one part (as it does seem to 
+me) alive, one part merely galvanised:  no work, only an essay.  
+For a man of tentative method, and weak health, and a scarcity of 
+private means, and not too much of that frugality which is the 
+artist's proper virtue, the days of sinecures and patrons look very 
+golden:  the days of professional literature very hard.  Yet I do 
+not so far deceive myself as to think I should change my character 
+by changing my epoch; the sum of virtue in our books is in a 
+relation of equality to the sum of virtues in ourselves; and my 
+KIDNAPPED was doomed, while still in the womb and while I was yet 
+in the cradle, to be the thing it is.
+
+And now to the more genial business of defence.  You attack my 
+fight on board the COVENANT:  I think it literal.  David and Alan 
+had every advantage on their side - position, arms, training, a 
+good conscience; a handful of merchant sailors, not well led in the 
+first attack, not led at all in the second, could only by an 
+accident have taken the round-house by attack; and since the 
+defenders had firearms and food, it is even doubtful if they could 
+have been starved out.  The only doubtful point with me is whether 
+the seamen would have ever ventured on the second onslaught; I half 
+believe they would not; still the illusion of numbers and the 
+authority of Hoseason would perhaps stretch far enough to justify 
+the extremity. - I am, dear Mr. Watts, your very sincere admirer,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON
+
+
+
+SKERRYVORE, SEPTEMBER 4, 1886.
+
+NOT roses to the rose, I trow,
+The thistle sends, nor to the bee
+Do wasps bring honey.  Wherefore now
+Should Locker ask a verse from me?
+
+Martial, perchance, - but he is dead,
+And Herrick now must rhyme no more;
+Still burning with the muse, they tread
+(And arm in arm) the shadowy shore.
+
+They, if they lived, with dainty hand,
+To music as of mountain brooks,
+Might bring you worthy words to stand
+Unshamed, dear Locker, in your books.
+
+But tho' these fathers of your race
+Be gone before, yourself a sire,
+To-day you see before your face
+Your stalwart youngsters touch the lyre -
+
+On these - on Lang, or Dobson - call,
+Long leaders of the songful feast.
+They lend a verse your laughing fall -
+A verse they owe you at the least.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON
+
+
+
+[SKERRYVORE], BOURNEMOUTH, SEPTEMBER 1886.
+
+DEAR LOCKER, - You take my verses too kindly, but you will admit, 
+for such a bluebottle of a versifier to enter the house of 
+Gertrude, where her necklace hangs, was not a little brave.  Your 
+kind invitation, I fear, must remain unaccented; and yet - if I am 
+very well - perhaps next spring - (for I mean to be very well) - my 
+wife might....  But all that is in the clouds with my better 
+health.  And now look here:  you are a rich man and know many 
+people, therefore perhaps some of the Governors of Christ's 
+Hospital.  If you do, I know a most deserving case, in which I 
+would (if I could) do anything.  To approach you, in this way, is 
+not decent; and you may therefore judge by my doing it, how near 
+this matter lies to my heart.  I enclose you a list of the 
+Governors, which I beg you to return, whether or not you shall be 
+able to do anything to help me.
+
+The boy's name is -; he and his mother are very poor.  It may 
+interest you in her cause if I tell you this:  that when I was 
+dangerously ill at Hyeres, this brave lady, who had then a sick 
+husband of her own (since dead) and a house to keep and a family of 
+four to cook for, all with her own hands, for they could afford no 
+servant, yet took watch-about with my wife, and contributed not 
+only to my comfort, but to my recovery in a degree that I am not 
+able to limit.  You can conceive how much I suffer from my 
+impotence to help her, and indeed I have already shown myself a 
+thankless friend.  Let not my cry go up before you in vain! - Yours 
+in hope,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON
+
+
+
+SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, SEPTEMBER 1886.
+
+MY DEAR LOCKER, - That I should call myself a man of letters, and 
+land myself in such unfathomable ambiguities!  No, my dear Locker, 
+I did not want a cheque; and in my ignorance of business, which is 
+greater even than my ignorance of literature, I have taken the 
+liberty of drawing a pen through the document and returning it; 
+should this be against the laws of God or man, forgive me.  All 
+that I meant by my excessively disgusting reference to your 
+material well-being was the vague notion that a man who is well off 
+was sure to know a Governor of Christ's Hospital; though how I 
+quite arrived at this conclusion I do not see.  A man with a cold 
+in the head does not necessarily know a ratcatcher; and the 
+connection is equally close - as it now appears to my awakened and 
+somewhat humbled spirit.  For all that, let me thank you in the 
+warmest manner for your friendly readiness to contribute.  You say 
+you have hopes of becoming a miser:  I wish I had; but indeed I 
+believe you deceive yourself, and are as far from it as ever.  I 
+wish I had any excuse to keep your cheque, for it is much more 
+elegant to receive than to return; but I have my way of making it 
+up to you, and I do sincerely beg you to write to the two 
+Governors.  This extraordinary outpouring of correspondence would 
+(if you knew my habits) convince you of my great eagerness in this 
+matter.  I would promise gratitude; but I have made a promise to 
+myself to make no more promises to anybody else, having broken such 
+a host already, and come near breaking my heart in consequence; and 
+as for gratitude, I am by nature a thankless dog, and was spoiled 
+from a child up.  But if you can help this lady in the matter of 
+the Hospital, you will have helped the worthy.  Let me continue to 
+hope that I shall make out my visit in the spring, and believe me, 
+yours very truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+It may amuse you to know that a very long while ago, I broke my 
+heart to try to imitate your verses, and failed hopelessly.  I saw 
+some of the evidences the other day among my papers, and blushed to 
+the heels.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+I give up finding out your name in the meantime, and keep to that 
+by which you will be known - Frederick Locker.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON
+
+
+
+[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH], 24TH SEPTEMBER 1886.
+
+MY DEAR LOCKER, - You are simply an angel of light, and your two 
+letters have gone to the post; I trust they will reach the hearts 
+of the recipients - at least, that could not be more handsomely 
+expressed.  About the cheque:  well now, I am going to keep it; but 
+I assure you Mrs. - has never asked me for money, and I would not 
+dare to offer any till she did.  For all that I shall stick to the 
+cheque now, and act to that amount as your almoner.  In this way I 
+reward myself for the ambiguity of my epistolary style.
+
+I suppose, if you please, you may say your verses are thin (would 
+you so describe an arrow, by the way, and one that struck the gold?  
+It scarce strikes me as exhaustively descriptive), and, thin or 
+not, they are (and I have found them) inimitably elegant.  I thank 
+you again very sincerely for the generous trouble you have taken in 
+this matter which was so near my heart, and you may be very certain 
+it will be the fault of my health and not my inclination, if I do 
+not see you before very long; for all that has past has made me in 
+more than the official sense sincerely yours,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+
+SKERRYVORE, DEC. 14, 1886.
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN, - This is first-rate of you, the Lord love you for 
+it!  I am truly much obliged.  He - my father - is very changeable; 
+at times, he seems only a slow quiet edition of himself; again, he 
+will be very heavy and blank; but never so violent as last spring; 
+and therefore, to my mind, better on the whole.
+
+Fanny is pretty peepy; I am splendid.  I have been writing much 
+verse - quite the bard, in fact; and also a dam tale to order, 
+which will be what it will be:  I don't love it, but some of it is 
+passable in its mouldy way, THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON.  
+All my bardly exercises are in Scotch; I have struck my somewhat 
+ponderous guitar in that tongue to no small extent:  with what 
+success, I know not, but I think it's better than my English verse; 
+more marrow and fatness, and more ruggedness.
+
+How goes KEATS?  Pray remark, if he (Keats) hung back from Shelley, 
+it was not to be wondered at, WHEN SO MANY OF HIS FRIENDS WERE 
+SHELLEY'S PENSIONERS.  I forget if you have made this point; it has 
+been borne in upon me reading Dowden and the SHELLEY PAPERS; and it 
+will do no harm if you have made it.  I finished a poem to-day, and 
+writ 3000 words of a story, TANT BIEN QUE MAL; and have a right to 
+be sleepy, and (what is far nobler and rarer) am so. - My dear 
+Colvin, ever yours,
+
+THE REAL MACKAY.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON
+
+
+
+SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, FEBRUARY 5TH, 1887.
+
+MY DEAR LOCKER, - Here I am in my bed as usual, and it is indeed a 
+long while since I went out to dinner.  You do not know what a 
+crazy fellow this is.  My winter has not so far been luckily 
+passed, and all hope of paying visits at Easter has vanished for 
+twelve calendar months.  But because I am a beastly and indurated 
+invalid, I am not dead to human feelings; and I neither have 
+forgotten you nor will forget you.  Some day the wind may round to 
+the right quarter and we may meet; till then I am still truly 
+yours,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+
+[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, FEBRUARY 1887.]
+
+MY DEAR JAMES, - My health has played me it in once more in the 
+absurdest fashion, and the creature who now addresses you is but a 
+stringy and white-faced BOUILLI out of the pot of fever, with the 
+devil to pay in every corner of his economy.  I suppose (to judge 
+by your letter) I need not send you these sheets, which came during 
+my collapse by the rush.  I am on the start with three volumes, 
+that one of tales, a second one of essays, and one of - ahem - 
+verse.  This is a great order, is it not?  After that I shall have 
+empty lockers.  All new work stands still; I was getting on well 
+with Jenkin when this blessed malady unhorsed me, and sent me back 
+to the dung-collecting trade of the republisher.  I shall re-issue 
+VIRG. PUER. as Vol. I. of ESSAYS, and the new vol. as Vol. II. of 
+ditto; to be sold, however, separately.  This is but a dry 
+maundering; however, I am quite unfit - 'I am for action quite 
+unfit Either of exercise or wit.'  My father is in a variable 
+state; many sorrows and perplexities environ the house of 
+Stevenson; my mother shoots north at this hour on business of a 
+distinctly rancid character; my father (under my wife's tutorage) 
+proceeds to-morrow to Salisbury; I remain here in my bed and 
+whistle; in no quarter of heaven is anything encouraging apparent, 
+except that the good Colvin comes to the hotel here on a visit.  
+This dreary view of life is somewhat blackened by the fact that my 
+head aches, which I always regard as a liberty on the part of the 
+powers that be.  This is also my first letter since my recovery.  
+God speed your laudatory pen!
+
+My wife joins in all warm messages. - Yours,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO W. H. LOW
+
+
+
+(APRIL 1887.)
+
+MY DEAR LOW, - The fares to London may be found in any continental 
+Bradshaw or sich; from London to Bournemouth impoverished parties 
+who can stoop to the third class get their ticket for the matter of 
+10s., or, as my wife loves to phrase it, 'a half a pound.'  You 
+will also be involved in a 3s. fare to get to Skerryvore; but this, 
+I dare say, friends could help you in on your arrival; so that you 
+may reserve your energies for the two tickets - costing the matter 
+of a pound - and the usual gratuities to porters.  This does not 
+seem to me much:  considering the intellectual pleasures that await 
+you here, I call it dirt cheap.  I BELIEVE the third class from 
+Paris to London (VIA Dover) is ABOUT forty francs, but I cannot 
+swear.  Suppose it to be fifty.
+
+50x2=100
+
+The expense of spirit or spontaneous lapse of coin on the journey, 
+at 5 frcs. a head, 5x2=10
+
+Victuals on ditto, at 5 frcs. a head, 5x2 = 10
+
+Gratuity to stewardess, in case of severe prostration, at 3 francs
+
+One night in London, on a modest footing, say 20
+
+Two tickets to Bournemouth at 12.50, 12.50x2=25
+
+Porters and general devilment, say 5
+
+Cabs in London, say 2 shillings, and in Bournemouth, 3 shillings=5 
+shillings, 6 frcs. 25
+
+Total frcs. 179.25
+
+Or, the same in pounds, 7 pounds, 3s. 6 and a half d.
+
+ Or, the same in dollars, $35.45,
+
+if there be any arithmetical virtue in me.  I have left out dinner 
+in London in case you want to blow out, which would come extry, and 
+with the aid of VANGS FANGS might easily double the whole amount - 
+above all if you have a few friends to meet you.
+
+In making this valuable project, or budget, I discovered for the 
+first time a reason (frequently overlooked) for the singular 
+costliness of travelling with your wife.  Anybody would count the 
+tickets double; but how few would have remembered - or indeed has 
+any one ever remembered? - to count the spontaneous lapse of coin 
+double also?  Yet there are two of you, each must do his daily 
+leakage, and it must be done out of your travelling fund.  You will 
+tell me, perhaps, that you carry the coin yourself:  my dear sir, 
+do you think you can fool your Maker?  Your wife has to lose her 
+quota; and by God she will - if you kept the coin in a belt.  One 
+thing I have omitted:  you will lose a certain amount on the 
+exchange, but this even I cannot foresee, as it is one of the few 
+things that vary with the way a man has. - I am, dear sir, yours 
+financially,
+
+SAMUEL BUDGETT.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
+
+
+
+SKERRYVORE, APRIL 16TH, 1887.
+
+MY DEAREST CUMMY, - As usual, I have been a dreary bad fellow and 
+not written for ages; but you must just try to forgive me, to 
+believe (what is the truth) that the number of my letters is no 
+measure of the number of times I think of you, and to remember how 
+much writing I have to do.  The weather is bright, but still cold; 
+and my father, I'm afraid, feels it sharply.  He has had - still 
+has, rather - a most obstinate jaundice, which has reduced him 
+cruelly in strength, and really upset him altogether.  I hope, or 
+think, he is perhaps a little better; but he suffers much, cannot 
+sleep at night, and gives John and my mother a severe life of it to 
+wait upon him.  My wife is, I think, a little better, but no great 
+shakes.  I keep mightily respectable myself.
+
+Coolin's Tombstone is now built into the front wall of Skerryvore, 
+and poor Bogie's (with a Latin inscription also) is set just above 
+it.  Poor, unhappy wee man, he died, as you must have heard, in 
+fight, which was what he would have chosen; for military glory was 
+more in his line than the domestic virtues.  I believe this is 
+about all my news, except that, as I write, there is a blackbird 
+singing in our garden trees, as it were at Swanston.  I would like 
+fine to go up the burnside a bit, and sit by the pool and be young 
+again - or no, be what I am still, only there instead of here, for 
+just a little.  Did you see that I had written about John Todd?  In 
+this month's LONGMAN it was; if you have not seen it, I will try 
+and send it you.  Some day climb as high as Halkerside for me (I am 
+never likely to do it for myself), and sprinkle some of the well 
+water on the turf.  I am afraid it is a pagan rite, but quite 
+harmless, and YE CAN SAIN IT WI' A BIT PRAYER.  Tell the Peewies 
+that I mind their forbears well.  My heart is sometimes heavy, and 
+sometimes glad to mind it all.  But for what we have received, the 
+Lord make us truly thankful.  Don't forget to sprinkle the water, 
+and do it in my name; I feel a childish eagerness in this.
+
+Remember me most kindly to James, and with all sorts of love to 
+yourself, believe me, your laddie,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+P.S. - I suppose Mrs. Todd ought to see the paper about her man; 
+judge of that, and if you think she would not dislike it, buy her 
+one from me, and let me know.  The article is called 'Pastoral,' in 
+LONGMAN'S MAGAZINE for April.  I will send you the money; I would 
+to-day, but it's the Sabbie day, and I cannae.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+Remembrances from all here.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+
+ [EDINBURGH, JUNE 1887.]
+
+MY DEAR S. C., - At last I can write a word to you.  Your little 
+note in the P. M. G. was charming.  I have written four pages in 
+the CONTEMPORARY, which Bunting found room for:  they are not very 
+good, but I shall do more for his memory in time.
+
+About the death, I have long hesitated, I was long before I could 
+tell my mind; and now I know it, and can but say that I am glad.  
+If we could have had my father, that would have been a different 
+thing.  But to keep that changeling - suffering changeling - any 
+longer, could better none and nothing.  Now he rests; it is more 
+significant, it is more like himself.  He will begin to return to 
+us in the course of time, as he was and as we loved him.
+
+My favourite words in literature, my favourite scene - 'O let him 
+pass,' Kent and Lear - was played for me here in the first moment 
+of my return.  I believe Shakespeare saw it with his own father.  I 
+had no words; but it was shocking to see.  He died on his feet, you 
+know; was on his feet the last day, knowing nobody - still he would 
+be up.  This was his constant wish; also that he might smoke a pipe 
+on his last day.  The funeral would have pleased him; it was the 
+largest private funeral in man's memory here.
+
+We have no plans, and it is possible we may go home without going 
+through town.  I do not know; I have no views yet whatever; nor can 
+have any at this stage of my cold and my business. - Ever yours,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX - THE UNITED STATES AGAIN:  WINTER IN THE ADIRONDACKS, 
+AUGUST 1887-OCTOBER 1888
+
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO W. E. HENLEY
+
+
+
+[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH], AUGUST 1887.
+
+DEAR LAD, - I write to inform you that Mr. Stevenson's well-known 
+work, VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE, is about to be reprinted.  At the same 
+time a second volume called MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS will issue from 
+the roaring loom.  Its interest will be largely autobiographical, 
+Mr. S. having sketched there the lineaments of many departed 
+friends, and dwelt fondly, and with a m'istened eye, upon byegone 
+pleasures.  The two will be issued under the common title of 
+FAMILIAR ESSAYS; but the volumes will be vended separately to those 
+who are mean enough not to hawk at both.
+
+The blood is at last stopped:  only yesterday.  I began to think I 
+should not get away.  However, I hope - I hope - remark the word - 
+no boasting - I hope I may luff up a bit now.  Dobell, whom I saw, 
+gave as usual a good account of my lungs, and expressed himself, 
+like his neighbours, hopefully about the trip.  He says, my uncle 
+says, Scott says, Brown says - they all say - You ought not to be 
+in such a state of health; you should recover.  Well, then, I mean 
+to.  My spirits are rising again after three months of black 
+depression:  I almost begin to feel as if I should care to live:  I 
+would, by God!  And so I believe I shall. - Yours, BULLETIN 
+M'GURDER.
+
+How has the Deacon gone?
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO W. H. LOW
+
+
+
+[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH], August 6TH, 1887.
+
+MY DEAR LOW, - We - my mother, my wife, my stepson, my maidservant, 
+and myself, five souls - leave, if all is well, Aug. 20th, per 
+Wilson line SS. LUDGATE HILL.  Shall probably evade N. Y. at first, 
+cutting straight to a watering-place:  Newport, I believe, its 
+name.  Afterwards we shall steal incognito into LA BONNE VILLA, and 
+see no one but you and the Scribners, if it may be so managed.  You 
+must understand I have been very seedy indeed, quite a dead body; 
+and unless the voyage does miracles, I shall have to draw it dam 
+fine.  Alas, 'The Canoe Speaks' is now out of date; it will figure 
+in my volume of verses now imminent.  However, I may find some 
+inspiration some day. - Till very soon, yours ever,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
+
+
+
+BOURNEMOUTH, AUGUST 19TH, 1887.
+
+MY DEAR MISS BOODLE, - I promise you the paper-knife shall go to 
+sea with me; and if it were in my disposal, I should promise it 
+should return with me too.  All that you say, I thank you for very 
+much; I thank you for all the pleasantness that you have brought 
+about our house; and I hope the day may come when I shall see you 
+again in poor old Skerryvore, now left to the natives of Canada, or 
+to worse barbarians, if such exist.  I am afraid my attempt to jest 
+is rather A CONTRE-COEUR.  Good-bye - AU REVOIR - and do not forget 
+your friend,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MESSRS. CHATTO AND WINDUS
+
+
+
+BOURNEMOUTH [AUGUST 1887].
+
+DEAR SIRS, - I here enclose the two titles.  Had you not better 
+send me the bargains to sign?  I shall be here till Saturday; and 
+shall have an address in London (which I shall send you) till 
+Monday, when I shall sail.  Even if the proofs do not reach you 
+till Monday morning, you could send a clerk from Fenchurch Street 
+Station at 10.23 A.M. for Galleons Station, and he would find me 
+embarking on board the LUDGATE HILL, Island Berth, Royal Albert 
+Dock.  Pray keep this in case it should be necessary to catch this 
+last chance.  I am most anxious to have the proofs with me on the 
+voyage. - Yours very truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+
+H.M.S. 'VULGARIUM,'
+OFF HAVRE DE GRACE, THIS 22ND DAY OF AUGUST [1887].
+
+SIR, - The weather has been hitherto inimitable.  Inimitable is the 
+only word that I can apply to our fellow-voyagers, whom a 
+categorist, possibly premature, has been already led to divide into 
+two classes - the better sort consisting of the baser kind of 
+Bagman, and the worser of undisguised Beasts of the Field.  The 
+berths are excellent, the pasture swallowable, the champagne of H. 
+James (to recur to my favourite adjective) inimitable.  As for the 
+Commodore, he slept awhile in the evening, tossed off a cup of 
+Henry James with his plain meal, walked the deck till eight, among 
+sands and floating lights and buoys and wrecked brigantines, came 
+down (to his regret) a minute too soon to see Margate lit up, 
+turned in about nine, slept, with some interruptions, but on the 
+whole sweetly, until six, and has already walked a mile or so of 
+deck, among a fleet of other steamers waiting for the tide, within 
+view of Havre, and pleasantly entertained by passing fishing-boats, 
+hovering sea-gulls, and Vulgarians pairing on deck with endearments 
+of primitive simplicity.  There, sir, can be viewed the sham 
+quarrel, the sham desire for information, and every device of these 
+two poor ancient sexes (who might, you might think, have learned in 
+the course of the ages something new) down to the exchange of head-
+gear. - I am, sir, yours,
+
+BOLD BOB BOLTSPRIT.
+
+B. B. B. (ALIAS the Commodore) will now turn to his proofs.  Havre 
+de Grace is a city of some show.  It is for-ti-fied; and, so far as 
+I can see, is a place of some trade.  It is situ-ated in France, a 
+country of Europe.  You always complain there are no facts in my 
+letters.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+
+NEWPORT, R. I. U.S.A. [SEPTEMBER 1887].
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN, - So long it went excellent well, and I had a time 
+I am glad to have had; really enjoying my life.  There is nothing 
+like being at sea, after all.  And O, why have I allowed myself to 
+rot so long on land?  But on the Banks I caught a cold, and I have 
+not yet got over it.  My reception here was idiotic to the last 
+degree....  It is very silly, and not pleasant, except where humour 
+enters; and I confess the poor interviewer lads pleased me.  They 
+are too good for their trade; avoided anything I asked them to 
+avoid, and were no more vulgar in their reports than they could 
+help.  I liked the lads.
+
+O, it was lovely on our stable-ship, chock full of stallions.  She 
+rolled heartily, rolled some of the fittings out of our state-room, 
+and I think a more dangerous cruise (except that it was summer) it 
+would be hard to imagine.  But we enjoyed it to the masthead, all 
+but Fanny; and even she perhaps a little.  When we got in, we had 
+run out of beer, stout, cocoa, soda-water, water, fresh meat, and 
+(almost) of biscuit.  But it was a thousandfold pleasanter than a 
+great big Birmingham liner like a new hotel; and we liked the 
+officers, and made friends with the quartermasters, and I (at 
+least) made a friend of a baboon (for we carried a cargo of apes), 
+whose embraces have pretty near cost me a coat.  The passengers 
+improved, and were a very good specimen lot, with no drunkard, no 
+gambling that I saw, and less grumbling and backbiting than one 
+would have asked of poor human nature.  Apes, stallions, cows, 
+matches, hay, and poor men-folk, all, or almost all, came 
+successfully to land. - Yours ever,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+
+[NEWPORT, U.S.A., SEPTEMBER 1887.]
+
+MY DEAR JAMES, - Here we are at Newport in the house of the good 
+Fairchilds; and a sad burthen we have laid upon their shoulders.  I 
+have been in bed practically ever since I came.  I caught a cold on 
+the Banks after having had the finest time conceivable, and enjoyed 
+myself more than I could have hoped on board our strange floating 
+menagerie:  stallions and monkeys and matches made our cargo; and 
+the vast continent of these incongruities rolled the while like a 
+haystack; and the stallions stood hypnotised by the motion, looking 
+through the ports at our dinner-table, and winked when the crockery 
+was broken; and the little monkeys stared at each other in their 
+cages, and were thrown overboard like little bluish babies; and the 
+big monkey, Jacko, scoured about the ship and rested willingly in 
+my arms, to the ruin of my clothing; and the man of the stallions 
+made a bower of the black tarpaulin, and sat therein at the feet of 
+a raddled divinity, like a picture on a box of chocolates; and the 
+other passengers, when they were not sick, looked on and laughed.  
+Take all this picture, and make it roll till the bell shall sound 
+unexpected notes and the fittings shall break lose in our state-
+room, and you have the voyage of the LUDGATE HILL.  She arrived in 
+the port of New York, without beer, porter, soda-water, curacoa, 
+fresh meat, or fresh water; and yet we lived, and we regret her.
+
+My wife is a good deal run down, and I am no great shakes.
+
+America is, as I remarked, a fine place to eat in, and a great 
+place for kindness; but, Lord, what a silly thing is popularity!  I 
+envy the cool obscurity of Skerryvore.  If it even paid, said 
+Meanness! and was abashed at himself. - Yours most sincerely,
+
+R. L S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+
+[NEW YORK:  END OF SEPTEMBER 1887.]
+
+MY DEAR S. C., - Your delightful letter has just come, and finds me 
+in a New York hotel, waiting the arrival of a sculptor (St. 
+Gaudens) who is making a medallion of yours truly and who is (to 
+boot) one of the handsomest and nicest fellows I have seen.  I 
+caught a cold on the Banks; fog is not for me; nearly died of 
+interviewers and visitors, during twenty-four hours in New York; 
+cut for Newport with Lloyd and Valentine, a journey like fairy-land 
+for the most engaging beauties, one little rocky and pine-shaded 
+cove after another, each with a house and a boat at anchor, so that 
+I left my heart in each and marvelled why American authors had been 
+so unjust to their country; caught another cold on the train; 
+arrived at Newport to go to bed and to grow worse, and to stay in 
+bed until I left again; the Fairchilds proving during this time 
+kindness itself; Mr. Fairchild simply one of the most engaging men 
+in the world, and one of the children, Blair, AET. ten, a great joy 
+and amusement in his solemn adoring attitude to the author of 
+TREASURE ISLAND.
+
+Here I was interrupted by the arrival of my sculptor.  I have 
+begged him to make a medallion of himself and give me a copy.  I 
+will not take up the sentence in which I was wandering so long, but 
+begin fresh.  I was ten or twelve days at Newport; then came back 
+convalescent to New York.  Fanny and Lloyd are off to the 
+Adirondacks to see if that will suit; and the rest of us leave 
+Monday (this is Saturday) to follow them up.  I hope we may manage 
+to stay there all winter.  I have a splendid appetite and have on 
+the whole recovered well after a mighty sharp attack.  I am now on 
+a salary of 500 pounds a year for twelve articles in SCRIBNER'S 
+MAGAZINE on what I like; it is more than 500 pounds, but I cannot 
+calculate more precisely.  You have no idea how much is made of me 
+here; I was offered 2000 pounds for a weekly article - eh heh! how 
+is that? but I refused that lucrative job.  The success of 
+UNDERWOODS is gratifying.  You see, the verses are sane; that is 
+their strong point, and it seems it is strong enough to carry them.
+
+A thousand thanks for your grand letter, ever yours,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO W. E. HENLEY
+
+
+
+NEW YORK [SEPTEMBER 1887]
+
+MY DEAR LAD, - Herewith verses for Dr. Hake, which please 
+communicate.  I did my best with the interviewers; I don't know if 
+Lloyd sent you the result; my heart was too sick:  you can do 
+nothing with them; and yet - literally sweated with anxiety to 
+please, and took me down in long hand!
+
+I have been quite ill, but go better.  I am being not busted, but 
+medallioned, by St. Gaudens, who is a first-rate, plain, high-
+minded artist and honest fellow; you would like him down to the 
+ground.  I believe sculptors are fine fellows when they are not 
+demons.  O, I am now a salaried person, 600 pounds a year, to write 
+twelve articles in SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE; it remains to be seen if it 
+really pays, huge as the sum is, but the slavery may overweigh me.  
+I hope you will like my answer to Hake, and specially that he will.
+
+Love to all. - Yours affectionately,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+(LE SALARIE).
+
+
+
+Letter:  To R. A. M. STEVENSON
+
+
+
+SARANAC LAKE, ADIRONDACKS, NEW YORK, U.S.A. [OCTOBER 1887].
+
+MY DEAR BOB, - The cold [of Colorado] was too rigorous for me; I 
+could not risk the long railway voyage, and the season was too late 
+to risk the Eastern, Cape Hatteras side of the steamer one; so here 
+we stuck and stick.  We have a wooden house on a hill-top, 
+overlooking a river, and a village about a quarter of a mile away, 
+and very wooded hills; the whole scene is very Highland, bar want 
+of heather and the wooden houses.
+
+I have got one good thing of my sea voyage:  it is proved the sea 
+agrees heartily with me, and my mother likes it; so if I get any 
+better, or no worse, my mother will likely hire a yacht for a month 
+or so in summer.  Good Lord!  What fun!  Wealth is only useful for 
+two things:  a yacht and a string quartette.  For these two I will 
+sell my soul.  Except for these I hold that 700 pounds a year is as 
+much as anybody can possibly want; and I have had more, so I know, 
+for the extry coins were for no use, excepting for illness, which 
+damns everything.
+
+I was so happy on board that ship, I could not have believed it 
+possible.  We had the beastliest weather, and many discomforts; but 
+the mere fact of its being a tramp-ship gave us many comforts; we 
+could cut about with the men and officers, stay in the wheel-house, 
+discuss all manner of things, and really be a little at sea.  And 
+truly there is nothing else.  I had literally forgotten what 
+happiness was, and the full mind - full of external and physical 
+things, not full of cares and labours and rot about a fellow's 
+behaviour.  My heart literally sang; I truly care for nothing so 
+much as for that.  We took so north a course, that we saw 
+Newfoundland; no one in the ship had ever seen it before.
+
+It was beyond belief to me how she rolled; in seemingly smooth 
+water, the bell striking, the fittings bounding out of our state-
+room.  It is worth having lived these last years, partly because I 
+have written some better books, which is always pleasant, but 
+chiefly to have had the joy of this voyage.  I have been made a lot 
+of here, and it is sometimes pleasant, sometimes the reverse; but I 
+could give it all up, and agree that - was the author of my works, 
+for a good seventy ton schooner and the coins to keep her on.  And 
+to think there are parties with yachts who would make the exchange!  
+I know a little about fame now; it is no good compared to a yacht; 
+and anyway there is more fame in a yacht, more genuine fame; to 
+cross the Atlantic and come to anchor in Newport (say) with the 
+Union Jack, and go ashore for your letters and hang about the pier, 
+among the holiday yachtsmen - that's fame, that's glory, and nobody 
+can take it away; they can't say your book is bad; you HAVE crossed 
+the Atlantic.  I should do it south by the West Indies, to avoid 
+the damned Banks; and probably come home by steamer, and leave the 
+skipper to bring the yacht home.
+
+Well, if all goes well, we shall maybe sail out of Southampton 
+water some of these days and take a run to Havre, and try the 
+Baltic, or somewhere.
+
+Love to you all. - Ever your afft.,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO EDMUND GOSSE
+
+
+
+SARANAC LAKE, OCT. 8TH, 1887.
+
+MY DEAR GOSSE, - I have just read your article twice, with cheers 
+of approving laughter.  I do not believe you ever wrote anything so 
+funny:  Tyndall's 'shell,' the passage on the Davos press and its 
+invaluable issues, and that on V. Hugo and Swinburne, are 
+exquisite; so, I say it more ruefully, is the touch about the 
+doctors.  For the rest, I am very glad you like my verses so well; 
+and the qualities you ascribe to them seem to me well found and 
+well named.  I own to that kind of candour you attribute to me:  
+when I am frankly interested, I suppose I fancy the public will be 
+so too; and when I am moved, I am sure of it.  It has been my luck 
+hitherto to meet with no staggering disillusion.  'Before' and 
+'After' may be two; and yet I believe the habit is now too 
+thoroughly ingrained to be altered.  About the doctors, you were 
+right, that dedication has been the subject of some pleasantries 
+that made me grind, and of your happily touched reproof which made 
+me blush.  And to miscarry in a dedication is an abominable form of 
+book-wreck; I am a good captain, I would rather lose the tent and 
+save my dedication.
+
+I am at Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks, I suppose for the winter:  
+it seems a first-rate place; we have a house in the eye of many 
+winds, with a view of a piece of running water - Highland, all but 
+the dear hue of peat - and of many hills - Highland also, but for 
+the lack of heather.  Soon the snow will close on us; we are here 
+some twenty miles - twenty-seven, they say, but this I profoundly 
+disbelieve - in the woods; communication by letter is slow and (let 
+me be consistent) aleatory; by telegram is as near as may be 
+impossible.
+
+I had some experience of American appreciation; I liked a little of 
+it, but there is too much; a little of that would go a long way to 
+spoil a man; and I like myself better in the woods.  I am so damned 
+candid and ingenuous (for a cynic), and so much of a 'cweatu' of 
+impulse - aw' (if you remember that admirable Leech), that I begin 
+to shirk any more taffy; I think I begin to like it too well.  But 
+let us trust the Gods; they have a rod in pickle; reverently I doff 
+my trousers, and with screwed eyes await the AMARI ALIQUID of the 
+great God Busby.
+
+I thank you for the article in all ways, and remain yours 
+affectionately,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO W. H. LOW
+
+
+
+[SARANAC, OCTOBER 1887.]
+
+SIR,  - I have to trouble you with the following PAROLES BIEN 
+SENTIES.  We are here at a first-rate place.  'Baker's' is the name 
+of our house, but we don't address there; we prefer the tender care 
+of the Post-Office, as more aristocratic (it is no use to telegraph 
+even to the care of the Post-Office who does not give a single 
+damn).  Baker's has a prophet's chamber, which the hypercritical 
+might describe as a garret with a hole in the floor:  in that 
+garret, sir, I have to trouble you and your wife to come and 
+slumber.  Not now, however:  with manly hospitality, I choke off 
+any sudden impulse.  Because first, my wife and my mother are gone 
+(a note for the latter, strongly suspected to be in the hand of 
+your talented wife, now sits silent on the mantel shelf), one to 
+Niagara and t'other to Indianapolis.  Because, second, we are not 
+yet installed.  And because third, I won't have you till I have a 
+buffalo robe and leggings, lest you should want to paint me as a 
+plain man, which I am not, but a rank Saranacker and wild man of 
+the woods. - Yours,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO WILLIAM ARCHER.
+
+
+
+SARANAC LAKE, OCTOBER 1887.
+
+DEAR ARCHER, - Many thanks for the Wondrous Tale.  It is scarcely a 
+work of genius, as I believe you felt.  Thanks also for your 
+pencillings; though I defend 'shrew,' or at least many of the 
+shrews.
+
+We are here (I suppose) for the winter in the Adirondacks, a hill 
+and forest country on the Canadian border of New York State, very 
+unsettled and primitive and cold, and healthful, or we are the more 
+bitterly deceived.  I believe it will do well for me; but must not 
+boast.
+
+My wife is away to Indiana to see her family; my mother, Lloyd, and 
+I remain here in the cold, which has been exceeding sharp, and the 
+hill air, which is inimitably fine.  We all eat bravely, and sleep 
+well, and make great fires, and get along like one o'clock,
+
+I am now a salaried party; I am a BOURGEOIS now; I am to write a 
+weekly paper for Scribner's, at a scale of payment which makes my 
+teeth ache for shame and diffidence.  The editor is, I believe, to 
+apply to you; for we were talking over likely men, and when I 
+instanced you, he said he had had his eye upon you from the first.  
+It is worth while, perhaps, to get in tow with the Scribners; they 
+are such thorough gentlefolk in all ways that it is always a 
+pleasure to deal with them.  I am like to be a millionaire if this 
+goes on, and be publicly hanged at the social revolution:  well, I 
+would prefer that to dying in my bed; and it would be a godsend to 
+my biographer, if ever I have one.  What are you about?  I hope you 
+are all well and in good case and spirits, as I am now, after a 
+most nefast experience of despondency before I left; but indeed I 
+was quite run down.  Remember me to Mrs. Archer, and give my 
+respects to Tom. - Yours very truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+
+[SARANAC LAKE, OCTOBER 1887.]  I know not the day; but the month it 
+is the drear October by the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir
+
+MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - This is to say FIRST, the voyage was a huge 
+success.  We all enjoyed it (bar my wife) to the ground:  sixteen 
+days at sea with a cargo of hay, matches, stallions, and monkeys, 
+and in a ship with no style on, and plenty of sailors to talk to, 
+and the endless pleasures of the sea - the romance of it, the sport 
+of the scratch dinner and the smashing crockery, the pleasure - an 
+endless pleasure - of balancing to the swell:  well, it's over.
+
+SECOND, I had a fine time, rather a troubled one, at Newport and 
+New York; saw much of and liked hugely the Fairchilds, St. Gaudens 
+the sculptor, Gilder of the CENTURY - just saw the dear Alexander - 
+saw a lot of my old and admirable friend Will Low, whom I wish you 
+knew and appreciated - was medallioned by St. Gaudens, and at last 
+escaped to
+
+THIRD, Saranac Lake, where we now are, and which I believe we mean 
+to like and pass the winter at.  Our house - emphatically 'Baker's' 
+- is on a hill, and has a sight of a stream turning a corner in the 
+valley - bless the face of running water! - and sees some hills 
+too, and the paganly prosaic roofs of Saranac itself; the Lake it 
+does not see, nor do I regret that; I like water (fresh water I 
+mean) either running swiftly among stones, or else largely 
+qualified with whisky.  As I write, the sun (which has been long a 
+stranger) shines in at my shoulder; from the next room, the bell of 
+Lloyd's typewriter makes an agreeable music as it patters off (at a 
+rate which astonishes this experienced novelist) the early chapters 
+of a humorous romance; from still further off - the walls of 
+Baker's are neither ancient nor massive - rumours of Valentine 
+about the kitchen stove come to my ears; of my mother and Fanny I 
+hear nothing, for the excellent reason that they have gone sparking 
+off, one to Niagara, one to Indianapolis.  People complain that I 
+never give news in my letters.  I have wiped out that reproach.
+
+But now, FOURTH, I have seen the article; and it may be from 
+natural partiality, I think it the best you have written.  O - I 
+remember the Gautier, which was an excellent performance; and the 
+Balzac, which was good; and the Daudet, over which I licked my 
+chops; but the R. L. S. is better yet.  It is so humorous, and it 
+hits my little frailties with so neat (and so friendly) a touch; 
+and Alan is the occasion for so much happy talk, and the quarrel is 
+so generously praised.  I read it twice, though it was only some 
+hours in my possession; and Low, who got it for me from the 
+CENTURY, sat up to finish it ere he returned it; and, sir, we were 
+all delighted.  Here is the paper out, nor will anything, not even 
+friendship, not even gratitude for the article, induce me to begin 
+a second sheet; so here with the kindest remembrances and the 
+warmest good wishes, I remain, yours affectionately,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+SARANAC, 18TH NOVEMBER 1887.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES, - No likely I'm going to waste a sheet of paper. . 
+. .  I am offered 1600 pounds ($8000) for the American serial 
+rights on my next story!  As you say, times are changed since the 
+Lothian Road.  Well, the Lothian Road was grand fun too; I could 
+take an afternoon of it with great delight.  But I'm awfu' grand 
+noo, and long may it last!
+
+Remember me to any of the faithful - if there are any left.  I wish 
+I could have a crack with you. - Yours ever affectionately,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+I find I have forgotten more than I remembered of business. . . .  
+Please let us know (if you know) for how much Skerryvore is let; 
+you will here detect the female mind; I let it for what I could 
+get; nor shall the possession of this knowledge (which I am happy 
+to have forgot) increase the amount by so much as the shadow of a 
+sixpenny piece; but my females are agog. - Yours ever,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES SCRIBNER
+
+
+
+[SARANAC, NOVEMBER 20 OR 21, 1887.]
+
+MY DEAR MR. SCRIBNER, - Heaven help me, I am under a curse just 
+now.  I have played fast and loose with what I said to you; and 
+that, I beg you to believe, in the purest innocence of mind.  I 
+told you you should have the power over all my work in this 
+country; and about a fortnight ago, when M'Clure was here, I calmly 
+signed a bargain for the serial publication of a story.  You will 
+scarce believe that I did this in mere oblivion; but I did; and all 
+that I can say is that I will do so no more, and ask you to forgive 
+me.  Please write to me soon as to this.
+
+Will you oblige me by paying in for three articles, as already 
+sent, to my account with John Paton & Co., 52 William Street?  This 
+will be most convenient for us.
+
+The fourth article is nearly done; and I am the more deceived, or 
+it is A BUSTER.
+
+Now as to the first thing in this letter, I do wish to hear from 
+you soon; and I am prepared to hear any reproach, or (what is 
+harder to hear) any forgiveness; for I have deserved the worst. - 
+Yours sincerely,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+SARANAC, NOVEMBER 1887.
+
+DEAR MR. BURLINGAME, - I enclose corrected proof of BEGGARS, which 
+seems good.  I mean to make a second sermon, which, if it is about 
+the same length as PULVIS ET UMBRA, might go in along with it as 
+two sermons, in which case I should call the first 'The Whole 
+Creation,' and the second 'Any Good.'  We shall see; but you might 
+say how you like the notion.
+
+One word:  if you have heard from Mr. Scribner of my unhappy 
+oversight in the matter of a story, you will make me ashamed to 
+write to you, and yet I wish to beg you to help me into quieter 
+waters.  The oversight committed - and I do think it was not so bad 
+as Mr. Scribner seems to think it-and discovered, I was in a 
+miserable position.  I need not tell you that my first impulse was 
+to offer to share or to surrender the price agreed upon when it 
+should fall due; and it is almost to my credit that I arranged to 
+refrain.  It is one of these positions from which there is no 
+escape; I cannot undo what I have done.  And I wish to beg you - 
+should Mr. Scribner speak to you in the matter - to try to get him 
+to see this neglect of mine for no worse than it is:  unpardonable 
+enough, because a breach of an agreement; but still pardonable, 
+because a piece of sheer carelessness and want of memory, done, God 
+knows, without design and since most sincerely regretted.  I have 
+no memory.  You have seen how I omitted to reserve the American 
+rights in JEKYLL:  last winter I wrote and demanded, as an 
+increase, a less sum than had already been agreed upon for a story 
+that I gave to Cassell's.  For once that my forgetfulness has, by a 
+cursed fortune, seemed to gain, instead of lose, me money, it is 
+painful indeed that I should produce so poor an impression on the 
+mind of Mr. Scribner.  But I beg you to believe, and if possible to 
+make him believe, that I am in no degree or sense a FAISEUR, and 
+that in matters of business my design, at least, is honest.  Nor 
+(bating bad memory and self-deception) am I untruthful in such 
+affairs.
+
+If Mr. Scribner shall have said nothing to you in the matter, 
+please regard the above as unwritten, and believe me, yours very 
+truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+SARANAC, NOVEMBER 1887.
+
+DEAR MR. BURLINGAME, - The revise seemed all right, so I did not 
+trouble you with it; indeed, my demand for one was theatrical, to 
+impress that obdurate dog, your reader.  Herewith a third paper:  
+it has been a cruel long time upon the road, but here it is, and 
+not bad at last, I fondly hope.  I was glad you liked the LANTERN 
+BEARERS; I did, too.  I thought it was a good paper, really 
+contained some excellent sense, and was ingeniously put together.  
+I have not often had more trouble than I have with these papers; 
+thirty or forty pages of foul copy, twenty is the very least I have 
+had.  Well, you pay high; it is fit that I should have to work 
+hard, it somewhat quiets my conscience. - Yours very truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO J. A. SYMONDS
+
+
+
+SARANAC LAKE, ADIRONDACK MOUNTAINS, NEW YORK, U.S.A., NOVEMBER 21, 
+1887.
+
+MY DEAR SYMONDS, - I think we have both meant and wanted to write 
+to you any time these months; but we have been much tossed about, 
+among new faces and old, and new scenes and old, and scenes (like 
+this of Saranac) which are neither one nor other.  To give you some 
+clue to our affairs, I had best begin pretty well back.  We sailed 
+from the Thames in a vast bucket of iron that took seventeen days 
+from shore to shore.  I cannot describe how I enjoyed the voyage, 
+nor what good it did me; but on the Banks I caught friend catarrh.  
+In New York and then in Newport I was pretty ill; but on my return 
+to New York, lying in bed most of the time, with St. Gaudens the 
+sculptor sculping me, and my old friend Low around, I began to pick 
+up once more.  Now here we are in a kind of wilderness of hills and 
+firwoods and boulders and snow and wooden houses.  So far as we 
+have gone the climate is grey and harsh, but hungry and somnolent; 
+and although not charming like that of Davos, essentially bracing 
+and briskening.  The country is a kind of insane mixture of 
+Scotland and a touch of Switzerland and a dash of America, and a 
+thought of the British Channel in the skies.  We have a decent 
+house -
+
+DECEMBER 6TH.
+
+- A decent house, as I was saying, sir, on a hill-top, with a look 
+down a Scottish river in front, and on one hand a Perthshire hill; 
+on the other, the beginnings and skirts of the village play hide 
+and seek among other hills.  We have been below zero, I know not 
+how far (10 at 8 A.M. once), and when it is cold it is delightful; 
+but hitherto the cold has not held, and we have chopped in and out 
+from frost to thaw, from snow to rain, from quiet air to the most 
+disastrous north-westerly curdlers of the blood.  After a week of 
+practical thaw, the ice still bears in favoured places.  So there 
+is hope.
+
+I wonder if you saw my book of verses?  It went into a second 
+edition, because of my name, I suppose, and its PROSE merits.  I do 
+not set up to be a poet.  Only an all-round literary man:  a man 
+who talks, not one who sings.  But I believe the very fact that it 
+was only speech served the book with the public.  Horace is much a 
+speaker, and see how popular! most of Martial is only speech, and I 
+cannot conceive a person who does not love his Martial; most of 
+Burns, also, such as 'The Louse,' 'The Toothache,' 'The Haggis,' 
+and lots more of his best.  Excuse this little apology for my 
+house; but I don't like to come before people who have a note of 
+song, and let it be supposed I do not know the difference.
+
+To return to the more important - news.  My wife again suffers in 
+high and cold places; I again profit.  She is off to-day to New 
+York for a change, as heretofore to Berne, but I am glad to say in 
+better case than then.  Still it is undeniable she suffers, and you 
+must excuse her (at least) if we both prove bad correspondents.  I 
+am decidedly better, but I have been terribly cut up with business 
+complications:  one disagreeable, as threatening loss; one, of the 
+most intolerable complexion, as involving me in dishonour.  The 
+burthen of consistent carelessness:  I have lost much by it in the 
+past; and for once (to my damnation) I have gained.  I am sure you 
+will sympathise.  It is hard work to sleep; it is hard to be told 
+you are a liar, and have to hold your peace, and think, 'Yes, by 
+God, and a thief too!'  You remember my lectures on Ajax, or the 
+Unintentional Sin?  Well, I know all about that now.  Nothing seems 
+so unjust to the sufferer:  or is more just in essence.  LAISSEZ 
+PASSER LA JUSTICE DE DIEU.
+
+Lloyd has learned to use the typewriter, and has most gallantly 
+completed upon that the draft of a tale, which seems to me not 
+without merit and promise, it is so silly, so gay, so absurd, in 
+spots (to my partial eyes) so genuinely humorous.  It is true, he 
+would not have written it but for the New Arabian Nights; but it is 
+strange to find a young writer funny.  Heavens, but I was 
+depressing when I took the pen in hand!  And now I doubt if I am 
+sadder than my neighbours.  Will this beginner move in the inverse 
+direction?
+
+Let me have your news, and believe me, my dear Symonds, with 
+genuine affection, yours,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO W. E. HENLEY
+
+
+
+SARANAC [DECEMBER 1887].
+
+MY DEAR LAD, - I was indeed overjoyed to hear of the Dumas.  In the 
+matter of the dedication, are not cross dedications a little 
+awkward?  Lang and Rider Haggard did it, to be sure.  Perpend.  And 
+if you should conclude against a dedication, there is a passage in 
+MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS written AT you, when I was most desperate 
+(to stir you up a bit), which might be quoted:  something about 
+Dumas still waiting his biographer.  I have a decent time when the 
+weather is fine; when it is grey, or windy, or wet (as it too often 
+is), I am merely degraded to the dirt.  I get some work done every 
+day with a devil of a heave; not extra good ever; and I regret my 
+engagement.  Whiles I have had the most deplorable business 
+annoyances too; have been threatened with having to refund money; 
+got over that; and found myself in the worse scrape of being a kind 
+of unintentional swindler.  These have worried me a great deal; 
+also old age with his stealing steps seems to have clawed me in his 
+clutch to some tune.
+
+Do you play All Fours?  We are trying it; it is still all haze to 
+me.  Can the elder hand BEG more than once?  The Port Admiral is at 
+Boston mingling with millionaires.  I am but a weed on Lethe wharf.  
+The wife is only so-so.  The Lord lead us all:  if I can only get 
+off the stage with clean hands, I shall sing Hosanna.  'Put' is 
+described quite differently from your version in a book I have; 
+what are your rules?  The Port Admiral is using a game of put in a 
+tale of his, the first copy of which was gloriously finished about 
+a fortnight ago, and the revise gallantly begun:  THE FINSBURY 
+TONTINE it is named, and might fill two volumes, and is quite 
+incredibly silly, and in parts (it seems to me) pretty humorous. - 
+Love to all from
+
+AN OLD, OLD MAN.
+
+I say, Taine's ORIGINES DE LA FRANCE CONTEMPORAINE is no end; it 
+would turn the dead body of Charles Fox into a living Tory.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN
+
+
+
+[SARANAC LAKE, DECEMBER 1887.]
+
+MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN, - The Opal is very well; it is fed with 
+glycerine when it seems hungry.  I am very well, and get about much 
+more than I could have hoped.  My wife is not very well; there is 
+no doubt the high level does not agree with her, and she is on the 
+move for a holiday to New York.  Lloyd is at Boston on a visit, and 
+I hope has a good time.  My mother is really first-rate; she and I, 
+despairing of other games for two, now play All Fours out of a 
+gamebook, and have not yet discovered its niceties, if any.
+
+You will have heard, I dare say, that they made a great row over me 
+here.  They also offered me much money, a great deal more than my 
+works are worth:  I took some of it, and was greedy and hasty, and 
+am now very sorry.  I have done with big prices from now out.  
+Wealth and self-respect seem, in my case, to be strangers.
+
+We were talking the other day of how well Fleeming managed to grow 
+rich.  Ah, that is a rare art; something more intellectual than a 
+virtue.  The book has not yet made its appearance here; the life 
+alone, with a little preface, is to appear in the States; and the 
+Scribners are to send you half the royalties.  I should like it to 
+do well, for Fleeming's sake.
+
+Will you please send me the Greek water-carrier's song?  I have a 
+particular use for it.
+
+Have I any more news, I wonder? - and echo wonders along with me.  
+I am strangely disquieted on all political matters; and I do not 
+know if it is 'the signs of the times' or the sign of my own time 
+of life.  But to me the sky seems black both in France and England, 
+and only partly clear in America.  I have not seen it so dark in my 
+time; of that I am sure.
+
+Please let us have some news; and, excuse me, for the sake of my 
+well-known idleness; and pardon Fanny, who is really not very well, 
+for this long silence. - Very sincerely your friend,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
+
+
+
+[SARANAC LAKE, DECEMBER 1887.]
+
+MY DEAR MISS BOODLE, - I am so much afraid, our gamekeeper may 
+weary of unacknowledged reports!  Hence, in the midst of a perfect 
+horror of detestable weathers of a quite incongruous strain, and 
+with less desire for correspondence than - well, than - well, with 
+no desire for correspondence, behold me dash into the breach.  Do 
+keep up your letters.  They are most delightful to this exiled 
+backwoods family; and in your next, we shall hope somehow or other 
+to hear better news of you and yours - that in the first place - 
+and to hear more news of our beasts and birds and kindly fruits of 
+earth and those human tenants who are (truly) too much with us.
+
+I am very well; better than for years:  that is for good.  But then 
+my wife is no great shakes; the place does not suit her - it is my 
+private opinion that no place does - and she is now away down to 
+New York for a change, which (as Lloyd is in Boston) leaves my 
+mother and me and Valentine alone in our wind-beleaguered hilltop 
+hatbox of a house.  You should hear the cows butt against the walls 
+in the early morning while they feed; you should also see our back 
+log when the thermometer goes (as it does go) away - away below 
+zero, till it can be seen no more by the eye of man - not the 
+thermometer, which is still perfectly visible, but the mercury, 
+which curls up into the bulb like a hibernating bear; you should 
+also see the lad who 'does chores' for us, with his red stockings 
+and his thirteen year old face, and his highly manly tramp into the 
+room; and his two alternative answers to all questions about the 
+weather:  either 'Cold,' or with a really lyrical movement of the 
+voice, 'LOVELY - raining!'
+
+Will you take this miserable scarp for what it is worth?  Will you 
+also understand that I am the man to blame, and my wife is really 
+almost too much out of health to write, or at least doesn't write? 
+- And believe me, with kind remembrance to Mrs. Boodle and your 
+sisters, very sincerely yours,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+SARANAC, 12TH DECEMBER '87.
+
+Give us news of all your folk.  A Merry Christmas from all of us.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES, - Will you please send 20 pounds to - for a 
+Christmas gift from -?  Moreover, I cannot remember what I told you 
+to send to - ; but as God has dealt so providentially with me this 
+year, I now propose to make it 20 pounds.
+
+I beg of you also to consider my strange position.  I jined a club 
+which it was said was to defend the Union; and had a letter from 
+the secretary, which his name I believe was Lord Warmingpan (or 
+words to that effect), to say I am elected, and had better pay up a 
+certain sum of money, I forget what.  Now I cannae verra weel draw 
+a blank cheque and send to -
+
+LORD WARMINGPAN (or words to that effect),
+London, England.
+
+And, man, if it was possible, I would be dooms glad to be out o' 
+this bit scrapie.  Mebbe the club was ca'd  'The Union,' but I 
+wouldnae like to sweir; and mebbe it wasnae, or mebbe only words to 
+that effec' - but I wouldnae care just exac'ly about sweirin'.  Do 
+ye no think Henley, or Pollick, or some o' they London fellies, 
+micht mebbe perhaps find out for me? and just what the soom was?  
+And that you would aiblins pay for me?  For I thocht I was sae dam 
+patriotic jinin', and it would be a kind o' a come-doun to be 
+turned out again.  Mebbe Lang would ken; or mebbe Rider Haggyard:  
+they're kind o' Union folks.  But it's my belief his name was 
+Warmingpan whatever. Yours,
+
+THOMSON,
+ALIAS ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+Could it be Warminster?
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MISS MONROE
+
+
+
+SARANAC LAKE, NEW YORK [DECEMBER 19, 1887].
+
+DEAR MISS MONROE, - Many thanks for your letter and your good 
+wishes.  It was much my desire to get to Chicago:  had I done - or 
+if I yet do - so, I shall hope to see the original of my 
+photograph, which is one of my show possessions; but the fates are 
+rather contrary.  My wife is far from well; I myself dread worse 
+than almost any other imaginable peril, that miraculous and really 
+insane invention the American Railroad Car.  Heaven help the man - 
+may I add the woman - that sets foot in one!  Ah, if it were only 
+an ocean to cross, it would be a matter of small thought to me - 
+and great pleasure.  But the railroad car - every man has his weak 
+point; and I fear the railroad car as abjectly as I do an earwig, 
+and, on the whole, on better grounds.  You do not know how bitter 
+it is to have to make such a confession; for you have not the 
+pretension nor the weakness of a man.  If I do get to Chicago, you 
+will hear of me:  so much can be said.  And do you never come east?
+
+I was pleased to recognise a word of my poor old Deacon in your 
+letter.  It would interest me very much to hear how it went and 
+what you thought of piece and actors; and my collaborator, who 
+knows and respects the photograph, would be pleased too. - Still in 
+the hope of seeing you, I am, yours very truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+
+SARANAC LAKE, WINTER 1887-8.
+
+MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - It may please you to know how our family has 
+been employed.  In the silence of the snow the afternoon lamp has 
+lighted an eager fireside group:  my mother reading, Fanny, Lloyd, 
+and I devoted listeners; and the work was really one of the best 
+works I ever heard; and its author is to be praised and honoured; 
+and what do you suppose is the name of it? and have you ever read 
+it yourself? and (I am bound I will get to the bottom of the page 
+before I blow the gaff, if I have to fight it out on this line all 
+summer; for if you have not to turn a leaf, there can be no 
+suspense, the conspectory eye being swift to pick out proper names; 
+and without suspense, there can be little pleasure in this world, 
+to my mind at least) - and, in short, the name of it is RODERICK 
+HUDSON, if you please.  My dear James, it is very spirited, and 
+very sound, and very noble too.  Hudson, Mrs. Hudson, Rowland, O, 
+all first-rate:  Rowland a very fine fellow; Hudson as good as he 
+can stick (did you know Hudson?  I suspect you did), Mrs. H. his 
+real born mother, a thing rarely managed in fiction.
+
+We are all keeping pretty fit and pretty hearty; but this letter is 
+not from me to you, it is from a reader of R. H. to the author of 
+the same, and it says nothing, and has nothing to say, but thank 
+you.
+
+We are going to re-read CASAMASSIMA as a proper pendant.  Sir, I 
+think these two are your best, and care not who knows it.
+
+May I beg you, the next time RODERICK is printed off, to go over 
+the sheets of the last few chapters, and strike out 'immense' and 
+'tremendous'?  You have simply dropped them there like your pocket-
+handkerchief; all you have to do is to pick them up and pouch them, 
+and your room - what do I say? - your cathedral! - will be swept 
+and garnished. - I am, dear sir, your delighted reader,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+P.S. - Perhaps it is a pang of causeless honesty, perhaps.  I hope 
+it will set a value on my praise of RODERICK, perhaps it's a burst 
+of the diabolic, but I must break out with the news that I can't 
+bear the PORTRAIT OF A LADY.  I read it all, and I wept too; but I 
+can't stand your having written it; and I beg you will write no 
+more of the like.  INFRA, sir; Below you:  I can't help it - it may 
+be your favourite work, but in my eyes it's BELOW YOU to write and 
+me to read.  I thought RODERICK was going to be another such at the 
+beginning; and I cannot describe my pleasure as I found it taking 
+bones and blood, and looking out at me with a moved and human 
+countenance, whose lineaments are written in my memory until my 
+last of days.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+My wife begs your forgiveness; I believe for her silence.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+
+SARANAC LAKE [DECEMBER 1887].
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN, - This goes to say that we are all fit, and the 
+place is very bleak and wintry, and up to now has shown no such 
+charms of climate as Davos, but is a place where men eat and where 
+the cattarh, catarrh (cattarrh, or cattarrhh) appears to be 
+unknown.  I walk in my verandy in the snaw, sir, looking down over 
+one of those dabbled wintry landscapes that are (to be frank) so 
+chilly to the human bosom, and up at a grey, English - nay, 
+MEHERCLE, Scottish - heaven; and I think it pretty bleak; and the 
+wind swoops at me round the corner, like a lion, and fluffs the 
+snow in my face; and I could aspire to be elsewhere; but yet I do 
+not catch cold, and yet, when I come in, I eat.  So that hitherto 
+Saranac, if not deliriously delectable, has not been a failure; 
+nay, from the mere point of view of the wicked body, it has proved 
+a success.  But I wish I could still get to the woods; alas, NOUS 
+N'IRONS PLUS AU BOIS is my poor song; the paths are buried, the 
+dingles drifted full, a little walk is grown a long one; till 
+spring comes, I fear the burthen will hold good.
+
+I get along with my papers for SCRIBNER not fast, nor so far 
+specially well; only this last, the fourth one (which makes a third 
+part of my whole task), I do believe is pulled off after a fashion.  
+It is a mere sermon:  'Smith opens out'; but it is true, and I find 
+it touching and beneficial, to me at least; and I think there is 
+some fine writing in it, some very apt and pregnant phrases.  
+PULVIS ET UMBRA, I call it; I might have called it a Darwinian 
+Sermon, if I had wanted.  Its sentiments, although parsonic, will 
+not offend even you, I believe.  The other three papers, I fear, 
+bear many traces of effort, and the ungenuine inspiration of an 
+income at so much per essay, and the honest desire of the incomer 
+to give good measure for his money.  Well, I did my damndest 
+anyway.
+
+We have been reading H. James's RODERICK HUDSON, which I eagerly 
+press you to get at once:  it is a book of a high order - the last 
+volume in particular.  I wish Meredith would read it.  It took my 
+breath away.
+
+I am at the seventh book of the AENEID, and quite amazed at its 
+merits (also very often floored by its difficulties).  The Circe 
+passage at the beginning, and the sublime business of Amata with 
+the simile of the boy's top - O Lord, what a happy thought! - have 
+specially delighted me. - I am, dear sir, your respected friend,
+
+JOHN GREGG GILLSON, J.P., M.R.I.A., etc
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+
+[SARANAC, DECEMBER 24, 1887.]
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN, - Thank you for your explanations.  I have done no 
+more Virgil since I finished the seventh book, for I have, first 
+been eaten up with Taine, and next have fallen head over heels into 
+a new tale, THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE.  No thought have I now apart 
+from it, and I have got along up to page ninety-two of the draft 
+with great interest.  It is to me a most seizing tale:  there are 
+some fantastic elements; the most is a dead genuine human problem - 
+human tragedy, I should say rather.  It will be about as long, I 
+imagine, as KIDNAPPED.
+
+DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
+
+(1) My old Lord Durrisdeer.
+(2) The Master of Ballantrae, AND
+(3) Henry Durie, HIS SONS.
+(4) Clementina, ENGAGED TO THE FIRST, MARRIED TO THE SECOND.
+(5) Ephraim Mackellar, LAND STEWARD AT DURRISDEER AND NARRATOR OF 
+THE MOST OF THE BOOK.
+(6) Francis Burke, Chevalier de St. Louis, ONE OF PRINCE CHARLIE'S 
+IRISHMEN AND NARRATOR OF THE REST.
+
+Besides these, many instant figures, most of them dumb or nearly 
+so:  Jessie Brown the whore, Captain Crail, Captain MacCombie, our 
+old friend Alan Breck, our old friend Riach (both only for an 
+instant), Teach the pirate (vulgarly Blackbeard), John Paul and 
+Macconochie, servants at Durrisdeer.  The date is from 1745 to '65 
+(about).  The scene, near Kirkcudbright, in the States, and for a 
+little moment in the French East Indies.  I have done most of the 
+big work, the quarrel, duel between the brothers, and announcement 
+of the death to Clementina and my Lord - Clementina, Henry, and 
+Mackellar (nicknamed Squaretoes) are really very fine fellows; the 
+Master is all I know of the devil.  I have known hints of him, in 
+the world, but always cowards; he is as bold as a lion, but with 
+the same deadly, causeless duplicity I have watched with so much 
+surprise in my two cowards.  'Tis true, I saw a hint of the same 
+nature in another man who was not a coward; but he had other things 
+to attend to; the Master has nothing else but his devilry.  Here 
+come my visitors - and have now gone, or the first relay of them; 
+and I hope no more may come.  For mark you, sir, this is our 'day' 
+- Saturday, as ever was, and here we sit, my mother and I, before a 
+large wood fire and await the enemy with the most steadfast 
+courage; and without snow and greyness:  and the woman Fanny in New 
+York for her health, which is far from good; and the lad Lloyd at 
+the inn in the village because he has a cold; and the handmaid 
+Valentine abroad in a sleigh upon her messages; and to-morrow 
+Christmas and no mistake.  Such is human life:  LA CARRIERE 
+HUMAINE.  I will enclose, if I remember, the required autograph.
+
+I will do better, put it on the back of this page.  Love to all, 
+and mostly, my very dear Colvin, to yourself.  For whatever I say 
+or do, or don't say or do, you may be very sure I am, - Yours 
+always affectionately,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
+
+
+
+SARANAC LAKE, ADIRONDACKS, N.Y., U.S.A., CHRISTMAS 1887.
+
+MY DEAR MISS BOODLE, - And a very good Christmas to you all; and 
+better fortune; and if worse, the more courage to support it - 
+which I think is the kinder wish in all human affairs.  Somewhile - 
+I fear a good while - after this, you should receive our Christmas 
+gift; we have no tact and no taste, only a welcome and (often) 
+tonic brutality; and I dare say the present, even after my friend 
+Baxter has acted on and reviewed my hints, may prove a White 
+Elephant.  That is why I dread presents.  And therefore pray 
+understand if any element of that hamper prove unwelcome, IT IS TO 
+BE EXCHANGED.  I will not sit down under the name of a giver of 
+White Elephants.  I never had any elephant but one, and his 
+initials were R. L. S.; and he trod on my foot at a very early age.  
+But this is a fable, and not in the least to the point:  which is 
+that if, for once in my life, I have wished to make things nicer 
+for anybody but the Elephant (see fable), do not suffer me to have 
+made them ineffably more embarrassing, and exchange - ruthlessly 
+exchange! 
+
+For my part, I am the most cockered up of any mortal being; and one 
+of the healthiest, or thereabout, at some modest distance from the 
+bull's eye.  I am condemned to write twelve articles in SCRIBNER'S 
+MAGAZINE for the love of gain; I think I had better send you them; 
+what is far more to the purpose, I am on the jump with a new story 
+which has bewitched me - I doubt it may bewitch no one else.  It is 
+called THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE - pronounce Ballan-tray.  If it is 
+not good, well, mine will be the fault; for I believe it is a good 
+tale.
+
+The greetings of the season to you, and your mother, and your 
+sisters.  My wife heartily joins. - And I am, yours very sincerely,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+P.S. - You will think me an illiterate dog:  I am, for the first 
+time, reading ROBERTSON'S SERMONS.  I do not know how to express 
+how much I think of them.  If by any chance you should be as 
+illiterate as I, and not know them, it is worth while curing the 
+defect.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+SARANAC LAKE, JANUARY '88.
+
+DEAR CHARLES, - You are the flower of Doers. . . . Will my doer 
+collaborate thus much in my new novel?  In the year 1794 or 5, Mr. 
+Ephraim Mackellar, A.M., late. steward on the Durrisdeer estates, 
+completed a set of memoranda (as long as a novel) with regard to 
+the death of the (then) late Lord Durrisdeer, and as to that of his 
+attainted elder brother, called by the family courtesy title the 
+Master of Ballantrae.  These he placed in the hands of John 
+Macbrair.  W.S., the family agent, on the understanding they were 
+to be sealed until 1862, when a century would have elapsed since 
+the affair in the wilderness (my lord's death).  You succeeded Mr. 
+Macbrair's firm; the Durrisdeers are extinct; and last year, in an 
+old green box, you found these papers with Macbrair's indorsation.  
+It is that indorsation of which I want a copy; you may remember, 
+when you gave me the papers, I neglected to take that, and I am 
+sure you are a man too careful of antiquities to have let it fall 
+aside.  I shall have a little introduction descriptive of my visit 
+to Edinburgh, arrival there, denner with yoursel', and first 
+reading of the papers in your smoking-room:  all of which, of 
+course, you well remember. - Ever yours affectionately,
+
+R. L S.
+
+Your name is my friend Mr. Johnstone Thomson, W.S.!!!
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+SARANAC, WINTER 1887-8.
+
+DEAR MR. BURLINGAME, - I am keeping the sermon to see if I can't 
+add another.  Meanwhile, I will send you very soon a different 
+paper which may take its place.  Possibly some of these days soon I 
+may get together a talk on things current, which should go in (if 
+possible) earlier than either.  I am now less nervous about these 
+papers; I believe I can do the trick without great strain, though 
+the terror that breathed on my back in the beginning is not yet 
+forgotten.
+
+THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE I have had to leave aside, as I was quite 
+worked out.  But in about a week I hope to try back and send you 
+the first four numbers:  these are all drafted, it is only the 
+revision that has broken me down, as it is often the hardest work.  
+These four I propose you should set up for me at once, and we'll 
+copyright 'em in a pamphlet.  I will tell you the names of the BONA 
+FIDE purchasers in England.
+
+The numbers will run from twenty to thirty pages of my manuscript.  
+You can give me that much, can you not?  It is a howling good tale 
+- at least these first four numbers are; the end is a trifle more 
+fantastic, but 'tis all picturesque.
+
+Don't trouble about any more French books; I am on another scent, 
+you see, just now.  Only the FRENCH IN HINDUSTAN I await with 
+impatience, as that is for BALLANTRAE.  The scene of that romance 
+is Scotland - the States - Scotland - India - Scotland - and the 
+States again; so it jumps like a flea.  I have enough about the 
+States now, and very much obliged I am; yet if Drake's TRAGEDIES OF 
+the WILDERNESS is (as I gather) a collection of originals, I should 
+like to purchase it.  If it is a picturesque vulgarisation, I do 
+not wish to look it in the face.  Purchase, I say; for I think it 
+would be well to have some such collection by me with a view to 
+fresh works. - Yours very sincerely,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+P.S. - If you think of having the MASTER illustrated, I suggest 
+that Hole would be very well up to the Scottish, which is the 
+larger part.  If you have it done here, tell your artist to look at 
+the hall of Craigievar in Billing's BARONIAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL 
+ANTIQUITIES, and he will get a broad hint for the hall at 
+Durrisdeer:  it is, I think, the chimney of Craigievar and the roof 
+of Pinkie, and perhaps a little more of Pinkie altogether; but I 
+should have to see the book myself to be sure.  Hole would be 
+invaluable for this.  I dare say if you had it illustrated, you 
+could let me have one or two for the English edition.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO WILLIAM ARCHER
+
+
+
+[SARANAC, WINTER 1887-8.]
+
+MY DEAR ARCHER, - What am I to say?  I have read your friend's book 
+with singular relish.  If he has written any other, I beg you will 
+let me see it; and if he has not, I beg him to lose no time in 
+supplying the deficiency.  It is full of promise; but I should like 
+to know his age.  There are things in it that are very clever, to 
+which I attach small importance; it is the shape of the age.  And 
+there are passages, particularly the rally in presence of the Zulu 
+king, that show genuine and remarkable narrative talent - a talent 
+that few will have the wit to understand, a talent of strength, 
+spirit, capacity, sufficient vision, and sufficient self-sacrifice, 
+which last is the chief point in a narrator.
+
+As a whole, it is (of course) a fever dream of the most feverish.  
+Over Bashville the footman I howled with derision and delight; I 
+dote on Bashville - I could read of him for ever; DE BASHVILLE JE 
+SUIS LE FERVENT - there is only one Bashville, and I am his devoted 
+slave; BASHVILLE EST MAGNIFIQUE, MAIS IL N'EST GUERE POSSIBLE.  He 
+is the note of the book.  It is all mad, mad and deliriously 
+delightful; the author has a taste in chivalry like Walter Scott's 
+or Dumas', and then he daubs in little bits of socialism; he soars 
+away on the wings of the romantic griffon - even the griffon, as he 
+cleaves air, shouting with laughter at the nature of the quest - 
+and I believe in his heart he thinks he is labouring in a quarry of 
+solid granite realism.
+
+It is this that makes me - the most hardened adviser now extant - 
+stand back and hold my peace.  If Mr. Shaw is below five-and-
+twenty, let him go his path; if he is thirty, he had best be told 
+that he is a romantic, and pursue romance with his eyes open; - or 
+perhaps he knows it; - God knows! - my brain is softened.
+
+It is HORRID FUN.  All I ask is more of it.  Thank you for the 
+pleasure you gave us, and tell me more of the inimitable author.
+
+(I say, Archer, my God, what women!) - Yours very truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO WILLIAM ARCHER
+
+
+
+SARANAC, FEBRUARY 1888.
+
+MY DEAR ARCHER, - Pretty sick in bed; but necessary to protest and 
+continue your education.
+
+Why was Jenkin an amateur in my eyes?  You think because not 
+amusing (I think he often was amusing).  The reason is this:  I 
+never, or almost never, saw two pages of his work that I could not 
+have put in one without the smallest loss of material.  That is the 
+only test I know of writing.  If there is anywhere a thing said in 
+two sentences that could have been as clearly and as engagingly and 
+as forcibly said in one, then it's amateur work.  Then you will 
+bring me up with old Dumas.  Nay, the object of a story is to be 
+long, to fill up hours; the story-teller's art of writing is to 
+water out by continual invention, historical and technical, and yet 
+not seem to water; seem on the other hand to practise that same wit 
+of conspicuous and declaratory condensation which is the proper art 
+of writing.  That is one thing in which my stories fail:  I am 
+always cutting the flesh off their bones.
+
+I would rise from the dead to preach!
+
+Hope all well.  I think my wife better, but she's not allowed to 
+write; and this (only wrung from me by desire to Boss and Parsonise 
+and Dominate, strong in sickness) is my first letter for days, and 
+will likely be my last for many more.  Not blame my wife for her 
+silence:  doctor's orders.  All much interested by your last, and 
+fragment from brother, and anecdotes of Tomarcher. - The sick but 
+still Moral
+
+R. L. S.
+
+Tell Shaw to hurry up:  I want another.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO WILLIAM ARCHER
+
+
+
+[SARANAC, SPRING 1888?]
+
+MY DEAR ARCHER, - It happened thus.  I came forth from that 
+performance in a breathing heat of indignation.  (Mind, at this 
+distance of time and with my increased knowledge, I admit there is 
+a problem in the piece; but I saw none then, except a problem in 
+brutality; and I still consider the problem in that case not 
+established.)  On my way down the FRANCAIS stairs, I trod on an old 
+gentleman's toes, whereupon with that suavity that so well becomes 
+me, I turned about to apologise, and on the instant, repenting me 
+of that intention, stopped the apology midway, and added something 
+in French to this effect:  No, you are one of the LACHES who have 
+been applauding that piece.  I retract my apology.  Said the old 
+Frenchman, laying his hand on my arm, and with a smile that was 
+truly heavenly in temperance, irony, good-nature, and knowledge of 
+the world, 'Ah, monsieur, vous etes bien jeune!' - Yours very 
+truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+SARANAC [FEBRUARY 1888].
+
+DEAR MR. BURLINGAME, - Will you send me (from the library) some of 
+the works of my dear old G. P. R. James.  With the following 
+especially I desire to make or to renew acquaintance:  THE 
+SONGSTER, THE GIPSY, THE CONVICT, THE STEPMOTHER, THE GENTLEMAN OF 
+THE OLD SCHOOL, THE ROBBER.
+
+EXCUSEZ DU PEU.
+
+This sudden return to an ancient favourite hangs upon an accident.  
+The 'Franklin County Library' contains two works of his, THE 
+CAVALIER and MORLEY ERNSTEIN.  I read the first with indescribable 
+amusement - it was worse than I had feared, and yet somehow 
+engaging; the second (to my surprise) was better than I had dared 
+to hope:  a good honest, dull, interesting tale, with a genuine 
+old-fashioned talent in the invention when not strained; and a 
+genuine old-fashioned feeling for the English language.  This 
+experience awoke appetite, and you see I have taken steps to stay 
+it.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+[SARANAC, FEBRUARY 1888.]
+
+DEAR MR. BURLINGAME, - 1.  Of course then don't use it.  Dear Man, 
+I write these to please you, not myself, and you know a main sight 
+better than I do what is good.  In that case, however, I enclose 
+another paper, and return the corrected proof of PULVIS ET UMBRA, 
+so that we may be afloat.
+
+2.  I want to say a word as to the MASTER.  (THE MASTER OF 
+BALLANTRAE shall be the name by all means.)  If you like and want 
+it, I leave it to you to make an offer.  You may remember I thought 
+the offer you made when I was still in England too small; by which 
+I did not at all mean, I thought it less than it was worth, but too 
+little to tempt me to undergo the disagreeables of serial 
+publication.  This tale (if you want it) you are to have; for it is 
+the least I can do for you; and you are to observe that the sum you 
+pay me for my articles going far to meet my wants, I am quite open 
+to be satisfied with less than formerly.  I tell you I do dislike 
+this battle of the dollars.  I feel sure you all pay too much here 
+in America; and I beg you not to spoil me any more.  For I am 
+getting spoiled:  I do not want wealth, and I feel these big sums 
+demoralise me.
+
+My wife came here pretty ill; she had a dreadful bad night; to-day 
+she is better.  But now Valentine is ill; and Lloyd and I have got 
+breakfast, and my hand somewhat shakes after washing dishes. - 
+Yours very sincerely,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+P.S. - Please order me the EVENING POST for two months.  My 
+subscription is run out.  The MUTINY and EDWARDES to hand.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+
+[SARANAC, MARCH 1888.]
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN, - Fanny has been very unwell.  She is not long 
+home, has been ill again since her return, but is now better again 
+to a degree.  You must not blame her for not writing, as she is not 
+allowed to write at all, not even a letter.  To add to our 
+misfortunes, Valentine is quite ill and in bed.  Lloyd and I get 
+breakfast; I have now, 10.15, just got the dishes washed and the 
+kitchen all clear, and sit down to give you as much news as I have 
+spirit for, after such an engagement.  Glass is a thing that really 
+breaks my spirit:  I do not like to fail, and with glass I cannot 
+reach the work of my high calling - the artist's.
+
+I am, as you may gather from this, wonderfully better:  this harsh, 
+grey, glum, doleful climate has done me good.  You cannot fancy how 
+sad a climate it is.  When the thermometer stays all day below 10 
+degrees, it is really cold; and when the wind blows, O commend me 
+to the result.  Pleasure in life is all delete; there is no red 
+spot left, fires do not radiate, you burn your hands all the time 
+on what seem to be cold stones.  It is odd, zero is like summer 
+heat to us now; and we like, when the thermometer outside is really 
+low, a room at about 48 degrees:  60 degrees we find oppressive.  
+Yet the natives keep their holes at 90 degrees or even 100 degrees.
+
+This was interrupted days ago by household labours.  Since then I 
+have had and (I tremble to write it, but it does seem as if I had) 
+beaten off an influenza.  The cold is exquisite.  Valentine still 
+in bed.  The proofs of the first part of the MASTER OF BALLANTRAE 
+begin to come in; soon you shall have it in the pamphlet form; and 
+I hope you will like it.  The second part will not be near so good; 
+but there - we can but do as it'll do with us.  I have every reason 
+to believe this winter has done me real good, so far as it has 
+gone; and if I carry out my scheme for next winter, and succeeding 
+years, I should end by being a tower of strength.  I want you to 
+save a good holiday for next winter; I hope we shall be able to 
+help you to some larks.  Is there any Greek Isle you would like to 
+explore? or any creek in Asia Minor? - Yours ever affectionately,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO THE REV. DR. CHARTERIS
+
+
+
+[SARANAC LAKE, WINTER 1887-1888.]
+
+MY DEAR DR. CHARTERIS, - I have asked Douglas and Foulis to send 
+you my last volume, so that you may possess my little paper on my 
+father in a permanent shape; not for what that is worth, but as a 
+tribute of respect to one whom my father regarded with such love, 
+esteem, and affection.  Besides, as you will see, I have brought 
+you under contribution, and I have still to thank you for your 
+letter to my mother; so more than kind; in much, so just.  It is my 
+hope, when time and health permit, to do something more definite 
+for my father's memory.  You are one of the very few who can (if 
+you will) help me.  Pray believe that I lay on you no obligation; I 
+know too well, you may believe me, how difficult it is to put even 
+two sincere lines upon paper, where all, too, is to order.  But if 
+the spirit should ever move you, and you should recall something 
+memorable of your friend, his son will heartily thank you for a 
+note of it. - With much respect, believe me, yours sincerely,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+
+[SARANAC LAKE, MARCH 1888.]
+
+MY DEAR DELIGHTFUL JAMES, - To quote your heading to my wife, I 
+think no man writes so elegant a letter, I am sure none so kind, 
+unless it be Colvin, and there is more of the stern parent about 
+him.  I was vexed at your account of my admired Meredith:  I wish I 
+could go and see him; as it is I will try to write.  I read with 
+indescribable admiration your EMERSON.  I begin to long for the day 
+when these portraits of yours shall be collected:  do put me in.  
+But Emerson is a higher flight.  Have you a TOURGUENEFF?  You have 
+told me many interesting things of him, and I seem to see them 
+written, and forming a graceful and BILDEND sketch.  My novel is a 
+tragedy; four parts out of six or seven are written, and gone to 
+Burlingame.  Five parts of it are sound, human tragedy; the last 
+one or two, I regret to say, not so soundly designed; I almost 
+hesitate to write them; they are very picturesque, but they are 
+fantastic; they shame, perhaps degrade, the beginning.  I wish I 
+knew; that was how the tale came to me however.  I got the 
+situation; it was an old taste of mine:  The older brother goes out 
+in the '45, the younger stays; the younger, of course, gets title 
+and estate and marries the bride designate of the elder - a family 
+match, but he (the younger) had always loved her, and she had 
+really loved the elder.  Do you see the situation?  Then the devil 
+and Saranac suggested this DENOUEMENT, and I joined the two ends in 
+a day or two of constant feverish thought, and began to write.  And 
+now - I wonder if I have not gone too far with the fantastic?  The 
+elder brother is an INCUBUS:  supposed to be killed at Culloden, he 
+turns up again and bleeds the family of money; on that stopping he 
+comes and lives with them, whence flows the real tragedy, the 
+nocturnal duel of the brothers (very naturally, and indeed, I 
+think, inevitably arising), and second supposed death of the elder.  
+Husband and wife now really make up, and then the cloven hoof 
+appears.  For the third supposed death and the manner of the third 
+reappearance is steep; steep, sir.  It is even very steep, and I 
+fear it shames the honest stuff so far; but then it is highly 
+pictorial, and it leads up to the death of the elder brother at the 
+hands of the younger in a perfectly cold-blooded murder, of which I 
+wish (and mean) the reader to approve.  You see how daring is the 
+design.  There are really but six characters, and one of these 
+episodic, and yet it covers eighteen years, and will be, I imagine, 
+the longest of my works. - Yours ever,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+READ GOSSE'S RALEIGH.  First-rate. - Yours ever,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO THE REV. DR. CHARTERIS
+
+
+
+SARANAC LAKE, ADIRONDACKS, NEW YORK, U.S.A., SPRING 1888.
+
+MY DEAR DR. CHARTERIS, - The funeral letter, your notes, and many 
+other things, are reserved for a book, MEMORIALS OF A SCOTTISH 
+FAMILY, if ever I can find time and opportunity.  I wish I could 
+throw off all else and sit down to it to-day.  Yes, my father was a 
+'distinctly religious man,' but not a pious.  The distinction 
+painfully and pleasurably recalls old conflicts; it used to be my 
+great gun - and you, who suffered for the whole Church, know how 
+needful it was to have some reserve artillery!  His sentiments were 
+tragic; he was a tragic thinker.  Now, granted that life is tragic 
+to the marrow, it seems the proper function of religion to make us 
+accept and serve in that tragedy, as officers in that other and 
+comparable one of war.  Service is the word, active service, in the 
+military sense; and the religious man - I beg pardon, the pious man 
+- is he who has a military joy in duty - not he who weeps over the 
+wounded.  We can do no more than try to do our best.  Really, I am 
+the grandson of the manse - I preach you a kind of sermon.  Box the 
+brat's ears!
+
+My mother - to pass to matters more within my competence - finely 
+enjoys herself.  The new country, some new friends we have made, 
+the interesting experiment of this climate-which (at least) is 
+tragic - all have done her good.  I have myself passed a better 
+winter than for years, and now that it is nearly over have some 
+diffident hopes of doing well in the summer and 'eating a little 
+more air' than usual.
+
+I thank you for the trouble you are taking, and my mother joins 
+with me in kindest regards to yourself and Mrs. Charteris. - Yours 
+very truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO S. R. CROCKETT
+
+
+
+[SARANAC LAKE, SPRING 1888.]
+
+DEAR MINISTER OF THE FREE KIRK AT PENICUIK, - For O, man, I cannae 
+read your name! - That I have been so long in answering your 
+delightful letter sits on my conscience badly.  The fact is I let 
+my correspondence accumulate until I am going to leave a place; and 
+then I pitch in, overhaul the pile, and my cries of penitence might 
+be heard a mile about.  Yesterday I despatched thirty-five belated 
+letters:  conceive the state of my conscience, above all as the 
+Sins of Omission (see boyhood's guide, the Shorter Catechism) are 
+in my view the only serious ones; I call it my view, but it cannot 
+have escaped you that it was also Christ's.  However, all that is 
+not to the purpose, which is to thank you for the sincere pleasure 
+afforded by your charming letter.  I get a good few such; how few 
+that please me at all, you would be surprised to learn - or have a 
+singularly just idea of the dulness of our race; how few that 
+please me as yours did, I can tell you in one word - NONE.  I am no 
+great kirkgoer, for many reasons - and the sermon's one of them, 
+and the first prayer another, but the chief and effectual reason is 
+the stuffiness.  I am no great kirkgoer, says I, but when I read 
+yon letter of yours, I thought I would like to sit under ye.  And 
+then I saw ye were to send me a bit buik, and says I, I'll wait for 
+the bit buik, and then I'll mebbe can read the man's name, and 
+anyway I'll can kill twa birds wi' ae stane.  And, man! the buik 
+was ne'er heard tell o'!
+
+That fact is an adminicle of excuse for my delay.
+
+And now, dear minister of the illegible name, thanks to you, and 
+greeting to your wife, and may you have good guidance in your 
+difficult labours, and a blessing on your life.
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+(No just so young sae young's he was, though -
+I'm awfae near forty, man.)
+
+Address c/o CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS,
+743 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.
+
+Don't put 'N.B.' in your paper:  put SCOTLAND, and be done with it.  
+Alas, that I should be thus stabbed in the home of my friends!  The 
+name of my native land is not NORTH BRITAIN, whatever may be the 
+name of yours.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MISS FERRIER
+
+
+
+[SARANAC LAKE, APRIL 1888.]
+
+MY DEAREST COGGIE, - I wish I could find the letter I began to you 
+some time ago when I was ill; but I can't and I don't believe there 
+was much in it anyway.  We have all behaved like pigs and beasts 
+and barn-door poultry to you; but I have been sunk in work, and the 
+lad is lazy and blind and has been working too; and as for Fanny, 
+she has been (and still is) really unwell.  I had a mean hope you 
+might perhaps write again before I got up steam:  I could not have 
+been more ashamed of myself than I am, and I should have had 
+another laugh.
+
+They always say I cannot give news in my letters:  I shall shake 
+off that reproach.  On Monday, if she is well enough, Fanny leaves 
+for California to see her friends; it is rather an anxiety to let 
+her go alone; but the doctor simply forbids it in my case, and she 
+is better anywhere than here - a bleak, blackguard, beggarly 
+climate, of which I can say no good except that it suits me and 
+some others of the same or similar persuasions whom (by all rights) 
+it ought to kill.  It is a form of Arctic St. Andrews, I should 
+imagine; and the miseries of forty degrees below zero, with a high 
+wind, have to be felt to be appreciated.  The greyness of the 
+heavens here is a circumstance eminently revolting to the soul; I 
+have near forgot the aspect of the sun - I doubt if this be news; 
+it is certainly no news to us.  My mother suffers a little from the 
+inclemency of the place, but less on the whole than would be 
+imagined.  Among other wild schemes, we have been projecting yacht 
+voyages; and I beg to inform you that Cogia Hassan was cast for the 
+part of passenger.  They may come off! - Again this is not news.  
+The lad?  Well, the lad wrote a tale this winter, which appeared to 
+me so funny that I have taken it in hand, and some of these days 
+you will receive a copy of a work entitled 'A GAME OF BLUFF, by 
+Lloyd Osbourne and Robert Louis Stevenson.'
+
+Otherwise he (the lad) is much as usual.  There remains, I believe, 
+to be considered only R. L. S., the house-bond, prop, pillar, 
+bread-winner, and bully of the establishment.  Well, I do think him 
+much better; he is making piles of money; the hope of being able to 
+hire a yacht ere long dances before his eyes; otherwise he is not 
+in very high spirits at this particular moment, though compared 
+with last year at Bournemouth an angel of joy.
+
+And now is this news, Cogia, or is it not?  It all depends upon the 
+point of view, and I call it news.  The devil of it is that I can 
+think of nothing else, except to send you all our loves, and to 
+wish exceedingly you were here to cheer us all up.  But we'll see 
+about that on board the yacht. - Your affectionate friend,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+
+[SARANAC LAKE], APRIL 9TH!! 1888
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN, - I have been long without writing to you, but am 
+not to blame, I had some little annoyances quite for a private eye, 
+but they ran me so hard that I could not write without lugging them 
+in, which (for several reasons) I did not choose to do.  Fanny is 
+off to San Francisco, and next week I myself flit to New York:  
+address Scribner's.  Where we shall go I know not, nor (I was going 
+to say) care; so bald and bad is my frame of mind.  Do you know our 
+- ahem! - fellow clubman, Colonel Majendie?  I had such an 
+interesting letter from him.  Did you see my sermon?  It has evoked 
+the worst feeling:  I fear people don't care for the truth, or else 
+I don't tell it.  Suffer me to wander without purpose.  I have sent 
+off twenty letters to-day, and begun and stuck at a twenty-first, 
+and taken a copy of one which was on business, and corrected 
+several galleys of proof, and sorted about a bushel of old letters; 
+so if any one has a right to be romantically stupid it is I - and I 
+am.  Really deeply stupid, and at that stage when in old days I 
+used to pour out words without any meaning whatever and with my 
+mind taking no part in the performance.  I suspect that is now the 
+case.  I am reading with extraordinary pleasure the life of Lord 
+Lawrence:  Lloyd and I have a mutiny novel -
+
+(NEXT MORNING, AFTER TWELVE OTHER LETTERS) - mutiny novel on hand - 
+a tremendous work - so we are all at Indian books.  The idea of the 
+novel is Lloyd's:  I call it a novel.  'Tis a tragic romance, of 
+the most tragic sort:  I believe the end will be almost too much 
+for human endurance - when the hero is thrown to the ground with 
+one of his own (Sepoy) soldier's knees upon his chest, and the 
+cries begin in the Beebeeghar.  O truly, you know it is a howler!  
+The whole last part is - well the difficulty is that, short of 
+resuscitating Shakespeare, I don't know who is to write it.
+
+I still keep wonderful.  I am a great performer before the Lord on 
+the penny whistle.  Dear sir, sincerely yours,
+
+ANDREW JACKSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
+
+
+
+[SARANAC LAKE, APRIL 1888.] ADDRESS C/O MESSRS. SCRIBNER'S SONS, 
+743 BROADWAY, N.Y.
+
+MY DEAR GAMEKEEPER, - Your p. c. (proving you a good student of 
+Micawber) has just arrived, and it paves the way to something I am 
+anxious to say.  I wrote a paper the other day - PULVIS ET UMBRA; - 
+I wrote it with great feeling and conviction:  to me it seemed 
+bracing and healthful, it is in such a world (so seen by me), that 
+I am very glad to fight out my battle, and see some fine sunsets, 
+and hear some excellent jests between whiles round the camp fire.  
+But I find that to some people this vision of mine is a nightmare, 
+and extinguishes all ground of faith in God or pleasure in man.  
+Truth I think not so much of; for I do not know it.  And I could 
+wish in my heart that I had not published this paper, if it 
+troubles folk too much:  all have not the same digestion, nor the 
+same sight of things.  And it came over me with special pain that 
+perhaps this article (which I was at the pains to send to her) 
+might give dismalness to my GAMEKEEPER AT HOME.  Well, I cannot 
+take back what I have said; but yet I may add this.  If my view be 
+everything but the nonsense that it may be - to me it seems self-
+evident and blinding truth - surely of all things it makes this 
+world holier.  There is nothing in it but the moral side - but the 
+great battle and the breathing times with their refreshments.  I 
+see no more and no less.  And if you look again, it is not ugly, 
+and it is filled with promise.
+
+Pray excuse a desponding author for this apology.  My wife is away 
+off to the uttermost parts of the States, all by herself.  I shall 
+be off, I hope, in a week; but where?  Ah! that I know not.  I keep 
+wonderful, and my wife a little better, and the lad flourishing.  
+We now perform duets on two D tin whistles; it is no joke to make 
+the bass; I think I must really send you one, which I wish you 
+would correct . . . I may be said to live for these instrumental 
+labours now, but I have always some childishness on hand. - I am, 
+dear Gamekeeper, your indulgent but intemperate Squire,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+UNION HOUSE, MANASQUAN, N.J., BUT ADDRESS TO SCRIBNER'S, 11TH MAY 
+1888.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES, - I have found a yacht, and we are going the full 
+pitch for seven months.  If I cannot get my health back (more or 
+less), 'tis madness; but, of course, there is the hope, and I will 
+play big. . . . If this business fails to set me up, well, 2000 
+pounds is gone, and I know I can't get better.  We sail from San 
+Francisco, June 15th, for the South Seas in the yacht CASCO. - With 
+a million thanks for all your dear friendliness, ever yours 
+affectionately,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  To HOMER ST. GAUDENS
+
+
+
+MANASQUAN, NEW JERSEY, 27TH MAY 1888.
+
+DEAR HOMER ST. GAUDENS, - Your father has brought you this day to 
+see me, and he tells me it is his hope you may remember the 
+occasion.  I am going to do what I can to carry out his wish; and 
+it may amuse you, years after, to see this little scrap of paper 
+and to read what I write.  I must begin by testifying that you 
+yourself took no interest whatever in the introduction, and in the 
+most proper spirit displayed a single-minded ambition to get back 
+to play, and this I thought an excellent and admirable point in 
+your character.  You were also (I use the past tense, with a view 
+to the time when you shall read, rather than to that when I am 
+writing) a very pretty boy, and (to my European views) startlingly 
+self-possessed.  My time of observation was so limited that you 
+must pardon me if I can say no more:  what else I marked, what 
+restlessness of foot and hand, what graceful clumsiness, what 
+experimental designs upon the furniture, was but the common 
+inheritance of human youth.  But you may perhaps like to know that 
+the lean flushed man in bed, who interested you so little, was in a 
+state of mind extremely mingled and unpleasant:  harassed with work 
+which he thought he was not doing well, troubled with difficulties 
+to which you will in time succeed, and yet looking forward to no 
+less a matter than a voyage to the South Seas and the visitation of 
+savage and desert islands. -Your father's friend,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+
+MANASQUAN (AHEM!), NEW JERSEY, MAY 28TH, 1888.
+
+MY DEAR JAMES, - With what a torrent it has come at last!  Up to 
+now, what I like best is the first number of a LONDON LIFE.  You 
+have never done anything better, and I don't know if perhaps you 
+have ever done anything so good as the girl's outburst:  tip-top.  
+I have been preaching your later works in your native land.  I had 
+to present the Beltraffio volume to Low, and it has brought him to 
+his knees; he was AMAZED at the first part of Georgina's Reasons, 
+although (like me) not so well satisfied with Part II.  It is 
+annoying to find the American public as stupid as the English, but 
+they will waken up in time:  I wonder what they will think of TWO 
+NATIONS? . .
+
+This, dear James, is a valedictory.  On June 15th the schooner 
+yacht CASCO will (weather and a jealous providence permitting) 
+steam through the Golden Gates for Honolulu, Tahiti, the Galapagos, 
+Guayaquil, and - I hope NOT the bottom of the Pacific.  It will 
+contain your obedient 'umble servant and party.  It seems too good 
+to be true, and is a very good way of getting through the green-
+sickness of maturity which, with all its accompanying ills, is now 
+declaring itself in my mind and life.  They tell me it is not so 
+severe as that of youth; if I (and the CASCO) are spared, I shall 
+tell you more exactly, as I am one of the few people in the world 
+who do not forget their own lives.
+
+Good-bye, then, my dear fellow, and please write us a word; we 
+expect to have three mails in the next two months:  Honolulu, 
+Tahiti, and Guayaquil.  But letters will be forwarded from 
+Scribner's, if you hear nothing more definite directly.  In 3 
+(three) days I leave for San Francisco. - Ever yours most 
+cordially,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X - PACIFIC VOYAGES, JUNE 1888-NOVEMBER 1890
+
+
+
+
+TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+
+YACHT 'CASCO,' ANAHO BAY, NUKAHIVA, MARQUESAS ISLANDS [JULY 1888].
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN, - From this somewhat (ahem) out of the way place, I 
+write to say how d'ye do.  It is all a swindle:  I chose these 
+isles as having the most beastly population, and they are far 
+better, and far more civilised than we.  I know one old chief Ko-o-
+amua, a great cannibal in his day, who ate his enemies even as he 
+walked home from killing 'em, and he is a perfect gentleman and 
+exceedingly amiable and simple-minded:  no fool, though.
+
+The climate is delightful; and the harbour where we lie one of the 
+loveliest spots imaginable.  Yesterday evening we had near a score 
+natives on board; lovely parties.  We have a native god; very rare 
+now.  Very rare and equally absurd to view.
+
+This sort of work is not favourable to correspondence:  it takes me 
+all the little strength I have to go about and see, and then come 
+home and note, the strangeness around us.  I shouldn't wonder if 
+there came trouble here some day, all the same.  I could name a 
+nation that is not beloved in certain islands - and it does not 
+know it!  Strange:  like ourselves, perhaps, in India!  Love to all 
+and much to yourself.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+YACHT 'CASCO,' AT SEA, NEAR THE PAUMOTUS, 7 A.M., SEPTEMBER 6TH, 
+1888, WITH A DREADFUL PEN.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES, - Last night as I lay under my blanket in the 
+cockpit, courting sleep, I had a comic seizure.  There was nothing 
+visible but the southern stars, and the steersman there out by the 
+binnacle lamp; we were all looking forward to a most deplorable 
+landfall on the morrow, praying God we should fetch a tuft of palms 
+which are to indicate the Dangerous Archipelago; the night was as 
+warm as milk, and all of a sudden I had a vision of - Drummond 
+Street.  It came on me like a flash of lightning:  I simply 
+returned thither, and into the past.  And when I remember all I 
+hoped and feared as I pickled about Rutherford's in the rain and 
+the east wind; how I feared I should make a mere shipwreck, and yet 
+timidly hoped not; how I feared I should never have a friend, far 
+less a wife, and yet passionately hoped I might; how I hoped (if I 
+did not take to drink) I should possibly write one little book, 
+etc. etc.  And then now - what a change!  I feel somehow as if I 
+should like the incident set upon a brass plate at the corner of 
+that dreary thoroughfare for all students to read, poor devils, 
+when their hearts are down.  And I felt I must write one word to 
+you.  Excuse me if I write little:  when I am at sea, it gives me a 
+headache; when I am in port, I have my diary crying 'Give, give.'  
+I shall have a fine book of travels, I feel sure; and will tell you 
+more of the South Seas after very few months than any other writer 
+has done - except Herman Melville perhaps, who is a howling cheese.  
+Good luck to you, God bless you. - Your affectionate friend,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+
+FAKARAVA, LOW ARCHIPELAGO, SEPTEMBER 21ST, 1888.
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN, - Only a word.  Get out your big atlas, and imagine 
+a straight line from San Francisco to Anaho, the N.E. corner of 
+Nukahiva, one of the Marquesas Islands; imagine three weeks there:  
+imagine a day's sail on August 12th round the eastern end of the 
+island to Tai-o-hae, the capital; imagine us there till August 
+22nd:  imagine us skirt the east side of Ua-pu - perhaps Rona-Poa 
+on your atlas - and through the Bondelais straits to Taaka-uku in 
+Hiva-Oa, where we arrive on the 23rd; imagine us there until 
+September 4th, when we sailed for Fakarava, which we reached on the 
+9th, after a very difficult and dangerous passage among these 
+isles.  Tuesday, we shall leave for Taiti, where I shall knock off 
+and do some necessary work ashore.  It looks pretty bald in the 
+atlas; not in fact; nor I trust in the 130 odd pages of diary which 
+I have just been looking up for these dates:  the interest, indeed, 
+has been INCREDIBLE:  I did not dream there were such places or 
+such races.  My health has stood me splendidly; I am in for hours 
+wading over the knees for shells; I have been five hours on 
+horseback:  I have been up pretty near all night waiting to see 
+where the CASCO would go ashore, and with my diary all ready - 
+simply the most entertaining night of my life.  Withal I still have 
+colds; I have one now, and feel pretty sick too; but not as at 
+home:  instead of being in bed, for instance, I am at this moment 
+sitting snuffling and writing in an undershirt and trousers; and as 
+for colour, hands, arms, feet, legs, and face, I am browner than 
+the berry:  only my trunk and the aristocratic spot on which I sit 
+retain the vile whiteness of the north.
+
+Please give my news and kind love to Henley, Henry James, and any 
+whom you see of well-wishers.  Accept from me the very best of my 
+affection:  and believe me ever yours,
+
+THE OLD MAN VIRULENT.
+
+TAITI, OCTOBER 7TH, 1888.
+
+Never having found a chance to send this off, I may add more of my 
+news.  My cold took a very bad turn, and I am pretty much out of 
+sorts at this particular, living in a little bare one-twentieth-
+furnished house, surrounded by mangoes, etc.  All the rest are 
+well, and I mean to be soon.  But these Taiti colds are very severe 
+and, to children, often fatal; so they were not the thing for me.  
+Yesterday the brigantine came in from San Francisco, so we can get 
+our letters off soon.  There are in Papeete at this moment, in a 
+little wooden house with grated verandahs, two people who love you 
+very much, and one of them is
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+TAITI, AS EVER WAS, 6TH OCTOBER 1888.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES, - . . . You will receive a lot of mostly very bad 
+proofs of photographs:  the paper was so bad.  Please keep them 
+very private, as they are for the book.  We send them, having 
+learned so dread a fear of the sea, that we wish to put our eggs in 
+different baskets.  We have been thrice within an ace of being 
+ashore:  we were lost (!) for about twelve hours in the Low 
+Archipelago, but by God's blessing had quiet weather all the time; 
+and once, in a squall, we cam' so near gaun heels ower hurdies, 
+that I really dinnae ken why we didnae athegither.  Hence, as I 
+say, a great desire to put our eggs in different baskets, 
+particularly on the Pacific (aw-haw-haw) Pacific Ocean.
+
+You can have no idea what a mean time we have had, owing to 
+incidental beastlinesses, nor what a glorious, owing to the 
+intrinsic interest of these isles.  I hope the book will be a good 
+one; nor do I really very much doubt that - the stuff is so 
+curious; what I wonder is, if the public will rise to it.  A copy 
+of my journal, or as much of it as is made, shall go to you also; 
+it is, of course, quite imperfect, much being to be added and 
+corrected; but O, for the eggs in the different baskets.
+
+All the rest are well enough, and all have enjoyed the cruise so 
+far, in spite of its drawbacks.  We have had an awfae time in some 
+ways, Mr. Baxter; and if I wasnae sic a verra patient man (when I 
+ken that I HAVE to be) there wad hae been a braw row; and ance if I 
+hadnae happened to be on deck about three in the marnin', I THINK 
+there would have been MURDER done.  The American Mairchant Marine 
+is a kent service; ye'll have heard its praise, I'm thinkin'; an' 
+if ye never did, ye can get TWA YEARS BEFORE THE MAST, by Dana, 
+whaur forbye a great deal o' pleisure, ye'll get a' the needcessary 
+information.  Love to your father and all the family. - Ever your 
+affectionate friend,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
+
+
+
+TAITI, OCTOBER 10TH, 1888.
+
+DEAR GIVER, - I am at a loss to conceive your object in giving me 
+to a person so locomotory as my proprietor.  The number of thousand 
+miles that I have travelled, the strange bed-fellows with which I 
+have been made acquainted, I lack the requisite literary talent to 
+make clear to your imagination.  I speak of bed-fellows; pocket-
+fellows would be a more exact expression, for the place of my abode 
+is in my master's righthand trouser-pocket; and there, as he waded 
+on the resounding beaches of Nukahiva, or in the shallow tepid 
+water on the reef of Fakarava, I have been overwhelmed by and 
+buried among all manner of abominable South Sea shells, beautiful 
+enough in their way, I make no doubt, but singular company for any 
+self-respecting paper-cutter.  He, my master - or as I more justly 
+call him, my bearer; for although I occasionally serve him, does 
+not he serve me daily and all day long, carrying me like an African 
+potentate on my subject's legs? - HE is delighted with these isles, 
+and this climate, and these savages, and a variety of other things.  
+He now blows a flageolet with singular effects:  sometimes the poor 
+thing appears stifled with shame, sometimes it screams with agony; 
+he pursues his career with truculent insensibility.  Health appears 
+to reign in the party.  I was very nearly sunk in a squall.  I am 
+sorry I ever left England, for here there are no books to be had, 
+and without books there is no stable situation for, dear Giver, 
+your affectionate
+
+WOODEN PAPER-CUTTER.
+
+A neighbouring pair of scissors snips a kiss in your direction.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+
+TAITI, OCTOBER 16TH, 1888.
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN, - The cruiser for San Francisco departs to-morrow 
+morning bearing you some kind of a scratch.  This much more 
+important packet will travel by way of Auckland.  It contains a 
+ballant; and I think a better ballant than I expected ever to do.  
+I can imagine how you will wag your pow over it; and how ragged you 
+will find it, etc., but has it not spirit all the same? and though 
+the verse is not all your fancy painted it, has it not some life?  
+And surely, as narrative, the thing has considerable merit!  Read 
+it, get a typewritten copy taken, and send me that and your opinion 
+to the Sandwiches.  I know I am only courting the most excruciating 
+mortification; but the real cause of my sending the thing is that I 
+could bear to go down myself, but not to have much MS. go down with 
+me.  To say truth, we are through the most dangerous; but it has 
+left in all minds a strong sense of insecurity, and we are all for 
+putting eggs in various baskets.
+
+We leave here soon, bound for Uahiva, Reiatea, Bora-Bora, and the 
+Sandwiches.
+
+
+O, how my spirit languishes
+To step ashore on the Sanguishes;
+For there my letters wait,
+There shall I know my fate.
+O, how my spirit languidges
+To step ashore on the Sanguidges.
+
+
+18TH. - I think we shall leave here if all is well on Monday.  I am 
+quite recovered, astonishingly recovered. It must be owned these 
+climates and this voyage have given me more strength than I could 
+have thought possible.  And yet the sea is a terrible place, 
+stupefying to the mind and poisonous to the temper, the sea, the 
+motion, the lack of space, the cruel publicity, the villainous 
+tinned foods, the sailors, the captain, the passengers - but you 
+are amply repaid when you sight an island, and drop anchor in a new 
+world.  Much trouble has attended this trip, but I must confess 
+more pleasure.  Nor should I ever complain, as in the last few 
+weeks, with the curing of my illness indeed, as if that were the 
+bursting of an abscess, the cloud has risen from my spirits and to 
+some degree from my temper.  Do you know what they called the CASCO 
+at Fakarava?  The SILVER SHIP.  Is that not pretty?  Pray tell Mrs. 
+Jenkin, DIE SILBERNE FRAU, as I only learned it since I wrote her.  
+I think of calling the book by that name:  THE CRUISE OF THE SILVER 
+SHIP - so there will be one poetic page at least - the title.  At 
+the Sandwiches we shall say farewell to the S. S. with mingled 
+feelings.  She is a lovely creature:  the most beautiful thing at 
+this moment in Taiti.
+
+Well, I will take another sheet, though I know I have nothing to 
+say.  You would think I was bursting:  but the voyage is all stored 
+up for the book, which is to pay for it, we fondly hope; and the 
+troubles of the time are not worth telling; and our news is little.
+
+Here I conclude (Oct. 24th, I think), for we are now stored, and 
+the Blue Peter metaphorically flies.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO WILLIAM AND THOMAS ARCHER
+
+
+
+TAITI, OCTOBER 17TH, 1888.
+
+DEAR ARCHER, - Though quite unable to write letters, I nobly send 
+you a line signifying nothing.  The voyage has agreed well with 
+all; it has had its pains, and its extraordinary pleasures; nothing 
+in the world can equal the excitement of the first time you cast 
+anchor in some bay of a tropical island, and the boats begin to 
+surround you, and the tattooed people swarm aboard.  Tell 
+Tomarcher, with my respex, that hide-and-seek is not equal to it; 
+no, nor hidee-in-the-dark; which, for the matter of that, is a game 
+for the unskilful:  the artist prefers daylight, a good-sized 
+garden, some shrubbery, an open paddock, and - come on, Macduff.
+
+TOMARCHER, I am now a distinguished litterytour, but that was not 
+the real bent of my genius.  I was the best player of hide-and-seek 
+going; not a good runner, I was up to every shift and dodge, I 
+could jink very well, I could crawl without any noise through 
+leaves, I could hide under a carrot plant, it used to be my 
+favourite boast that I always WALKED into the den.  You may care to 
+hear, Tomarcher, about the children in these parts; their parents 
+obey them, they do not obey their parents; and I am sorry to tell 
+you (for I dare say you are already thinking the idea a good one) 
+that it does not pay one halfpenny.  There are three sorts of 
+civilisation, Tomarcher:  the real old-fashioned one, in which 
+children either had to find out how to please their dear papas, or 
+their dear papas cut their heads off.  This style did very well, 
+but is now out of fashion.  Then the modern European style:  in 
+which children have to behave reasonably well, and go to school and 
+say their prayers, or their dear papas WILL KNOW THE REASON WHY.  
+This does fairly well.  Then there is the South Sea Island plan, 
+which does not do one bit.  The children beat their parents here; 
+it does not make their parents any better; so do not try it.
+
+Dear Tomarcher, I have forgotten the address of your new house, but 
+will send this to one of your papa's publishers.  Remember us all 
+to all of you, and believe me, yours respectably,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+TAUTIRA (THE GARDEN OF THE WORLD), OTHERWISE CALLED HANS-CHRISTIAN-
+ANDERSEN-VILLE [NOVEMBER 1888].
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES, - Whether I have a penny left in the wide world, I 
+know not, nor shall know, till I get to Honolulu, where I 
+anticipate a devil of an awakening.  It will be from a mighty 
+pleasant dream at least:  Tautira being mere Heaven.  But suppose, 
+for the sake of argument, any money to be left in the hands of my 
+painful doer, what is to be done with it?  Save us from exile would 
+be the wise man's choice, I suppose; for the exile threatens to be 
+eternal.  But yet I am of opinion - in case there should be SOME 
+dibs in the hand of the P.D., I.E. painful doer; because if there 
+be none, I shall take to my flageolet on the high-road, and work 
+home the best way I can, having previously made away with my family 
+- I am of opinion that if - and his are in the customary state, and 
+you are thinking of an offering, and there should be still some 
+funds over, you would be a real good P.D. to put some in with yours 
+and tak' the credit o't, like a wee man!  I know it's a beastly 
+thing to ask; but it, after all, does no earthly harm, only that 
+much good.  And besides, like enough there's nothing in the till, 
+and there is an end.  Yet I live here in the full lustre of 
+millions; it is thought I am the richest son of man that has yet 
+been to Tautira:  I! - and I am secretly eaten with the fear of 
+lying in pawn, perhaps for the remainder of my days, in San 
+Francisco.  As usual, my colds have much hashed my finances.
+
+Do tell Henley I write this just after having dismissed Ori the 
+sub-chief, in whose house I live, Mrs. Ori, and Pairai, their 
+adopted child, from the evening hour of music:  during which I 
+Publickly (with a k) Blow on the Flageolet.  These are words of 
+truth.  Yesterday I told Ori about W. E. H., counterfeited his 
+playing on the piano and the pipe, and succeeded in sending the six 
+feet four there is of that sub-chief somewhat sadly to his bed; 
+feeling that his was not the genuine article after all.  Ori is 
+exactly like a colonel in the Guards. - I am, dear Charles, ever 
+yours affectionately,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TAUTIRA, 10TH NOVEMBER '88.
+
+
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES, - Our mainmast is dry-rotten, and we are all to 
+the devil; I shall lie in a debtor's jail.  Never mind, Tautira is 
+first chop.  I am so besotted that I shall put on the back of this 
+my attempt at words to Wandering Willie; if you can conceive at all 
+the difficulty, you will also conceive the vanity with which I 
+regard any kind of result; and whatever mine is like, it has some 
+sense, and Burns's has none.
+
+
+Home no more home to me, whither must I wander?
+Hunger my driver, I go where I must.
+Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather;
+Thick drives the rain, and my roof is in the dust.
+Loved of wise men was the shade of my roof-tree.
+The true word of welcome was spoken in the door -
+Dear days of old, with the faces in the firelight,
+Kind folks of old, you come again no more.
+
+Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces,
+Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child.
+Fire and the windows bright glittered on the moorland;
+Song, tuneful song, built a palace in the wild.
+Now, when day dawns on the brow of the moorland,
+Lone stands the house, and the chimney-stone is cold.
+Lone let it stand, now the friends are all departed,
+The kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place of old.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO J. A. SYMONDS
+
+
+
+NOVEMBER 11TH 1888.
+
+One November night, in the village of Tautira, we sat at the high 
+table in the hall of assembly, hearing the natives sing.  It was 
+dark in the hall, and very warm; though at times the land wind blew 
+a little shrewdly through the chinks, and at times, through the 
+larger openings, we could see the moonlight on the lawn.  As the 
+songs arose in the rattling Tahitian chorus, the chief translated 
+here and there a verse.  Farther on in the volume you shall read 
+the songs themselves; and I am in hopes that not you only, but all 
+who can find a savour in the ancient poetry of places, will read 
+them with some pleasure.  You are to conceive us, therefore, in 
+strange circumstances and very pleasing; in a strange land and 
+climate, the most beautiful on earth; surrounded by a foreign race 
+that all travellers have agreed to be the most engaging; and taking 
+a double interest in two foreign arts.
+
+We came forth again at last, in a cloudy moonlight, on the forest 
+lawn which is the street of Tautira.  The Pacific roared outside 
+upon the reef.  Here and there one of the scattered palm-built 
+lodges shone out under the shadow of the wood, the lamplight 
+bursting through the crannies of the wall.  We went homeward 
+slowly, Ori a Ori carrying behind us the lantern and the chairs, 
+properties with which we had just been enacting our part of the 
+distinguished visitor.  It was one of those moments in which minds 
+not altogether churlish recall the names and deplore the absence of 
+congenial friends; and it was your name that first rose upon our 
+lips.  'How Symonds would have enjoyed this evening!' said one, and 
+then another.  The word caught in my mind; I went to bed, and it 
+was still there.  The glittering, frosty solitudes in which your 
+days are cast arose before me:  I seemed to see you walking there 
+in the late night, under the pine-trees and the stars; and I 
+received the image with something like remorse.
+
+There is a modern attitude towards fortune; in this place I will 
+not use a graver name.  Staunchly to withstand her buffets and to 
+enjoy with equanimity her favours was the code of the virtuous of 
+old.  Our fathers, it should seem, wondered and doubted how they 
+had merited their misfortunes:  we, rather how we have deserved our 
+happiness.  And we stand often abashed and sometimes revolted, at 
+those partialities of fate by which we profit most.  It was so with 
+me on that November night:  I felt that our positions should be 
+changed.   It was you, dear Symonds, who should have gone upon that 
+voyage and written this account.  With your rich stores of 
+knowledge, you could have remarked and understood a thousand things 
+of interest and beauty that escaped my ignorance; and the brilliant 
+colours of your style would have carried into a thousand sickrooms 
+the sea air and the strong sun of tropic islands.  It was otherwise 
+decreed.  But suffer me at least to connect you, if only in name 
+and only in the fondness of imagination, with the voyage of the 
+'SILVER SHIP.'
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+DEAR SYMONDS, - I send you this (November 11th), the morning of its 
+completion.  If I ever write an account of this voyage, may I place 
+this letter at the beginning?  It represents - I need not tell you, 
+for you too are an artist - a most genuine feeling, which kept me 
+long awake last night; and though perhaps a little elaborate, I 
+think it a good piece of writing.  We are IN HEAVEN HERE.  Do not 
+forget
+
+R. L. S.
+
+Please keep this:  I have no perfect copy.
+TAUTIRA, ON THE PENINSULA OF TAHITI.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO THOMAS ARCHER
+
+
+
+TAUTIRA, ISLAND OF TAHITI [NOVEMBER 1888].
+
+DEAR TOMARCHER, - This is a pretty state of things! seven o'clock 
+and no word of breakfast!  And I was awake a good deal last night, 
+for it was full moon, and they had made a great fire of cocoa-nut 
+husks down by the sea, and as we have no blinds or shutters, this 
+kept my room very bright.  And then the rats had a wedding or a 
+school-feast under my bed.  And then I woke early, and I have 
+nothing to read except Virgil's AENEID, which is not good fun on an 
+empty stomach, and a Latin dictionary, which is good for naught, 
+and by some humorous accident, your dear papa's article on 
+Skerryvore.  And I read the whole of that, and very impudent it is, 
+but you must not tell your dear papa I said so, or it might come to 
+a battle in which you might lose either a dear papa or a valued 
+correspondent, or both, which would be prodigal.  And still no 
+breakfast; so I said 'Let's write to Tomarcher.'
+
+This is a much better place for children than any I have hitherto 
+seen in these seas.  The girls (and sometimes the boys) play a very 
+elaborate kind of hopscotch.  The boys play horses exactly as we do 
+in Europe; and have very good fun on stilts, trying to knock each 
+other down, in which they do not often succeed.  The children of 
+all ages go to church and are allowed to do what they please, 
+running about the aisles, rolling balls, stealing mamma's bonnet 
+and publicly sitting on it, and at last going to sleep in the 
+middle of the floor.  I forgot to say that the whips to play 
+horses, and the balls to roll about the church - at least I never 
+saw them used elsewhere - grow ready made on trees; which is rough 
+on toy-shops.  The whips are so good that I wanted to play horses 
+myself; but no such luck! my hair is grey, and I am a great, big, 
+ugly man.  The balls are rather hard, but very light and quite 
+round.  When you grow up and become offensively rich, you can 
+charter a ship in the port of London, and have it come back to you 
+entirely loaded with these balls; when you could satisfy your mind 
+as to their character, and give them away when done with to your 
+uncles and aunts.  But what I really wanted to tell you was this:  
+besides the tree-top toys (Hush-a-by, toy-shop, on the tree-top!), 
+I have seen some real MADE toys, the first hitherto observed in the 
+South Seas.
+
+This was how.  You are to imagine a four-wheeled gig; one horse; in 
+the front seat two Tahiti natives, in their Sunday clothes, blue 
+coat, white shirt, kilt (a little longer than the Scotch) of a blue 
+stuff with big white or yellow flowers, legs and feet bare; in the 
+back seat me and my wife, who is a friend of yours; under our feet, 
+plenty of lunch and things:  among us a great deal of fun in broken 
+Tahitian, one of the natives, the sub-chief of the village, being a 
+great ally of mine.  Indeed we have exchanged names; so that he is 
+now called Rui, the nearest they can come to Louis, for they have 
+no L and no S in their language.  Rui is six feet three in his 
+stockings, and a magnificent man.  We all have straw hats, for the 
+sun is strong.  We drive between the sea, which makes a great 
+noise, and the mountains; the road is cut through a forest mostly 
+of fruit trees, the very creepers, which take the place of our ivy, 
+heavy with a great and delicious fruit, bigger than your head and 
+far nicer, called Barbedine.  Presently we came to a house in a 
+pretty garden, quite by itself, very nicely kept, the doors and 
+windows open, no one about, and no noise but that of the sea.  It 
+looked like a house in a fairy-tale, and just beyond we must ford a 
+river, and there we saw the inhabitants.  Just in the mouth of the 
+river, where it met the sea waves, they were ducking and bathing 
+and screaming together like a covey of birds:  seven or eight 
+little naked brown boys and girls as happy as the day was long; and 
+on the banks of the stream beside them, real toys - toy ships, full 
+rigged, and with their sails set, though they were lying in the 
+dust on their beam ends.  And then I knew for sure they were all 
+children in a fairy-story, living alone together in that lonely 
+house with the only toys in all the island; and that I had myself 
+driven, in my four-wheeled gig, into a corner of the fairy-story, 
+and the question was, should I get out again?  But it was all 
+right; I guess only one of the wheels of the gig had got into the 
+fairy-story; and the next jolt the whole thing vanished, and we 
+drove on in our sea-side forest as before, and I have the honour to 
+be Tomarcher's valued correspondent, TERIITEPA, which he was 
+previously known as
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+
+YACHT 'CASCO,' AT SEA, 14TH JANUARY, 1889.
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN, - Twenty days out from Papeete.  Yes, sir, all 
+that, and only (for a guess) in 4 degrees north or at the best 4 
+degrees 30 minutes, though already the wind seems to smell a little 
+of the North Pole.  My handwriting you must take as you get, for we 
+are speeding along through a nasty swell, and I can only keep my 
+place at the table by means of a foot against the divan, the 
+unoccupied hand meanwhile gripping the ink-bottle.  As we begin (so 
+very slowly) to draw near to seven months of correspondence, we are 
+all in some fear; and I want to have letters written before I shall 
+be plunged into that boiling pot of disagreeables which I 
+constantly expect at Honolulu.  What is needful can be added there.
+
+We were kept two months at Tautira in the house of my dear old 
+friend, Ori a Ori, till both the masts of this invaluable yacht had 
+been repaired.  It was all for the best:  Tautira being the most 
+beautiful spot, and its people the most amiable, I have ever found.  
+Besides which, the climate suited me to the ground; I actually went 
+sea-bathing almost every day, and in our feasts (we are all huge 
+eaters in Taiarapu) have been known to apply four times for pig.  
+And then again I got wonderful materials for my book, collected 
+songs and legends on the spot; songs still sung in chorus by 
+perhaps a hundred persons, not two of whom can agree on their 
+translation; legends, on which I have seen half a dozen seniors 
+sitting in conclave and debating what came next.  Once I went a 
+day's journey to the other side of the island to Tati, the high 
+chief of the Tevas - MY chief that is, for I am now a Teva and 
+Teriitera, at your service - to collect more and correct what I had 
+already.  In the meanwhile I got on with my work, almost finished 
+the MASTER OF BALLANTRAE, which contains more human work than 
+anything of mine but KIDNAPPED, and wrote the half of another 
+ballad, the SONG OF RAHERO, on a Taiarapu legend of my own clan, 
+sir - not so much fire as the FEAST OF FAMINE, but promising to be 
+more even and correct.  But the best fortune of our stay at Tautira 
+was my knowledge of Ori himself, one of the finest creatures 
+extant.  The day of our parting was a sad one.  We deduced from it 
+a rule for travellers:  not to stay two months in one place - which 
+is to cultivate regrets.
+
+At last our contemptible ship was ready; to sea we went, bound for 
+Honolulu and the letter-bag, on Christmas Day; and from then to now 
+have experienced every sort of minor misfortune, squalls, calms, 
+contrary winds and seas, pertinacious rains, declining stores, till 
+we came almost to regard ourselves as in the case of Vanderdecken.  
+Three days ago our luck seemed to improve, we struck a leading 
+breeze, got creditably through the doldrums, and just as we looked 
+to have the N.E. trades and a straight run, the rains and squalls 
+and calms began again about midnight, and this morning, though 
+there is breeze enough to send us along, we are beaten back by an 
+obnoxious swell out of the north.  Here is a page of complaint, 
+when a verse of thanksgiving had perhaps been more in place.  For 
+all this time we must have been skirting past dangerous weather, in 
+the tail and circumference of hurricanes, and getting only 
+annoyance where we should have had peril, and ill-humour instead of 
+fear.
+
+I wonder if I have managed to give you any news this time, or 
+whether the usual damn hangs over my letter?  'The midwife 
+whispered, Be thou dull!' or at least inexplicit.  Anyway I have 
+tried my best, am exhausted with the effort, and fall back into the 
+land of generalities.  I cannot tell you how often we have planned 
+our arrival at the Monument:  two nights ago, the 12th January, we 
+had it all planned out, arrived in the lights and whirl of 
+Waterloo, hailed a hansom, span up Waterloo Road, over the bridge, 
+etc. etc., and hailed the Monument gate in triumph and with 
+indescribable delight.  My dear Custodian, I always think we are 
+too sparing of assurances:  Cordelia is only to be excused by Regan 
+and Goneril in the same nursery; I wish to tell you that the longer 
+I live, the more dear do you become to me; nor does my heart own 
+any stronger sentiment.  If the bloody schooner didn't send me 
+flying in every sort of direction at the same time, I would say 
+better what I feel so much; but really, if you were here, you would 
+not be writing letters, I believe; and even I, though of a more 
+marine constitution, am much perturbed by this bobbery and wish - O 
+ye Gods, how I wish! - that it was done, and we had arrived, and I 
+had Pandora's Box (my mail bag) in hand, and was in the lively hope 
+of something eatable for dinner instead of salt horse, tinned 
+mutton, duff without any plums, and pie fruit, which now make up 
+our whole repertory.  O Pandora's Box!  I wonder what you will 
+contain.  As like as not you will contain but little money:  if 
+that be so, we shall have to retire to 'Frisco in the CASCO, and 
+thence by sea VIA Panama to Southampton, where we should arrive in 
+April.  I would like fine to see you on the tug:  ten years older 
+both of us than the last time you came to welcome Fanny and me to 
+England.  If we have money, however, we shall do a little 
+differently:  send the CASCO away from Honolulu empty of its high-
+born lessees, for that voyage to 'Frisco is one long dead beat in 
+foul and at last in cold weather; stay awhile behind, follow by 
+steamer, cross the States by train, stay awhile in New York on 
+business, and arrive probably by the German Line in Southampton.  
+But all this is a question of money.  We shall have to lie very 
+dark awhile to recruit our finances:  what comes from the book of 
+the cruise, I do not want to touch until the capital is repaid.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+HONOLULU, JANUARY 1889.
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - Here at last I have arrived.  We could not 
+get away from Tahiti till Christmas Day, and then had thirty days 
+of calms and squalls, a deplorable passage.  This has thrown me all 
+out of gear in every way.  I plunge into business.
+
+1.  THE MASTER:  Herewith go three more parts.  You see he grows in 
+balk; this making ten already, and I am not yet sure if I can 
+finish it in an eleventh; which shall go to you QUAM PRIMUM - I 
+hope by next mail.
+
+2.  ILLUSTRATIONS TO M.  I totally forgot to try to write to Hole.  
+It was just as well, for I find it impossible to forecast with 
+sufficient precision.  You had better throw off all this and let 
+him have it at once.  PLEASE DO:  ALL, AND AT ONCE:  SEE FURTHER; 
+and I should hope he would still be in time for the later numbers.  
+The three pictures I have received are so truly good that I should 
+bitterly regret having the volume imperfectly equipped.  They are 
+the best illustrations I have seen since I don't know when.
+
+3.  MONEY.  To-morrow the mail comes in, and I hope it will bring 
+me money either from you or home, but I will add a word on that 
+point.
+
+4.  My address will be Honolulu - no longer Yacht CASCO, which I am 
+packing off - till probably April.
+
+5.  As soon as I am through with THE MASTER, I shall finish the 
+GAME OF BLUFF - now rechristened THE WRONG BOX.  This I wish to 
+sell, cash down.  It is of course copyright in the States; and I 
+offer it to you for five thousand dollars.  Please reply on this by 
+return.  Also please tell the typewriter who was so good as to be 
+amused by our follies that I am filled with admiration for his 
+piece of work.
+
+6.  MASTER again.  Please see that I haven't the name of the 
+Governor of New York wrong (1764 is the date) in part ten.  I have 
+no book of reference to put me right.  Observe you now have up to 
+August inclusive in hand, so you should begin to feel happy.
+
+Is this all?  I wonder, and fear not.  Henry the Trader has not yet 
+turned up:  I hope he may to-morrow, when we expect a mail.  Not 
+one word of business have I received either from the States or 
+England, nor anything in the shape of coin; which leaves me in a 
+fine uncertainty and quite penniless on these islands.  H.M. (who 
+is a gentleman of a courtly order and much tinctured with letters) 
+is very polite; I may possibly ask for the position of palace 
+doorkeeper.  My voyage has been a singular mixture of good and ill-
+fortune.  As far as regards interest and material, the fortune has 
+been admirable; as far as regards time, money, and impediments of 
+all kinds, from squalls and calms to rotten masts and sprung spars, 
+simply detestable.  I hope you will be interested to hear of two 
+volumes on the wing.  The cruise itself, you are to know, will make 
+a big volume with appendices; some of it will first appear as (what 
+they call) letters in some of M'Clure's papers.  I believe the book 
+when ready will have a fair measure of serious interest:  I have 
+had great fortune in finding old songs and ballads and stories, for 
+instance, and have many singular instances of life in the last few 
+years among these islands.
+
+The second volume is of ballads.  You know TICONDEROGA.  I have 
+written another:  THE FEAST OF FAMINE, a Marquesan story.  A third 
+is half done:  THE SONG OF RAHERO, a genuine Tahitian legend.  A 
+fourth dances before me.  A Hawaiian fellow this, THE PRIEST'S 
+DROUGHT, or some such name.  If, as I half suspect, I get enough 
+subjects out of the islands, TICONDEROGA shall be suppressed, and 
+we'll call the volume SOUTH SEA BALLADS.  In health, spirits, 
+renewed interest in life, and, I do believe, refreshed capacity for 
+work, the cruise has proved a wise folly.  Still we're not home, 
+and (although the friend of a crowned head) are penniless upon 
+these (as one of my correspondents used to call them) 'lovely but 
+FATIL islands.'  By the way, who wrote the LION OF THE NILE?  My 
+dear sir, that is Something Like.  Overdone in bits, it has a true 
+thought and a true ring of language.  Beg the anonymous from me, to 
+delete (when he shall republish) the two last verses, and end on 
+'the lion of the Nile.'  One Lampman has a good sonnet on a 'Winter 
+Evening' in, I think, the same number:  he seems ill named, but I 
+am tempted to hope a man is not always answerable for his name.  
+For instance, you would think you knew mine.  No such matter.  It 
+is - at your service and Mr. Scribner's and that of all of the 
+faithful - Teriitera (pray pronounce Tayree-Tayra) or (GALLICE) 
+Teri-tera.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+More when the mail shall come.
+
+I am an idiot.  I want to be clear on one point.  Some of Hole's 
+drawings must of course be too late; and yet they seem to me so 
+excellent I would fain have the lot complete.  It is one thing for 
+you to pay for drawings which are to appear in that soul-swallowing 
+machine, your magazine:  quite another if they are only to 
+illustrate a volume.  I wish you to take a brisk (even a fiery) 
+decision on the point; and let Hole know.  To resume my desultory 
+song, I desire you would carry the same fire (hereinbefore 
+suggested) into your decision on the WRONG BOX; for in my present 
+state of benighted ignorance as to my affairs for the last seven 
+months - I know not even whether my house or my mother's house have 
+been let - I desire to see something definite in front of me - 
+outside the lot of palace doorkeeper.  I believe the said WRONG BOX 
+is a real lark; in which, of course, I may be grievously deceived; 
+but the typewriter is with me.  I may also be deceived as to the 
+numbers of THE MASTER now going and already gone; but to me they 
+seem First Chop, sir, First Chop.  I hope I shall pull off that 
+damned ending; but it still depresses me:  this is your doing, Mr. 
+Burlingame:  you would have it there and then, and I fear it - I 
+fear that ending.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+HONOLULU, FEBRUARY 8TH, 1889.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES, - Here we are at Honolulu, and have dismissed the 
+yacht, and lie here till April anyway, in a fine state of haze, 
+which I am yet in hopes some letter of yours (still on the way) may 
+dissipate.  No money, and not one word as to money!  However, I 
+have got the yacht paid off in triumph, I think; and though we stay 
+here impignorate, it should not be for long, even if you bring us 
+no extra help from home.  The cruise has been a great success, both 
+as to matter, fun, and health; and yet, Lord, man! we're pleased to 
+be ashore!  Yon was a very fine voyage from Tahiti up here, but - 
+the dry land's a fine place too, and we don't mind squalls any 
+longer, and eh, man, that's a great thing.  Blow, blow, thou wintry 
+wind, thou hast done me no appreciable harm beyond a few grey 
+hairs!  Altogether, this foolhardy venture is achieved; and if I 
+have but nine months of life and any kind of health, I shall have 
+both eaten my cake and got it back again with usury.  But, man, 
+there have been days when I felt guilty, and thought I was in no 
+position for the head of a house.
+
+Your letter and accounts are doubtless at S. F., and will reach me 
+in course.  My wife is no great shakes; she is the one who has 
+suffered most.  My mother has had a Huge Old Time; Lloyd is first 
+chop; I so well that I do not know myself - sea-bathing, if you 
+please, and what is far more dangerous, entertaining and being 
+entertained by His Majesty here, who is a very fine intelligent 
+fellow, but O, Charles! what a crop for the drink!  He carries it, 
+too, like a mountain with a sparrow on its shoulders.  We 
+calculated five bottles of champagne in three hours and a half 
+(afternoon), and the sovereign quite presentable, although 
+perceptibly more dignified at the end. . . .
+
+The extraordinary health I enjoy and variety of interests I find 
+among these islands would tempt me to remain here; only for Lloyd, 
+who is not well placed in such countries for a permanency; and a 
+little for Colvin, to whom I feel I owe a sort of filial duty.  And 
+these two considerations will no doubt bring me back - to go to bed 
+again - in England. - Yours ever affectionately,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO R. A. M. STEVENSON
+
+
+
+HONOLULU, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS, FEBRUARY 1889.
+
+MY DEAR BOB, - My extremely foolhardy venture is practically over.  
+How foolhardy it was I don't think I realised.  We had a very small 
+schooner, and, like most yachts, over-rigged and over-sparred, and 
+like many American yachts on a very dangerous sail plan.  The 
+waters we sailed in are, of course, entirely unlighted, and very 
+badly charted; in the Dangerous Archipelago, through which we were 
+fools enough to go, we were perfectly in ignorance of where we were 
+for a whole night and half the next day, and this in the midst of 
+invisible islands and rapid and variable currents; and we were 
+lucky when we found our whereabouts at last.  We have twice had all 
+we wanted in the way of squalls:  once, as I came on deck, I found 
+the green sea over the cockpit coamings and running down the 
+companion like a brook to meet me; at that same moment the foresail 
+sheet jammed and the captain had no knife; this was the only 
+occasion on the cruise that ever I set a hand to a rope, but I 
+worked like a Trojan, judging the possibility of haemorrhage better 
+than the certainty of drowning.  Another time I saw a rather 
+singular thing:  our whole ship's company as pale as paper from the 
+captain to the cook; we had a black squall astern on the port side 
+and a white squall ahead to starboard; the complication passed off 
+innocuous, the black squall only fetching us with its tail, and the 
+white one slewing off somewhere else.  Twice we were a long while 
+(days) in the close vicinity of hurricane weather, but again luck 
+prevailed, and we saw none of it.  These are dangers incident to 
+these seas and small craft.  What was an amazement, and at the same 
+time a powerful stroke of luck, both our masts were rotten, and we 
+found it out - I was going to say in time, but it was stranger and 
+luckier than that.  The head of the mainmast hung over so that 
+hands were afraid to go to the helm; and less than three weeks 
+before - I am not sure it was more than a fortnight - we had been 
+nearly twelve hours beating off the lee shore of Eimeo (or Moorea, 
+next island to Tahiti) in half a gale of wind with a violent head 
+sea:  she would neither tack nor wear once, and had to be boxed off 
+with the mainsail - you can imagine what an ungodly show of kites 
+we carried - and yet the mast stood.  The very day after that, in 
+the southern bight of Tahiti, we had a near squeak, the wind 
+suddenly coming calm; the reefs were close in with, my eye! what a 
+surf!  The pilot thought we were gone, and the captain had a boat 
+cleared, when a lucky squall came to our rescue.  My wife, hearing 
+the order given about the boats, remarked to my mother, 'Isn't that 
+nice?  We shall soon be ashore!'  Thus does the female mind 
+unconsciously skirt along the verge of eternity.  Our voyage up 
+here was most disastrous - calms, squalls, head sea, waterspouts of 
+rain, hurricane weather all about, and we in the midst of the 
+hurricane season, when even the hopeful builder and owner of the 
+yacht had pronounced these seas unfit for her.  We ran out of food, 
+and were quite given up for lost in Honolulu:  people had ceased to 
+speak to Belle about the CASCO, as a deadly subject.
+
+But the perils of the deep were part of the programme; and though I 
+am very glad to be done with them for a while and comfortably 
+ashore, where a squall does not matter a snuff to any one, I feel 
+pretty sure I shall want to get to sea again ere long.  The 
+dreadful risk I took was financial, and double-headed.  First, I 
+had to sink a lot of money in the cruise, and if I didn't get 
+health, how was I to get it back?  I have got health to a wonderful 
+extent; and as I have the most interesting matter for my book, bar 
+accidents, I ought to get all I have laid out and a profit.  But, 
+second (what I own I never considered till too late), there was the 
+danger of collisions, of damages and heavy repairs, of disablement, 
+towing, and salvage; indeed, the cruise might have turned round and 
+cost me double.  Nor will this danger be quite over till I hear the 
+yacht is in San Francisco; for though I have shaken the dust of her 
+deck from my feet, I fear (as a point of law) she is still mine 
+till she gets there.
+
+From my point of view, up to now the cruise has been a wonderful 
+success.  I never knew the world was so amusing.  On the last 
+voyage we had grown so used to sea-life that no one wearied, though 
+it lasted a full month, except Fanny, who is always ill.  All the 
+time our visits to the islands have been more like dreams than 
+realities:  the people, the life, the beachcombers, the old stories 
+and songs I have picked up, so interesting; the climate, the 
+scenery, and (in some places) the women, so beautiful.  The women 
+are handsomest in Tahiti, the men in the Marquesas; both as fine 
+types as can be imagined.  Lloyd reminds me, I have not told you 
+one characteristic incident of the cruise from a semi-naval point 
+of view.  One night we were going ashore in Anaho Bay; the most 
+awful noise on deck; the breakers distinctly audible in the cabin; 
+and there I had to sit below, entertaining in my best style a 
+negroid native chieftain, much the worse for rum!  You can imagine 
+the evening's pleasure.
+
+This naval report on cruising in the South Seas would be incomplete 
+without one other trait.  On our voyage up here I came one day into 
+the dining-room, the hatch in the floor was open, the ship's boy 
+was below with a baler, and two of the hands were carrying buckets 
+as for a fire; this meant that the pumps had ceased working.
+
+One stirring day was that in which we sighted Hawaii.  It blew 
+fair, but very strong; we carried jib, foresail, and mainsail, all 
+single-reefed, and she carried her lee rail under water and flew.  
+The swell, the heaviest I have ever been out in - I tried in vain 
+to estimate the height, AT LEAST fifteen feet - came tearing after 
+us about a point and a half off the wind.  We had the best hand - 
+old Louis - at the wheel; and, really, he did nobly, and had noble 
+luck, for it never caught us once.  At times it seemed we must have 
+it; Louis would look over his shoulder with the queerest look and 
+dive down his neck into his shoulders; and then it missed us 
+somehow, and only sprays came over our quarter, turning the little 
+outside lane of deck into a mill race as deep as to the cockpit 
+coamings.  I never remember anything more delightful and exciting.  
+Pretty soon after we were lying absolutely becalmed under the lee 
+of Hawaii, of which we had been warned; and the captain never 
+confessed he had done it on purpose, but when accused, he smiled.  
+Really, I suppose he did quite right, for we stood committed to a 
+dangerous race, and to bring her to the wind would have been rather 
+a heart-sickening manoeuvre.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MARCEL SCHWOB
+
+
+
+HONOLULU, SANDWICH ISLANDS, FEBRUARY 8TH, 1889.
+
+DEAR SIR, - I thank you - from the midst of such a flurry as you 
+can imagine, with seven months' accumulated correspondence on my 
+table - for your two friendly and clever letters.  Pray write me 
+again.  I shall be home in May or June, and not improbably shall 
+come to Paris in the summer.  Then we can talk; or in the interval 
+I may be able to write, which is to-day out of the question.  Pray 
+take a word from a man of crushing occupations, and count it as a 
+volume.  Your little CONTE is delightful.  Ah yes, you are right, I 
+love the eighteenth century; and so do you, and have not listened 
+to its voice in vain. - The Hunted One,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+HONOLULU, 8TH MARCH 1889.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES, - At last I have the accounts:  the Doer has done 
+excellently, and in the words of -, 'I reciprocate every step of 
+your behaviour.' . .  I send a letter for Bob in your care, as I 
+don't know his Liverpool address, by which (for he is to show you 
+part of it) you will see we have got out of this adventure - or 
+hope to have - with wonderful fortune.  I have the retrospective 
+horrors on me when I think of the liabilities I incurred; but, 
+thank God, I think I'm in port again, and I have found one climate 
+in which I can enjoy life.  Even Honolulu is too cold for me; but 
+the south isles were a heaven upon earth to a puir, catarrhal party 
+like Johns'one.  We think, as Tahiti is too complete a banishment, 
+to try Madeira.  It's only a week from England, good 
+communications, and I suspect in climate and scenery not unlike our 
+dear islands; in people, alas! there can be no comparison.  But 
+friends could go, and I could come in summer, so I should not be 
+quite cut off.
+
+Lloyd and I have finished a story, THE WRONG BOX.  If it is not 
+funny, I am sure I do not know what is.  I have split over writing 
+it.  Since I have been here, I have been toiling like a galley 
+slave:  three numbers of THE MASTER to rewrite, five chapters of 
+the WRONG BOX to write and rewrite, and about five hundred lines of 
+a narrative poem to write, rewrite, and re-rewrite.  Now I have THE 
+MASTER waiting me for its continuation, two numbers more; when 
+that's done, I shall breathe.  This spasm of activity has been 
+chequered with champagne parties:  Happy and Glorious, Hawaii Ponoi 
+paua:  kou moi - (Native Hawaiians, dote upon your monarch!) 
+Hawaiian God save the King.  (In addition to my other labours, I am 
+learning the language with a native moonshee.)  Kalakaua is a 
+terrible companion; a bottle of fizz is like a glass of sherry to 
+him, he thinks nothing of five or six in an afternoon as a whet for 
+dinner.  You should see a photograph of our party after an 
+afternoon with H. H. M.:  my! what a crew! - Yours ever 
+affectionately,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+
+HONOLULU [MARCH 1889].
+
+MY DEAR JAMES, - Yes - I own up - I am untrue to friendship and 
+(what is less, but still considerable) to civilisation.  I am not 
+coming home for another year.  There it is, cold and bald, and now 
+you won't believe in me at all, and serve me right (says you) and 
+the devil take me.  But look here, and judge me tenderly.  I have 
+had more fun and pleasure of my life these past months than ever 
+before, and more health than any time in ten long years.  And even 
+here in Honolulu I have withered in the cold; and this precious 
+deep is filled with islands, which we may still visit; and though 
+the sea is a deathful place, I like to be there, and like squalls 
+(when they are over); and to draw near to a new island, I cannot 
+say how much I like.  In short, I take another year of this sort of 
+life, and mean to try to work down among the poisoned arrows, and 
+mean (if it may be) to come back again when the thing is through, 
+and converse with Henry James as heretofore; and in the meanwhile 
+issue directions to H. J. to write to me once more.  Let him 
+address here at Honolulu, for my views are vague; and if it is sent 
+here it will follow and find me, if I am to be found; and if I am 
+not to be found the man James will have done his duty, and we shall 
+be at the bottom of the sea, where no post-office clerk can be 
+expected to discover us, or languishing on a coral island, the 
+philosophic drudges of some barbarian potentate:  perchance, of an 
+American Missionary.  My wife has just sent to Mrs. Sitwell a 
+translation (TANT BIEN QUE MAL) of a letter I have had from my 
+chief friend in this part of the world:  go and see her, and get a 
+hearing of it; it will do you good; it is a better method of 
+correspondence 'than even Henry James's.  I jest, but seriously it 
+is a strange thing for a tough, sick, middle-aged scrivener like R. 
+L. S. to receive a letter so conceived from a man fifty years old, 
+a leading politician, a crack orator, and the great wit of his 
+village:  boldly say, 'the highly popular M.P. of Tautira.'  My 
+nineteenth century strikes here, and lies alongside of something 
+beautiful and ancient.  I think the receipt of such a letter might 
+humble, shall I say even -? and for me, I would rather have 
+received it than written REDGAUNTLET or the SIXTH AENEID.  All 
+told, if my books have enabled or helped me to make this voyage, to 
+know Rui, and to have received such a letter, they have (in the old 
+prefatorial expression) not been writ in vain.  It would seem from 
+this that I have been not so much humbled as puffed up; but, I 
+assure you, I have in fact been both.  A little of what that letter 
+says is my own earning; not all, but yet a little; and the little 
+makes me proud, and all the rest ashamed; and in the contrast, how 
+much more beautiful altogether is the ancient man than him of to-
+day!
+
+Well, well, Henry James is pretty good, though he IS of the 
+nineteenth century, and that glaringly.  And to curry favour with 
+him, I wish I could be more explicit; but, indeed, I am still of 
+necessity extremely vague, and cannot tell what I am to do, nor 
+where I am to go for some while yet.  As soon as I am sure, you 
+shall hear.  All are fairly well - the wife, your countrywoman, 
+least of all; troubles are not entirely wanting; but on the whole 
+we prosper, and we are all affectionately yours,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+
+HONOLULU, APRIL 2ND, 1889.
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN, - I am beginning to be ashamed of writing on to you 
+without the least acknowledgment, like a tramp; but I do not care - 
+I am hardened; and whatever be the cause of your silence, I mean to 
+write till all is blue.  I am outright ashamed of my news, which is 
+that we are not coming home for another year.  I cannot but hope it 
+may continue the vast improvement of my health:  I think it good 
+for Fanny and Lloyd; and we have all a taste for this wandering and 
+dangerous life.  My mother I send home, to my relief, as this part 
+of our cruise will be (if we can carry it out) rather difficult in 
+places.  Here is the idea:  about the middle of June (unless the 
+Boston Board objects) we sail from Honolulu in the missionary ship 
+(barquentine auxiliary steamer) MORNING STAR:  she takes us through 
+the Gilberts and Marshalls, and drops us (this is my great idea) on 
+Ponape, one of the volcanic islands of the Carolines.  Here we stay 
+marooned among a doubtful population, with a Spanish vice-governor 
+and five native kings, and a sprinkling of missionaries all at 
+loggerheads, on the chance of fetching a passage to Sydney in a 
+trader, a labour ship, or (maybe, but this appears too bright) a 
+ship of war.  If we can't get the MORNING STAR (and the Board has 
+many reasons that I can see for refusing its permission) I mean to 
+try to fetch Fiji, hire a schooner there, do the Fijis and 
+Friendlies, hit the course of the RICHMOND at Tonga Tabu, make back 
+by Tahiti, and so to S. F., and home:  perhaps in June 1890.  For 
+the latter part of the cruise will likely be the same in either 
+case.  You can see for yourself how much variety and adventure this 
+promises, and that it is not devoid of danger at the best; but if 
+we can pull it off in safety, gives me a fine book of travel, and 
+Lloyd a fine lecture and diorama, which should vastly better our 
+finances.
+
+I feel as if I were untrue to friendship; believe me, Colvin, when 
+I look forward to this absence of another year, my conscience sinks 
+at thought of the Monument; but I think you will pardon me if you 
+consider how much this tropical weather mends my health.  Remember 
+me as I was at home, and think of me sea-bathing and walking about, 
+as jolly as a sandboy:  you will own the temptation is strong; and 
+as the scheme, bar fatal accidents, is bound to pay into the 
+bargain, sooner or later, it seems it would be madness to come home 
+now, with an imperfect book, no illustrations to speak of, no 
+diorama, and perhaps fall sick again by autumn.  I do not think I 
+delude myself when I say the tendency to catarrh has visibly 
+diminished.
+
+It is a singular tiring that as I was packing up old papers ere I 
+left Skerryvore, I came on the prophecies of a drunken Highland 
+sibyl, when I was seventeen.  She said I was to be very happy, to 
+visit America, and TO BE MUCH UPON THE SEA.  It seems as if it were 
+coming true with a vengeance.  Also, do you remember my strong, 
+old, rooted belief that I shall die by drowning?  I don't want that 
+to come true, though it is an easy death; but it occurs to me 
+oddly, with these long chances in front.  I cannot say why I like 
+the sea; no man is more cynically and constantly alive to its 
+perils; I regard it as the highest form of gambling; and yet I love 
+the sea as much as I hate gambling.  Fine, clean emotions; a world 
+all and always beautiful; air better than wine; interest 
+unflagging; there is upon the whole no better life. - Yours ever,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+[HONOLULU, APRIL 1889.]
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - This is to announce the most prodigious 
+change of programme.  I have seen so much of the South Seas that I 
+desire to see more, and I get so much health here that I dread a 
+return to our vile climates.  I have applied accordingly to the 
+missionary folk to let me go round in the MORNING STAR; and if the 
+Boston Board should refuse, I shall get somehow to Fiji, hire a 
+trading schooner, and see the Fijis and Friendlies and Samoa.  He 
+would be a South Seayer, Mr. Burlingame.  Of course, if I go in the 
+MORNING STAR, I see all the eastern (or western?) islands.
+
+Before I sail, I shall make out to let you have the last of THE 
+MASTER:  though I tell you it sticks! - and I hope to have had some 
+proofs forbye, of the verses anyway.  And now to business.
+
+I want (if you can find them) in the British sixpenny edition, if 
+not, in some equally compact and portable shape - Seaside Library, 
+for instance - the Waverley Novels entire, or as entire as you can 
+get 'em, and the following of Marryat:  PHANTOM SHIP, PETER SIMPLE, 
+PERCIVAL KEENE, PRIVATEERSMAN, CHILDREN OF THE NEW FOREST, FRANK 
+MILDMAY, NEWTON FORSTER, DOG FIEND (SNARLEYYOW).  Also MIDSHIPMAN 
+EASY, KINGSBURN, Carlyle's FRENCH REVOLUTION, Motley's DUTCH 
+REPUBLIC, Lang's LETTERS ON LITERATURE, a complete set of my works, 
+JENKIN, in duplicate; also FAMILIAR STUDIES, ditto.
+
+I have to thank you for the accounts, which are satisfactory 
+indeed, and for the cheque for $1000.  Another account will have 
+come and gone before I see you.  I hope it will be equally roseate 
+in colour.  I am quite worked out, and this cursed end of THE 
+MASTER hangs over me like the arm of the gallows; but it is always 
+darkest before dawn, and no doubt the clouds will soon rise; but it 
+is a difficult thing to write, above all in Mackellarese; and I 
+cannot yet see my way clear.  If I pull this off, THE MASTER will 
+be a pretty good novel or I am the more deceived; and even if I 
+don't pull it off, it'll still have some stuff in it.
+
+We shall remain here until the middle of June anyway; but my mother 
+leaves for Europe early in May.  Hence our mail should continue to 
+come here; but not hers.  I will let you know my next address, 
+which will probably be Sydney.  If we get on the MORNING STAR, I 
+propose at present to get marooned on Ponape, and take my chance of 
+getting a passage to Australia.  It will leave times and seasons 
+mighty vague, and the cruise is risky; but I shall know something 
+of the South Seas when it is done, or else the South Seas will 
+contain all there is of me.  It should give me a fine book of 
+travels, anyway.
+
+Low will probably come and ask some dollars of you.  Pray let him 
+have them, they are for outfit.  O, another complete set of my 
+books should go to Captain A. H. Otis, care of Dr. Merritt, Yacht 
+CASCO, Oakland, Cal.  In haste,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
+
+
+
+HONOLULU, APRIL 6TH, 1889.
+
+MY DEAR MISS BOODLE, - Nobody writes a better letter than my 
+Gamekeeper:  so gay, so pleasant, so engagingly particular, 
+answering (by some delicate instinct) all the questions she 
+suggests.  It is a shame you should get such a poor return as I can 
+make, from a mind essentially and originally incapable of the art 
+epistolary.  I would let the paper-cutter take my place; but I am 
+sorry to say the little wooden seaman did after the manner of 
+seamen, and deserted in the Societies.  The place he seems to have 
+stayed at - seems, for his absence was not observed till we were 
+near the Equator - was Tautira, and, I assure you, he displayed 
+good taste, Tautira being as 'nigh hand heaven' as a paper-cutter 
+or anybody has a right to expect.
+
+I think all our friends will be very angry with us, and I give the 
+grounds of their probable displeasure bluntly - we are not coming 
+home for another year.  My mother returns next month.  Fanny, 
+Lloyd, and I push on again among the islands on a trading schooner, 
+the EQUATOR - first for the Gilbert group, which we shall have an 
+opportunity to explore thoroughly; then, if occasion serve, to the 
+Marshalls and Carolines; and if occasion (or money) fail, to Samoa, 
+and back to Tahiti.  I own we are deserters, but we have excuses.  
+You cannot conceive how these climates agree with the wretched 
+house-plant of Skerryvore:  he wonders to find himself sea-bathing, 
+and cutting about the world loose, like a grown-up person.  They 
+agree with Fanny too, who does not suffer from her rheumatism, and 
+with Lloyd also.  And the interest of the islands is endless; and 
+the sea, though I own it is a fearsome place, is very delightful.  
+We had applied for places in the American missionary ship, the 
+MORNING STAR, but this trading schooner is a far preferable idea, 
+giving us more time and a thousandfold more liberty; so we 
+determined to cut off the missionaries with a shilling.
+
+The Sandwich Islands do not interest us very much; we live here, 
+oppressed with civilisation, and look for good things in the 
+future.  But it would surprise you if you came out to-night from 
+Honolulu (all shining with electric lights, and all in a bustle 
+from the arrival of the mail, which is to carry you these lines) 
+and crossed the long wooden causeway along the beach, and came out 
+on the road through Kapiolani park, and seeing a gate in the 
+palings, with a tub of gold-fish by the wayside, entered casually 
+in.  The buildings stand in three groups by the edge of the beach, 
+where an angry little spitfire sea continually spirts and thrashes 
+with impotent irascibility, the big seas breaking further out upon 
+the reef.  The first is a small house, with a very large summer 
+parlour, or LANAI, as they call it here, roofed, but practically 
+open.  There you will find the lamps burning and the family sitting 
+about the table, dinner just done:  my mother, my wife, Lloyd, 
+Belle, my wife's daughter, Austin her child, and to-night (by way 
+of rarity) a guest.  All about the walls our South Sea curiosities, 
+war clubs, idols, pearl shells, stone axes, etc.; and the walls are 
+only a small part of a lanai, the rest being glazed or latticed 
+windows, or mere open space.  You will see there no sign of the 
+Squire, however; and being a person of a humane disposition, you 
+will only glance in over the balcony railing at the merry-makers in 
+the summer parlour, and proceed further afield after the Exile.  
+You look round, there is beautiful green turf, many trees of an 
+outlandish sort that drop thorns - look out if your feet are bare; 
+but I beg your pardon, you have not been long enough in the South 
+Seas - and many oleanders in full flower.  The next group of 
+buildings is ramshackle, and quite dark; you make out a coach-house 
+door, and look in - only some cocoanuts; you try round to the left 
+and come to the sea front, where Venus and the moon are making 
+luminous tracks on the water, and a great swell rolls and shines on 
+the outer reef; and here is another door - all these places open 
+from the outside - and you go in, and find photography, tubs of 
+water, negatives steeping, a tap, and a chair and an inkbottle, 
+where my wife is supposed to write; round a little further, a third 
+door, entering which you find a picture upon the easel and a table 
+sticky with paints; a fourth door admits you to a sort of court, 
+where there is a hen sitting - I believe on a fallacious egg.  No 
+sign of the Squire in all this.  But right opposite the studio door 
+you have observed a third little house, from whose open door 
+lamplight streams and makes hay of the strong moonlight shadows.  
+You had supposed it made no part of the grounds, for a fence runs 
+round it lined with oleander; but as the Squire is nowhere else, is 
+it not just possible he may be here?  It is a grim little wooden 
+shanty; cobwebs bedeck it; friendly mice inhabit its recesses; the 
+mailed cockroach walks upon the wall; so also, I regret to say, the 
+scorpion.  Herein are two pallet beds, two mosquito curtains, 
+strung to the pitch-boards of the roof, two tables laden with books 
+and manuscripts, three chairs, and, in one of the beds, the Squire 
+busy writing to yourself, as it chances, and just at this moment 
+somewhat bitten by mosquitoes.  He has just set fire to the insect 
+powder, and will be all right in no time; but just now he 
+contemplates large white blisters, and would like to scratch them, 
+but knows better.  The house is not bare; it has been inhabited by 
+Kanakas, and - you know what children are! - the bare wood walls 
+are pasted over with pages from the GRAPHIC, HARPER'S WEEKLY, etc.  
+The floor is matted, and I am bound to say the matting is filthy.  
+There are two windows and two doors, one of which is condemned; on 
+the panels of that last a sheet of paper is pinned up, and covered 
+with writing.  I cull a few plums:-
+
+
+'A duck-hammock for each person.
+A patent organ like the commandant's at Taiohae.
+Cheap and bad cigars for presents.
+Revolvers.
+Permanganate of potass.
+Liniment for the head and sulphur.
+Fine tooth-comb.'
+
+
+What do you think this is?  Simply life in the South Seas 
+foreshortened.  These are a few of our desiderata for the next 
+trip, which we jot down as they occur.
+
+There, I have really done my best and tried to send something like 
+a letter - one letter in return for all your dozens.  Pray remember 
+us all to yourself, Mrs. Boodle, and the rest of your house.  I do 
+hope your mother will be better when this comes.  I shall write and 
+give you a new address when I have made up my mind as to the most 
+probable, and I do beg you will continue to write from time to time 
+and give us airs from home.  To-morrow - think of it - I must be 
+off by a quarter to eight to drive in to the palace and breakfast 
+with his Hawaiian Majesty at 8.30:  I shall be dead indeed.  Please 
+give my news to Scott, I trust he is better; give him my warm 
+regards.  To you we all send all kinds of things, and I am the 
+absentee Squire,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+HONOLULU, APRIL 1889.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES, - As usual, your letter is as good as a cordial, 
+and I thank you for it, and all your care, kindness, and generous 
+and thoughtful friendship, from my heart.  I was truly glad to hear 
+a word of Colvin, whose long silence has terrified me; and glad to 
+hear that you condoned the notion of my staying longer in the South 
+Seas, for I have decided in that sense.  The first idea was to go 
+in the MORNING STAR, missionary ship; but now I have found a 
+trading schooner, the EQUATOR, which is to call for me here early 
+in June and carry us through the Gilberts.  What will happen then, 
+the Lord knows.  My mother does not accompany us:  she leaves here 
+for home early in May, and you will hear of us from her; but not, I 
+imagine, anything more definite.  We shall get dumped on 
+Butaritari, and whether we manage to go on to the Marshalls and 
+Carolines, or whether we fall back on Samoa, Heaven must decide; 
+but I mean to fetch back into the course of the RICHMOND - (to 
+think you don't know what the RICHMOND is! - the steamer of the 
+Eastern South Seas, joining New Zealand, Tongatabu, the Samoas, 
+Taheite, and Rarotonga, and carrying by last advices sheep in the 
+saloon!) - into the course of the RICHMOND and make Taheite again 
+on the home track.  Would I like to see the SCOTS OBSERVER?  
+Wouldn't I not?  But whaur?  I'm direckit at space.  They have nae 
+post offishes at the Gilberts, and as for the Car'lines!  Ye see, 
+Mr. Baxter, we're no just in the punkshewal CENTRE o' civ'lisation.  
+But pile them up for me, and when I've decided on an address, I'll 
+let you ken, and ye'll can send them stavin' after me. - Ever your 
+affectionate,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+HONOLULU, 10TH MAY 1889.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES, - I am appalled to gather from your last just to 
+hand that you have felt so much concern about the letter.  Pray 
+dismiss it from your mind.  But I think you scarce appreciate how 
+disagreeable it is to have your private affairs and private 
+unguarded expressions getting into print.  It would soon sicken any 
+one of writing letters.  I have no doubt that letter was very 
+wisely selected, but it just shows how things crop up.  There was a 
+raging jealousy between the two yachts; our captain was nearly in a 
+fight over it.  However, no more; and whatever you think, my dear 
+fellow, do not suppose me angry with you or -; although I was 
+ANNOYED AT THE CIRCUMSTANCE - a very different thing.  But it is 
+difficult to conduct life by letter, and I continually feel I may 
+be drifting into some matter of offence, in which my heart takes no 
+part.
+
+I must now turn to a point of business.  This new cruise of ours is 
+somewhat venturesome; and I think it needful to warn you not to be 
+in a hurry to suppose us dead.  In these ill-charted seas, it is 
+quite on the cards we might be cast on some unvisited, or very 
+rarely visited, island; that there we might lie for a long time, 
+even years, unheard of; and yet turn up smiling at the hinder end.  
+So do not let me be 'rowpit' till you get some certainty we have 
+gone to Davie Jones in a squall, or graced the feast of some 
+barbarian in the character of Long Pig.
+
+I have just been a week away alone on the lee coast of Hawaii, the 
+only white creature in many miles, riding five and a half hours one 
+day, living with a native, seeing four lepers shipped off to 
+Molokai, hearing native causes, and giving my opinion as AMICUS 
+CURIAE as to the interpretation of a statute in English; a lovely 
+week among God's best - at least God's sweetest works - 
+Polynesians.  It has bettered me greatly.  If I could only stay 
+there the time that remains, I could get my work done and be happy; 
+but the care of my family keeps me in vile Honolulu, where I am 
+always out of sorts, amidst heat and cold and cesspools and beastly 
+HAOLES.  What is a haole?  You are one; and so, I am sorry to say, 
+am I.  After so long a dose of whites, it was a blessing to get 
+among Polynesians again even for a week.
+
+Well, Charles, there are waur haoles than yoursel', I'll say that 
+for ye; and trust before I sail I shall get another letter with 
+more about yourself. - Ever your affectionate friend
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO W. H. LOW
+
+
+
+HONOLULU, (ABOUT) 20TH MAY '89.
+
+MY DEAR LOW, - The goods have come; many daughters have done 
+virtuously, but thou excellest them all. - I have at length 
+finished THE MASTER; it has been a sore cross to me; but now he is 
+buried, his body's under hatches, - his soul, if there is any hell 
+to go to, gone to hell; and I forgive him:  it is harder to forgive 
+Burlingame for having induced me to begin the publication, or 
+myself for suffering the induction. - Yes, I think Hole has done 
+finely; it will be one of the most adequately illustrated books of 
+our generation; he gets the note, he tells the story - MY story:  I 
+know only one failure - the Master standing on the beach. - You 
+must have a letter for me at Sydney - till further notice.  
+Remember me to Mrs. Will. H., the godlike sculptor, and any of the 
+faithful.  If you want to cease to be a republican, see my little 
+Kaiulani, as she goes through - but she is gone already.  You will 
+die a red, I wear the colours of that little royal maiden, NOUS 
+ALLONS CHANTER A LA RONDE, SI VOUS VOULEZ! only she is not blonde 
+by several chalks, though she is but a half-blood, and the wrong 
+half Edinburgh Scots like mysel'.  But, O Low, I love the 
+Polynesian:  this civilisation of ours is a dingy, ungentlemanly 
+business; it drops out too much of man, and too much of that the 
+very beauty of the poor beast:  who has his beauties in spite of 
+Zola and Co.  As usual, here is a whole letter with no news:  I am 
+a bloodless, inhuman dog; and no doubt Zola is a better 
+correspondent. - Long live your fine old English admiral - yours, I 
+mean - the U.S.A. one at Samoa; I wept tears and loved myself and 
+mankind when I read of him:  he is not too much civilised.  And 
+there was Gordon, too; and there are others, beyond question.  But 
+if you could live, the only white folk, in a Polynesian village; 
+and drink that warm, light VIN DU PAYS of human affection, and 
+enjoy that simple dignity of all about you - I will not gush, for I 
+am now in my fortieth year, which seems highly unjust, but there it 
+is, Mr. Low, and the Lord enlighten your affectionate
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MRS. R. L. STEVENSON
+
+
+
+KALAWAO, MOLOKAI [MAY 1889].
+
+DEAR FANNY, - I had a lovely sail up.  Captain Cameron and Mr. 
+Gilfillan, both born in the States, yet the first still with a 
+strong Highland, and the second still with a strong Lowland accent, 
+were good company; the night was warm, the victuals plain but good.  
+Mr. Gilfillan gave me his berth, and I slept well, though I heard 
+the sisters sick in the next stateroom, poor souls.  Heavy rolling 
+woke me in the morning; I turned in all standing, so went right on 
+the upper deck.  The day was on the peep out of a low morning bank, 
+and we were wallowing along under stupendous cliffs.  As the lights 
+brightened, we could see certain abutments and buttresses on their 
+front where wood clustered and grass grew brightly.  But the whole 
+brow seemed quite impassable, and my heart sank at the sight.  Two 
+thousand feet of rock making 19 degrees (the Captain guesses) 
+seemed quite beyond my powers.  However, I had come so far; and, to 
+tell you the truth, I was so cowed with fear and disgust that I 
+dared not go back on the adventure in the interests of my own self-
+respect.  Presently we came up with the leper promontory:  lowland, 
+quite bare and bleak and harsh, a little town of wooden houses, two 
+churches, a landing-stair, all unsightly, sour, northerly, lying 
+athwart the sunrise, with the great wall of the pali cutting the 
+world out on the south.  Our lepers were sent on the first boat, 
+about a dozen, one poor child very horrid, one white man, leaving a 
+large grown family behind him in Honolulu, and then into the second 
+stepped the sisters and myself.  I do not know how it would have 
+been with me had the sisters not been there.  My horror of the 
+horrible is about my weakest point; but the moral loveliness at my 
+elbow blotted all else out; and when I found that one of them was 
+crying, poor soul, quietly under her veil, I cried a little myself; 
+then I felt as right as a trivet, only a little crushed to be there 
+so uselessly.  I thought it was a sin and a shame she should feel 
+unhappy; I turned round to her, and said something like this:  
+'Ladies, God Himself is here to give you welcome.  I'm sure it is 
+good for me to be beside you; I hope it will be blessed to me; I 
+thank you for myself and the good you do me.'  It seemed to cheer 
+her up; but indeed I had scarce said it when we were at the 
+landing-stairs, and there was a great crowd, hundreds of (God save 
+us!) pantomime masks in poor human flesh, waiting to receive the 
+sisters and the new patients.
+
+Every hand was offered:  I had gloves, but I had made up my mind on 
+the boat's voyage NOT to give my hand; that seemed less offensive 
+than the gloves.  So the sisters and I went up among that crew, and 
+presently I got aside (for I felt I had no business there) and set 
+off on foot across the promontory, carrying my wrap and the camera.  
+All horror was quite gone from me:  to see these dread creatures 
+smile and look happy was beautiful.  On my way through Kalaupapa I 
+was exchanging cheerful ALOHAS with the patients coming galloping 
+over on their horses; I was stopping to gossip at house-doors; I 
+was happy, only ashamed of myself that I was here for no good.  One 
+woman was pretty, and spoke good English, and was infinitely 
+engaging and (in the old phrase) towardly; she thought I was the 
+new white patient; and when she found I was only a visitor, a 
+curious change came in her face and voice - the only sad thing, 
+morally sad, I mean - that I met that morning.  But for all that, 
+they tell me none want to leave.  Beyond Kalaupapa the houses 
+became rare; dry stone dykes, grassy, stony land, one sick 
+pandanus; a dreary country; from overhead in the little clinging 
+wood shogs of the pali chirruping of birds fell; the low sun was 
+right in my face; the trade blew pure and cool and delicious; I 
+felt as right as ninepence, and stopped and chatted with the 
+patients whom I still met on their horses, with not the least 
+disgust.  About half-way over, I met the superintendent (a leper) 
+with a horse for me, and O, wasn't I glad!  But the horse was one 
+of those curious, dogged, cranky brutes that always dully want to 
+go somewhere else, and my traffic with him completed my crushing 
+fatigue.  I got to the guest-house, an empty house with several 
+rooms, kitchen, bath, etc.  There was no one there, and I let the 
+horse go loose in the garden, lay down on the bed, and fell asleep.
+
+Dr. Swift woke me and gave me breakfast, then I came back and slept 
+again while he was at the dispensary, and he woke me for dinner; 
+and I came back and slept again, and he woke me about six for 
+supper; and then in about an hour I felt tired again, and came up 
+to my solitary guest-house, played the flageolet, and am now 
+writing to you.  As yet, you see, I have seen nothing of the 
+settlement, and my crushing fatigue (though I believe that was 
+moral and a measure of my cowardice) and the doctor's opinion make 
+me think the pali hopeless.  'You don't look a strong man,' said 
+the doctor; 'but are you sound?'  I told him the truth; then he 
+said it was out of the question, and if I were to get up at all, I 
+must be carried up.  But, as it seems, men as well as horses 
+continually fall on this ascent:  the doctor goes up with a change 
+of clothes - it is plain that to be carried would in itself be very 
+fatiguing to both mind and body; and I should then be at the 
+beginning of thirteen miles of mountain road to be ridden against 
+time.  How should I come through?  I hope you will think me right 
+in my decision:  I mean to stay, and shall not be back in Honolulu 
+till Saturday, June first.  You must all do the best you can to 
+make ready.
+
+Dr. Swift has a wife and an infant son, beginning to toddle and 
+run, and they live here as composed as brick and mortar - at least 
+the wife does, a Kentucky German, a fine enough creature, I 
+believe, who was quite amazed at the sisters shedding tears!  How 
+strange is mankind!  Gilfillan too, a good fellow I think, and far 
+from a stupid, kept up his hard Lowland Scottish talk in the boat 
+while the sister was covering her face; but I believe he knew, and 
+did it (partly) in embarrassment, and part perhaps in mistaken 
+kindness.  And that was one reason, too, why I made my speech to 
+them.  Partly, too, I did it, because I was ashamed to do so, and 
+remembered one of my golden rules, 'When you are ashamed to speak, 
+speak up at once.'  But, mind you, that rule is only golden with 
+strangers; with your own folks, there are other considerations.  
+This is a strange place to be in.  A bell has been sounded at 
+intervals while I wrote, now all is still but a musical humming of 
+the sea, not unlike the sound of telegraph wires; the night is 
+quite cool and pitch dark, with a small fine rain; one light over 
+in the leper settlement, one cricket whistling in the garden, my 
+lamp here by my bedside, and my pen cheeping between my inky 
+fingers.
+
+Next day, lovely morning, slept all night, 80 degrees in the shade, 
+strong, sweet Anaho trade-wind.
+
+LOUIS.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+
+HONOLULU, JUNE 1889.
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN, - I am just home after twelve days journey to 
+Molokai, seven of them at the leper settlement, where I can only 
+say that the sight of so much courage, cheerfulness, and devotion 
+strung me too high to mind the infinite pity and horror of the 
+sights.  I used to ride over from Kalawao to Kalaupapa (about three 
+miles across the promontory, the cliff-wall, ivied with forest and 
+yet inaccessible from steepness, on my left), go to the Sisters' 
+home, which is a miracle of neatness, play a game of croquet with 
+seven leper girls (90 degrees in the shade), got a little old-maid 
+meal served me by the Sisters, and ride home again, tired enough, 
+but not too tired.  The girls have all dolls, and love dressing 
+them.  You who know so many ladies delicately clad, and they who 
+know so many dressmakers, please make it known it would be an 
+acceptable gift to send scraps for doll dressmaking to the Reverend 
+Sister Maryanne, Bishop Home, Kalaupapa, Molokai, Hawaiian Islands.
+
+I have seen sights that cannot be told, and heard stories that 
+cannot be repeated:  yet I never admired my poor race so much, nor 
+(strange as it may seem) loved life more than in the settlement.  A 
+horror of moral beauty broods over the place:  that's like bad 
+Victor Hugo, but it is the only way I can express the sense that 
+lived with me all these days.  And this even though it was in great 
+part Catholic, and my sympathies flew never with so much difficulty 
+as towards Catholic virtues.  The pass-book kept with heaven stirs 
+me to anger and laughter.  One of the sisters calls the place 'the 
+ticket office to heaven.'  Well, what is the odds?  They do their 
+darg and do it with kindness and efficiency incredible; and we must 
+take folk's virtues as we find them, and love the better part.  Of 
+old Damien, whose weaknesses and worse perhaps I heard fully, I 
+think only the more.  It was a European peasant:  dirty, bigoted, 
+untruthful, unwise, tricky, but superb with generosity, residual 
+candour and fundamental good-humour:  convince him he had done 
+wrong (it might take hours of insult) and he would undo what he had 
+done and like his corrector better.  A man, with all the grime and 
+paltriness of mankind, but a saint and hero all the more for that.  
+The place as regards scenery is grand, gloomy, and bleak.  Mighty 
+mountain walls descending sheer along the whole face of the island 
+into a sea unusually deep; the front of the mountain ivied and 
+furred with clinging forest, one viridescent cliff:  about half-way 
+from east to west, the low, bare, stony promontory edged in between 
+the cliff and the ocean; the two little towns (Kalawao and 
+Kalaupapa) seated on either side of it, as bare almost as bathing 
+machines upon a beach; and the population - gorgons and chimaeras 
+dire.  All this tear of the nerves I bore admirably; and the day 
+after I got away, rode twenty miles along the opposite coast and up 
+into the mountains:  they call it twenty, I am doubtful of the 
+figures:  I should guess it nearer twelve; but let me take credit 
+for what residents allege; and I was riding again the day after, so 
+I need say no more about health.  Honolulu does not agree with me 
+at all:  I am always out of sorts there, with slight headache, 
+blood to the head, etc.  I had a good deal of work to do and did it 
+with miserable difficulty; and yet all the time I have been gaining 
+strength, as you see, which is highly encouraging.  By the time I 
+am done with this cruise I shall have the material for a very 
+singular book of travels:  names of strange stories and characters, 
+cannibals, pirates, ancient legends, old Polynesian poetry, - never 
+was so generous a farrago.  I am going down now to get the story of 
+a shipwrecked family, who were fifteen months on an island with a 
+murderer:  there is a specimen.  The Pacific is a strange place; 
+the nineteenth century only exists there in spots:  all round, it 
+is a no man's land of the ages, a stir-about of epochs and races, 
+barbarisms and civilisations, virtues and crimes.
+
+It is good of you to let me stay longer, but if I had known how ill 
+you were, I should be now on my way home.  I had chartered my 
+schooner and made all arrangements before (at last) we got definite 
+news.  I feel highly guilty; I should be back to insult and worry 
+you a little.  Our address till further notice is to be c/o R. 
+Towns and Co., Sydney.  That is final:  I only got the arrangement 
+made yesterday; but you may now publish it abroad. - Yours ever,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO JAMES PAYN
+
+
+
+HONOLULU, H.I., JUNE 13TH, 1889.
+
+MY DEAR JAMES PAYN, - I get sad news of you here at my offsetting 
+for further voyages:  I wish I could say what I feel.  Sure there 
+was never any man less deserved this calamity; for I have heard you 
+speak time and again, and I remember nothing that was unkind, 
+nothing that was untrue, nothing that was not helpful, from your 
+lips.  It is the ill-talkers that should hear no more.  God knows, 
+I know no word of consolation; but I do feel your trouble.  You are 
+the more open to letters now; let me talk to you for two pages.  I 
+have nothing but happiness to tell; and you may bless God you are a 
+man so sound-hearted that (even in the freshness of your calamity) 
+I can come to you with my own good fortune unashamed and secure of 
+sympathy.  It is a good thing to be a good man, whether deaf or 
+whether dumb; and of all our fellow-craftsmen (whom yet they count 
+a jealous race), I never knew one but gave you the name of honesty 
+and kindness:  come to think of it gravely, this is better than the 
+finest hearing.  We are all on the march to deafness, blindness, 
+and all conceivable and fatal disabilities; we shall not all get 
+there with a report so good.  My good news is a health 
+astonishingly reinstated.  This climate; these voyagings; these 
+landfalls at dawn; new islands peaking from the morning bank; new 
+forested harbours; new passing alarms of squalls and surf; new 
+interests of gentle natives, - the whole tale of my life is better 
+to me than any poem.
+
+I am fresh just now from the leper settlement of Molokai, playing 
+croquet with seven leper girls, sitting and yarning with old, 
+blind, leper beachcombers in the hospital, sickened with the 
+spectacle of abhorrent suffering and deformation amongst the 
+patients, touched to the heart by the sight of lovely and effective 
+virtues in their helpers:  no stranger time have I ever had, nor 
+any so moving.  I do not think it a little thing to be deaf, God 
+knows, and God defend me from the same! - but to be a leper, of one 
+of the self-condemned, how much more awful! and yet there's a way 
+there also.  'There are Molokais everywhere,' said Mr. Dutton, 
+Father Damien's dresser; you are but new landed in yours; and my 
+dear and kind adviser, I wish you, with all my soul, that patience 
+and courage which you will require.  Think of me meanwhile on a 
+trading schooner, bound for the Gilbert Islands, thereafter for the 
+Marshalls, with a diet of fish and cocoanut before me; bound on a 
+cruise of - well, of investigation to what islands we can reach, 
+and to get (some day or other) to Sydney, where a letter addressed 
+to the care of R. Towns & Co. will find me sooner or later; and if 
+it contain any good news, whether of your welfare or the courage 
+with which you bear the contrary, will do me good. - Yours 
+affectionately (although so near a stranger),
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+
+SCHOONER 'EQUATOR,' APAIANG LAGOON, AUGUST 22ND, 1889.
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN, - The missionary ship is outside the reef trying 
+(vainly) to get in; so I may have a chance to get a line off.  I am 
+glad to say I shall be home by June next for the summer, or we 
+shall know the reason why.  For God's sake be well and jolly for 
+the meeting.  I shall be, I believe, a different character from 
+what you have seen this long while.  This cruise is up to now a 
+huge success, being interesting, pleasant, and profitable.  The 
+beachcomber is perhaps the most interesting character here; the 
+natives are very different, on the whole, from Polynesians:  they 
+are moral, stand-offish (for good reasons), and protected by a dark 
+tongue.  It is delightful to meet the few Hawaiians (mostly 
+missionaries) that are dotted about, with their Italian BRIO and 
+their ready friendliness.  The whites are a strange lot, many of 
+them good, kind, pleasant fellows; others quite the lowest I have 
+ever seen even in the slums of cities.  I wish I had time to 
+narrate to you the doings and character of three white murderers 
+(more or less proven) I have met.  One, the only undoubted assassin 
+of the lot, quite gained my affection in his big home out of a 
+wreck, with his New Hebrides wife in her savage turban of hair and 
+yet a perfect lady, and his three adorable little girls in Rob Roy 
+Macgregor dresses, dancing to the hand organ, performing circus on 
+the floor with startling effects of nudity, and curling up together 
+on a mat to sleep, three sizes, three attitudes, three Rob Roy 
+dresses, and six little clenched fists:  the murderer meanwhile 
+brooding and gloating over his chicks, till your whole heart went 
+out to him; and yet his crime on the face of it was dark:  
+disembowelling, in his own house, an old man of seventy, and him 
+drunk.
+
+It is lunch-time, I see, and I must close up with my warmest love 
+to you.  I wish you were here to sit upon me when required.  Ah! if 
+you were but a good sailor!  I will never leave the sea, I think; 
+it is only there that a Briton lives:  my poor grandfather, it is 
+from him I inherit the taste, I fancy, and he was round many 
+islands in his day; but I, please God, shall beat him at that 
+before the recall is sounded.  Would you be surprised to learn that 
+I contemplate becoming a shipowner?  I do, but it is a secret.  
+Life is far better fun than people dream who fall asleep among the 
+chimney stacks and telegraph wires.
+
+Love to Henry James and others near. - Ever yours, my dear fellow,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+EQUATOR TOWN,  APEMAMA, OCTOBER 1889.
+
+No MORNING STAR came, however; and so now I try to send this to you 
+by the schooner J. L. TIERNAN.  We have been about a month ashore, 
+camping out in a kind of town the king set up for us:  on the idea 
+that I was really a 'big chief' in England.  He dines with us 
+sometimes, and sends up a cook for a share of our meals when he 
+does not come himself.  This sounds like high living! alas, 
+undeceive yourself.  Salt junk is the mainstay; a low island, 
+except for cocoanuts, is just the same as a ship at sea:  brackish 
+water, no supplies, and very little shelter.  The king is a great 
+character - a thorough tyrant, very much of a gentleman, a poet, a 
+musician, a historian, or perhaps rather more a genealogist - it is 
+strange to see him lying in his house among a lot of wives (nominal 
+wives) writing the History of Apemama in an account-book; his 
+description of one of his own songs, which he sang to me himself, 
+as 'about sweethearts, and trees, and the sea - and no true, all-
+the-same lie,' seems about as compendious a definition of lyric 
+poetry as a man could ask.  Tembinoka is here the great attraction:  
+all the rest is heat and tedium and villainous dazzle, and yet more 
+villainous mosquitoes.  We are like to be here, however, many a 
+long week before we get away, and then whither?  A strange trade 
+this voyaging:  so vague, so bound-down, so helpless.  Fanny has 
+been planting some vegetables, and we have actually onions and 
+radishes coming up:  ah, onion-despiser, were you but awhile in a 
+low island, how your heart would leap at sight of a coster's 
+barrow!  I think I could shed tears over a dish of turnips.  No 
+doubt we shall all be glad to say farewell to low islands - I had 
+near said for ever.  They are very tame; and I begin to read up the 
+directory, and pine for an island with a profile, a running brook, 
+or were it only a well among the rocks.  The thought of a mango 
+came to me early this morning and set my greed on edge; but you do 
+not know what a mango is, so -.
+
+I have been thinking a great deal of you and the Monument of late, 
+and even tried to get my thoughts into a poem, hitherto without 
+success.  God knows how you are:  I begin to weary dreadfully to 
+see you - well, in nine months, I hope; but that seems a long time.  
+I wonder what has befallen me too, that flimsy part of me that 
+lives (or dwindles) in the public mind; and what has befallen THE 
+MASTER, and what kind of a Box the Merry Box has been found.  It is 
+odd to know nothing of all this.  We had an old woman to do devil-
+work for you about a month ago, in a Chinaman's house on Apaiang 
+(August 23rd or 24th).  You should have seen the crone with a noble 
+masculine face, like that of an old crone [SIC], a body like a 
+man's (naked all but the feathery female girdle), knotting cocoanut 
+leaves and muttering spells:  Fanny and I, and the good captain of 
+the EQUATOR, and the Chinaman and his native wife and sister-in-
+law, all squatting on the floor about the sibyl; and a crowd of 
+dark faces watching from behind her shoulder (she sat right in the 
+doorway) and tittering aloud with strange, appalled, embarrassed 
+laughter at each fresh adjuration.  She informed us you were in 
+England, not travelling and now no longer sick; she promised us a 
+fair wind the next day, and we had it, so I cherish the hope she 
+was as right about Sidney Colvin.  The shipownering has rather 
+petered out since I last wrote, and a good many other plans beside.
+
+Health?  Fanny very so-so; I pretty right upon the whole, and 
+getting through plenty work:  I know not quite how, but it seems to 
+me not bad and in places funny.
+
+South Sea Yarns:
+
+1. THE WRECKER       }
+                     }     R. L. S.
+2. THE PEARL FISHER  } by    and
+                     }     Lloyd O.
+3. THE BEACHCOMBERS  }
+
+THE PEARL FISHER, part done, lies in Sydney.  It is THE WRECKER we 
+are now engaged upon:  strange ways of life, I think, they set 
+forth:  things that I can scarce touch upon, or even not at all, in 
+my travel book; and the yarns are good, I do believe.  THE PEARL 
+FISHER is for the NEW YORK LEDGER:  the yarn is a kind of Monte 
+Cristo one.  THE WRECKER is the least good as a story, I think; but 
+the characters seem to me good.  THE BEACHCOMBERS is more 
+sentimental.  These three scarce touch the outskirts of the life we 
+have been viewing; a hot-bed of strange characters and incidents:  
+Lord, how different from Europe or the Pallid States!  Farewell.  
+Heaven knows when this will get to you.  I burn to be in Sydney and 
+have news.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+
+SCHOONER 'EQUATOR,' AT SEA. 190 MILES OFF SAMOA.  MONDAY, DECEMBER 
+2ND, 1889
+
+MY DEAR COLVIN, - We are just nearing the end of our long cruise.  
+Rain, calms, squalls, bang - there's the foretopmast gone; rain, 
+calm, squalls, away with the staysail; more rain, more calm, more 
+squalls; a prodigious heavy sea all the time, and the EQUATOR 
+staggering and hovering like a swallow in a storm; and the cabin, a 
+great square, crowded with wet human beings, and the rain 
+avalanching on the deck, and the leaks dripping everywhere:  Fanny, 
+in the midst of fifteen males, bearing up wonderfully.  But such 
+voyages are at the best a trial.  We had one particularity:  coming 
+down on Winslow Reef, p. d. (position doubtful):  two positions in 
+the directory, a third (if you cared to count that) on the chart; 
+heavy sea running, and the night due.  The boats were cleared, 
+bread put on board, and we made up our packets for a boat voyage of 
+four or five hundred miles, and turned in, expectant of a crash.  
+Needless to say it did not come, and no doubt we were far to 
+leeward.  If we only had twopenceworth of wind, we might be at 
+dinner in Apia to-morrow evening; but no such luck:  here we roll, 
+dead before a light air - and that is no point of sailing at all 
+for a fore and aft schooner - the sun blazing overhead, thermometer 
+88 degrees, four degrees above what I have learned to call South 
+Sea temperature; but for all that, land so near, and so much grief 
+being happily astern, we are all pretty gay on board, and have been 
+photographing and draught-playing and sky-larking like anything.  I 
+am minded to stay not very long in Samoa and confine my studies 
+there (as far as any one can forecast) to the history of the late 
+war.  My book is now practically modelled:  if I can execute what 
+is designed, there are few better books now extant on this globe, 
+bar the epics, and the big tragedies, and histories, and the choice 
+lyric poetics and a novel or so - none.  But it is not executed 
+yet; and let not him that putteth on his armour, vaunt himself.  At 
+least, nobody has had such stuff; such wild stories, such beautiful 
+scenes, such singular intimacies, such manners and traditions, so 
+incredible a mixture of the beautiful and horrible, the savage and 
+civilised.  I will give you here some idea of the table of 
+contents, which ought to make your mouth water.  I propose to call 
+the book THE SOUTH SEAS:  it is rather a large title, but not many 
+people have seen more of them than I, perhaps no one - certainly no 
+one capable of using the material.
+
+PART I.  GENERAL.  'OF SCHOONERS, ISLANDS, AND MAROONS.'
+
+CHAPTER I. Marine.
+
+II. Contraband (smuggling, barratry, labour traffic).
+
+III. The Beachcomber.
+
+IV. Beachcomber stories.  i. The Murder of the Chinaman.  ii. Death 
+of a Beachcomber.  iii. A Character.  iv. The Apia Blacksmith.
+
+PART II.  THE MARQUESAS.
+
+V. Anaho.  i. Arrival.  ii. Death.  iii. The Tapu.  iv. Morals.  v. 
+Hoka.
+
+VI. Tai-o-hae.  i. Arrival.  ii. The French.  iii. The Royal 
+Family.  iv. Chiefless Folk.  v. The Catholics.  vi. Hawaiian 
+Missionaries.
+
+VII. Observations of a Long Pig.  i. Cannibalism.  ii. Hatiheu.  
+iii. Frere Michel.  iv.  Toahauka and Atuona.  v. The Vale of 
+Atuona.  vi. Moipu.  vii. Captain Hati.
+
+PART III.  THE DANGEROUS ARCHIPELAGO.
+
+VIII. The Group.
+
+IX. A House to let in a Low Island.
+
+X. A Paumotuan Funeral.  i. The Funeral.  ii. Tales of the Dead.
+
+PART IV.  TAHITI.
+
+XI. Tautira.
+
+XII. Village Government in Tahiti.
+
+XIII. A Journey in Quest of Legends.
+
+XIV. Legends and Songs.
+
+XV. Life in Eden.
+
+XVI. Note on the French Regimen.
+
+PART V.  THE EIGHT ISLANDS.
+
+XVII. A Note on Missions.
+
+XVIII. The Kona Coast of Hawaii.  i. Hookena.  ii. A Ride in the 
+Forest.  iii. A Law Case.  iv. The City of Refuge.  v. The Lepers.
+
+XIX. Molokai.  i. A Week in the Precinct.  ii. History of the Leper 
+Settlement.  iii. The Mokolii.  iv. The Free Island.
+
+PART VI.  THE GILBERTS.
+
+XX. The Group.  ii. Position of Woman.  iii. The Missions.  iv. 
+Devilwork.  v. Republics.
+
+XXI. Rule and Misrule on Makin.  i. Butaritari, its King and Court.  
+ii. History of Three Kings.  iii. The Drink Question.
+
+XXII. A Butaritarian Festival.
+
+XXIII. The King of Apemama.  i. First Impressions.  ii. Equator 
+Town and the Palace.  iii. The Three Corselets.
+
+PART VII.  SAMOA.
+
+which I have not yet reached.
+
+Even as so sketched it makes sixty chapters, not less than 300 
+CORNHILL pages; and I suspect not much under 500.  Samoa has yet to 
+be accounted for:  I think it will be all history, and I shall work 
+in observations on Samoan manners, under the similar heads in other 
+Polynesian islands.  It is still possible, though unlikely, that I 
+may add a passing visit to Fiji or Tonga, or even both; but I am 
+growing impatient to see yourself, and I do not want to be later 
+than June of coming to England.  Anyway, you see it will be a large 
+work, and as it will be copiously illustrated, the Lord knows what 
+it will cost.  We shall return, God willing, by Sydney, Ceylon, 
+Suez and, I guess, Marseilles the many-masted (copyright epithet).  
+I shall likely pause a day or two in Paris, but all that is too far 
+ahead - although now it begins to look near - so near, and I can 
+hear the rattle of the hansom up Endell Street, and see the gates 
+swing back, and feel myself jump out upon the Monument steps - 
+Hosanna! - home again.  My dear fellow, now that my father is done 
+with his troubles, and 17 Heriot Row no more than a mere shell, you 
+and that gaunt old Monument in Bloomsbury are all that I have in 
+view when I use the word home; some passing thoughts there may be 
+of the rooms at Skerryvore, and the black-birds in the chine on a 
+May morning; but the essence is S. C. and the Museum.  Suppose, by 
+some damned accident, you were no more:  well, I should return just 
+the same, because of my mother and Lloyd, whom I now think to send 
+to Cambridge; but all the spring would have gone out of me, and 
+ninety per cent. of the attraction lost.  I will copy for you here 
+a copy of verses made in Apemama.
+
+
+I heard the pulse of the besieging sea
+Throb far away all night.  I heard the wind
+Fly crying, and convulse tumultuous palms.
+I rose and strolled.  The isle was all bright sand,
+And flailing fans and shadows of the palm:
+The heaven all moon, and wind, and the blind vault -
+The keenest planet slain, for Venus slept.
+The King, my neighbour, with his host of wives,
+Slept in the precinct of the palisade:
+Where single, in the wind, under the moon,
+Among the slumbering cabins, blazed a fire,
+Sole street-lamp and the only sentinel.
+To other lands and nights my fancy turned,
+To London first, and chiefly to your house,
+The many-pillared and the well-beloved.
+There yearning fancy lighted; there again
+In the upper room I lay and heard far off
+The unsleeping city murmur like a shell;
+The muffled tramp of the Museum guard
+Once more went by me; I beheld again
+Lamps vainly brighten the dispeopled street;
+Again I longed for the returning morn,
+The awaking traffic, the bestirring birds,
+The consentaneous trill of tiny song
+That weaves round monumental cornices
+A passing charm of beauty:  most of all,
+For your light foot I wearied, and your knock
+That was the glad reveille of my day.
+Lo, now, when to your task in the great house
+At morning through the portico you pass,
+One moment glance where, by the pillared wall,
+Far-voyaging island gods, begrimed with smoke,
+Sit now unworshipped, the rude monument
+Of faiths forgot and races undivined;
+Sit now disconsolate, remembering well
+The priest, the victim, and the songful crowd,
+The blaze of the blue noon, and that huge voice
+Incessant, of the breakers on the shore.
+As far as these from their ancestral shrine,
+So far, so foreign, your divided friends
+Wander, estranged in body, not in mind.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+SCHOONER 'EQUATOR,' AT SEA, WEDNESDAY, 4TH DECEMBER 1889.
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - We are now about to rise, like whales, from 
+this long dive, and I make ready a communication which is to go to 
+you by the first mail from Samoa.  How long we shall stay in that 
+group I cannot forecast; but it will be best still to address at 
+Sydney, where I trust, when I shall arrive, perhaps in one month 
+from now, more probably in two or three, to find all news.
+
+BUSINESS. - Will you be likely to have a space in the Magazine for 
+a serial story, which should be, ready, I believe, by April, at 
+latest by autumn?  It is called THE WRECKER; and in book form will 
+appear as number 1 of South Sea Yarns by R. L. S. and Lloyd 
+Osbourne.  Here is the table as far as fully conceived, and indeed 
+executed. ...
+
+The story is founded on fact, the mystery I really believe to be 
+insoluble; the purchase of a wreck has never been handled before, 
+no more has San Francisco.  These seem all elements of success.  
+There is, besides, a character, Jim Pinkerton, of the advertising 
+American, on whom we build a good deal; and some sketches of the 
+American merchant marine, opium smuggling in Honolulu, etc.  It 
+should run to (about) three hundred pages of my MS.  I would like 
+to know if this tale smiles upon you, if you will have a vacancy, 
+and what you will be willing to pay.  It will of course be 
+copyright in both the States and England.  I am a little anxious to 
+have it tried serially, as it tests the interest of the mystery.
+
+PLEASURE. - We have had a fine time in the Gilbert group, though 
+four months on low islands, which involves low diet, is a largish 
+order; and my wife is rather down.  I am myself, up to now, a 
+pillar of health, though our long and vile voyage of calms, 
+squalls, cataracts of rain, sails carried away, foretopmast lost, 
+boats cleared and packets made on the approach of a p. d. reef, 
+etc., has cured me of salt brine, and filled me with a longing for 
+beef steak and mangoes not to be depicted.  The interest has been 
+immense.  Old King Tembinoka of Apemama, the Napoleon of the group, 
+poet, tyrant, altogether a man of mark, gave me the woven corselets 
+of his grandfather, his father and his uncle, and, what pleased me 
+more, told me their singular story, then all manner of strange 
+tales, facts and experiences for my South Sea book, which should be 
+a Tearer, Mr. Burlingame:  no one at least has had such stuff.
+
+We are now engaged in the hell of a dead calm, the heat is cruel - 
+it is the only time when I suffer from heat:  I have nothing on but 
+a pair of serge trousers, and a singlet without sleeves of Oxford 
+gauze - O, yes, and a red sash about my waist; and yet as I sit 
+here in the cabin, sweat streams from me.  The rest are on deck 
+under a bit of awning; we are not much above a hundred miles from 
+port, and we might as well be in Kamschatka.  However, I should be 
+honest:  this is the first calm I have endured without the added 
+bane of a heavy swell, and the intoxicated blue-bottle wallowings 
+and knockings of the helpless ship.
+
+I wonder how you liked the end of THE MASTER; that was the hardest 
+job I ever had to do; did I do it?
+
+My wife begs to be remembered to yourself and Mrs. Burlingame.  
+Remember all of us to all friends, particularly Low, in case I 
+don't get a word through for him. - I am, yours very sincerely,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+SAMOA, [DECEMBER 1889].
+
+MY DEAR BAXTER, - . . . I cannot return until I have seen either 
+Tonga or Fiji or both:  and I must not leave here till I have 
+finished my collections on the war - a very interesting bit of 
+history, the truth often very hard to come at, and the search (for 
+me) much complicated by the German tongue, from the use of which I 
+have desisted (I suppose) these fifteen years.  The last two days I 
+have been mugging with a dictionary from five to six hours a day; 
+besides this, I have to call upon, keep sweet, and judiciously 
+interview all sorts of persons - English, American, German, and 
+Samoan.  It makes a hard life; above all, as after every interview 
+I have to come and get my notes straight on the nail.  I believe I 
+should have got my facts before the end of January, when I shall 
+make our Tonga or Fiji.  I am down right in the hurricane season; 
+but they had so bad a one last year, I don't imagine there will be 
+much of an edition this.  Say that I get to Sydney some time in 
+April, and I shall have done well, and be in a position to write a 
+very singular and interesting book, or rather two; for I shall 
+begin, I think, with a separate opuscule on the Samoan Trouble, 
+about as long as KIDNAPPED, not very interesting, but valuable - 
+and a thing proper to be done.  And then, hey! for the big South 
+Sea Book:  a devil of a big one, and full of the finest sport.
+
+This morning as I was going along to my breakfast a little before 
+seven, reading a number of BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, I was startled by 
+a soft TALOFA, ALII (note for my mother:  they are quite courteous 
+here in the European style, quite unlike Tahiti), right in my ear:  
+it was Mataafa coming from early mass in his white coat and white 
+linen kilt, with three fellows behind him.  Mataafa is the nearest 
+thing to a hero in my history, and really a fine fellow; plenty 
+sense, and the most dignified, quiet, gentle manners.  Talking of 
+BLACKWOOD - a file of which I was lucky enough to find here in the 
+lawyer's - Mrs. Oliphant seems in a staggering state:  from the 
+WRONG BOX to THE MASTER I scarce recognise either my critic or 
+myself.  I gather that THE MASTER should do well, and at least that 
+notice is agreeable reading.  I expect to be home in June:  you 
+will have gathered that I am pretty well.  In addition to my 
+labours, I suppose I walk five or six miles a day, and almost every 
+day I ride up and see Fanny and Lloyd, who are in a house in the 
+bush with Ah Fu.  I live in Apia for history's sake with Moors, an 
+American trader.  Day before yesterday I was arrested and fined for 
+riding fast in the street, which made my blood bitter, as the wife 
+of the manager of the German Firm has twice almost ridden me down, 
+and there seems none to say her nay.  The Germans have behaved 
+pretty badly here, but not in all ways so ill as you may have 
+gathered:  they were doubtless much provoked; and if the insane 
+Knappe had not appeared upon the scene, might have got out of the 
+muddle with dignity.  I write along without rhyme or reason, as 
+things occur to me.
+
+I hope from my outcries about printing you do not think I want you 
+to keep my news or letters in a Blue Beard closet.  I like all 
+friends to hear of me; they all should if I had ninety hours in the 
+day, and strength for all of them; but you must have gathered how 
+hard worked I am, and you will understand I go to bed a pretty 
+tired man.
+
+29TH DECEMBER, [1889].
+
+To-morrow (Monday, I won't swear to my day of the month; this is 
+the Sunday between Christmas and New Year) I go up the coast with 
+Mr. Clarke, one of the London Society missionaries, in a boat to 
+examine schools, see Tamasese, etc.  Lloyd comes to photograph.  
+Pray Heaven we have good weather; this is the rainy season; we 
+shall be gone four or five days; and if the rain keep off, I shall 
+be glad of the change; if it rain, it will be beastly.  This 
+explains still further how hard pressed I am, as the mail will be 
+gone ere I return, and I have thus lost the days I meant to write 
+in.  I have a boy, Henry, who interprets and copies for me, and is 
+a great nuisance.  He said he wished to come to me in order to 
+learn 'long expressions.'  Henry goes up along with us; and as I am 
+not fond of him, he may before the trip is over hear some 'strong 
+expressions.'  I am writing this on the back balcony at Moors', 
+palms and a hill like the hill of Kinnoull looking in at me; myself 
+lying on the floor, and (like the parties in Handel's song) 'clad 
+in robes of virgin white'; the ink is dreadful, the heat delicious, 
+a fine going breeze in the palms, and from the other side of the 
+house the sudden angry splash and roar of the Pacific on the reef, 
+where the warships are still piled from last year's hurricane, some 
+under water, one high and dry upon her side, the strangest figure 
+of a ship was ever witnessed; the narrow bay there is full of 
+ships; the men-of-war covered with sail after the rains, and 
+(especially the German ship, which is fearfully and awfully top 
+heavy) rolling almost yards in, in what appears to be calm water.
+
+Samoa, Apia at least, is far less beautiful than the Marquesas or 
+Tahiti:  a more gentle scene, gentler acclivities, a tamer face of 
+nature; and this much aided, for the wanderer, by the great German 
+plantations with their countless regular avenues of palms.  The 
+island has beautiful rivers, of about the bigness of our waters in 
+the Lothians, with pleasant pools and waterfalls and overhanging 
+verdure, and often a great volume of sound, so that once I thought 
+I was passing near a mill, and it was only the voice of the river.  
+I am not specially attracted by the people; but they are courteous; 
+the women very attractive, and dress lovely; the men purposelike, 
+well set up, tall, lean, and dignified.  As I write the breeze is 
+brisking up, doors are beginning to slam:  and shutters; a strong 
+draught sweeps round the balcony; it looks doubtful for to-morrow.  
+Here I shut up. - Ever your affectionate,
+
+R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO DR. SCOTT
+
+
+
+APIA, SAMOA, JANUARY 20TH, 1890.
+
+MY DEAR SCOTT, - Shameful indeed that you should not have heard of 
+me before!  I have now been some twenty months in the South Seas, 
+and am (up to date) a person whom you would scarce know.  I think 
+nothing of long walks and rides:  I was four hours and a half gone 
+the other day, partly riding, partly climbing up a steep ravine.  I 
+have stood a six months' voyage on a copra schooner with about 
+three months ashore on coral atolls, which means (except for 
+cocoanuts to drink) no change whatever from ship's food.  My wife 
+suffered badly - it was too rough a business altogether - Lloyd 
+suffered - and, in short, I was the only one of the party who 'kept 
+my end up.'
+
+I am so pleased with this climate that I have decided to settle; 
+have even purchased a piece of land from three to four hundred 
+acres, I know not which till the survey is completed, and shall 
+only return next summer to wind up my affairs in England; 
+thenceforth I mean to be a subject of the High Commissioner.
+
+Now you would have gone longer yet without news of your truant 
+patient, but that I have a medical discovery to communicate.  I 
+find I can (almost immediately) fight off a cold with liquid 
+extract of coca; two or (if obstinate) three teaspoonfuls in the 
+day for a variable period of from one to five days sees the cold 
+generally to the door.  I find it at once produces a glow, stops 
+rigour, and though it makes one very uncomfortable, prevents the 
+advance of the disease.  Hearing of this influenza, it occurred to 
+me that this might prove remedial; and perhaps a stronger 
+exhibition - injections of cocaine, for instance - still better.
+
+If on my return I find myself let in for this epidemic, which seems 
+highly calculated to nip me in the bud, I shall feel very much 
+inclined to make the experiment.  See what a gulf you may save me 
+from if you shall have previously made it on ANIMA VILI, on some 
+less important sufferer, and shall have found it worse than 
+useless.
+
+How is Miss Boodle and her family?  Greeting to your brother and 
+all friends in Bournemouth, yours very sincerely,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+FEBRUAR DEN 3EN 1890.
+DAMPFER LUBECK ZWISCHEN APIA UND SYDNEY.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES, - I have got one delightful letter from you, and 
+heard from my mother of your kindness in going to see her.  Thank 
+you for that:  you can in no way more touch and serve me. . . . Ay, 
+ay, it is sad to sell 17; sad and fine were the old days:  when I 
+was away in Apemama, I wrote two copies of verse about Edinburgh 
+and the past, so ink black, so golden bright.  I will send them, if 
+I can find them, for they will say something to you, and indeed one 
+is more than half addressed to you.  This is it -
+
+
+TO MY OLD COMRADES
+
+
+Do you remember - can we e'er forget? -
+How, in the coiled perplexities of youth,
+In our wild climate, in our scowling town,
+We gloomed and shivered, sorrowed, sobbed, and feared?
+The belching winter wind, the missile rain,
+The rare and welcome silence of the snows,
+The laggard morn, the haggard day, the night,
+The grimy spell of the nocturnal town,
+Do you remember? - Ah, could one forget!
+As when the fevered sick that all night long
+Listed the wind intone, and hear at last
+The ever-welcome voice of the chanticleer
+Sing in the bitter hour before the dawn, -
+With sudden ardour, these desire the day:
+
+(Here a squall sends all flying.)
+
+So sang in the gloom of youth the bird of hope;
+So we, exulting, hearkened and desired.
+For lo! as in the palace porch of life
+We huddled with chimeras, from within -
+How sweet to hear! - the music swelled and fell,
+And through the breach of the revolving doors
+What dreams of splendour blinded us and fled!
+I have since then contended and rejoiced;
+Amid the glories of the house of life
+Profoundly entered, and the shrine beheld:
+Yet when the lamp from my expiring eyes
+Shall dwindle and recede, the voice of love
+Fall insignificant on my closing ears,
+What sound shall come but the old cry of the wind
+In our inclement city? what return
+But the image of the emptiness of youth,
+Filled with the sound of footsteps and that voice
+Of discontent and rapture and despair?
+So, as in darkness, from the magic lamp,
+The momentary pictures gleam and fade
+And perish, and the night resurges - these
+Shall I remember, and then all forget.
+
+
+They're pretty second-rate, but felt.  I can't be bothered to copy 
+the other.
+
+I have bought 314 and a half acres of beautiful land in the bush 
+behind Apia; when we get the house built, the garden laid, and 
+cattle in the place, it will be something to fall back on for 
+shelter and food; and if the island could stumble into political 
+quiet, it is conceivable it might even bring a little income. . . . 
+We range from 600 to 1500 feet, have five streams, waterfalls, 
+precipices, profound ravines, rich tablelands, fifty head of cattle 
+on the ground (if any one could catch them), a great view of 
+forest, sea, mountains, the warships in the haven:  really a noble 
+place.  Some day you are to take a long holiday and come and see 
+us:  it has been all planned.
+
+With all these irons in the fire, and cloudy prospects, you may be 
+sure I was pleased to hear a good account of business.  I believed 
+THE MASTER was a sure card:  I wonder why Henley thinks it grimy; 
+grim it is, God knows, but sure not grimy, else I am the more 
+deceived.  I am sorry he did not care for it; I place it on the 
+line with KIDNAPPED myself.  We'll see as time goes on whether it 
+goes above or falls below.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+SS. LUBECK, [BETWEEN APIA AND SYDNEY, FEBRUARY] 1890.
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - I desire nothing better than to continue my 
+relation with the Magazine, to which it pleases me to hear I have 
+been useful.  The only thing I have ready is the enclosed barbaric 
+piece.  As soon as I have arrived in Sydney I shall send you some 
+photographs, a portrait of Tembinoka, perhaps a view of the palace 
+or of the 'matted men' at their singing; also T.'s flag, which my 
+wife designed for him:  in a word, what I can do best for you.  It 
+will be thus a foretaste of my book of travels.  I shall ask you to 
+let me have, if I wish it, the use of the plates made, and to make 
+up a little tract of the verses and illustrations, of which you 
+might send six copies to H. M. Tembinoka, King of Apemama VIA 
+Butaritari, Gilbert Islands.  It might be best to send it by 
+Crawford and Co., S. F.  There is no postal service; and schooners 
+must take it, how they may and when.  Perhaps some such note as 
+this might be prefixed:
+
+AT MY DEPARTURE FROM THE ISLAND OF APEMAMA, FOR WHICH YOU WILL LOOK 
+IN VAIN IN MOST ATLASES, THE KING AND I AGREED, SINCE WE BOTH SET 
+UP TO BE IN THE POETICAL WAY, THAT WE SHOULD CELEBRATE OUR 
+SEPARATION IN VERSE.  WHETHER OR NOT HIS MAJESTY HAS BEEN TRUE TO 
+HIS BARGAIN, THE LAGGARD POSTS OF THE PACIFIC MAY PERHAPS INFORM ME 
+IN SIX MONTHS, PERHAPS NOT BEFORE A YEAR.  THE FOLLOWING LINES 
+REPRESENT MY PART OF THE CONTRACT, AND IT IS HOPED, BY THEIR 
+PICTURES OF STRANGE MANNERS, THEY MAY ENTERTAIN A CIVILISED 
+AUDIENCE.  NOTHING THROUGHOUT HAS BEEN INVENTED OR EXAGGERATED; THE 
+LADY HEREIN REFERRED TO AS THE AUTHOR'S MUSE, HAS CONFINED HERSELF 
+TO STRINGING INTO RHYME FACTS AND LEGENDS THAT I SAW OR HEARD 
+DURING TWO MONTHS' RESIDENCE UPON THE ISLAND.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+You will have received from me a letter about THE WRECKER.  No 
+doubt it is a new experiment for me, being disguised so much as a 
+study of manners, and the interest turning on a mystery of the 
+detective sort, I think there need be no hesitation about beginning 
+it in the fall of the year.  Lloyd has nearly finished his part, 
+and I shall hope to send you very soon the MS. of about the first 
+four-sevenths.  At the same time, I have been employing myself in 
+Samoa, collecting facts about the recent war; and I propose to 
+write almost at once and to publish shortly a small volume, called 
+I know not what - the War In Samoa, the Samoa Trouble, an Island 
+War, the War of the Three Consuls, I know not - perhaps you can 
+suggest.  It was meant to be a part of my travel book; but material 
+has accumulated on my hands until I see myself forced into volume 
+form, and I hope it may be of use, if it come soon.  I have a few 
+photographs of the war, which will do for illustrations.  It is 
+conceivable you might wish to handle this in the Magazine, although 
+I am inclined to think you won't, and to agree with you.  But if 
+you think otherwise, there it is.  The travel letters (fifty of 
+them) are already contracted for in papers; these I was quite bound 
+to let M'Clure handle, as the idea was of his suggestion, and I 
+always felt a little sore as to one trick I played him in the 
+matter of the end-papers.  The war-volume will contain some very 
+interesting and picturesque details:  more I can't promise for it.  
+Of course the fifty newspaper letters will be simply patches chosen 
+from the travel volume (or volumes) as it gets written.
+
+But you see I have in hand:-
+
+Say half done.  1. THE WRECKER.
+
+Lloyd's copy half done, mine not touched.  2. THE PEARL FISHER (a 
+novel promised to the LEDGER, and which will form, when it comes in 
+book form, No. 2 of our SOUTH SEA YARNS).
+
+Not begun, but all material ready.  3. THE WAR VOLUME.
+
+Ditto.  4. THE BIG TRAVEL BOOK, which includes the letters.
+
+You know how they stand.  5. THE BALLADS.
+
+EXCUSEZ DU PEU!  And you see what madness it would be to make any 
+fresh engagement.  At the same time, you have THE WRECKER and the 
+WAR VOLUME, if you like either - or both - to keep my name in the 
+Magazine.
+
+It begins to look as if I should not be able to get any more 
+ballads done this somewhile.  I know the book would sell better if 
+it were all ballads; and yet I am growing half tempted to fill up 
+with some other verses.  A good few are connected with my voyage, 
+such as the 'Home of Tembinoka' sent herewith, and would have a 
+sort of slight affinity to the SOUTH SEA BALLADS.  You might tell 
+me how that strikes a stranger.
+
+In all this, my real interest is with the travel volume, which 
+ought to be of a really extraordinary interest
+
+I am sending you 'Tembinoka' as he stands; but there are parts of 
+him that I hope to better, particularly in stanzas III. and II.  I 
+scarce feel intelligent enough to try just now; and I thought at 
+any rate you had better see it, set it up if you think well, and 
+let me have a proof; so, at least, we shall get the bulk of it 
+straight.  I have spared you Tenkoruti, Tenbaitake, Tembinatake, 
+and other barbarous names, because I thought the dentists in the 
+States had work enough without my assistance; but my chiefs name is 
+TEMBINOKA, pronounced, according to the present quite modern habit 
+in the Gilberts, Tembinok'.  Compare in the margin Tengkorootch; a 
+singular new trick, setting at defiance all South Sea analogy, for 
+nowhere else do they show even the ability, far less the will, to 
+end a word upon a consonant.  Loia is Lloyd's name, ship becomes 
+shipe, teapot, tipote, etc.  Our admirable friend Herman Melville, 
+of whom, since I could judge, I have thought more than ever, had no 
+ear for languages whatever:  his Hapar tribe should be Hapaa, etc.
+
+But this is of no interest to you:  suffice it, you see how I am as 
+usual up to the neck in projects, and really all likely bairns this 
+time.  When will this activity cease?  Too soon for me, I dare to 
+say.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO JAMES PAYN
+
+
+
+FEBRUARY 4TH, 1890, SS. 'LUBECK.'
+
+MY DEAR JAMES PAYN, - In virtue of confessions in your last, you 
+would at the present moment, if you were along of me, be sick; and 
+I will ask you to receive that as an excuse for my hand of write.  
+Excuse a plain seaman if he regards with scorn the likes of you 
+pore land-lubbers ashore now.  (Reference to nautical ditty.)  
+Which I may however be allowed to add that when eight months' mail 
+was laid by my side one evening in Apia, and my wife and I sat up 
+the most of the night to peruse the same - (precious indisposed we 
+were next day in consequence) - no letter, out of so many, more 
+appealed to our hearts than one from the pore, stick-in-the-mud, 
+land-lubbering, common (or garden) Londoner, James Payn.  Thank you 
+for it; my wife says, 'Can't I see him when we get back to London?'  
+I have told her the thing appeared to me within the spear of 
+practical politix.  (Why can't I spell and write like an honest, 
+sober, god-fearing litry gent?  I think it's the motion of the 
+ship.)  Here I was interrupted to play chess with the chief 
+engineer; as I grow old, I prefer the 'athletic sport of cribbage,' 
+of which (I am sure I misquote) I have just been reading in your 
+delightful LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS.  How you skim along, you and 
+Andrew Lang (different as you are), and yet the only two who can 
+keep a fellow smiling every page, and ever and again laughing out 
+loud.  I joke wi' deeficulty, I believe; I am not funny; and when I 
+am, Mrs. Oliphant says I'm vulgar, and somebody else says (in 
+Latin) that I'm a whore, which seems harsh and even uncalled for:  
+I shall stick to weepers; a 5s. weeper, 2s. 6d. laugher, 1s. 
+shocker.
+
+My dear sir, I grow more and more idiotic; I cannot even feign 
+sanity.  Sometime in the month of June a stalwart weather-beaten 
+man, evidently of seafaring antecedents, shall be observed wending 
+his way between the Athenaeum Club and Waterloo Place.  Arrived off 
+No. 17, he shall be observed to bring his head sharply to the wind, 
+and tack into the outer haven.  'Captain Payn in the harbour?' - 
+'Ay, ay, sir.  What ship?' - 'Barquentin R. L. S., nine hundred and 
+odd days out from the port of Bournemouth, homeward bound, with 
+yarns and curiosities.'
+
+Who was it said, 'For God's sake, don't speak of it!' about Scott 
+and his tears?  He knew what he was saying.  The fear of that hour 
+is the skeleton in all our cupboards; that hour when the pastime 
+and the livelihood go together; and - I am getting hard of hearing 
+myself; a pore young child of forty, but new come frae my Mammy, O!
+
+Excuse these follies, and accept the expression of all my regards. 
+- Yours affectionately,
+
+R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+UNION CLUB, SYDNEY, MARCH 7TH, 1890.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES, - I did not send off the enclosed before from 
+laziness; having gone quite sick, and being a blooming prisoner 
+here in the club, and indeed in my bedroom.  I was in receipt of 
+your letters and your ornamental photo, and was delighted to see 
+how well you looked, and how reasonably well I stood. . . . I am 
+sure I shall never come back home except to die; I may do it, but 
+shall always think of the move as suicidal, unless a great change 
+comes over me, of which as yet I see no symptom.  This visit to 
+Sydney has smashed me handsomely; and yet I made myself a prisoner 
+here in the club upon my first arrival.  This is not encouraging 
+for further ventures; Sydney winter - or, I might almost say, 
+Sydney spring, for I came when the worst was over - is so small an 
+affair, comparable to our June depression at home in Scotland. . . 
+. The pipe is right again; it was the springs that had rusted, and 
+ought to have been oiled.  Its voice is now that of an angel; but, 
+Lord! here in the club I dare not wake it!  Conceive my impatience 
+to be in my own backwoods and raise the sound of minstrelsy.  What 
+pleasures are to be compared with those of the Unvirtuous Virtuoso. 
+- Yours ever affectionately, the Unvirtuous Virtuoso,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO SIDNEY COLVIN
+
+
+
+SS.  'JANET NICOLL,' OFF UPOLU [SPRING 1890].
+
+MY DEAREST COLVIN, - I was sharply ill at Sydney, cut off, right 
+out of bed, in this steamer on a fresh island cruise, and have 
+already reaped the benefit.  We are excellently found this time, on 
+a spacious vessel, with an excellent table; the captain, 
+supercargo, our one fellow-passenger, etc., very nice; and the 
+charterer, Mr. Henderson, the very man I could have chosen.  The 
+truth is, I fear, this life is the only one that suits me; so long 
+as I cruise in the South Seas, I shall be well and happy - alas, 
+no, I do not mean that, and ABSIT OMEN! - I mean that, so soon as I 
+cease from cruising, the nerves are strained, the decline 
+commences, and I steer slowly but surely back to bedward.  We left 
+Sydney, had a cruel rough passage to Auckland, for the JANET is the 
+worst roller I was ever aboard of.  I was confined to my cabin, 
+ports closed, self shied out of the berth, stomach (pampered till 
+the day I left on a diet of perpetual egg-nogg) revolted at ship's 
+food and ship eating, in a frowsy bunk, clinging with one hand to 
+the plate, with the other to the glass, and using the knife and 
+fork (except at intervals) with the eyelid.  No matter:  I picked 
+up hand over hand.  After a day in Auckland, we set sail again; 
+were blown up in the main cabin with calcium fires, as we left the 
+bay.  Let no man say I am unscientific:  when I ran, on the alert, 
+out of my stateroom, and found the main cabin incarnadined with the 
+glow of the last scene of a pantomime, I stopped dead:  'What is 
+this?' said I.  'This ship is on fire, I see that; but why a 
+pantomime?'  And I stood and reasoned the point, until my head was 
+so muddled with the fumes that I could not find the companion.  A 
+few seconds later, the captain had to enter crawling on his belly, 
+and took days to recover (if he has recovered) from the fumes.  By 
+singular good fortune, we got the hose down in time and saved the 
+ship, but Lloyd lost most of his clothes and a great part of our 
+photographs was destroyed.  Fanny saw the native sailors tossing 
+overboard a blazing trunk; she stopped them in time, and behold, it 
+contained my manuscripts.  Thereafter we had three (or two) days 
+fine weather:  then got into a gale of wind, with rain and a 
+vexatious sea.  As we drew into our anchorage in a bight of Savage 
+Island, a man ashore told me afterwards the sight of the JANET 
+NICOLL made him sick; and indeed it was rough play, though nothing 
+to the night before.  All through this gale I worked four to six 
+hours per diem, spearing the ink-bottle like a flying fish, and 
+holding my papers together as I might.  For, of all things, what I 
+was at was history - the Samoan business - and I had to turn from 
+one to another of these piles of manuscript notes, and from one 
+page to another in each, until I should have found employment for 
+the hands of Briareus.  All the same, this history is a godsend for 
+a voyage; I can put in time, getting events co-ordinated and the 
+narrative distributed, when my much-heaving numskull would be 
+incapable of finish or fine style.  At Savage we met the missionary 
+barque JOHN WILLIAMS.  I tell you it was a great day for Savage 
+Island:  the path up the cliffs was crowded with gay islandresses 
+(I like that feminine plural) who wrapped me in their embraces, and 
+picked my pockets of all my tobacco, with a manner which a touch 
+would have made revolting, but as it was, was simply charming, like 
+the Golden Age.  One pretty, little, stalwart minx, with a red 
+flower behind her ear, had searched me with extraordinary zeal; and 
+when, soon after, I missed my matches, I accused her (she still 
+following us) of being the thief.  After some delay, and with a 
+subtle smile, she produced the box, gave me ONE MATCH, and put the 
+rest away again.  Too tired to add more. - Your most affectionate,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+S.S. 'JANET NICOLL,' OFF PERU ISLAND, KINGSMILLS GROUP, JULY 13th, 
+'90.
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - I am moved to write to you in the matter of 
+the end papers.  I am somewhat tempted to begin them again.  Follow 
+the reasons PRO and CON:-
+
+1st.  I must say I feel as if something in the nature of the end 
+paper were a desirable finish to the number, and that the 
+substitutes of occasional essays by occasional contributors somehow 
+fail to fill the bill.  Should you differ with me on this point, no 
+more is to be said.  And what follows must be regarded as lost 
+words.
+
+2nd.  I am rather taken with the idea of continuing the work.  For 
+instance, should you have no distaste for papers of the class 
+called RANDOM MEMORIES, I should enjoy continuing them (of course 
+at intervals), and when they were done I have an idea they might 
+make a readable book.  On the other hand, I believe a greater 
+freedom of choice might be taken, the subjects more varied and more 
+briefly treated, in somewhat approaching the manner of Andrew Lang 
+in the SIGN OF THE SHIP; it being well understood that the broken 
+sticks method is one not very suitable (as Colonel Burke would say) 
+to my genius, and not very likely to be pushed far in my practice.  
+Upon this point I wish you to condense your massive brain.  In the 
+last lot I was promised, and I fondly expected to receive, a vast 
+amount of assistance from intelligent and genial correspondents.  I 
+assure you, I never had a scratch of a pen from any one above the 
+level of a village idiot, except once, when a lady sowed my head 
+full of grey hairs by announcing that she was going to direct her 
+life in future by my counsels.  Will the correspondents be more 
+copious and less irrelevant in the future?  Suppose that to be the 
+case, will they be of any use to me in my place of exile?  Is it 
+possible for a man in Samoa to be in touch with the great heart of 
+the People?  And is it not perhaps a mere folly to attempt, from so 
+hopeless a distance, anything so delicate as a series of papers?  
+Upon these points, perpend, and give me the results of your 
+perpensions.
+
+3rd.  The emolument would be agreeable to your humble servant.
+
+I have now stated all the PROS, and the most of the CONS are come 
+in by the way.  There follows, however, one immense Con (with a 
+capital 'C'), which I beg you to consider particularly.  I fear 
+that, to be of any use for your magazine, these papers should begin 
+with the beginning of a volume.  Even supposing my hands were free, 
+this would be now impossible for next year.  You have to consider 
+whether, supposing you have no other objection, it would be worth 
+while to begin the series in the middle of a volume, or desirable 
+to delay the whole matter until the beginning of another year.
+
+Now supposing that the CONS have it, and you refuse my offer, let 
+me make another proposal, which you will be very inclined to refuse 
+at the first off-go, but which I really believe might in time come 
+to something.  You know how the penny papers have their answers to 
+correspondents.  Why not do something of the same kind for the 
+'culchawed'?  Why not get men like Stimson, Brownell, Professor 
+James, Goldwin Smith, and others who will occur to you more readily 
+than to me, to put and to answer a series of questions of 
+intellectual and general interest, until at last you should have 
+established a certain standard of matter to be discussed in this 
+part of the Magazine?
+
+I want you to get me bound volumes of the Magazine from its start.  
+The Lord knows I have had enough copies; where they are I know not.  
+A wandering author gathers no magazines.
+
+THE WRECKER is in no forrader state than in last reports.  I have 
+indeed got to a period when I cannot well go on until I can refresh 
+myself on the proofs of the beginning.  My respected collaborator, 
+who handles the machine which is now addressing you, has indeed 
+carried his labours farther, but not, I am led to understand, with 
+what we used to call a blessing; at least, I have been refused a 
+sight of his latest labours.  However, there is plenty of time 
+ahead, and I feel no anxiety about the tale, except that it may 
+meet with your approval.
+
+All this voyage I have been busy over my TRAVELS, which, given a 
+very high temperature and the saloon of a steamer usually going 
+before the wind, and with the cabins in front of the engines, has 
+come very near to prostrating me altogether.  You will therefore 
+understand that there are no more poems.  I wonder whether there 
+are already enough, and whether you think that such a volume would 
+be worth the publishing?  I shall hope to find in Sydney some 
+expression of your opinion on this point.  Living as I do among - 
+not the most cultured of mankind ('splendidly educated and perfect 
+gentlemen when sober') - I attach a growing importance to friendly 
+criticisms from yourself.
+
+I believe that this is the most of our business.  As for my health, 
+I got over my cold in a fine style, but have not been very well of 
+late.  To my unaffected annoyance, the blood-spitting has started 
+again.  I find the heat of a steamer decidedly wearing and trying 
+in these latitudes, and I am inclined to think the superior 
+expedition rather dearly paid for.  Still, the fact that one does 
+not even remark the coming of a squall, nor feel relief on its 
+departure, is a mercy not to be acknowledged without gratitude.  
+The rest of the family seem to be doing fairly well; both seem less 
+run down than they were on the EQUATOR, and Mrs. Stevenson very 
+much less so.  We have now been three months away, have visited 
+about thirty-five islands, many of which were novel to us, and some 
+extremely entertaining; some also were old acquaintances, and 
+pleasant to revisit.  In the meantime, we have really a capital 
+time aboard ship, in the most pleasant and interesting society, and 
+with (considering the length and nature of the voyage) an excellent 
+table.  Please remember us all to Mr. Scribner, the young chieftain 
+of the house, and the lady, whose health I trust is better.  To 
+Mrs. Burlingame we all desire to be remembered, and I hope you will 
+give our news to Low, St. Gaudens, Faxon, and others of the 
+faithful in the city.  I shall probably return to Samoa direct, 
+having given up all idea of returning to civilisation in the 
+meanwhile.  There, on my ancestral acres, which I purchased six 
+months ago from a blind Scots blacksmith, you will please address 
+me until further notice.  The name of the ancestral acres is going 
+to be Vailima; but as at the present moment nobody else knows the 
+name, except myself and the co-patentees, it will be safer, if less 
+ambitious, to address R. L. S., Apia, Samoa.  The ancestral acres 
+run to upwards of three hundred; they enjoy the ministrations of 
+five streams, whence the name.  They are all at the present moment 
+under a trackless covering of magnificent forest, which would be 
+worth a great deal if it grew beside a railway terminus.  To me, as 
+it stands, it represents a handsome deficit.  Obliging natives from 
+the Cannibal Islands are now cutting it down at my expense.  You 
+would be able to run your magazine to much greater advantage if the 
+terms of authors were on the same scale with those of my cannibals.  
+We have also a house about the size of a manufacturer's lodge.  
+'Tis but the egg of the future palace, over the details of which on 
+paper Mrs. Stevenson and I have already shed real tears; what it 
+will be when it comes to paying for it, I leave you to imagine.  
+But if it can only be built as now intended, it will be with 
+genuine satisfaction and a growunded pride that I shall welcome you 
+at the steps of my Old Colonial Home, when you land from the 
+steamer on a long-merited holiday.  I speak much at my ease; yet I 
+do not know, I may be now an outlaw, a bankrupt, the abhorred of 
+all good men.  I do not know, you probably do.  Has Hyde turned 
+upon me?  Have I fallen, like Danvers Carew?
+
+It is suggested to me that you might like to know what will be my 
+future society.  Three consuls, all at logger-heads with one 
+another, or at the best in a clique of two against one; three 
+different sects of missionaries, not upon the best of terms; and 
+the Catholics and Protestants in a condition of unhealable ill-
+feeling as to whether a wooden drum ought or ought not to be beaten 
+to announce the time of school.  The native population, very 
+genteel, very songful, very agreeable, very good-looking, 
+chronically spoiling for a fight (a circumstance not to be entirely 
+neglected in the design of the palace).  As for the white 
+population of (technically, 'The Beach'), I don't suppose it is 
+possible for any person not thoroughly conversant with the South 
+Seas to form the smallest conception of such a society, with its 
+grog-shops, its apparently unemployed hangers-on, its merchants of 
+all degrees of respectability and the reverse.  The paper, of which 
+I must really send you a copy - if yours were really a live 
+magazine, you would have an exchange with the editor:  I assure 
+you, it has of late contained a great deal of matter about one of 
+your contributors - rejoices in the name of SAMOA TIMES AND SOUTH 
+SEA ADVERTISER.  The advertisements in the ADVERTISER are 
+permanent, being simply subsidies for its existence.  A dashing 
+warfare of newspaper correspondence goes on between the various 
+residents, who are rather fond of recurring to one another's 
+antecedents.  But when all is said, there are a lot of very nice, 
+pleasant people, and I don't know that Apia is very much worse than 
+half a hundred towns that I could name.
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+HOTEL SEBASTOPOL, NOUMEA, AUGUST 1890.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES, - I have stayed here a week while Lloyd and my 
+wife continue to voyage in the JANET NICOLL; this I did, partly to 
+see the convict system, partly to shorten my stay in the extreme 
+cold - hear me with my extreme! MOI QUI SUIS ORIGINAIRE D'EDINBOURG 
+- of Sydney at this season.  I am feeling very seedy, utterly 
+fatigued, and overborne with sleep.  I have a fine old gentleman of 
+a doctor, who attends and cheers and entertains, if he does not 
+cure me; but even with his ministrations I am almost incapable of 
+the exertion sufficient for this letter; and I am really, as I 
+write, falling down with sleep.  What is necessary to say, I must 
+try to say shortly.  Lloyd goes to clear out our establishments:  
+pray keep him in funds, if I have any; if I have not, pray try to 
+raise them.  Here is the idea:  to install ourselves, at the risk 
+of bankruptcy, in Samoa.  It is not the least likely it will pay 
+(although it may); but it is almost certain it will support life, 
+with very few external expenses.  If I die, it will be an endowment 
+for the survivors, at least for my wife and Lloyd; and my mother, 
+who might prefer to go home, has her own.  Hence I believe I shall 
+do well to hurry my installation.  The letters are already in part 
+done; in part done is a novel for Scribner; in the course of the 
+next twelve months I should receive a considerable amount of money.  
+I am aware I had intended to pay back to my capital some of this.  
+I am now of opinion I should act foolishly.  Better to build the 
+house and have a roof and farm of my own; and thereafter, with a 
+livelihood assured, save and repay . . .  There is my livelihood, 
+all but books and wine, ready in a nutshell; and it ought to be 
+more easy to save and to repay afterwards.  Excellent, say you, but 
+will you save and will you repay?  I do not know, said the Bell of 
+Old Bow. . . . It seems clear to me. . . . The deuce of the affair 
+is that I do not know when I shall see you and Colvin.  I guess you 
+will have to come and see me:  many a time already we have arranged 
+the details of your visit in the yet unbuilt house on the mountain.  
+I shall be able to get decent wine from Noumea.  We shall be able 
+to give you a decent welcome, and talk of old days.  APROPOS of old 
+days, do you remember still the phrase we heard in Waterloo Place?  
+I believe you made a piece for the piano on that phrase.  Pray, if 
+you remember it, send it me in your next.  If you find it 
+impossible to write correctly, send it me A LA RECITATIVE, and 
+indicate the accents.  Do you feel (you must) how strangely heavy 
+and stupid I am?  I must at last give up and go sleep; I am simply 
+a rag.
+
+The morrow:  I feel better, but still dim and groggy.  To-night I 
+go to the governor's; such a lark - no dress clothes - twenty-four 
+hours' notice - able-bodied Polish tailor - suit made for a man 
+with the figure of a puncheon - same hastily altered for self with 
+the figure of a bodkin - sight inconceivable.  Never mind; dress 
+clothes, 'which nobody can deny'; and the officials have been all 
+so civil that I liked neither to refuse nor to appear in mufti.  
+Bad dress clothes only prove you are a grisly ass; no dress 
+clothes, even when explained, indicate a want of respect.  I wish 
+you were here with me to help me dress in this wild raiment, and to 
+accompany me to M. Noel-Pardon's.  I cannot say what I would give 
+if there came a knock now at the door and you came in.  I guess 
+Noel-Pardon would go begging, and we might burn the fr. 200 dress 
+clothes in the back garden for a bonfire; or what would be yet more 
+expensive and more humorous, get them once more expanded to fit 
+you, and when that was done, a second time cut down for my gossamer 
+dimensions.
+
+I hope you never forget to remember me to your father, who has 
+always a place in my heart, as I hope I have a little in his.  His 
+kindness helped me infinitely when you and I were young; I recall 
+it with gratitude and affection in this town of convicts at the 
+world's end.  There are very few things, my dear Charles, worth 
+mention:  on a retrospect of life, the day's flash and colour, one 
+day with another, flames, dazzles, and puts to sleep; and when the 
+days are gone, like a fast-flying thaumatrope, they make but a 
+single pattern.  Only a few things stand out; and among these - 
+most plainly to me - Rutland Square, - Ever, my dear Charles, your 
+affectionate friend,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+P.S. - Just returned from trying on the dress clo'.  Lord, you 
+should see the coat!  It stands out at the waist like a bustle, the 
+flaps cross in front, the sleeves are like bags.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+UNION CLUB, SYDNEY [AUGUST 1890].
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME
+
+BALLADS.
+
+The deuce is in this volume.  It has cost me more botheration and 
+dubiety than any other I ever took in hand.  On one thing my mind 
+is made up:  the verses at the end have no business there, and 
+throw them down.  Many of them are bad, many of the rest want nine 
+years' keeping, and the remainder are not relevant - throw them 
+down; some I never want to hear of more, others will grow in time 
+towards decent items in a second UNDERWOODS - and in the meanwhile, 
+down with them!  At the same time, I have a sneaking idea the 
+ballads are not altogether without merit - I don't know if they're 
+poetry, but they're good narrative, or I'm deceived.  (You've never 
+said one word about them, from which I astutely gather you are dead 
+set against:  'he was a diplomatic man' - extract from epitaph of 
+E. L. B. - 'and remained on good terms with Minor Poets.')  You 
+will have to judge:  one of the Gladstonian trinity of paths must 
+be chosen.  (1st) Either publish the five ballads, such as they 
+are, in a volume called BALLADS; in which case pray send sheets at 
+once to Chatto and Windus.  Or (2nd) write and tell me you think 
+the book too small, and I'll try and get into the mood to do some 
+more.  Or (3rd) write and tell me the whole thing is a blooming 
+illusion; in which case draw off some twenty copies for my private 
+entertainment, and charge me with the expense of the whole dream.
+
+In the matter of rhyme no man can judge himself; I am at the 
+world's end, have no one to consult, and my publisher holds his 
+tongue.  I call it unfair and almost unmanly.  I do indeed begin to 
+be filled with animosity; Lord, wait till you see the continuation 
+of THE WRECKER, when I introduce some New York publishers. . . It's 
+a good scene; the quantities you drink and the really hideous 
+language you are represented as employing may perhaps cause you one 
+tithe of the pain you have inflicted by your silence on, sir, The 
+Poetaster,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+Lloyd is off home; my wife and I dwell sundered:  she in lodgings, 
+preparing for the move; I here in the club, and at my old trade - 
+bedridden.  Naturally, the visit home is given up; we only wait our 
+opportunity to get to Samoa, where, please, address me.
+
+Have I yet asked you to despatch the books and papers left in your 
+care to me at Apia, Samoa?  I wish you would, QUAM PRIMUM.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+
+UNION CLUB, SYDNEY, AUGUST 1890.
+
+MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - Kipling is too clever to live.  The BETE 
+HUMAINE I had already perused in Noumea, listening the while to the 
+strains of the convict band.  He a Beast; but not human, and, to be 
+frank, not very interesting.  'Nervous maladies:  the homicidal 
+ward,' would be the better name:  O, this game gets very tedious.
+
+Your two long and kind letters have helped to entertain the old 
+familiar sickbed.  So has a book called THE BONDMAN, by Hall Caine; 
+I wish you would look at it.  I am not half-way through yet.  Read 
+the book, and communicate your views.  Hall Caine, by the way, 
+appears to take Hugo's view of History and Chronology.  (LATER; the 
+book doesn't keep up; it gets very wild.)
+
+I must tell you plainly - I can't tell Colvin - I do not think I 
+shall come to England more than once, and then it'll be to die.  
+Health I enjoy in the tropics; even here, which they call sub- or 
+semi-tropical, I come only to catch cold.  I have not been out 
+since my arrival; live here in a nice bedroom by the fireside, and 
+read books and letters from Henry James, and send out to get his 
+TRAGIC MUSE, only to be told they can't be had as yet in Sydney, 
+and have altogether a placid time.  But I can't go out!  The 
+thermometer was nearly down to 50 degrees the other day - no 
+temperature for me, Mr. James:  how should I do in England?  I fear 
+not at all.  Am I very sorry?  I am sorry about seven or eight 
+people in England, and one or two in the States.  And outside of 
+that, I simply prefer Samoa.  These are the words of honesty and 
+soberness.  (I am fasting from all but sin, coughing, THE BONDMAN, 
+a couple of eggs and a cup of tea.)  I was never fond of towns, 
+houses, society, or (it seems) civilisation.  Nor yet it seems was 
+I ever very fond of (what is technically called) God's green earth.  
+The sea, islands, the islanders, the island life and climate, make 
+and keep me truly happier.  These last two years I have been much 
+at sea, and I have NEVER WEARIED; sometimes I have indeed grown 
+impatient for some destination; more often I was sorry that the 
+voyage drew so early to an end; and never once did I lose my 
+fidelity to blue water and a ship.  It is plain, then, that for me 
+my exile to the place of schooners and islands can be in no sense 
+regarded as a calamity.
+
+Good-bye just now:  I must take a turn at my proofs.
+
+N.B. - Even my wife has weakened about the sea.  She wearied, the 
+last time we were ashore, to get afloat again. - Yours ever,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MARCEL SCHWOB
+
+
+
+UNION CLUB, SYDNEY, AUGUST 19TH, 1890.
+
+MY DEAR MR. SCHWOB, - MAIS, ALORS, VOUS AVEZ TOUS LES BONHEURS, 
+VOUS!  More about Villon; it seems incredible:  when it is put in 
+order, pray send it me.
+
+You wish to translate the BLACK ARROW:  dear sir, you are hereby 
+authorised; but I warn you, I do not like the work.  Ah, if you, 
+who know so well both tongues, and have taste and instruction - if 
+you would but take a fancy to translate a book of mine that I 
+myself admired - for we sometimes admire our own - or I do - with 
+what satisfaction would the authority be granted!  But these things 
+are too much to expect.  VOUS NE DETESTEZ PAS ALORS MES BONNES 
+FEMMES? MOI, JE LES DETESTE.  I have never pleased myself with any 
+women of mine save two character parts, one of only a few lines - 
+the Countess of Rosen, and Madame Desprez in the TREASURE OF 
+FRANCHARD.
+
+I had indeed one moment of pride about my poor BLACK ARROW:  Dickon 
+Crookback I did, and I do, think is a spirited and possible figure.  
+Shakespeare's - O, if we can call that cocoon Shakespeare! - 
+Shakespeare's is spirited - one likes to see the untaught athlete 
+butting against the adamantine ramparts of human nature, head down, 
+breach up; it reminds us how trivial we are to-day, and what safety 
+resides in our triviality.  For spirited it may be, but O, sure not 
+possible!  I love Dumas and I love Shakespeare:  you will not 
+mistake me when I say that the Richard of the one reminds me of the 
+Porthos of the other; and if by any sacrifice of my own literary 
+baggage I could clear the VICOMTE DE BRAGELONNE of Porthos, JEKYLL 
+might go, and the MASTER, and the BLACK ARROW, you may be sure, and 
+I should think my life not lost for mankind if half a dozen more of 
+my volumes must be thrown in.
+
+The tone of your pleasant letters makes me egotistical; you make me 
+take myself too gravely.  Comprehend how I have lived much of my 
+time in France, and loved your country, and many of its people, and 
+all the time was learning that which your country has to teach - 
+breathing in rather that atmosphere of art which can only there be 
+breathed; and all the time knew - and raged to know - that I might 
+write with the pen of angels or of heroes, and no Frenchman be the 
+least the wiser!  And now steps in M. Marcel Schwob, writes me the 
+most kind encouragement, and reads and understands, and is kind 
+enough to like my work.
+
+I am just now overloaded with work.  I have two huge novels on hand 
+- THE WRECKER and the PEARL FISHER, in collaboration with my 
+stepson:  the latter, the PEARL FISHER, I think highly of, for a 
+black, ugly, trampling, violent story, full of strange scenes and 
+striking characters.  And then I am about waist-deep in my big book 
+on the South Seas:  THE big book on the South Seas it ought to be, 
+and shall.  And besides, I have some verses in the press, which, 
+however, I hesitate to publish.  For I am no judge of my own verse; 
+self-deception is there so facile.  All this and the cares of an 
+impending settlement in Samoa keep me very busy, and a cold (as 
+usual) keeps me in bed.
+
+Alas, I shall not have the pleasure to see you yet awhile, if ever.  
+You must be content to take me as a wandering voice, and in the 
+form of occasional letters from recondite islands; and address me, 
+if you will be good enough to write, to Apia, Samoa.  My stepson, 
+Mr. Osbourne, goes home meanwhile to arrange some affairs; it is 
+not unlikely he may go to Paris to arrange about the illustrations 
+to my South Seas; in which case I shall ask him to call upon you, 
+and give you some word of our outlandish destinies.  You will find 
+him intelligent, I think; and I am sure, if (PAR HASARD) you should 
+take any interest in the islands, he will have much to tell you. - 
+Herewith I conclude, and am your obliged and interested 
+correspondent,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+P.S. - The story you refer to has got lost in the post.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO ANDREW LANG
+
+
+
+UNION CLUB, SYDNEY [AUGUST 1890].
+
+MY DEAR LANG, - I observed with a great deal of surprise and 
+interest that a controversy in which you have been taking sides at 
+home, in yellow London, hinges in part at least on the Gilbert 
+Islanders and their customs in burial.  Nearly six months of my 
+life has been passed in the group:  I have revisited it but the 
+other day; and I make haste to tell you what I know.  The upright 
+stones - I enclose you a photograph of one on Apemama - are 
+certainly connected with religion; I do not think they are adored.  
+They stand usually on the windward shore of the islands, that is to 
+say, apart from habitation (on ENCLOSED ISLANDS, where the people 
+live on the sea side, I do not know how it is, never having lived 
+on one).  I gathered from Tembinoka, Rex Apemamae, that the pillars 
+were supposed to fortify the island from invasion:  spiritual 
+martellos.  I think he indicated they were connected with the cult 
+of Tenti - pronounce almost as chintz in English, the T being 
+explosive; but you must take this with a grain of salt, for I knew 
+no word of Gilbert Island; and the King's English, although 
+creditable, is rather vigorous than exact.  Now, here follows the 
+point of interest to you:  such pillars, or standing stones, have 
+no connection with graves.  The most elaborate grave that I have 
+ever seen in the group - to be certain - is in the form of a RAISED 
+BORDER of gravel, usually strewn with broken glass.  One, of which 
+I cannot be sure that it was a grave, for I was told by one that it 
+was, and by another that it was not - consisted of a mound about 
+breast high in an excavated taro swamp, on the top of which was a 
+child's house, or rather MANIAPA - that is to say, shed, or open 
+house, such as is used in the group for social or political 
+gatherings - so small that only a child could creep under its 
+eaves.  I have heard of another great tomb on Apemama, which I did 
+not see; but here again, by all accounts, no sign of a standing 
+stone.  My report would be - no connection between standing stones 
+and sepulture.  I shall, however, send on the terms of the problem 
+to a highly intelligent resident trader, who knows more than 
+perhaps any one living, white or native, of the Gilbert group; and 
+you shall have the result.  In Samoa, whither I return for good, I 
+shall myself make inquiries; up to now, I have neither seen nor 
+heard of any standing stones in that group. - Yours,
+
+R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MRS. CHARLES FAIRCHILD
+
+
+
+UNION CLUB, SYDNEY [SEPTEMBER 1890].
+
+MY DEAR MRS. FAIRCHILD, - I began a letter to you on board the 
+JANET NICOLL on my last cruise, wrote, I believe, two sheets, and 
+ruthlessly destroyed the flippant trash.  Your last has given me 
+great pleasure and some pain, for it increased the consciousness of 
+my neglect.  Now, this must go to you, whatever it is like.
+
+. . . You are quite right; our civilisation is a hollow fraud, all 
+the fun of life is lost by it; all it gains is that a larger number 
+of persons can continue to be contemporaneously unhappy on the 
+surface of the globe.  O, unhappy! - there is a big word and a 
+false - continue to be not nearly - by about twenty per cent. - so 
+happy as they might be:  that would be nearer the mark.
+
+When - observe that word, which I will write again and larger - 
+WHEN you come to see us in Samoa, you will see for yourself a 
+healthy and happy people.
+
+You see, you are one of the very few of our friends rich enough to 
+come and see us; and when my house is built, and the road is made, 
+and we have enough fruit planted and poultry and pigs raised, it is 
+undeniable that you must come - must is the word; that is the way 
+in which I speak to ladies.  You and Fairchild, anyway - perhaps my 
+friend Blair - we'll arrange details in good time.  It will be the 
+salvation of your souls, and make you willing to die.
+
+Let me tell you this:  In '74 or 5 there came to stay with my 
+father and mother a certain Mr. Seed, a prime minister or something 
+of New Zealand.  He spotted what my complaint was; told me that I 
+had no business to stay in Europe; that I should find all I cared 
+for, and all that was good for me, in the Navigator Islands; sat up 
+till four in the morning persuading me, demolishing my scruples.  
+And I resisted:  I refused to go so far from my father and mother.  
+O, it was virtuous, and O, wasn't it silly!  But my father, who was 
+always my dearest, got to his grave without that pang; and now in 
+1890, I (or what is left of me) go at last to the Navigator 
+Islands.  God go with us!  It is but a Pisgah sight when all is 
+said; I go there only to grow old and die; but when you come, you 
+will see it is a fair place for the purpose.
+
+Flaubert has not turned up; I hope he will soon; I knew of him only 
+through Maxime Descamps. - With kindest messages to yourself and 
+all of yours, I remain,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI - LIFE IN SAMOA, NOVEMBER 1890-DECEMBER 1892
+
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, APIA, SAMOA, NOV. 7, 1890.
+
+I WISH you to add to the words at the end of the prologue; they 
+run, I think, thus, 'And this is the yarn of Loudon Dodd'; add, 
+'not as he told, but as he wrote it afterwards for his diversion.'  
+This becomes the more needful, because, when all is done, I shall 
+probably revert to Tai-o-hae, and give final details about the 
+characters in the way of a conversation between Dodd and Havers.  
+These little snippets of information and FAITS-DIVERS have always a 
+disjointed, broken-backed appearance; yet, readers like them.  In 
+this book we have introduced so many characters, that this kind of 
+epilogue will be looked for; and I rather hope, looking far ahead, 
+that I can lighten it in dialogue.
+
+We are well past the middle now.  How does it strike you? and can 
+you guess my mystery?  It will make a fattish volume!
+
+I say, have you ever read the HIGHLAND WIDOW?  I never had till 
+yesterday:  I am half inclined, bar a trip or two, to think it 
+Scott's masterpiece; and it has the name of a failure!  Strange 
+things are readers.
+
+I expect proofs and revises in duplicate.
+
+We have now got into a small barrack at our place.  We see the sea 
+six hundred feet below filling the end of two vales of forest.  On 
+one hand the mountain runs above us some thousand feet higher; 
+great trees stand round us in our clearing; there is an endless 
+voice of birds; I have never lived in such a heaven; just now, I 
+have fever, which mitigates but not destroys my gusto in my 
+circumstances. - You may envy
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+. . . O, I don't know if I mentioned that having seen your new tail 
+to the magazine, I cried off interference, at least for this trip.  
+Did I ask you to send me my books and papers, and all the bound 
+volumes of the mag.? QUORUM PARS.  I might add that were there a 
+good book or so - new - I don't believe there is - such would be 
+welcome.
+
+I desire - I positively begin to awake - to be remembered to 
+Scribner, Low, St. Gaudens, Russell Sullivan.  Well, well, you 
+fellows have the feast of reason and the flow of soul; I have a 
+better-looking place and climate:  you should hear the birds on the 
+hill now!  The day has just wound up with a shower; it is still 
+light without, though I write within here at the cheek of a lamp; 
+my wife and an invaluable German are wrestling about bread on the 
+back verandah; and how the birds and the frogs are rattling, and 
+piping, and hailing from the woods!  Here and there a throaty 
+chuckle; here and there, cries like those of jolly children who 
+have lost their way; here and there, the ringing sleigh-bell of the 
+tree frog.  Out and away down below me on the sea it is still 
+raining; it will be wet under foot on schooners, and the house will 
+leak; how well I know that!  Here the showers only patter on the 
+iron roof, and sometimes roar; and within, the lamp burns steady on 
+the tafa-covered walls, with their dusky tartan patterns, and the 
+book-shelves with their thin array of books; and no squall can rout 
+my house or bring my heart into my mouth. - The well-pleased South 
+Sea Islander,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+[VAILIMA, DECEMBER 1890.]
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - By some diabolical accident, I have mislaid 
+your last.  What was in it?  I know not, and here I am caught 
+unexpectedly by the American mail, a week earlier than by 
+computation.  The computation, not the mail, is supposed to be in 
+error.  The vols. of SCRIBNER'S have arrived, and present a noble 
+appearance in my house, which is not a noble structure at present.  
+But by autumn we hope to be sprawling in our verandah, twelve feet, 
+sir, by eighty-eight in front, and seventy-two on the flank; view 
+of the sea and mountains, sunrise, moonrise, and the German fleet 
+at anchor three miles away in Apia harbour.  I hope some day to 
+offer you a bowl of kava there, or a slice of a pineapple, or some 
+lemonade from my own hedge.  'I know a hedge where the lemons grow' 
+- SHAKESPEARE.  My house at this moment smells of them strong; and 
+the rain, which a while ago roared there, now rings in minute drops 
+upon the iron roof.  I have no WRECKER for you this mail, other 
+things having engaged me.  I was on the whole rather relieved you 
+did not vote for regular papers, as I feared the traces.  It is my 
+design from time to time to write a paper of a reminiscential 
+(beastly word) description; some of them I could scarce publish 
+from different considerations; but some of them - for instance, my 
+long experience of gambling places - Homburg, Wiesbaden, Baden-
+Baden, old Monaco, and new Monte Carlo - would make good magazine 
+padding, if I got the stuff handled the right way.  I never could 
+fathom why verse was put in magazines; it has something to do with 
+the making-up, has it not?  I am scribbling a lot just now; if you 
+are taken badly that way, apply to the South Seas.  I could send 
+you some, I believe, anyway, only none of it is thoroughly ripe.  
+If kept back the volume of ballads, I'll soon make it a respectable 
+size if this fit continue.  By the next mail you may expect some 
+more WRECKER, or I shall be displeased.  Probably no more than a 
+chapter, however, for it is a hard one, and I am denuded of my 
+proofs, my collaborator having walked away with them to England; 
+hence some trouble in catching the just note.
+
+I am a mere farmer:  my talk, which would scarce interest you on 
+Broadway, is all of fuafua and tuitui, and black boys, and planting 
+and weeding, and axes and cutlasses; my hands are covered with 
+blisters and full of thorns; letters are, doubtless, a fine thing, 
+so are beer and skittles, but give me farmering in the tropics for 
+real interest.  Life goes in enchantment; I come home to find I am 
+late for dinner; and when I go to bed at night, I could cry for the 
+weariness of my loins and thighs.  Do not speak to me of vexation, 
+the life brims with it, but with living interest fairly.
+
+Christmas I go to Auckland, to meet Tamate, the New Guinea 
+missionary, a man I love.  The rest of my life is a prospect of 
+much rain, much weeding and making of paths, a little letters, and 
+devilish little to eat. - I am, my dear Burlingame, with messages 
+to all whom it may concern, very sincerely yours,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, APIA, SAMOA, DECEMBER 29TH, 1890.
+
+MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - It is terrible how little everybody writes, 
+and how much of that little disappears in the capacious maw of the 
+Post Office.  Many letters, both from and to me, I now know to have 
+been lost in transit:  my eye is on the Sydney Post Office, a large 
+ungainly structure with a tower, as being not a hundred miles from 
+the scene of disappearance; but then I have no proof.  THE TRAGIC 
+MUSE you announced to me as coming; I had already ordered it from a 
+Sydney bookseller:  about two months ago he advised me that his 
+copy was in the post; and I am still tragically museless.
+
+News, news, news.  What do we know of yours?  What do you care for 
+ours?  We are in the midst of the rainy season, and dwell among 
+alarms of hurricanes, in a very unsafe little two-storied wooden 
+box 650 feet above and about three miles from the sea-beach.  
+Behind us, till the other slope of the island, desert forest, 
+peaks, and loud torrents; in front green slopes to the sea, some 
+fifty miles of which we dominate.  We see the ships as they go out 
+and in to the dangerous roadstead of Apia; and if they lie far out, 
+we can even see their topmasts while they are at anchor.  Of sounds 
+of men, beyond those of our own labourers, there reach us, at very 
+long intervals, salutes from the warships in harbour, the bell of 
+the cathedral church, and the low of the conch-shell calling the 
+labour boys on the German plantations.  Yesterday, which was Sunday 
+- the QUANTIEME is most likely erroneous; you can now correct it - 
+we had a visitor - Baker of Tonga.  Heard you ever of him?  He is a 
+great man here:  he is accused of theft, rape, judicial murder, 
+private poisoning, abortion, misappropriation of public moneys - 
+oddly enough, not forgery, nor arson:  you would be amused if you 
+knew how thick the accusations fly in this South Sea world.  I make 
+no doubt my own character is something illustrious; or if not yet, 
+there is a good time coming.
+
+But all our resources have not of late been Pacific.  We have had 
+enlightened society:  La Farge the painter, and your friend Henry 
+Adams:  a great privilege - would it might endure.  I would go 
+oftener to see them, but the place is awkward to reach on 
+horseback.  I had to swim my horse the last time I went to dinner; 
+and as I have not yet returned the clothes I had to borrow, I dare 
+not return in the same plight:  it seems inevitable - as soon as 
+the wash comes in, I plump straight into the American consul's 
+shirt or trousers!  They, I believe, would come oftener to see me 
+but for the horrid doubt that weighs upon our commissariat 
+department; we have OFTEN almost nothing to eat; a guest would 
+simply break the bank; my wife and I have dined on one avocado 
+pear; I have several times dined on hard bread and onions.  What 
+would you do with a guest at such narrow seasons? - eat him? or 
+serve up a labour boy fricasseed?
+
+Work? work is now arrested, but I have written, I should think, 
+about thirty chapters of the South Sea book; they will all want 
+rehandling, I dare say.  Gracious, what a strain is a long book!  
+The time it took me to design this volume, before I could dream of 
+putting pen to paper, was excessive; and then think of writing a 
+book of travels on the spot, when I am continually extending my 
+information, revising my opinions, and seeing the most finely 
+finished portions of my work come part by part in pieces.  Very 
+soon I shall have no opinions left.  And without an opinion, how to 
+string artistically vast accumulations of fact?  Darwin said no one 
+could observe without a theory; I suppose he was right; 'tis a fine 
+point of metaphysic; but I will take my oath, no man can write 
+without one - at least the way he would like to, and my theories 
+melt, melt, melt, and as they melt the thaw-waters wash down my 
+writing, and leave unideal tracts - wastes instead of cultivated 
+farms.
+
+Kipling is by far the most promising young man who has appeared 
+since - ahem - I appeared.  He amazes me by his precocity and 
+various endowment.  But he alarms me by his copiousness and haste.  
+He should shield his fire with both hands 'and draw up all his 
+strength and sweetness in one ball.'  ('Draw all his strength and 
+all His sweetness up into one ball'?  I cannot remember Marvell's 
+words.)  So the critics have been saying to me; but I was never 
+capable of - and surely never guilty of - such a debauch of 
+production.  At this rate his works will soon fill the habitable 
+globe; and surely he was armed for better conflicts than these 
+succinct sketches and flying leaves of verse?  I look on, I admire, 
+I rejoice for myself; but in a kind of ambition we all have for our 
+tongue and literature I am wounded.  If I had this man's fertility 
+and courage, it seems to me I could heave a pyramid.
+
+Well, we begin to be the old fogies now; and it was high time 
+SOMETHING rose to take our places.  Certainly Kipling has the 
+gifts; the fairy godmothers were all tipsy at his christening:  
+what will he do with them?
+
+Goodbye, my dear James; find an hour to write to us, and register 
+your letter. - Yours affectionately,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+
+
+[VAILIMA, 1891.]
+
+SIR, - I cannot call to mind having written you, but I am so throng 
+with occupation this may have fallen aside.  I never heard tell I 
+had any friends in Ireland, and I am led to understand you are come 
+of no considerable family.  The gentleman I now serve with assures 
+me, however, you are a very pretty fellow and your letter deserves 
+to be remarked.  It's true he is himself a man of a very low 
+descent upon the one side; though upon the other he counts 
+cousinship with a gentleman, my very good friend, the late Mr. 
+Balfour of the Shaws, in the Lothian; which I should be wanting in 
+good fellowship to forget.  He tells me besides you are a man of 
+your hands; I am not informed of your weapon; but if all be true it 
+sticks in my mind I would be ready to make exception in your 
+favour, and meet you like one gentleman with another.  I suppose 
+this'll be your purpose in your favour, which I could very ill make 
+out; it's one I would be sweir to baulk you of.  It seems, Mr. 
+McIlvaine, which I take to be your name, you are in the household 
+of a gentleman of the name of Coupling:  for whom my friend is very 
+much engaged.  The distances being very uncommodious, I think it 
+will be maybe better if we leave it to these two to settle all 
+that's necessary to honour.  I would have you to take heed it's a 
+very unusual condescension on my part, that bear a King's name; and 
+for the matter of that I think shame to be mingled with a person of 
+the name of Coupling, which is doubtless a very good house but one 
+I never heard tell of, any more than Stevenson.  But your purpose 
+being laudable, I would be sorry (as the word goes) to cut off my 
+nose to spite my face. - I am, Sir, your humble servant,
+
+A. STEWART,
+CHEVALIER DE ST. LOUIS.
+
+TO MR. M'ILVAINE,
+GENTLEMAN PRIVATE IN A FOOT REGIMENT,
+UNDER COVER TO MR. COUPLING.
+
+He has read me some of your Barrack Room Ballants, which are not of 
+so noble a strain as some of mine in the Gaelic, but I could set 
+some of them to the pipes if this rencounter goes as it's to be 
+desired.  Let's first, as I understand you to move, do each other 
+this rational courtesys; and if either will survive, we may grow 
+better acquaint.  For your tastes for what's martial and for poetry 
+agree with mine.
+
+A. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MARCEL SCHWOB
+
+
+
+SYDNEY, JANUARY 19th, 1891.
+
+MY DEAR SIR, - SAPRISTI, COMME VOUS Y ALLEZ!  Richard III. and 
+Dumas, with all my heart; but not Hamlet.  Hamlet is great 
+literature; Richard III. a big, black, gross, sprawling melodrama, 
+writ with infinite spirit but with no refinement or philosophy by a 
+man who had the world, himself, mankind, and his trade still to 
+learn.  I prefer the Vicomte de Bragelonne to Richard III.; it is 
+better done of its kind:  I simply do not mention the Vicomte in 
+the same part of the building with Hamlet, or Lear, or Othello, or 
+any of those masterpieces that Shakespeare survived to give us.
+
+Also, COMME VOUS Y ALLEZ in my commendation!  I fear my SOLIDE 
+EDUCATION CLASSIQUE had best be described, like Shakespeare's, as 
+'little Latin and no Greek,' and I was educated, let me inform you, 
+for an engineer.  I shall tell my bookseller to send you a copy of 
+MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS, where you will see something of my descent 
+and education, as it was, and hear me at length on my dear Vicomte.  
+I give you permission gladly to take your choice out of my works, 
+and translate what you shall prefer, too much honoured that so 
+clever a young man should think it worth the pains.  My own choice 
+would lie between KIDNAPPED and the MASTER OF BALLANTRAE.  Should 
+you choose the latter, pray do not let Mrs. Henry thrust the sword 
+up to the hilt in the frozen ground - one of my inconceivable 
+blunders, an exaggeration to stagger Hugo.  Say 'she sought to 
+thrust it in the ground.'  In both these works you should be 
+prepared for Scotticisms used deliberately.
+
+I fear my stepson will not have found time to get to Paris; he was 
+overwhelmed with occupation, and is already on his voyage back.  We 
+live here in a beautiful land, amid a beautiful and interesting 
+people.  The life is still very hard:  my wife and I live in a two-
+roomed cottage, about three miles and six hundred and fifty feet 
+above the sea; we have had to make the road to it; our supplies are 
+very imperfect; in the wild weather of this (the hurricane) season 
+we have much discomfort:  one night the wind blew in our house so 
+outrageously that we must sit in the dark; and as the sound of the 
+rain on the roof made speech inaudible, you may imagine we found 
+the evening long.  All these things, however, are pleasant to me.  
+You say L'ARTISTE INCONSCIENT set off to travel:  you do not divide 
+me right.  0.6 of me is artist; 0.4, adventurer.  First, I suppose, 
+come letters; then adventure; and since I have indulged the second 
+part, I think the formula begins to change:  0.55 of an artist, 
+0.45 of the adventurer were nearer true.  And if it had not been 
+for my small strength, I might have been a different man in all 
+things,
+
+Whatever you do, do not neglect to send me what you publish on 
+Villon:  I look forward to that with lively interest.  I have no 
+photograph at hand, but I will send one when I can.  It would be 
+kind if you would do the like, for I do not see much chance of our 
+meeting in the flesh:  and a name, and a handwriting, and an 
+address, and even a style?  I know about as much of Tacitus, and 
+more of Horace; it is not enough between contemporaries, such as we 
+still are.  I have just remembered another of my books, which I re-
+read the other day, and thought in places good - PRINCE OTTO.  It 
+is not as good as either of the others; but it has one 
+recommendation - it has female parts, so it might perhaps please 
+better in France.
+
+I will ask Chatto to send you, then - PRINCE OTTO, MEMORIES AND 
+PORTRAITS, UNDERWOODS, and BALLADS, none of which you seem to have 
+seen.  They will be too late for the New Year:  let them be an 
+Easter present.
+
+You must translate me soon; you will soon have better to do than to 
+transverse the work of others. - Yours very truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON,
+
+With the worst pen in the South Pacific.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+SS. 'LUBECK,' AT SEA [ON THE RETURN VOYAGE FROM SYDNEY, MARCH 
+1891].
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES, - Perhaps in my old days I do grow irascible; 'the 
+old man virulent' has long been my pet name for myself.  Well, the 
+temper is at least all gone now; time is good at lowering these 
+distemperatures; far better is a sharp sickness, and I am just (and 
+scarce) afoot again after a smoking hot little malady at Sydney.  
+And the temper being gone, I still think the same. . . .  We have 
+not our parents for ever; we are never very good to them; when they 
+go and we have lost our front-file man, we begin to feel all our 
+neglects mighty sensibly.  I propose a proposal.  My mother is here 
+on board with me; to-day for once I mean to make her as happy as I 
+am able, and to do that which I know she likes.  You, on the other 
+hand, go and see your father, and do ditto, and give him a real 
+good hour or two.  We shall both be glad hereafter. - Yours ever,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO H. B. BAILDON
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, UPOLU [UNDATED, BUT WRITTEN IN 1891].
+
+MY DEAR BAILDON, - This is a real disappointment.  It was so long 
+since we had met, I was anxious to see where time had carried and 
+stranded us.  Last time we saw each other - it must have been all 
+ten years ago, as we were new to the thirties - it was only for a 
+moment, and now we're in the forties, and before very long we shall 
+be in our graves.  Sick and well, I have had a splendid life of it, 
+grudge nothing, regret very little - and then only some little 
+corners of misconduct for which I deserve hanging, and must 
+infallibly be damned - and, take it all over, damnation and all, 
+would hardly change with any man of my time, unless perhaps it were 
+Gordon or our friend Chalmers:  a man I admire for his virtues, 
+love for his faults, and envy for the really A1 life he has, with 
+everything heart - my heart, I mean - could wish.  It is curious to 
+think you will read this in the grey metropolis; go the first grey, 
+east-windy day into the Caledonian Station, if it looks at all as 
+it did of yore:  I met Satan there.  And then go and stand by the 
+cross, and remember the other one - him that went down - my 
+brother, Robert Fergusson.  It is a pity you had not made me out, 
+and seen me as patriarch and planter.  I shall look forward to some 
+record of your time with Chalmers:  you can't weary me of that 
+fellow, he is as big as a house and far bigger than any church, 
+where no man warms his hands.  Do you know anything of Thomson?  Of 
+A-, B-, C-, D-, E-, F-, at all?  As I write C.'s name mustard rises 
+my nose; I have never forgiven that weak, amiable boy a little 
+trick he played me when I could ill afford it:  I mean that 
+whenever I think of it, some of the old wrath kindles, not that I 
+would hurt the poor soul, if I got the world with it.  And Old X-?  
+Is he still afloat?  Harmless bark!  I gather you ain't married 
+yet, since your sister, to whom I ask to be remembered, goes with 
+you.  Did you see a silly tale, JOHN NICHOLSON'S PREDICAMENT, or 
+some such name, in which I made free with your home at Murrayfield?  
+There is precious little sense in it, but it might amuse.  
+Cassell's published it in a thing called YULE-TIDE years ago, and 
+nobody that ever I heard of read or has ever seen YULE-TIDE.  It is 
+addressed to a class we never met - readers of Cassell's series and 
+that class of conscientious chaff, and my tale was dull, though I 
+don't recall that it was conscientious.  Only, there's the house at 
+Murrayfield and a dead body in it.  Glad the BALLADS amused you.  
+They failed to entertain a coy public, at which I wondered, not 
+that I set much account by my verses, which are the verses of 
+Prosator; but I do know how to tell a yarn, and two of the yarns 
+are great.  RAHERO is for its length a perfect folk-tale:  savage 
+and yet fine, full of tailforemost morality, ancient as the granite 
+rocks; if the historian, not to say the politician, could get that 
+yarn into his head, he would have learned some of his A B C. But 
+the average man at home cannot understand antiquity; he is sunk 
+over the ears in Roman civilisation; and a tale like that of RAHERO 
+falls on his ears inarticulate.  The SPECTATOR said there was no 
+psychology in it; that interested me much:  my grandmother (as I 
+used to call that able paper, and an able paper it is, and a fair 
+one) cannot so much as observe the existence of savage psychology 
+when it is put before it.  I am at bottom a psychologist and 
+ashamed of it; the tale seized me one-third because of its 
+picturesque features, two-thirds because of its astonishing 
+psychology, and the SPECTATOR says there's none.  I am going on 
+with a lot of island work, exulting in the knowledge of a new 
+world, 'a new created world' and new men; and I am sure my income 
+will DECLINE and FALL off; for the effort of comprehension is death 
+to the intelligent public, and sickness to the dull.
+
+I do not know why I pester you with all this trash, above all as 
+you deserve nothing.  I give you my warm TALOFA ('my love to you,' 
+Samoan salutation).  Write me again when the spirit moves you.  And 
+some day, if I still live, make out the trip again and let us hob-
+a-nob with our grey pows on my verandah. - Yours sincerely,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO W. CRAIBE ANGUS
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, APRIL 1891.
+
+DEAR MR. ANGUS, - Surely I remember you!  It was W. C. Murray who 
+made us acquainted, and we had a pleasant crack.  I see your poet 
+is not yet dead.  I remember even our talk - or you would not think 
+of trusting that invaluable JOLLY BEGGARS to the treacherous posts, 
+and the perils of the sea, and the carelessness of authors.  I love 
+the idea, but I could not bear the risk.  However -
+
+
+'Hale be your heart, hale be your fiddle - '
+
+
+ it was kindly thought upon.
+
+My interest in Burns is, as you suppose, perennial.  I would I 
+could be present at the exhibition, with the purpose of which I 
+heartily sympathise; but the NANCY has not waited in vain for me, I 
+have followed my chest, the anchor is weighed long ago, I have said 
+my last farewell to the hills and the heather and the lynns:  like 
+Leyden, I have gone into far lands to die, not stayed like Burns to 
+mingle in the end with Scottish soil.  I shall not even return like 
+Scott for the last scene.  Burns Exhibitions are all over.  'Tis a 
+far cry to Lochow from tropical Vailima.
+
+
+'But still our hearts are true, our hearts are Highland,
+And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.'
+
+
+When your hand is in, will you remember our poor Edinburgh Robin?  
+Burns alone has been just to his promise; follow Burns, he knew 
+best, he knew whence he drew fire - from the poor, white-faced, 
+drunken, vicious boy that raved himself to death in the Edinburgh 
+madhouse.  Surely there is more to be gleaned about Fergusson, and 
+surely it is high time the task was set about.  I way tell you 
+(because your poet is not dead) something of how I feel:  we are 
+three Robins who have touched the Scots lyre this last century.  
+Well, the one is the world's, he did it, he came off, he is for 
+ever; but I and the other - ah! what bonds we have - born in the 
+same city; both sickly, both pestered, one nearly to madness, one 
+to the madhouse, with a damnatory creed; both seeing the stars and 
+the dawn, and wearing shoe-leather on the same ancient stones, 
+under the same pends, down the same closes, where our common 
+ancestors clashed in their armour, rusty or bright.  And the old 
+Robin, who was before Burns and the flood, died in his acute, 
+painful youth, and left the models of the great things that were to 
+come; and the new, who came after, outlived his greensickness, and 
+has faintly tried to parody the finished work.  If you will collect 
+the strays of Robin Fergusson, fish for material, collect any last 
+re-echoing of gossip, command me to do what you prefer - to write 
+the preface - to write the whole if you prefer:  anything, so that 
+another monument (after Burns's) be set up to my unhappy 
+predecessor on the causey of Auld Reekie.  You will never know, nor 
+will any man, how deep this feeling is:  I believe Fergusson lives 
+in me.  I do, but tell it not in Gath; every man has these fanciful 
+superstitions, coming, going, but yet enduring; only most men are 
+so wise (or the poet in them so dead) that they keep their follies 
+for themselves. - I am, yours very truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO EDMUND GOSSE
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, APRIL 1891.
+
+MY DEAR GOSSE, - I have to thank you and Mrs. Gosse for many 
+mementoes, chiefly for your LIFE of your father.  There is a very 
+delicate task, very delicately done.  I noted one or two 
+carelessnesses, which I meant to point out to you for another 
+edition; but I find I lack the time, and you will remark them for 
+yourself against a new edition.  They were two, or perhaps three, 
+flabbinesses of style which (in your work) amazed me.  Am I right 
+in thinking you were a shade bored over the last chapters? or was 
+it my own fault that made me think them susceptible of a more 
+athletic compression?  (The flabbinesses were not there, I think, 
+but in the more admirable part, where they showed the bigger.)  
+Take it all together, the book struck me as if you had been hurried 
+at the last, but particularly hurried over the proofs, and could 
+still spend a very profitable fortnight in earnest revision and 
+(towards the end) heroic compression.  The book, in design, 
+subject, and general execution, is well worth the extra trouble.  
+And even if I were wrong in thinking it specially wanted, it will 
+not be lost; for do we not know, in Flaubert's dread confession, 
+that 'prose is never done'?  What a medium to work in, for a man 
+tired, perplexed among different aims and subjects, and spurred by 
+the immediate need of 'siller'!  However, it's mine for what it's 
+worth; and it's one of yours, the devil take it; and you know, as 
+well as Flaubert, and as well as me, that it is NEVER DONE; in 
+other words, it is a torment of the pit, usually neglected by the 
+bards who (lucky beggars!) approached the Styx in measure.  I speak 
+bitterly at the moment, having just detected in myself the last 
+fatal symptom, three blank verses in succession - and I believe, 
+God help me, a hemistich at the tail of them; hence I have deposed 
+the labourer, come out of hell by my private trap, and now write to 
+you from my little place in purgatory.  But I prefer hell:  would I 
+could always dig in those red coals - or else be at sea in a 
+schooner, bound for isles unvisited:  to be on shore and not to 
+work is emptiness - suicidal vacancy.
+
+I was the more interested in your LIFE of your father, because I 
+meditate one of mine, or rather of my family.  I have no such 
+materials as you, and (our objections already made) your attack 
+fills me with despair; it is direct and elegant, and your style is 
+always admirable to me - lenity, lucidity, usually a high strain of 
+breeding, an elegance that has a pleasant air of the accidental.  
+But beware of purple passages.  I wonder if you think as well of 
+your purple passages as I do of mine?  I wonder if you think as ill 
+of mine as I do of yours?  I wonder; I can tell you at least what 
+is wrong with yours - they are treated in the spirit of verse.  The 
+spirit - I don't mean the measure, I don't mean you fall into 
+bastard cadences; what I mean is that they seem vacant and smoothed 
+out, ironed, if you like.  And in a style which (like yours) aims 
+more and more successfully at the academic, one purple word is 
+already much; three - a whole phrase - is inadmissible.  Wed 
+yourself to a clean austerity:  that is your force.  Wear a linen 
+ephod, splendidly candid.  Arrange its folds, but do not fasten it 
+with any brooch.  I swear to you, in your talking robes, there 
+should be no patch of adornment; and where the subject forces, let 
+it force you no further than it must; and be ready with a twinkle 
+of your pleasantry.  Yours is a fine tool, and I see so well how to 
+hold it; I wonder if you see how to hold mine?  But then I am to 
+the neck in prose, and just now in the 'dark INTERSTYLAR cave,' all 
+methods and effects wooing me, myself in the midst impotent to 
+follow any.  I look for dawn presently, and a full flowing river of 
+expression, running whither it wills.  But these useless seasons, 
+above all, when a man MUST continue to spoil paper, are infinitely 
+weary.
+
+We are in our house after a fashion; without furniture, 'tis true, 
+camping there, like the family after a sale.  But the bailiff has 
+not yet appeared; he will probably come after.  The place is 
+beautiful beyond dreams; some fifty miles of the Pacific spread in 
+front; deep woods all round; a mountain making in the sky a profile 
+of huge trees upon our left; about us, the little island of our 
+clearing, studded with brave old gentlemen (or ladies, or 'the twa 
+o' them') whom we have spared.  It is a good place to be in; night 
+and morning, we have Theodore Rousseaus (always a new one) hung to 
+amuse us on the walls of the world; and the moon - this is our good 
+season, we have a moon just now - makes the night a piece of 
+heaven.  It amazes me how people can live on in the dirty north; 
+yet if you saw our rainy season (which is really a caulker for 
+wind, wet, and darkness - howling showers, roaring winds, pit-
+blackness at noon) you might marvel how we could endure that.  And 
+we can't.  But there's a winter everywhere; only ours is in the 
+summer.  Mark my words:  there will be a winter in heaven - and in 
+hell.  CELA RENTRE DANS LES PROCEDES DU BON DIEU; ET VOUS VERREZ!  
+There's another very good thing about Vailima, I am away from the 
+little bubble of the literary life.  It is not all beer and 
+skittles, is it?  By the by, my BALLADS seem to have been dam bad; 
+all the crickets sing so in their crickety papers; and I have no 
+ghost of an idea on the point myself:  verse is always to me the 
+unknowable.  You might tell me how it strikes a professional bard:  
+not that it really matters, for, of course, good or bad, I don't 
+think I shall get into THAT galley any more.  But I should like to 
+know if you join the shrill chorus of the crickets.  The crickets 
+are the devil in all to you:  'tis a strange thing, they seem to 
+rejoice like a strong man in their injustice.  I trust you got my 
+letter about your Browning book.  In case it missed, I wish to say 
+again that your publication of Browning's kind letter, as an 
+illustration of HIS character, was modest, proper, and in radiant 
+good taste. - In Witness whereof, etc., etc.,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MISS RAWLINSON
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, APIA, SAMOA, APRIL 1891.
+
+MY DEAR MAY, - I never think of you by any more ceremonial name, so 
+I will not pretend.  There is not much chance that I shall forget 
+you until the time comes for me to forget all this little turmoil 
+in a corner (though indeed I have been in several corners) of an 
+inconsiderable planet.  You remain in my mind for a good reason, 
+having given me (in so short a time) the most delightful pleasure.  
+I shall remember, and you must still be beautiful.  The truth is, 
+you must grow more so, or you will soon be less.  It is not so easy 
+to be a flower, even when you bear a flower's name.  And if I 
+admired you so much, and still remember you, it is not because of 
+your face, but because you were then worthy of it, as you must 
+still continue.
+
+Will you give my heartiest congratulations to Mr. S.?  He has my 
+admiration; he is a brave man; when I was young, I should have run 
+away from the sight of you, pierced with the sense of my unfitness.  
+He is more wise and manly.  What a good husband he will have to be!  
+And you - what a good wife!  Carry your love tenderly.  I will 
+never forgive him - or you - it is in both your hands - if the face 
+that once gladdened my heart should be changed into one sour or 
+sorrowful.
+
+What a person you are to give flowers!  It was so I first heard of 
+you; and now you are giving the May flower!
+
+Yes, Skerryvore has passed; it was, for us.  But I wish you could 
+see us in our new home on the mountain, in the middle of great 
+woods, and looking far out over the Pacific.  When Mr. S. is very 
+rich, he must bring you round the world and let you see it, and see 
+the old gentleman and the old lady.  I mean to live quite a long 
+while yet, and my wife must do the same, or else I couldn't manage 
+it; so, you see, you will have plenty of time; and it's a pity not 
+to see the most beautiful places, and the most beautiful people 
+moving there, and the real stars and moon overhead, instead of the 
+tin imitations that preside over London.  I do not think my wife 
+very well; but I am in hopes she will now have a little rest.  It 
+has been a hard business, above all for her; we lived four months 
+in the hurricane season in a miserable house, overborne with work, 
+ill-fed, continually worried, drowned in perpetual rain, beaten 
+upon by wind, so that we must sit in the dark in the evenings; and 
+then I ran away, and she had a month of it alone.  Things go better 
+now; the back of the work is broken; and we are still foolish 
+enough to look forward to a little peace.  I am a very different 
+person from the prisoner of Skerryvore.  The other day I was three-
+and-twenty hours in an open boat; it made me pretty ill; but fancy 
+its not killing me half-way!  It is like a fairy story that I 
+should have recovered liberty and strength, and should go round 
+again among my fellow-men, boating, riding, bathing, toiling hard 
+with a wood-knife in the forest.  I can wish you nothing more 
+delightful than my fortune in life; I wish it you; and better, if 
+the thing be possible.
+
+Lloyd is tinkling below me on the typewriter; my wife has just left 
+the room; she asks me to say she would have written had she been 
+well enough, and hopes to do it still. - Accept the best wishes of 
+your admirer,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
+
+
+
+[VAILIMA, MAY 1891.]
+
+MY DEAR ADELAIDE, - I will own you just did manage to tread on my 
+gouty toe; and I beg to assure you with most people I should simply 
+have turned away and said no more.  My cudgelling was therefore in 
+the nature of a caress or testimonial.
+
+God forbid, I should seem to judge for you on such a point; it was 
+what you seemed to set forth as your reasons that fluttered my old 
+Presbyterian spirit - for, mind you, I am a child of the 
+Covenanters - whom I do not love, but they are mine after all, my 
+father's and my mother's - and they had their merits too, and their 
+ugly beauties, and grotesque heroisms, that I love them for, the 
+while I laugh at them; but in their name and mine do what you think 
+right, and let the world fall.  That is the privilege and the duty 
+of private persons; and I shall think the more of you at the 
+greater distance, because you keep a promise to your fellow-man, 
+your helper and creditor in life, by just so much as I was tempted 
+to think the less of you (O not much, or I would never have been 
+angry) when I thought you were the swallower of a (tinfoil) 
+formula.
+
+I must say I was uneasy about my letter, not because it was too 
+strong as an expression of my unregenerate sentiments, but because 
+I knew full well it should be followed by something kinder.  And 
+the mischief has been in my health.  I fell sharply sick in Sydney, 
+was put aboard the LUBECK pretty bad, got to Vailima, hung on a 
+month there, and didn't pick up as well as my work needed; set off 
+on a journey, gained a great deal, lost it again; and am back at 
+Vailima, still no good at my necessary work.  I tell you this for 
+my imperfect excuse that I should not have written you again sooner 
+to remove the bad taste of my last.
+
+A road has been called Adelaide Road; it leads from the back of our 
+house to the bridge, and thence to the garden, and by a bifurcation 
+to the pig pen.  It is thus much traversed, particularly by Fanny.  
+An oleander, the only one of your seeds that prospered in this 
+climate, grows there; and the name is now some week or ten days 
+applied and published.  ADELAIDE ROAD leads also into the bush, to 
+the banana patch, and by a second bifurcation over the left branch 
+of the stream to the plateau and the right hand of the gorges.  In 
+short, it leads to all sorts of good, and is, besides, in itself a 
+pretty winding path, bound downhill among big woods to the margin 
+of the stream.
+
+What a strange idea, to think me a Jew-hater!  Isaiah and David and 
+Heine are good enough for me; and I leave more unsaid.  Were I of 
+Jew blood, I do not think I could ever forgive the Christians; the 
+ghettos would get in my nostrils like mustard or lit gunpowder.  
+Just so you as being a child of the Presbytery, I retain - I need 
+not dwell on that.  The ascendant hand is what I feel most 
+strongly; I am bound in and in with my forbears; were he one of 
+mine, I should not be struck at all by Mr. Moss of Bevis Marks, I 
+should still see behind him Moses of the Mount and the Tables and 
+the shining face.  We are all nobly born; fortunate those who know 
+it; blessed those who remember.
+
+I am, my dear Adelaide, most genuinely yours,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+Write by return to say you are better, and I will try to do the 
+same.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+[VAILIMA], TUESDAY, 19TH MAY '91.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES, - I don't know what you think of me, not having 
+written to you at all during your illness.  I find two sheets begun 
+with your name, but that is no excuse. . . . I am keeping bravely; 
+getting about better, every day, and hope soon to be in my usual 
+fettle.  My books begin to come; and I fell once more on the Old 
+Bailey session papers.  I have 1778, 1784, and 1786.  Should you be 
+able to lay hands on any other volumes, above all a little later, I 
+should be very glad you should buy them for me.  I particularly 
+want ONE or TWO during the course of the Peninsular War.  Come to 
+think, I ought rather to have communicated this want to Bain.  
+Would it bore you to communicate to that effect with the great man?  
+The sooner I have them, the better for me.  'Tis for Henry Shovel.  
+But Henry Shovel has now turned into a work called 'The Shovels of 
+Newton French:  Including Memoirs of Henry Shovel, a Private in the 
+Peninsular War,' which work is to begin in 1664 with the marriage 
+of Skipper, afterwards Alderman Shovel of Bristol, Henry's great-
+great-grandfather, and end about 1832 with his own second marriage 
+to the daughter of his runaway aunt.  Will the public ever stand 
+such an opus?  Gude kens, but it tickles me.  Two or three 
+historical personages will just appear:  Judge Jeffreys, 
+Wellington, Colquhoun, Grant, and I think Townsend the runner.  I 
+know the public won't like it; let 'em lump it then; I mean to make 
+it good; it will be more like a saga. - Adieu, yours ever 
+affectionately,
+
+R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+VAILIMA [SUMMER 1891].
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - I find among my grandfather's papers his own 
+reminiscences of his voyage round the north with Sir Walter, eighty 
+years ago, LABUNTUR ANNI!  They are not remarkably good, but he was 
+not a bad observer, and several touches seem to me speaking.  It 
+has occurred to me you might like them to appear in the MAGAZINE.  
+If you would, kindly let me know, and tell me how you would like it 
+handled.  My grandad's MS. runs to between six and seven thousand 
+words, which I could abbreviate of anecdotes that scarce touch Sir 
+W.  Would you like this done?  Would you like me to introduce the 
+old gentleman?  I had something of the sort in my mind, and could 
+fill a few columns rather A PROPOS.  I give you the first offer of 
+this, according to your request; for though it may forestall one of 
+the interests of my biography, the thing seems to me particularly 
+suited for prior appearance in a magazine.
+
+I see the first number of the WRECKER; I thought it went lively 
+enough; and by a singular accident, the picture is not unlike Tai-
+o-hae!
+
+Thus we see the age of miracles, etc. - Yours very sincerely,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+Proofs for next mail.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO W. CRAIBE ANGUS
+
+
+
+[SUMMER 1891.]
+
+DEAR MR. ANGUS, - You can use my letter as you will.  The parcel 
+has not come; pray Heaven the next post bring it safe.  Is it 
+possible for me to write a preface here?  I will try if you like, 
+if you think I must:  though surely there are Rivers in Assyria.  
+Of course you will send me sheets of the catalogue; I suppose it 
+(the preface) need not be long; perhaps it should be rather very 
+short?  Be sure you give me your views upon these points.  Also 
+tell me what names to mention among those of your helpers, and do 
+remember to register everything, else it is not safe.
+
+The true place (in my view) for a monument to Fergusson were the 
+churchyard of Haddington.  But as that would perhaps not carry many 
+votes, I should say one of the two following sites:- First, either 
+as near the site of the old Bedlam as we could get, or, second, 
+beside the Cross, the heart of his city.  Upon this I would have a 
+fluttering butterfly, and, I suggest, the citation,
+
+
+Poor butterfly, thy case I mourn.
+
+
+For the case of Fergusson is not one to pretend about.  A more 
+miserable tragedy the sun never shone upon, or (in consideration of 
+our climate) I should rather say refused to brighten. - Yours 
+truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+Where Burns goes will not matter.  He is no local poet, like your 
+Robin the First; he is general as the casing air.  Glasgow, as the 
+chief city of Scottish men, would do well; but for God's sake, 
+don't let it be like the Glasgow memorial to Knox:  I remember, 
+when I first saw this, laughing for an hour by Shrewsbury clock.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO H. C. IDE
+
+
+
+[VAILIMA, JUNE 19, 1891.]
+
+DEAR MR. IDE, - Herewith please find the DOCUMENT, which I trust 
+will prove sufficient in law.  It seems to me very attractive in 
+its eclecticism; Scots, English, and Roman law phrases are all 
+indifferently introduced, and a quotation from the works of Haynes 
+Bayly can hardly fail to attract the indulgence of the Bench. - 
+Yours very truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+I, Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate of the Scots Bar, author of THE 
+MASTER OF BALLANTRAE and MORAL EMBLEMS, stuck civil engineer, sole 
+owner and patentee of the Palace and Plantation known as Vailima in 
+the island of Upolu, Samoa, a British Subject, being in sound mind, 
+and pretty well, I thank you, in body:
+
+In consideration that Miss Annie H. Ide, daughter of H. C. Ide, in 
+the town of Saint Johnsbury, in the county of Caledonia, in the 
+state of Vermont, United States of America, was born, out of all 
+reason, upon Christmas Day, and is therefore out of all justice 
+denied the consolation and profit of a proper birthday;
+
+And considering that I, the said Robert Louis Stevenson, have 
+attained an age when O, we never mention it, and that I have now no 
+further use for a birthday of any description;
+
+And in consideration that I have met H. C. Ide, the father of the 
+said Annie H. Ide, and found him about as white a land commissioner 
+as I require:
+
+HAVE TRANSFERRED, and DO HEREBY TRANSFER, to the said Annie H. Ide, 
+ALL AND WHOLE my rights and priviledges in the thirteenth day of 
+November, formerly my birthday, now, hereby, and henceforth, the 
+birthday of the said Annie H. Ide, to have, hold, exercise, and 
+enjoy the same in the customary manner, by the sporting of fine 
+raiment, eating of rich meats, and receipt of gifts, compliments, 
+and copies of verse, according to the manner of our ancestors;
+
+AND I DIRECT the said Annie H. Ide to add to the said name of Annie 
+H. Ide the name Louisa - at least in private; and I charge her to 
+use my said birthday with moderation and humanity, ET TAMQUAM BONA 
+FILIA FAMILIAE, the said birthday not being so young as it once 
+was, and having carried me in a very satisfactory manner since I 
+can remember;
+
+And in case the said Annie H. Ide shall neglect or contravene 
+either of the above conditions, I hereby revoke the donation and 
+transfer my rights in the said birthday to the President of the 
+United States of America for the time being:
+
+In witness whereof I have hereto set my hand and seal this 
+nineteenth day of June in the year of grace eighteen hundred and 
+ninety-one.
+
+[SEAL.]
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+WITNESS, LLOYD OSBOURNE,
+WITNESS, HAROLD WATTS.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+
+[VAILIMA, OCTOBER 1891.]
+
+MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - From this perturbed and hunted being expect 
+but a line, and that line shall be but a whoop for Adela.  O she's 
+delicious, delicious; I could live and die with Adela - die, rather 
+the better of the two; you never did a straighter thing, and never 
+will.
+
+DAVID BALFOUR, second part of KIDNAPPED, is on the stocks at last; 
+and is not bad, I think.  As for THE WRECKER, it's a machine, you 
+know - don't expect aught else - a machine, and a police machine; 
+but I believe the end is one of the most genuine butcheries in 
+literature; and we point to our machine with a modest pride, as the 
+only police machine without a villain.  Our criminals are a most 
+pleasing crew, and leave the dock with scarce a stain upon their 
+character.
+
+What a different line of country to be trying to draw Adela, and 
+trying to write the last four chapters of THE WRECKER!  Heavens, 
+it's like two centuries; and ours is such rude, transpontine 
+business, aiming only at a certain fervour of conviction and sense 
+of energy and violence in the men; and yours is so neat and bright 
+and of so exquisite a surface!  Seems dreadful to send such a book 
+to such an author; but your name is on the list.  And we do 
+modestly ask you to consider the chapters on the NORAH CREINA with 
+the study of Captain Nares, and the forementioned last four, with 
+their brutality of substance and the curious (and perhaps unsound) 
+technical manoeuvre of running the story together to a point as we 
+go along, the narrative becoming more succinct and the details 
+fining off with every page. - Sworn affidavit of
+
+R. L. S.
+
+NO PERSON NOW ALIVE HAS BEATEN ADELA:  I ADORE ADELA AND HER MAKER.  
+SIC SUBSCRIB.
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+A Sublime Poem to follow.
+
+Adela, Adela, Adela Chart,
+What have you done to my elderly heart?
+Of all the ladies of paper and ink
+I count you the paragon, call you the pink.
+The word of your brother depicts you in part:
+'You raving maniac!' Adela Chart;
+But in all the asylums that cumber the ground,
+So delightful a maniac was ne'er to be found.
+
+I pore on you, dote on you, clasp you to heart,
+I laud, love, and laugh at you, Adela Chart,
+And thank my dear maker the while I admire
+That I can be neither your husband nor sire.
+
+Your husband's, your sire's were a difficult part;
+You're a byway to suicide, Adela Chart;
+But to read of, depicted by exquisite James,
+O, sure you're the flower and quintessence of dames.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+ERUCTAVIT COR MEUM.
+
+
+My heart was inditing a goodly matter about Adela Chart.
+Though oft I've been touched by the volatile dart,
+To none have I grovelled but Adela Chart,
+There are passable ladies, no question, in art -
+But where is the marrow of Adela Chart?
+I dreamed that to Tyburn I passed in the cart -
+I dreamed I was married to Adela Chart:
+From the first I awoke with a palpable start,
+The second dumfoundered me, Adela Chart!
+
+
+Another verse bursts from me, you see; no end to the violence of 
+the Muse.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+OCTOBER 8TH, 1891.
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - All right, you shall have the TALES OF MY 
+GRANDFATHER soon, but I guess we'll try and finish off THE WRECKER 
+first.  A PROPOS of whom, please send some advanced sheets to 
+Cassell's - away ahead of you - so that they may get a dummy out.
+
+Do you wish to illustrate MY GRANDFATHER?  He mentions as excellent 
+a portrait of Scott by Basil Hall's brother.  I don't think I ever 
+saw this engraved; would it not, if you could get track of it, 
+prove a taking embellishment?  I suggest this for your 
+consideration and inquiry.  A new portrait of Scott strikes me as 
+good.  There is a hard, tough, constipated old portrait of my 
+grandfather hanging in my aunt's house, Mrs. Alan Stevenson, 16 St. 
+Leonard's Terrace, Chelsea, which has never been engraved - the 
+better portrait, Joseph's bust has been reproduced, I believe, 
+twice - and which, I am sure, my aunt would let you have a copy of.  
+The plate could be of use for the book when we get so far, and thus 
+to place it in the MAGAZINE might be an actual saving.
+
+I am swallowed up in politics for the first, I hope for the last, 
+time in my sublunary career.  It is a painful, thankless trade; but 
+one thing that came up I could not pass in silence.  Much drafting, 
+addressing, deputationising has eaten up all my time, and again (to 
+my contrition) I leave you Wreckerless.  As soon as the mail leaves 
+I tackle it straight. - Yours very sincerely,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+VAILIMA [AUTUMN 1891].
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - The time draws nigh, the mail is near due, 
+and I snatch a moment of collapse so that you may have at least 
+some sort of a scratch of note along with the 
+
+\ end
+ \ of
+  \ THE
+   \ WRECKER.
+     Hurray!
+
+which I mean to go herewith.  It has taken me a devil of a pull, 
+but I think it's going to be ready.  If I did not know you were on 
+the stretch waiting for it and trembling for your illustrations, I 
+would keep it for another finish; but things being as they are, I 
+will let it go the best way I can get it.  I am now within two 
+pages of the end of Chapter XXV., which is the last chapter, the 
+end with its gathering up of loose threads, being the dedication to 
+Low, and addressed to him:  this is my last and best expedient for 
+the knotting up of these loose cards.  'Tis possible I may not get 
+that finished in time, in which case you'll receive only Chapters 
+XXII. to XXV. by this mail, which is all that can be required for 
+illustration.
+
+I wish you would send me MEMOIRS OF BARON MARBOT (French); 
+INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE, Strong, 
+Logeman & Wheeler; PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY, William James; Morris 
+& Magnusson's SAGA LIBRARY, any volumes that are out; George 
+Meredith's ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS; LA BAS, by Huysmans (French); 
+O'Connor Morris's GREAT COMMANDERS OF MODERN TIMES; LIFE'S 
+HANDICAP, by Kipling; of Taine's ORIGINES DE LA FRANCE 
+CONTEMPORAINE, I have only as far as LA REVOLUTION, vol. iii.; if 
+another volume is out, please add that.  There is for a book-box.
+
+I hope you will like the end; I think it is rather strong meat.  I 
+have got into such a deliberate, dilatory, expansive turn, that the 
+effort to compress this last yarn was unwelcome; but the longest 
+yarn has to come to an end sometime.  Please look it over for 
+carelessnesses, and tell me if it had any effect upon your jaded 
+editorial mind.  I'll see if ever I have time to add more.
+
+I add to my book-box list Adams' HISTORICAL ESSAYS; the Plays of A. 
+W. Pinero - all that have appeared, and send me the rest in course 
+as they do appear; NOUGHTS AND CROSSES by Q.; Robertson's SCOTLAND 
+UNDER HER EARLY KINGS.
+
+SUNDAY.
+
+The deed is done, didst thou not hear a noise?  'The end' has been 
+written to this endless yarn, and I am once more a free man.  What 
+will he do with it?
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO W. CRAIBE ANGUS
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, NOVEMBER 1891.
+
+MY DEAR MR. ANGUS, - Herewith the invaluable sheets.  They came 
+months after your letter, and I trembled; but here they are, and I 
+have scrawled my vile name on them, and 'thocht shame' as I did it.  
+I am expecting the sheets of your catalogue, so that I may attack 
+the preface.  Please give me all the time you can.  The sooner the 
+better; you might even send me early proofs as they are sent out, 
+to give me more incubation.  I used to write as slow as judgment; 
+now I write rather fast; but I am still 'a slow study,' and sit a 
+long while silent on my eggs.  Unconscious thought, there is the 
+only method:  macerate your subject, let it boil slow, then take 
+the lid off and look in - and there your stuff is, good or bad.  
+But the journalist's method is the way to manufacture lies; it is 
+will-worship - if you know the luminous quaker phrase; and the will 
+is only to be brought in the field for study, and again for 
+revision.  The essential part of work is not an act, it is a state.
+
+I do not know why I write you this trash.
+
+Many thanks for your handsome dedication.  I have not yet had time 
+to do more than glance at Mrs. Begg; it looks interesting. - Yours 
+very truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MISS ANNIE H. IDE
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA [NOVEMBER 1891].
+
+MY DEAR LOUISA, - Your picture of the church, the photograph of 
+yourself and your sister, and your very witty and pleasing letter, 
+came all in a bundle, and made me feel I had my money's worth for 
+that birthday.  I am now, I must be, one of your nearest relatives; 
+exactly what we are to each other, I do not know, I doubt if the 
+case has ever happened before - your papa ought to know, and I 
+don't believe he does; but I think I ought to call you in the 
+meanwhile, and until we get the advice of counsel learned in the 
+law, my name-daughter.  Well, I was extremely pleased to see by the 
+church that my name-daughter could draw; by the letter, that she 
+was no fool; and by the photograph, that she was a pretty girl, 
+which hurts nothing.  See how virtues are rewarded!  My first idea 
+of adopting you was entirely charitable; and here I find that I am 
+quite proud of it, and of you, and that I chose just the kind of 
+name-daughter I wanted.  For I can draw too, or rather I mean to 
+say I could before I forgot how; and I am very far from being a 
+fool myself, however much I may look it; and I am as beautiful as 
+the day, or at least I once hoped that perhaps I might be going to 
+be.  And so I might.  So that you see we are well met, and peers on 
+these important points.  I am VERY glad also that you are older 
+than your sister.  So should I have been, if I had had one.  So 
+that the number of points and virtues which you have inherited from 
+your name-father is already quite surprising.
+
+I wish you would tell your father - not that I like to encourage my 
+rival - that we have had a wonderful time here of late, and that 
+they are having a cold day on Mulinuu, and the consuls are writing 
+reports, and I am writing to the TIMES, and if we don't get rid of 
+our friends this time I shall begin to despair of everything but my 
+name-daughter.
+
+You are quite wrong as to the effect of the birthday on your age.  
+From the moment the deed was registered (as it was in the public 
+press with every solemnity), the 13th of November became your own 
+AND ONLY birthday, and you ceased to have been born on Christmas 
+Day.  Ask your father:  I am sure he will tell you this is sound 
+law.  You are thus become a month and twelve days younger than you 
+were, but will go on growing older for the future in the regular 
+and human manner from one 13th November to the next.  The effect on 
+me is more doubtful; I may, as you suggest, live for ever; I might, 
+on the other hand, come to pieces like the one-horse shay at a 
+moment's notice; doubtless the step was risky, but I do not the 
+least regret that which enables me to sign myself your revered and 
+delighted name-father,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO FRED ORR
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, UPOLU, SAMOA, NOVEMBER 28TH, 1891.
+
+DEAR SIR, - Your obliging communication is to hand.  I am glad to 
+find that you have read some of my books, and to see that you spell 
+my name right.  This is a point (for some reason) of great 
+difficulty; and I believe that a gentleman who can spell Stevenson 
+with a v at sixteen, should have a show for the Presidency before 
+fifty.  By that time
+
+
+I, nearer to the wayside inn,
+
+
+predict that you will have outgrown your taste for autographs, but 
+perhaps your son may have inherited the collection, and on the 
+morning of the great day will recall my prophecy to your mind.  And 
+in the papers of 1921 (say) this letter may arouse a smile.
+
+Whatever you do, read something else besides novels and newspapers; 
+the first are good enough when they are good; the second, at their 
+best, are worth nothing.  Read great books of literature and 
+history; try to understand the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages; be 
+sure you do not understand when you dislike them; condemnation is 
+non-comprehension.  And if you know something of these two periods, 
+you will know a little more about to-day, and may be a good 
+President.
+
+I send you my best wishes, and am yours,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON,
+
+AUTHOR OF A VAST QUANTITY OF LITTLE BOOKS.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+[VAILIMA, DECEMBER 1891.]
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - The end of THE WRECKER having but just come 
+in, you will, I dare say, be appalled to receive three (possibly 
+four) chapters of a new book of the least attractive sort:  a 
+history of nowhere in a corner, for no time to mention, running to 
+a volume!  Well, it may very likely be an illusion; it is very 
+likely no one could possibly wish to read it, but I wish to publish 
+it.  If you don't cotton to the idea, kindly set it up at my 
+expense, and let me know your terms for publishing.  The great 
+affair to me is to have per return (if it might be) four or five - 
+better say half a dozen - sets of the roughest proofs that can be 
+drawn.  There are a good many men here whom I want to read the 
+blessed thing, and not one would have the energy to read MS.  At 
+the same time, if you care to glance at it, and have the time, I 
+should be very glad of your opinion as to whether I have made any 
+step at all towards possibly inducing folk at home to read matter 
+so extraneous and outlandish.  I become heavy and owlish; years sit 
+upon me; it begins to seem to me to be a man's business to leave 
+off his damnable faces and say his say.  Else I could have made it 
+pungent and light and lively.  In considering, kindly forget that I 
+am R. L. S.; think of the four chapters as a book you are reading, 
+by an inhabitant of our 'lovely but fatil' islands; and see if it 
+could possibly amuse the hebetated public.  I have to publish 
+anyway, you understand; I have a purpose beyond; I am concerned for 
+some of the parties to this quarrel.  What I want to hear is from 
+curiosity; what I want you to judge of is what we are to do with 
+the book in a business sense.  To me it is not business at all; I 
+had meant originally to lay all the profits to the credit of Samoa; 
+when it comes to the pinch of writing, I judge this unfair - I give 
+too much - and I mean to keep (if there be any profit at all) one-
+half for the artisan; the rest I shall hold over to give to the 
+Samoans FOR THAT WHICH I CHOOSE AND AGAINST WORK DONE.  I think I 
+have never heard of greater insolence than to attempt such a 
+subject; yet the tale is so strange and mixed, and the people so 
+oddly charactered - above all, the whites - and the high note of 
+the hurricane and the warships is so well prepared to take popular 
+interest, and the latter part is so directly in the day's movement, 
+that I am not without hope but some may read it; and if they don't, 
+a murrain on them!  Here is, for the first time, a tale of Greeks - 
+Homeric Greeks - mingled with moderns, and all true; Odysseus 
+alongside of Rajah Brooke, PROPORTION GARDEE; and all true.  Here 
+is for the first time since the Greeks (that I remember) the 
+history of a handful of men, where all know each other in the eyes, 
+and live close in a few acres, narrated at length, and with the 
+seriousness of history.  Talk of the modern novel; here is a modern 
+history.  And if I had the misfortune to found a school, the 
+legitimate historian might lie down and die, for he could never 
+overtake his material.  Here is a little tale that has not 'caret'-
+ed its 'vates'; 'sacer' is another point.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+
+DECEMBER 7TH, 1891.
+
+MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - Thanks for yours; your former letter was 
+lost; so it appears was my long and masterly treatise on the TRAGIC 
+MUSE.  I remember sending it very well, and there went by the same 
+mail a long and masterly tractate to Gosse about his daddy's life, 
+for which I have been long expecting an acknowledgment, and which 
+is plainly gone to the bottom with the other.  If you see Gosse, 
+please mention it.  These gems of criticism are now lost 
+literature, like the tomes of Alexandria.  I could not do 'em 
+again.  And I must ask you to be content with a dull head, a weary 
+hand, and short commons, for to-day, as I am physically tired with 
+hard work of every kind, the labours of the planter and the author 
+both piled upon me mountain deep.  I am delighted beyond expression 
+by Bourget's book:  he has phrases which affect me almost like 
+Montaigne; I had read ere this a masterly essay of his on Pascal; 
+this book does it; I write for all his essays by this mail, and 
+shall try to meet him when I come to Europe.  The proposal is to 
+pass a summer in France, I think in Royat, where the faithful could 
+come and visit me; they are now not many.  I expect Henry James to 
+come and break a crust or two with us.  I believe it will be only 
+my wife and myself; and she will go over to England, but not I, or 
+possibly incog. to Southampton, and then to Boscombe to see poor 
+Lady Shelley.  I am writing - trying to write in a Babel fit for 
+the bottomless pit; my wife, her daughter, her grandson and my 
+mother, all shrieking at each other round the house - not in war, 
+thank God! but the din is ultra martial, and the note of Lloyd 
+joins in occasionally, and the cause of this to-do is simply cacao, 
+whereof chocolate comes.  You may drink of our chocolate perhaps in 
+five or six years from now, and not know it.  It makes a fine 
+bustle, and gives us some hard work, out of which I have slunk for 
+to-day.
+
+I have a story coming out:  God knows when or how; it answers to 
+the name of the BEACH OF FALESA, and I think well of it.  I was 
+delighted with the TRAGIC MUSE; I thought the Muse herself one of 
+your best works; I was delighted also to hear of the success of 
+your piece, as you know I am a dam failure, and might have dined 
+with the dinner club that Daudet and these parties frequented.
+
+NEXT DAY.
+
+I have just been breakfasting at Baiae and Brindisi, and the charm 
+of Bourget hag-rides me.  I wonder if this exquisite fellow, all 
+made of fiddle-strings and scent and intelligence, could bear any 
+of my bald prose.  If you think he could, ask Colvin to send him a 
+copy of these last essays of mine when they appear; and tell 
+Bourget they go to him from a South Sea Island as literal homage.  
+I have read no new book for years that gave me the same literary 
+thrill as his SENSATIONS D'ITALIE.  If (as I imagine) my cut-and-
+dry literature would be death to him, and worse than death - 
+journalism - be silent on the point.  For I have a great curiosity 
+to know him, and if he doesn't know my work, I shall have the 
+better chance of making his acquaintance.  I read THE PUPIL the 
+other day with great joy; your little boy is admirable; why is 
+there no little boy like that unless he hails from the Great 
+Republic?
+
+Here I broke off, and wrote Bourget a dedication; no use resisting; 
+it's a love affair.  O, he's exquisite, I bless you for the gift of 
+him.  I have really enjoyed this book as I - almost as I - used to 
+enjoy books when I was going twenty - twenty-three; and these are 
+the years for reading!
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+[VAILIMA] JAN 2ND, '92.
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - Overjoyed you were pleased with WRECKER, and 
+shall consider your protests.  There is perhaps more art than you 
+think for in the peccant chapter, where I have succeeded in packing 
+into one a dedication, an explanation, and a termination.  Surely 
+you had not recognised the phrase about boodle?  It was a quotation 
+from Jim Pinkerton, and seemed to me agreeably skittish.  However, 
+all shall be prayerfully considered.
+
+To come to a more painful subject.  Herewith go three more chapters 
+of the wretched HISTORY; as you see, I approach the climax.  I 
+expect the book to be some 70,000 words, of which you have now 45.  
+Can I finish it for next mail?  I am going to try!  'Tis a long 
+piece of journalism, and full of difficulties here and there, of 
+this kind and that, and will make me a power of friends to be sure.  
+There is one Becker who will probably put up a window to me in the 
+church where he was baptized; and I expect a testimonial from 
+Captain Hand.
+
+Sorry to let the mail go without the Scott; this has been a bad 
+month with me, and I have been below myself.  I shall find a way to 
+have it come by next, or know the reason why.  The mail after, 
+anyway.
+
+A bit of a sketch map appears to me necessary for my HISTORY; 
+perhaps two.  If I do not have any, 'tis impossible any one should 
+follow; and I, even when not at all interested, demand that I shall 
+be able to follow; even a tourist book without a map is a cross to 
+me; and there must be others of my way of thinking.  I inclose the 
+very artless one that I think needful.  Vailima, in case you are 
+curious, is about as far again behind Tanugamanono as that is from 
+the sea.
+
+M'Clure is publishing a short story of mine, some 50,000 words, I 
+think, THE BEACH OF FALESA; when he's done with it, I want you and 
+Cassell to bring it out in a little volume; I shall send you a 
+dedication for it; I believe it good; indeed, to be honest, very 
+good.  Good gear that pleases the merchant.
+
+The other map that I half threaten is a chart for the hurricane.  
+Get me Kimberley's report of the hurricane:  not to be found here.  
+It is of most importance; I MUST have it with my proofs of that 
+part, if I cannot have it earlier, which now seems impossible. - 
+Yours in hot haste,
+
+R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO J. M. BARRIE
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, FEBRUARY 1892.
+
+DEAR MR. BARRIE, - This is at least the third letter I have written 
+you, but my correspondence has a bad habit of not getting so far as 
+the post.  That which I possess of manhood turns pale before the 
+business of the address and envelope.  But I hope to be more 
+fortunate with this:  for, besides the usual and often recurrent 
+desire to thank you for your work-you are one of four that have 
+come to the front since I was watching and had a corner of my own 
+to watch, and there is no reason, unless it be in these mysterious 
+tides that ebb and flow, and make and mar and murder the works of 
+poor scribblers, why you should not do work of the best order.  The 
+tides have borne away my sentence, of which I was weary at any 
+rate, and between authors I may allow myself so much freedom as to 
+leave it pending.  We are both Scots besides, and I suspect both 
+rather Scotty Scots; my own Scotchness tends to intermittency, but 
+is at times erisypelitous - if that be rightly spelt.  Lastly, I 
+have gathered we had both made our stages in the metropolis of the 
+winds:  our Virgil's 'grey metropolis,' and I count that a lasting 
+bond.  No place so brands a man.
+
+Finally, I feel it a sort of duty to you to report progress.  This 
+may be an error, but I believed I detected your hand in an article 
+- it may be an illusion, it may have been by one of those 
+industrious insects who catch up and reproduce the handling of each 
+emergent man - but I'll still hope it was yours - and hope it may 
+please you to hear that the continuation of KIDNAPPED is under way.  
+I have not yet got to Alan, so I do not know if he is still alive, 
+but David seems to have a kick or two in his shanks.  I was pleased 
+to see how the Anglo-Saxon theory fell into the trap:  I gave my 
+Lowlander a Gaelic name, and even commented on the fact in the 
+text; yet almost all critics recognised in Alan and David a Saxon 
+and a Celt.  I know not about England; in Scotland at least, where 
+Gaelic was spoken in Fife little over the century ago, and in 
+Galloway not much earlier, I deny that there exists such a thing as 
+a pure Saxon, and I think it more than questionable if there be 
+such a thing as a pure Celt.
+
+But what have you to do with this? and what have I?  Let us 
+continue to inscribe our little bits of tales, and let the heathen 
+rage!  Yours, with sincere interest in your career,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO WILLIAM MORRIS
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, FEB. 1892.
+
+MASTER, - A plea from a place so distant should have some weight, 
+and from a heart so grateful should have some address.  I have been 
+long in your debt, Master, and I did not think it could be so much 
+increased as you have now increased it.  I was long in your debt 
+and deep in your debt for many poems that I shall never forget, and 
+for SIGURD before all, and now you have plunged me beyond payment 
+by the Saga Library.  And so now, true to human nature, being 
+plunged beyond payment, I come and bark at your heels.
+
+For surely, Master, that tongue that we write, and that you have 
+illustrated so nobly, is yet alive.  She has her rights and laws, 
+and is our mother, our queen, and our instrument.  Now in that 
+living tongue WHERE has one sense, WHEREAS another.  In the 
+HEATHSLAYINGS STORY, p. 241, line 13, it bears one of its ordinary 
+senses.  Elsewhere and usually through the two volumes, which is 
+all that has yet reached me of this entrancing publication, WHEREAS 
+is made to figure for WHERE.
+
+For the love of God, my dear and honoured Morris, use WHERE, and 
+let us know WHEREAS we are, wherefore our gratitude shall grow, 
+whereby you shall be the more honoured wherever men love clear 
+language, whereas now, although we honour, we are troubled.
+
+Whereunder, please find inscribed to this very impudent but yet 
+very anxious document, the name of one of the most distant but not 
+the youngest or the coldest of those who honour you.
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MRS. CHARLES FAIRCHILD
+
+
+
+[VAILIMA, MARCH 1892.]
+
+MY DEAR MRS. FAIRCHILD, - I am guilty in your sight, but my affairs 
+besiege me.      The chief-justiceship of a family of nineteen 
+persons is in itself no sinecure, and sometimes occupies me for 
+days:  two weeks ago for four days almost entirely, and for two 
+days entirely.  Besides which, I have in the last few months 
+written all but one chapter of a HISTORY OF SAMOA for the last 
+eight or nine years; and while I was unavoidably delayed in the 
+writing of this, awaiting material, put in one-half of DAVID 
+BALFOUR, the sequel to KIDNAPPED.  Add the ordinary impediments of 
+life, and admire my busyness.  I am now an old, but healthy 
+skeleton, and degenerate much towards the machine.  By six at work:  
+stopped at half-past ten to give a history lesson to a step-
+grandson; eleven, lunch; after lunch we have a musical performance 
+till two; then to work again; bath, 4.40, dinner, five; cards in 
+the evening till eight; and then to bed - only I have no bed, only 
+a chest with a mat and blankets - and read myself to sleep.  This 
+is the routine, but often sadly interrupted.  Then you may see me 
+sitting on the floor of my verandah haranguing and being harangued 
+by squatting chiefs on a question of a road; or more privately 
+holding an inquiry into some dispute among our familiars, myself on 
+my bed, the boys on the floor - for when it comes to the judicial I 
+play dignity - or else going down to Apia on some more or less 
+unsatisfactory errand.  Altogether it is a life that suits me, but 
+it absorbs me like an ocean.  That is what I have always envied and 
+admired in Scott; with all that immensity of work and study, his 
+mind kept flexible, glancing to all points of natural interest.  
+But the lean hot spirits, such as mine, become hypnotised with 
+their bit occupations - if I may use Scotch to you - it is so far 
+more scornful than any English idiom.  Well, I can't help being a 
+skeleton, and you are to take this devious passage for an apology.
+
+I thought ALADDIN capital fun; but why, in fortune, did he pretend 
+it was moral at the end?  The so-called nineteenth century, OU VA-
+T-IL SE NICHER?  'Tis a trifle, but Pyle would do well to knock the 
+passage out, and leave his boguey tale a boguey tale, and a good 
+one at that.
+
+The arrival of your box was altogether a great success to the 
+castaways.  You have no idea where we live.  Do you know, in all 
+these islands there are not five hundred whites, and no postal 
+delivery, and only one village - it is no more - and would be a 
+mean enough village in Europe?  We were asked the other day if 
+Vailima were the name of our post town, and we laughed.  Do you 
+know, though we are but three miles from the village metropolis, we 
+have no road to it, and our goods are brought on the pack-saddle?  
+And do you know - or I should rather say, can you believe - or (in 
+the famous old Tichborne trial phrase) would you be surprised to 
+learn, that all you have read of Vailima - or Subpriorsford, as I 
+call it - is entirely false, and we have no ice-machine, and no 
+electric light, and no water supply but the cistern of the heavens, 
+and but one public room, and scarce a bedroom apiece?  But, of 
+course, it is well known that I have made enormous sums by my 
+evanescent literature, and you will smile at my false humility.  
+The point, however, is much on our minds just now.  We are 
+expecting an invasion of Kiplings; very glad we shall be to see 
+them; but two of the party are ladies, and I tell you we had to 
+hold a council of war to stow them.  You European ladies are so 
+particular; with all of mine, sleeping has long become a public 
+function, as with natives and those who go down much into the sea 
+in ships.
+
+Dear Mrs. Fairchild, I must go to my work.  I have but two words to 
+say in conclusion.
+
+First, civilisation is rot.
+
+Second, console a savage with more of the milk of that over 
+civilised being, your adorable schoolboy.
+
+As I wrote these remarkable words, I was called down to eight 
+o'clock prayers, and have just worked through a chapter of Joshua 
+and five verses, with five treble choruses of a Samoan hymn; but 
+the music was good, our boys and precentress ('tis always a woman 
+that leads) did better than I ever heard them, and to my great 
+pleasure I understood it all except one verse.  This gave me the 
+more time to try and identify what the parts were doing, and 
+further convict my dull ear.  Beyond the fact that the soprano rose 
+to the tonic above, on one occasion I could recognise nothing.  
+This is sickening, but I mean to teach my ear better before I am 
+done with it or this vile carcase.
+
+I think it will amuse you (for a last word) to hear that our 
+precentress - she is the washerwoman - is our shame.  She is a 
+good, healthy, comely, strapping young wench, full of energy and 
+seriousness, a splendid workwoman, delighting to train our chorus, 
+delighting in the poetry of the hymns, which she reads aloud (on 
+the least provocation) with a great sentiment of rhythm.  Well, 
+then, what is curious?  Ah, we did not know! but it was told us in 
+a whisper from the cook-house - she is not of good family.  Don't 
+let it get out, please; everybody knows it, of course, here; there 
+is no reason why Europe and the States should have the advantage of 
+me also.  And the rest of my housefolk are all chief-people, I 
+assure you.  And my late overseer (far the best of his race) is a 
+really serious chief with a good 'name.'  Tina is the name; it is 
+not in the Almanach de Gotha, it must have got dropped at press.  
+The odd thing is, we rather share the prejudice.  I have almost 
+always - though not quite always - found the higher the chief the 
+better the man through all the islands; or, at least, that the best 
+man came always from a highish rank.  I hope Helen will continue to 
+prove a bright exception.
+
+With love to Fairchild and the Huge Schoolboy, I am, my dear Mrs. 
+Fairchild, yours very sincerely,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+[VAILIMA, MARCH 1892.]
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - Herewith Chapters IX. and X., and I am left 
+face to face with the horrors and dilemmas of the present regimen:  
+pray for those that go down to the sea in ships.  I have promised 
+Henley shall have a chance to publish the hurricane chapter if he 
+like, so please let the slips be sent QUAM PRIMUM to C. Baxter, 
+W.S., 11 S. Charlotte Street, Edinburgh.  I got on mighty quick 
+with that chapter - about five days of the toughest kind of work.  
+God forbid I should ever have such another pirn to wind!  When I 
+invent a language, there shall be a direct and an indirect pronoun 
+differently declined - then writing would be some fun.
+
+
+DIRECT     INDIRECT
+
+  He         Tu
+  Him        Tum
+  His        Tus
+
+
+Ex.:  HE seized TUM by TUS throat; but TU at the same moment caught 
+HIM by HIS hair.  A fellow could write hurricanes with an 
+inflection like that!  Yet there would he difficulties too.
+
+Do what you please about THE BEACH; and I give you CARTE BLANCHE to 
+write in the matter to Baxter - or telegraph if the time press - to 
+delay the English contingent.  Herewith the two last slips of THE 
+WRECKER.  I cannot go beyond.  By the way, pray compliment the 
+printers on the proofs of the Samoa racket, but hint to them that 
+it is most unbusiness-like and unscholarly to clip the edges of the 
+galleys; these proofs should really have been sent me on large 
+paper; and I and my friends here are all put to a great deal of 
+trouble and confusion by the mistake. - For, as you must conceive, 
+in a matter so contested and complicated, the number of corrections 
+and the length of explanations is considerable.
+
+Please add to my former orders -
+
+LE CHEVALIER DES TOUCHES  } by Barbey d'Aurevilly.
+LES DIABOLIQUES . . .     }
+CORRESPONDANCE DE HENRI BEYLE (Stendahl).
+
+Yours sincerely,
+
+R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO T. W. DOVER
+
+
+
+VAILIMA PLANTATION, UPOLU, SAMOA, JUNE 20TH, 1892.
+
+SIR, - In reply to your very interesting letter, I cannot fairly 
+say that I have ever been poor, or known what it was to want a 
+meal.  I have been reduced, however, to a very small sum of money, 
+with no apparent prospect of increasing it; and at that time I 
+reduced myself to practically one meal a day, with the most 
+disgusting consequences to my health.  At this time I lodged in the 
+house of a working man, and associated much with others.  At the 
+same time, from my youth up, I have always been a good deal and 
+rather intimately thrown among the working-classes, partly as a 
+civil engineer in out-of-the-way places, partly from a strong and, 
+I hope, not ill-favoured sentiment of curiosity.  But the place 
+where, perhaps, I was most struck with the fact upon which you 
+comment was the house of a friend, who was exceedingly poor, in 
+fact, I may say destitute, and who lived in the attic of a very 
+tall house entirely inhabited by persons in varying stages of 
+poverty.  As he was also in ill-health, I made a habit of passing 
+my afternoon with him, and when there it was my part to answer the 
+door.  The steady procession of people begging, and the expectant 
+and confident manner in which they presented themselves, struck me 
+more and more daily; and I could not but remember with surprise 
+that though my father lived but a few streets away in a fine house, 
+beggars scarce came to the door once a fortnight or a month.  From 
+that time forward I made it my business to inquire, and in the 
+stories which I am very fond of hearing from all sorts and 
+conditions of men, learned that in the time of their distress it 
+was always from the poor they sought assistance, and almost always 
+from the poor they got it.
+
+Trusting I have now satisfactorily answered your question, which I 
+thank you for asking, I remain, with sincere compliments,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SUMMER 1892.
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - First of all, YOU HAVE ALL THE CORRECTIONS ON 
+'THE WRECKER.'  I found I had made what I meant and forgotten it, 
+and was so careless as not to tell you.
+
+Second, of course, and by all means, charge corrections on the 
+Samoa book to me; but there are not near so many as I feared.  The 
+Lord hath dealt bountifully with me, and I believe all my advisers 
+were amazed to see how nearly correct I had got the truck, at least 
+I was.  With this you will receive the whole revise and a 
+typewritten copy of the last chapter.  And the thing now is Speed, 
+to catch a possible revision of the treaty.  I believe Cassells are 
+to bring it out, but Baxter knows, and the thing has to be crammed 
+through PRESTISSIMO, A LA CHASSEUR.
+
+You mention the belated Barbeys; what about the equally belated 
+Pineros?  And I hope you will keep your bookshop alive to supplying 
+me continuously with the SAGA LIBRARY.  I cannot get enough of 
+SAGAS; I wish there were nine thousand; talk about realism!
+
+All seems to flourish with you; I also prosper; none the less for 
+being quit of that abhorred task, Samoa.  I could give a supper 
+party here were there any one to sup.  Never was such a 
+disagreeable task, but the thing had to be told. . . .
+
+There, I trust I am done with this cursed chapter of my career, bar 
+the rotten eggs and broken bottles that may follow, of course.  
+Pray remember, speed is now all that can be asked, hoped, or 
+wished.  I give up all hope of proofs, revises, proof of the map, 
+or sic like; and you on your side will try to get it out as 
+reasonably seemly as may be.
+
+Whole Samoa book herewith.  Glory be to God. - Yours very 
+sincerely,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+VAILIMA PLANTATION, UPOLU, SAMOAN ISLANDS, 18TH JULY 1892.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,- . . . I have been now for some time contending 
+with powers and principalities, and I have never once seen one of 
+my own letters to the TIMES.  So when you see something in the 
+papers that you think might interest the exiles of Upolu, do not 
+think twice, out with your saxpence, and send it flying to Vailima.  
+Of what you say of the past, eh, man, it was a queer time, and 
+awful miserable, but there's no sense in denying it was awful fun.  
+Do you mind the youth in Highland garb and the tableful of coppers?  
+Do you mind the SIGNAL of Waterloo Place? - Hey, how the blood 
+stands to the heart at such a memory! - Hae ye the notes o't?  
+Gie's them. - Gude's sake, man, gie's the notes o't; I mind ye made 
+a tune o't an' played it on your pinanny; gie's the notes.  Dear 
+Lord, that past.
+
+Glad to hear Henley's prospects are fair:  his new volume is the 
+work of a real poet.  He is one of those who can make a noise of 
+his own with words, and in whom experience strikes an individual 
+note.  There is perhaps no more genuine poet living, bar the Big 
+Guns.  In case I cannot overtake an acknowledgment to himself by 
+this mail, please let him hear of my pleasure and admiration.  How 
+poorly - compares!  He is all smart journalism and cleverness:  it 
+is all bright and shallow and limpid, like a business paper - a 
+good one, S'ENTEND; but there is no blot of heart's blood and the 
+Old Night:  there are no harmonics, there is scarce harmony to his 
+music; and in Henley - all of these; a touch, a sense within sense, 
+a sound outside the sound, the shadow of the inscrutable, eloquent 
+beyond all definition.  The First London Voluntary knocked me 
+wholly. - Ever yours affectionately, my dear Charles,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+Kind memories to your father and all friends.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO W. E. HENLEY
+
+
+
+VAILIMA PLANTATION, UPOLU, SAMOA, AUGUST 1ST, 1892.
+
+MY DEAR HENLEY, - It is impossible to let your new volume pass in 
+silence.  I have not received the same thrill of poetry since G. 
+M.'s JOY OF EARTH volume and LOVE IN A VALLEY; and I do not know 
+that even that was so intimate and deep.  Again and again, I take 
+the book down, and read, and my blood is fired as it used to be in 
+youth.  ANDANTE CON MOTO in the VOLUNTARIES, and the thing about 
+the trees at night (No. XXIV. I think) are up to date my 
+favourites.  I did not guess you were so great a magician; these 
+are new tunes, this is an undertone of the true Apollo; these are 
+not verse, they are poetry - inventions, creations, in language.  I 
+thank you for the joy you have given me, and remain your old friend 
+and present huge admirer,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+The hand is really the hand of Esau, but under a course of 
+threatened scrivener's cramp.
+
+For the next edition of the Book of Verses, pray accept an 
+emendation.  Last three lines of Echoes No. XLIV. read -
+
+
+'But life in act?  How should the grave
+Be victor over these,
+Mother, a mother of men?'
+
+
+The two vocatives scatter the effect of this inimitable close.  If 
+you insist on the longer line, equip 'grave' with an epithet.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, UPOLU, AUGUST 1st, '92.
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - Herewith MY GRANDFATHER.  I have had rather a 
+bad time suppressing the old gentleman, who was really in a very 
+garrulous stage; as for getting him IN ORDER, I could do but little 
+towards that; however, there are one or two points of interest 
+which may justify us in printing.  The swinging of his stick and 
+not knowing the sailor of Coruiskin, in particular, and the account 
+of how he wrote the lives in the Bell Book particularly please me. 
+I hope my own little introduction is not egoistic; or rather I do 
+not care if it is.  It was that old gentleman's blood that brought 
+me to Samoa.
+
+By the by, vols. vii., viii., and ix. of Adams's HISTORY have never 
+come to hand; no more have the dictionaries.
+
+Please send me STONEHENGE ON HORSE, STORIES AND INTERLUDES by Barry 
+Pain, and EDINBURGH SKETCHES AND MEMOIRS by David Masson.  THE 
+WRECKER has turned up.  So far as I have seen, it is very 
+satisfactory, but on pp. 548, 549, there has been a devil of a 
+miscarriage.  The two Latin quotations instead of following each 
+other being separated (doubtless for printing considerations) by a 
+line of prose.  My compliments to the printers; there is doubtless 
+such a thing as good printing, but there is such a thing as good 
+sense.
+
+The sequel to KIDNAPPED, DAVID BALFOUR by name, is about three-
+quarters done and gone to press for serial publication.  By what I 
+can find out it ought to be through hand with that and ready for 
+volume form early next spring. - Yours very sincerely,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO ANDREW LANG
+
+
+
+[VAILIMA, AUGUST 1892.]
+
+MY DEAR LANG, - I knew you would prove a trusty purveyor.  The 
+books you have sent are admirable.  I got the name of my hero out 
+of Brown - Blair of Balmyle - Francie Blair.  But whether to call 
+the story BLAIR OF BALMYLE, or whether to call it THE YOUNG 
+CHEVALIER, I have not yet decided.  The admirable Cameronian tract 
+- perhaps you will think this a cheat - is to be boned into DAVID 
+BALFOUR, where it will fit better, and really furnishes me with a 
+desired foothold over a boggy place.
+
+LATER; no, it won't go in, and I fear I must give up 'the 
+idolatrous occupant upon the throne,' a phrase that overjoyed me 
+beyond expression.  I am in a deuce of a flutter with politics, 
+which I hate, and in which I certainly do not shine; but a fellow 
+cannot stand aside and look on at such an exhibition as our 
+government.  'Taint decent; no gent can hold a candle to it.  But 
+it's a grind to be interrupted by midnight messengers and pass your 
+days writing proclamations (which are never proclaimed) and 
+petitions (which ain't petited) and letters to the TIMES, which it 
+makes my jaws yawn to re-read, and all your time have your heart 
+with David Balfour:  he has just left Glasgow this morning for 
+Edinburgh, James More has escaped from the castle; it is far more 
+real to me than the Behring Sea or the Baring brothers either - he 
+got the news of James More's escape from the Lord Advocate, and 
+started off straight to comfort Catriona.  You don't know her; 
+she's James More's daughter, and a respectable young wumman; the 
+Miss Grants think so - the Lord Advocate's daughters - so there 
+can't be anything really wrong.  Pretty soon we all go to Holland, 
+and be hanged; thence to Dunkirk, and be damned; and the tale 
+concludes in Paris, and be Poll-parrotted.  This is the last 
+authentic news.  You are not a real hard-working novelist; not a 
+practical novelist; so you don't know the temptation to let your 
+characters maunder.  Dumas did it, and lived.  But it is not war; 
+it ain't sportsmanlike, and I have to be stopping their chatter all 
+the time.  Brown's appendix is great reading.
+
+
+My only grief is that I can't
+Use the idolatrous occupant.
+
+
+Yours ever,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+Blessing and praising you for a useful (though idolatrous) occupant 
+of Kensington.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO THE COUNTESS OF JERSEY
+
+
+
+AUGUST 14, 1745.
+
+TO MISS AMELIA BALFOUR - MY DEAR COUSIN, - We are going an 
+expedition to leeward on Tuesday morning.  If a lady were perhaps 
+to be encountered on horseback - say, towards the Gasi-gasi river - 
+about six A.M., I think we should have an episode somewhat after 
+the style of the '45.  What a misfortune, my dear cousin, that you 
+should have arrived while your cousin Graham was occupying my only 
+guest-chamber - for Osterley Park is not so large in Samoa as it 
+was at home - but happily our friend Haggard has found a corner for 
+you!
+
+The King over the Water - the Gasi-gasi water - will be pleased to 
+see the clan of Balfour mustering so thick around his standard.
+
+I have (one serious word) been so lucky as to get a really secret 
+interpreter, so all is for the best in our little adventure into 
+the WAVERLEY NOVELS. - I am your affectionate cousin,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+Observe the stealth with which I have blotted my signature, but we 
+must be political A OUTRANCE.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO THE COUNTESS OF JERSEY
+
+
+
+MY DEAR COUSIN, - I send for your information a copy of my last 
+letter to the gentleman in question.  'Tis thought more wise, in 
+consideration of the difficulty and peril of the enterprise, that 
+we should leave the town in the afternoon, and by several 
+detachments.  If you would start for a ride with the Master of 
+Haggard and Captain Lockhart of Lee, say at three o'clock of the 
+afternoon, you would make some rencounters by the wayside which 
+might be agreeable to your political opinions.  All present will be 
+staunch.
+
+The Master of Haggard might extend his ride a little, and return 
+through the marsh and by the nuns' house (I trust that has the 
+proper flavour), so as a little to diminish the effect of 
+separation. - I remain, your affectionate cousin to command,
+
+O TUSITALA.
+
+P.S. - It is to be thought this present year of grace will be 
+historical.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MRS. CHARLES FAIRCHILD
+
+
+
+[VAILIMA, AUGUST 1892.]
+
+MY DEAR MRS. FAIRCHILD, - Thank you a thousand times for your 
+letter.  You are the Angel of (the sort of) Information (that I 
+care about); I appoint you successor to the newspaper press; and I 
+beg of you, whenever you wish to gird at the age, or think the bugs 
+out of proportion to the roses, or despair, or enjoy any cosmic or 
+epochal emotion, to sit down again and write to the Hermit of 
+Samoa.  What do I think of it all?  Well, I love the romantic 
+solemnity of youth; and even in this form, although not without 
+laughter, I have to love it still.  They are such ducks!  But what 
+are they made of?  We were just as solemn as that about atheism and 
+the stars and humanity; but we were all for belief anyway - we held 
+atheism and sociology (of which none of us, nor indeed anybody, 
+knew anything) for a gospel and an iron rule of life; and it was 
+lucky enough, or there would have been more windows broken.  What 
+is apt to puzzle one at first sight in the New Youth is that, with 
+such rickety and risky problems always at heart, they should not 
+plunge down a Niagara of Dissolution.  But let us remember the high 
+practical timidity of youth.  I was a particularly brave boy - this 
+I think of myself, looking back - and plunged into adventures and 
+experiments, and ran risks that it still surprises me to recall.  
+But, dear me, what a fear I was in of that strange blind machinery 
+in the midst of which I stood; and with what a compressed heart and 
+what empty lungs I would touch a new crank and await developments!  
+I do not mean to say I do not fear life still; I do; and that 
+terror (for an adventurer like myself) is still one of the chief 
+joys of living.
+
+But it was different indeed while I was yet girt with the priceless 
+robes of inexperience; then the fear was exquisite and infinite.  
+And so, when you see all these little Ibsens, who seem at once so 
+dry and so excitable, and faint in swathes over a play (I suppose - 
+for a wager) that would seem to me merely tedious, smile behind 
+your hand, and remember the little dears are all in a blue funk.  
+It must be very funny, and to a spectator like yourself I almost 
+envy it.  But never get desperate; human nature is human nature; 
+and the Roman Empire, since the Romans founded it and made our 
+European human nature what it is, bids fair to go on and to be true 
+to itself.  These little bodies will all grow up and become men and 
+women, and have heaps of fun; nay, and are having it now; and 
+whatever happens to the fashion of the age, it makes no difference 
+- there are always high and brave and amusing lives to be lived; 
+and a change of key, however exotic, does not exclude melody.  Even 
+Chinamen, hard as we find it to believe, enjoy being Chinese.  And 
+the Chinaman stands alone to be unthinkable; natural enough, as the 
+representative of the only other great civilisation.  Take my 
+people here at my doors; their life is a very good one; it is quite 
+thinkable, quite acceptable to us.  And the little dears will be 
+soon skating on the other foot; sooner or later, in each 
+generation, the one-half of them at least begin to remember all the 
+material they had rejected when first they made and nailed up their 
+little theory of life; and these become reactionaries or 
+conservatives, and the ship of man begins to fill upon the other 
+tack.
+
+Here is a sermon, by your leave!  It is your own fault, you have 
+amused and interested me so much by your breath of the New Youth, 
+which comes to me from so far away, where I live up here in my 
+mountain, and secret messengers bring me letters from rebels, and 
+the government sometimes seizes them, and generally grumbles in its 
+beard that Stevenson should really be deported.  O, my life is the 
+more lively, never fear!
+
+It has recently been most amusingly varied by a visit from Lady 
+Jersey.  I took her over mysteriously (under the pseudonym of my 
+cousin, Miss Amelia Balfour) to visit Mataafa, our rebel; and we 
+had great fun, and wrote a Ouida novel on our life here, in which 
+every author had to describe himself in the Ouida glamour, and of 
+which - for the Jerseys intend printing it - I must let you have a 
+copy.  My wife's chapter, and my description of myself, should, I 
+think, amuse you.  But there were finer touches still; as when 
+Belle and Lady Jersey came out to brush their teeth in front of the 
+rebel King's palace, and the night guard squatted opposite on the 
+grass and watched the process; or when I and my interpreter, and 
+the King with his secretary, mysteriously disappeared to conspire. 
+- Ever yours sincerely,
+
+R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO GORDON BROWNE
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, AUTUMN 1892.
+TO THE ARTIST WHO DID THE ILLUSTRATIONS TO 'UMA.'
+
+DEAR SIR, - I only know you under the initials G. B., but you have 
+done some exceedingly spirited and satisfactory illustrations to my 
+story THE BEACH OF FALESA, and I wish to write and thank you 
+expressly for the care and talent shown.  Such numbers of people 
+can do good black and whites!  So few can illustrate a story, or 
+apparently read it.  You have shown that you can do both, and your 
+creation of Wiltshire is a real illumination of the text.  It was 
+exactly so that Wiltshire dressed and looked, and you have the line 
+of his nose to a nicety.  His nose is an inspiration.  Nor should I 
+forget to thank you for Case, particularly in his last appearance.  
+It is a singular fact - which seems to point still more directly to 
+inspiration in your case - that your missionary actually resembles 
+the flesh-and-blood person from whom Mr. Tarleton was drawn.  The 
+general effect of the islands is all that could be wished; indeed I 
+have but one criticism to make, that in the background of Case 
+taking the dollar from Mr. Tarleton's head - head - not hand, as 
+the fools have printed it - the natives have a little too much the 
+look of Africans.
+
+But the great affair is that you have been to the pains to 
+illustrate my story instead of making conscientious black and 
+whites of people sitting talking.  I doubt if you have left 
+unrepresented a single pictorial incident.  I am writing by this 
+mail to the editor in the hopes that I may buy from him the 
+originals, and I am, dear sir, your very much obliged,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MISS MORSE
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOAN ISLANDS, OCTOBER 7TH, 1892.
+
+DEAR MADAM, - I have a great diffidence in answering your valued 
+letter.  It would be difficult for me to express the feelings with 
+which I read it - and am now trying to re-read it as I dictate 
+this.
+
+You ask me to forgive what you say 'must seem a liberty,' and I 
+find that I cannot thank you sufficiently or even find a word with 
+which to qualify your letter.  Dear Madam, such a communication 
+even the vainest man would think a sufficient reward for a lifetime 
+of labour.  That I should have been able to give so much help and 
+pleasure to your sister is the subject of my grateful wonder.
+
+That she, being dead, and speaking with your pen, should be able to 
+repay the debt with such a liberal interest, is one of those things 
+that reconcile us with the world and make us take hope again.  I do 
+not know what I have done to deserve so beautiful and touching a 
+compliment; and I feel there is but one thing fit for me to say 
+here, that I will try with renewed courage to go on in the same 
+path, and to deserve, if not to receive, a similar return from 
+others.
+
+You apologise for speaking so much about yourselves.  Dear Madam, I 
+thought you did so too little.  I should have wished to have known 
+more of those who were so sympathetic as to find a consolation in 
+my work, and so graceful and so tactful as to acknowledge it in 
+such a letter as was yours.
+
+Will you offer to your mother the expression of a sympathy which 
+(coming from a stranger) must seem very airy, but which yet is 
+genuine; and accept for yourself my gratitude for the thought which 
+inspired you to write to me and the words which you found to 
+express it.
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+VAILIMA PLANTATION, SAMOAN ISLANDS, OCT. 10TH, 1892.
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - It is now, as you see, the 10th of October, 
+and there has not reached the Island of Upolu one single copy, or 
+rag of a copy, of the Samoa book.  I lie; there has come one, and 
+that in the pocket of a missionary man who is at daggers drawn with 
+me, who lends it to all my enemies, conceals it from all my 
+friends, and is bringing a lawsuit against me on the strength of 
+expressions in the same which I have forgotten, and now cannot see.  
+This is pretty tragic, I think you will allow; and I was inclined 
+to fancy it was the fault of the Post Office.  But I hear from my 
+sister-in-law Mrs. Sanchez that she is in the same case, and has 
+received no 'Footnote.'  I have also to consider that I had no 
+letter from you last mail, although you ought to have received by 
+that time 'My Grandfather and Scott,' and 'Me and my Grandfather.'  
+Taking one consideration with another, therefore, I prefer to 
+conceive that No. 743 Broadway has fallen upon gentle and 
+continuous slumber, and is become an enchanted palace among 
+publishing houses.  If it be not so, if the 'Footnotes' were really 
+sent, I hope you will fall upon the Post Office with all the vigour 
+you possess.  How does THE WRECKER go in the States?  It seems to 
+be doing exceptionally well in England. - Yours sincerely,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO J. M.  BARRIE
+
+
+
+VAILIMA PLANTATION, SAMOAN ISLANDS, NOVEMBER 1ST, 1892.
+
+DEAR MR. BARRIE, - I can scarce thank you sufficiently for your 
+extremely amusing letter.  No, THE AULD LICHT IDYLS never reached 
+me - I wish it had, and I wonder extremely whether it would not be 
+good for me to have a pennyworth of the Auld Licht pulpit.  It is a 
+singular thing that I should live here in the South Seas under 
+conditions so new and so striking, and yet my imagination so 
+continually inhabit that cold old huddle of grey hills from which 
+we come.  I have just finished DAVID BALFOUR; I have another book 
+on the stocks, THE YOUNG CHEVALIER, which is to be part in France 
+and part in Scotland, and to deal with Prince Charlie about the 
+year 1749; and now what have I done but begun a third which is to 
+be all moorland together, and is to have for a centrepiece a figure 
+that I think you will appreciate - that of the immortal Braxfield - 
+Braxfield himself is my GRAND PREMIER, or, since you are so much 
+involved in the British drama, let me say my heavy lead. . . .
+
+Your descriptions of your dealings with Lord Rintoul are 
+frightfully unconscientious.  You should never write about anybody 
+until you persuade yourself at least for the moment that you love 
+him, above all anybody on whom your plot revolves.  It will always 
+make a hole in the book; and, if he has anything to do with the 
+mechanism, prove a stick in your machinery.  But you know all this 
+better than I do, and it is one of your most promising traits that 
+you do not take your powers too seriously.  The LITTLE MINISTER 
+ought to have ended badly; we all know it did; and we are 
+infinitely grateful to you for the grace and good feeling with 
+which you lied about it.  If you had told the truth, I for one 
+could never have forgiven you.  As you had conceived and written 
+the earlier parts, the truth about the end, though indisputably 
+true to fact, would have been a lie, or what is worse, a discord in 
+art.  If you are going to make a book end badly, it must end badly 
+from the beginning.  Now your book began to end well.  You let 
+yourself fall in love with, and fondle, and smile at your puppets.  
+Once you had done that, your honour was committed - at the cost of 
+truth to life you were bound to save them.  It is the blot on 
+RICHARD FEVEREL, for instance, that it begins to end well; and then 
+tricks you and ends ill.  But in that case there is worse behind, 
+for the ill-ending does not inherently issue from the plot - the 
+story HAD, in fact, ENDED WELL after the great last interview 
+between Richard and Lucy - and the blind, illogical bullet which 
+smashes all has no more to do between the boards than a fly has to 
+do with the room into whose open window it comes buzzing.  It MIGHT 
+have so happened; it needed not; and unless needs must, we have no 
+right to pain our readers.  I have had a heavy case of conscience 
+of the same kind about my Braxfield story.  Braxfield - only his 
+name is Hermiston - has a son who is condemned to death; plainly, 
+there is a fine tempting fitness about this; and I meant he was to 
+hang.  But now on considering my minor characters, I saw there were 
+five people who would - in a sense who must - break prison and 
+attempt his rescue.  They were capable, hardy folks, too, who might 
+very well succeed.  Why should they not then?  Why should not young 
+Hermiston escape clear out of the country? and be happy, if he 
+could, with his -  But soft!  I will not betray my secret of my 
+heroine.  Suffice it to breathe in your ear that she was what Hardy 
+calls (and others in their plain way don't) a Pure Woman.  Much 
+virtue in a capital letter, such as yours was.
+
+Write to me again in my infinite distance.  Tell me about your new 
+book.  No harm in telling ME; I am too far off to be indiscreet; 
+there are too few near me who would care to hear.  I am rushes by 
+the riverside, and the stream is in Babylon:  breathe your secrets 
+to me fearlessly; and if the Trade Wind caught and carried them 
+away, there are none to catch them nearer than Australia, unless it 
+were the Tropic Birds.  In the unavoidable absence of my 
+amanuensis, who is buying eels for dinner, I have thus concluded my 
+despatch, like St. Paul, with my own hand.
+
+And in the inimitable words of Lord Kames, Faur ye weel, ye bitch. 
+- Yours very truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO E. L. BURLINGAME
+
+
+
+VAILIMA PLANTATION, NOV. 2ND, 1892.
+
+MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - In the first place, I have to acknowledge 
+receipt of your munificent cheque for three hundred and fifty 
+dollars.  Glad you liked the Scott voyage; rather more than I did 
+upon the whole.  As the proofs have not turned up at all, there can 
+be no question of returning them, and I am therefore very much 
+pleased to think you have arranged not to wait.  The volumes of 
+Adams arrived along with yours of October 6th.  One of the 
+dictionaries has also blundered home, apparently from the Colonies; 
+the other is still to seek.  I note and sympathise with your 
+bewilderment as to FALESA.  My own direct correspondence with Mr. 
+Baxter is now about three months in abeyance.  Altogether you see 
+how well it would be if you could do anything to wake up the Post 
+Office.  Not a single copy of the 'Footnote' has yet reached Samoa, 
+but I hear of one having come to its address in Hawaii.  Glad to 
+hear good news of Stoddard. - Yours sincerely,
+
+R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+P.S. - Since the above was written an aftermath of post matter came 
+in, among which were the proofs of MY GRANDFATHER.  I shall correct 
+and return them, but as I have lost all confidence in the Post 
+Office, I shall mention here:  first galley, 4th line from the 
+bottom, for 'AS' read 'OR.'
+
+Should I ever again have to use my work without waiting for proofs, 
+bear in mind this golden principle.  From a congenital defect, I 
+must suppose, I am unable to write the word OR - wherever I write 
+it the printer unerringly puts AS - and those who read for me had 
+better, wherever it is possible, substitute OR for AS.  This the 
+more so since many writers have a habit of using AS which is death 
+to my temper and confusion to my face.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO LIEUTENANT EELES
+
+
+
+VAILIMA PLANTATION, UPOLU, SAMOAN ISLANDS, NOVEMBER 15TH, 1892.
+
+DEAR EELES, - In the first place, excuse me writing to you by 
+another hand, as that is the way in which alone all my 
+correspondence gets effected.  Before I took to this method, or 
+rather before I found a victim, it SIMPLY didn't get effected.
+
+Thank you again and again, first for your kind thought of writing 
+to me, and second for your extremely amusing and interesting 
+letter.  You can have no guess how immediately interesting it was 
+to our family.  First of all, the poor soul at Nukufetau is an old 
+friend of ours, and we have actually treated him ourselves on a 
+former visit to the island.  I don't know if Hoskin would approve 
+of our treatment; it consisted, I believe, mostly in a present of 
+stout and a recommendation to put nails in his water-tank.  We also 
+(as you seem to have done) recommended him to leave the island; and 
+I remember very well how wise and kind we thought his answer.  He 
+had half-caste children (he said) who would suffer and perhaps be 
+despised if he carried them elsewhere; if he left them there alone, 
+they would almost certainly miscarry; and the best thing was that 
+he should stay and die with them.  But the cream of the fun was 
+your meeting with Burn.  We not only know him, but (as the French 
+say) we don't know anybody else; he is our intimate and adored 
+original; and - prepare your mind - he was, is, and ever will be, 
+TOMMY HADDON!  As I don't believe you to be inspired, I suspect you 
+to have suspected this.  At least it was a mighty happy suspicion.  
+You are quite right:  Tommy is really 'a good chap,' though about 
+as comic as they make them.
+
+I was extremely interested in your Fiji legend, and perhaps even 
+more so in your capital account of the CURACOA'S misadventure.  
+Alas! we have nothing so thrilling to relate.  All hangs and fools 
+on in this isle of misgovernment, without change, though not 
+without novelty, but wholly without hope, unless perhaps you should 
+consider it hopeful that I am still more immediately threatened 
+with arrest.  The confounded thing is, that if it comes off, I 
+shall be sent away in the Ringarooma instead of the CURACOA.  The 
+former ship burst upon by the run - she had been sent off by 
+despatch and without orders - and to make me a little more easy in 
+my mind she brought newspapers clamouring for my incarceration.  
+Since then I have had a conversation with the German Consul.  He 
+said he had read a review of my Samoa book, and if the review were 
+fair, must regard it as an insult, and one that would have to be 
+resented.  At the same time, I learn that letters addressed to the 
+German squadron lie for them here in the Post Office.  Reports are 
+current of other English ships being on the way - I hope to 
+goodness yours will be among the number.  And I gather from one 
+thing and another that there must be a holy row going on between 
+the powers at home, and that the issue (like all else connected 
+with Samoa) is on the knees of the gods.  One thing, however, is 
+pretty sure - if that issue prove to be a German Protectorate, I 
+shall have to tramp.  Can you give us any advice as to a fresh 
+field of energy?  We have been searching the atlas, and it seems 
+difficult to fill the bill.  How would Rarotonga do?  I forget if 
+you have been there.  The best of it is that my new house is going 
+up like winking, and I am dictating this letter to the 
+accompaniment of saws and hammers.  A hundred black boys and about 
+a score draught-oxen perished, or at least barely escaped with 
+their lives, from the mud-holes on our road, bringing up the 
+materials.  It will be a fine legacy to H.I.G.M.'s Protectorate, 
+and doubtless the Governor will take it for his country-house.  The 
+Ringarooma people, by the way, seem very nice.  I liked Stansfield 
+particularly.
+
+Our middy has gone up to San Francisco in pursuit of the phantom 
+Education.  We have good word of him, and I hope he will not be in 
+disgrace again, as he was when the hope of the British Navy - need 
+I say that I refer to Admiral Burney? - honoured us last.  The next 
+time you come, as the new house will be finished, we shall be able 
+to offer you a bed.  Nares and Meiklejohn may like to hear that our 
+new room is to be big enough to dance in.  It will be a very 
+pleasant day for me to see the Curacoa in port again and at least a 
+proper contingent of her officers 'skipping in my 'all.'
+
+We have just had a feast on my birthday at which we had three of 
+the Ringaromas, and I wish they had been three CURACOAS - say 
+yourself, Hoskin, and Burney the ever Great.  (Consider this an 
+invitation.)  Our boys had got the thing up regardless.  There were 
+two huge sows - oh, brutes of animals that would have broken down a 
+hansom cab - four smaller pigs, two barrels of beef, and a horror 
+of vegetables and fowls.  We sat down between forty and fifty in a 
+big new native house behind the kitchen that you have never seen, 
+and ate and public spoke till all was blue.  Then we had about half 
+an hour's holiday with some beer and sherry and brandy and soda to 
+restrengthen the European heart, and then out to the old native 
+house to see a siva.  Finally, all the guests were packed off in a 
+trackless black night and down a road that was rather fitted for 
+the CURACOA than any human pedestrian, though to be sure I do not 
+know the draught of the CURACOA.  My ladies one and all desire to 
+be particularly remembered to our friends on board, and all look 
+forward, as I do myself, in the hope of your return. - Yours 
+sincerely,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+And let me hear from you again!
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+1ST DEC. '92.
+
+. . . I have a novel on the stocks to be called THE JUSTICE-CLERK.  
+It is pretty Scotch, the Grand Premier is taken from Braxfield - 
+(Oh, by the by, send me Cockburn's MEMORIALS) - and some of the 
+story is - well - queer.  The heroine is seduced by one man, and 
+finally disappears with the other man who shot him. . . . Mind you, 
+I expect the JUSTICE-CLERK to be my masterpiece.  My Braxfield is 
+already a thing of beauty and a joy for ever, and so far as he has 
+gone FAR my best character.
+
+[LATER.]
+
+Second thought.  I wish Pitcairn's CRIMINAL TRIALS QUAM PRIMUM.  
+Also, an absolutely correct text of the Scots judiciary oath.
+
+Also, in case Pitcairn does not come down late enough, I wish as 
+full a report as possible of a Scotch murder trial between 1790-
+1820.  Understand, THE FULLEST POSSIBLE.
+
+Is there any book which would guide me as to the following facts?
+
+The Justice-Clerk tries some people capitally on circuit.  Certain 
+evidence cropping up, the charge is transferred to the J.-C.'s own 
+son.  Of course, in the next trial the J.-C. is excluded, and the 
+case is called before the Lord-Justice General.
+
+Where would this trial have to be?  I fear in Edinburgh, which 
+would not suit my view.  Could it be again at the circuit town?
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MRS. JENKIN
+
+
+
+DECEMBER 5TH, 1892.
+
+MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN, - . . . So much said, I come with guilty speed 
+to what more immediately concerns myself.  Spare us a month or two 
+for old sake's sake, and make my wife and me happy and proud.  We 
+are only fourteen days from San Francisco, just about a month from 
+Liverpool; we have our new house almost finished.  The thing CAN be 
+done; I believe we can make you almost comfortable.  It is the 
+loveliest climate in the world, our political troubles seem near an 
+end.  It can be done, it must!  Do, please, make a virtuous effort, 
+come and take a glimpse of a new world I am sure you do not dream 
+of, and some old friends who do often dream of your arrival.
+
+Alas, I was just beginning to get eloquent, and there goes the 
+lunch bell, and after lunch I must make up the mail.
+
+Do come.  You must not come in February or March - bad months.  
+From April on it is delightful. - Your sincere friend,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+
+DECEMBER 5TH, 1892.
+
+MY DEAR JAMES, - How comes it so great a silence has fallen?  The 
+still small voice of self-approval whispers me it is not from me.  
+I have looked up my register, and find I have neither written to 
+you nor heard from you since June 22nd, on which day of grace that 
+invaluable work began.  This is not as it should be.  How to get 
+back?  I remember acknowledging with rapture the - of the MASTER, 
+and I remember receiving MARBOT:  was that our last relation?
+
+Hey, well! anyway, as you may have probably gathered from the 
+papers, I have been in devilish hot water, and (what may be new to 
+you) devilish hard at work.  In twelve calendar months I finished 
+THE WRECKER, wrote all of FALESA but the first chapter (well, much 
+of), the HISTORY OF SAMOA, did something here and there to my LIFE 
+OF MY GRANDFATHER, and began And Finished DAVID BALFOUR.  What do 
+you think of it for a year?  Since then I may say I have done 
+nothing beyond draft three chapters of another novel, THE JUSTICE-
+CLERK, which ought to be shorter and a blower - at least if it 
+don't make a spoon, it will spoil the horn of an Aurochs (if that's 
+how it should be spelt).
+
+On the hot water side it may entertain you to know that I have been 
+actually sentenced to deportation by my friends on Mulinuu, C. J. 
+Cedercrantz, and Baron Senfft von Pilsach.  The awful doom, 
+however, declined to fall, owing to Circumstances over Which.  I 
+only heard of it (so to speak) last night.  I mean officially, but 
+I had walked among rumours.  The whole tale will be some day put 
+into my hand, and I shall share it with humorous friends.
+
+It is likely, however, by my judgment, that this epoch of gaiety in 
+Samoa will soon cease; and the fierce white light of history will 
+beat no longer on Yours Sincerely and his fellows here on the 
+beach.  We ask ourselves whether the reason will more rejoice over 
+the end of a disgraceful business, or the unregenerate man more 
+sorrow over the stoppage of the fun.  For, say what you please, it 
+has been a deeply interesting time.  You don't know what news is, 
+nor what politics, nor what the life of man, till you see it on so 
+small a scale and with your own liberty on the board for stake.  I 
+would not have missed it for much.  And anxious friends beg me to 
+stay at home and study human nature in Brompton drawing-rooms!  
+FARCEURS!  And anyway you know that such is not my talent.  I could 
+never be induced to take the faintest interest in Brompton QUA 
+Brompton or a drawing-room QUA a drawing-room.  I am an Epick 
+Writer with a k to it, but without the necessary genius.
+
+Hurry up with another book of stories.  I am now reduced to two of 
+my contemporaries, you and Barrie - O, and Kipling - you and Barrie 
+and Kipling are now my Muses Three.  And with Kipling, as you know, 
+there are reservations to be made.  And you and Barrie don't write 
+enough.  I should say I also read Anstey when he is serious, and 
+can almost always get a happy day out of Marion Crawford - CE N'EST 
+PAS TOUJOURS LA GUERRE, but it's got life to it and guts, and it 
+moves.  Did you read the WITCH OF PRAGUE?  Nobody could read it 
+twice, of course; and the first time even it was necessary to skip.  
+E PUR SI MUOVE.  But Barrie is a beauty, the LITTLE MINISTER and 
+the WINDOW IN THRUMS, eh?  Stuff in that young man; but he must see 
+and not be too funny.  Genius in him, but there's a journalist at 
+his elbow - there's the risk.  Look, what a page is the glove 
+business in the WINDOW! knocks a man flat; that's guts, if you 
+please.
+
+Why have I wasted the little time that is left with a sort of naked 
+review article?  I don't know, I'm sure.  I suppose a mere 
+ebullition of congested literary talk I am beginning to think a 
+visit from friends would be due.  Wish you could come!
+
+Let us have your news anyway, and forgive this silly stale 
+effusion. - Yours ever,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO J. M. BARRIE
+
+
+
+[VAILIMA, DECEMBER 1892.]
+
+DEAR J. M. BARRIE, - You will be sick of me soon; I cannot help it.  
+I have been off my work for some time, and re-read the EDINBURGH 
+ELEVEN, and had a great mind to write a parody and give you all 
+your sauce back again, and see how you would like it yourself.  And 
+then I read (for the first time - I know not how) the WINDOW IN 
+THRUMS; I don't say that it is better than THE MINISTER; it's less 
+of a tale - and there is a beauty, a material beauty, of the tale 
+IPSE, which clever critics nowadays long and love to forget; it has 
+more real flaws; but somehow it is - well, I read it last anyway, 
+and it's by Barrie.  And he's the man for my money.  The glove is a 
+great page; it is startlingly original, and as true as death and 
+judgment.  Tibbie Birse in the Burial is great, but I think it was 
+a journalist that got in the word 'official.'  The same character 
+plainly had a word to say to Thomas Haggard.  Thomas affects me as 
+a lie - I beg your pardon; doubtless he was somebody you knew, that 
+leads people so far astray.  The actual is not the true.
+
+I am proud to think you are a Scotchman - though to be sure I know 
+nothing of that country, being only an English tourist, quo' Gavin 
+Ogilvy.  I commend the hard case of Mr. Gavin Ogilvy to J. M. 
+Barrie, whose work is to me a source of living pleasure and 
+heartfelt national pride.  There are two of us now that the Shirra 
+might have patted on the head.  And please do not think when I thus 
+seem to bracket myself with you, that I am wholly blinded with 
+vanity.  Jess is beyond my frontier line; I could not touch her 
+skirt; I have no such glamour of twilight on my pen.  I am a 
+capable artist; but it begins to look to me as if you were a man of 
+genius.  Take care of yourself, for my sake.  It's a devilish hard 
+thing for a man who writes so many novels as I do, that I should 
+get so few to read.  And I can read yours, and I love them.
+
+A pity for you that my amanuensis is not on stock to-day, and my 
+own hand perceptibly worse than usual. - Yours,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+DECEMBER 5TH, 1892.
+
+P.S. - They tell me your health is not strong.  Man, come out here 
+and try the Prophet's chamber.  There's only one bad point to us - 
+we do rise early.  The Amanuensis states that you are a lover of 
+silence - and that ours is a noisy house - and she is a chatterbox 
+- I am not answerable for these statements, though I do think there 
+is a touch of garrulity about my premises.  We have so little to 
+talk about, you see.  The house is three miles from town, in the 
+midst of great silent forests.  There is a burn close by, and when 
+we are not talking you can hear the burn, and the birds, and the 
+sea breaking on the coast three miles away and six hundred feet 
+below us, and about three times a month a bell - I don't know where 
+the bell is, nor who rings it; it may be the bell in Hans 
+Andersen's story for all I know.  It is never hot here - 86 in the 
+shade is about our hottest - and it is never cold except just in 
+the early mornings.  Take it for all in all, I suppose this island 
+climate to be by far the healthiest in the world - even the 
+influenza entirely lost its sting.  Only two patients died, and one 
+was a man nearly eighty, and the other a child below four months.  
+I won't tell you if it is beautiful, for I want you to come here 
+and see for yourself.  Everybody on the premises except my wife has 
+some Scotch blood in their veins - I beg your pardon - except the 
+natives - and then my wife is a Dutchwoman - and the natives are 
+the next thing conceivable to Highlanders before the forty-five.  
+We would have some grand cracks!
+
+R. L. S.
+
+COME, it will broaden your mind, and be the making of me.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII - LIFE IN SAMOA, CONTINUED, JANUARY 1893-DECEMBER 1894
+
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+[APRIL, 1893.]
+
+. . . About THE JUSTICE-CLERK, I long to go at it, but will first 
+try to get a short story done.  Since January I have had two severe 
+illnesses, my boy, and some heart-breaking anxiety over Fanny; and 
+am only now convalescing.  I came down to dinner last night for the 
+first time, and that only because the service had broken down, and 
+to relieve an inexperienced servant.  Nearly four months now I have 
+rested my brains; and if it be true that rest is good for brains, I 
+ought to be able to pitch in like a giant refreshed.  Before the 
+autumn, I hope to send you some JUSTICE-CLERK, or WEIR OF 
+HERMISTON, as Colvin seems to prefer; I own to indecision.  
+Received SYNTAX, DANCE OF DEATH, and PITCAIRN, which last I have 
+read from end to end since its arrival, with vast improvement.  
+What a pity it stops so soon!  I wonder is there nothing that seems 
+to prolong the series?  Why doesn't some young man take it up?  How 
+about my old friend Fountainhall's DECISIONS?  I remember as a boy 
+that there was some good reading there.  Perhaps you could borrow 
+me that, and send it on loan; and perhaps Laing's MEMORIALS 
+therewith; and a work I'm ashamed to say I have never read, 
+BALFOUR'S LETTERS. . . . I have come by accident, through a 
+correspondent, on one very curious and interesting fact - namely, 
+that Stevenson was one of the names adopted by the MacGregors at 
+the proscription.  The details supplied by my correspondent are 
+both convincing and amusing; but it would be highly interesting to 
+find out more of this.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO A. CONAN DOYLE
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, APIA, SAMOA, APRIL 5TH, 1893.
+
+DEAR SIR, - You have taken many occasions to make yourself very 
+agreeable to me, for which I might in decency have thanked you 
+earlier.  It is now my turn; and I hope you will allow me to offer 
+you my compliments on your very ingenious and very interesting 
+adventures of Sherlock Holmes.  That is the class of literature 
+that I like when I have the toothache.  As a matter of fact, it was 
+a pleurisy I was enjoying when I took the volume up; and it will 
+interest you as a medical man to know that the cure was for the 
+moment effectual.  Only the one thing troubles me:  can this be my 
+old friend Joe Bell? - I am, yours very truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+P.S. - And lo, here is your address supplied me here in Samoa!  But 
+do not take mine, O frolic fellow Spookist, from the same source; 
+mine is wrong.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO S. R. CROCKETT
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, MAY 17TH, 1893.
+
+DEAR MR. CROCKETT, - I do not owe you two letters, nor yet nearly 
+one, sir!  The last time I heard of you, you wrote about an 
+accident, and I sent you a letter to my lawyer, Charles Baxter, 
+which does not seem to have been presented, as I see nothing of it 
+in his accounts.  Query, was that lost?  I should not like you to 
+think I had been so unmannerly and so inhuman.  If you have written 
+since, your letter also has miscarried, as is much the rule in this 
+part of the world, unless you register.
+
+Your book is not yet to hand, but will probably follow next month.  
+I detected you early in the BOOKMAN, which I usually see, and noted 
+you in particular as displaying a monstrous ingratitude about the 
+footnote.  Well, mankind is ungrateful; 'Man's ingratitude to man 
+makes countless thousands mourn,' quo' Rab - or words to that 
+effect.  By the way, an anecdote of a cautious sailor:  'Bill, 
+Bill,' says I to him, 'OR WORDS TO THAT EFFECT.'
+
+I shall never take that walk by the Fisher's Tryst and Glencorse.  
+I shall never see Auld Reekie.  I shall never set my foot again 
+upon the heather.  Here I am until I die, and here will I be 
+buried.  The word is out and the doom written.  Or, if I do come, 
+it will be a voyage to a further goal, and in fact a suicide; 
+which, however, if I could get my family all fixed up in the money 
+way, I might, perhaps, perform, or attempt.  But there is a plaguey 
+risk of breaking down by the way; and I believe I shall stay here 
+until the end comes like a good boy, as I am.  If I did it, I 
+should put upon my trunks:  'Passenger to - Hades.'  How strangely 
+wrong your information is!  In the first place, I should never 
+carry a novel to Sydney; I should post it from here.  In the second 
+place, WEIR OF HERMISTON is as yet scarce begun.  It's going to be 
+excellent, no doubt; but it consists of about twenty pages.  I have 
+a tale, a shortish tale in length, but it has proved long to do, 
+THE EBB TIDE, some part of which goes home this mail.  It is by me 
+and Mr. Osbourne, and is really a singular work.  There are only 
+four characters, and three of them are bandits - well, two of them 
+are, and the third is their comrade and accomplice.  It sounds 
+cheering, doesn't it?  Barratry, and drunkenness, and vitriol, and 
+I cannot tell you all what, are the beams of the roof.  And yet - I 
+don't know - I sort of think there's something in it.  You'll see 
+(which is more than I ever can) whether Davis and Attwater come off 
+or not.
+
+WEIR OF HERMISTON is a much greater undertaking, and the plot is 
+not good, I fear; but Lord Justice-Clerk Hermiston ought to be a 
+plum.  Of other schemes, more or less executed, it skills not to 
+speak.
+
+I am glad to hear so good an account of your activity and 
+interests, and shall always hear from you with pleasure; though I 
+am, and must continue, a mere sprite of the inkbottle, unseen in 
+the flesh.  Please remember me to your wife and to the four-year-
+old sweetheart, if she be not too engrossed with higher matters.  
+Do you know where the road crosses the burn under Glencorse Church?  
+Go there, and say a prayer for me:  MORITURUS SALUTAT.  See that 
+it's a sunny day; I would like it to be a Sunday, but that's not 
+possible in the premises; and stand on the right-hand bank just 
+where the road goes down into the water, and shut your eyes, and if 
+I don't appear to you! well, it can't be helped, and will be 
+extremely funny.
+
+I have no concern here but to work and to keep an eye on this 
+distracted people.  I live just now wholly alone in an upper room 
+of my house, because the whole family are down with influenza, bar 
+my wife and myself.  I get my horse up sometimes in the afternoon 
+and have a ride in the woods; and I sit here and smoke and write, 
+and rewrite, and destroy, and rage at my own impotence, from six in 
+the morning till eight at night, with trifling and not always 
+agreeable intervals for meals.
+
+I am sure you chose wisely to keep your country charge.  There a 
+minister can be something, not in a town.  In a town, the most of 
+them are empty houses - and public speakers.  Why should you 
+suppose your book will be slated because you have no friends?  A 
+new writer, if he is any good, will be acclaimed generally with 
+more noise than he deserves.  But by this time you will know for 
+certain. - I am, yours sincerely,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+P.S. - Be it known to this fluent generation that I R. L. S., in 
+the forty-third of my age and the twentieth of my professional 
+life, wrote twenty-four pages in twenty-one days, working from six 
+to eleven, and again in the afternoon from two to four or so, 
+without fail or interruption.  Such are the gifts the gods have 
+endowed us withal:  such was the facility of this prolific writer!
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO AUGUSTUS ST. GAUDENS
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, MAY 29TH, 1893
+
+MY DEAR GOD-LIKE SCULPTOR, - I wish in the most delicate manner in 
+the world to insinuate a few commissions:-
+
+No. 1. Is for a couple of copies of my medallion, as gilt-edged and 
+high-toned as it is possible to make them.  One is for our house 
+here, and should be addressed as above.  The other is for my friend 
+Sidney Colvin, and should be addressed - Sidney Colvin, Esq., 
+Keeper of the Print Room, British Museum, London.
+
+No. 2. This is a rather large order, and demands some explanation.  
+Our house is lined with varnished wood of a dark ruddy colour, very 
+beautiful to see; at the same time, it calls very much for gold; 
+there is a limit to picture frames, and really you know there has 
+to be a limit to the pictures you put inside of them.  Accordingly, 
+we have had an idea of a certain kind of decoration, which, I 
+think, you might help us to make practical.  What we want is an 
+alphabet of gilt letters (very much such as people play with), and 
+all mounted on spikes like drawing-pins; say two spikes to each 
+letter, one at top, and one at bottom.  Say that they were this 
+height,
+
+               I
+               I
+               I
+
+and that you chose a model of some really exquisitely fine, clear 
+type from some Roman monument, and that they were made either of 
+metal or some composition gilt - the point is, could not you, in 
+your land of wooden houses, get a manufacturer to take the idea and 
+manufacture them at a venture, so that I could get two or three 
+hundred pieces or so at a moderate figure?  You see, suppose you 
+entertain an honoured guest, when he goes he leaves his name in 
+gilt letters on your walls; an infinity of fun and decoration can 
+be got out of hospitable and festive mottoes; and the doors of 
+every room can be beautified by the legend of their names.  I 
+really think there is something in the idea, and you might be able 
+to push it with the brutal and licentious manufacturer, using my 
+name if necessary, though I should think the name of the god-like 
+sculptor would be more germane.  In case you should get it started, 
+I should tell you that we should require commas in order to write 
+the Samoan language, which is full of words written thus:  la'u, 
+ti'e ti'e.  As the Samoan language uses but a very small proportion 
+of the consonants, we should require a double or treble stock of 
+all vowels and of F, G, L, U, N, P, S, T, and V.
+
+The other day in Sydney, I think you might be interested to hear, I 
+was sculpt a second time by a man called -, as well as I can 
+remember and read.  I mustn't criticise a present, and he had very 
+little time to do it in.  It is thought by my family to be an 
+excellent likeness of Mark Twain.  This poor fellow, by the by, met 
+with the devil of an accident.  A model of a statue which he had 
+just finished with a desperate effort was smashed to smithereens on 
+its way to exhibition.
+
+Please be sure and let me know if anything is likely to come of 
+this letter business, and the exact cost of each letter, so that I 
+may count the cost before ordering. - Yours sincerely,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO EDMUND GOSSE
+
+
+
+JUNE 10TH, 1893.
+
+MY DEAR GOSSE, - My mother tells me you never received the very 
+long and careful letter that I sent you more than a year ago; or is 
+it two years?
+
+I was indeed so much surprised at your silence that I wrote to 
+Henry James and begged him to inquire if you had received it; his 
+reply was an (if possible) higher power of the same silence; 
+whereupon I bowed my head and acquiesced.  But there is no doubt 
+the letter was written and sent; and I am sorry it was lost, for it 
+contained, among other things, an irrecoverable criticism of your 
+father's LIFE, with a number of suggestions for another edition, 
+which struck me at the time as excellent.
+
+Well, suppose we call that cried off, and begin as before?  It is 
+fortunate indeed that we can do so, being both for a while longer 
+in the day.  But, alas! when I see 'works of the late J. A. S.,'  I 
+can see no help and no reconciliation possible.  I wrote him a 
+letter, I think, three years ago, heard in some roundabout way that 
+he had received it, waited in vain for an answer (which had 
+probably miscarried), and in a humour between frowns and smiles 
+wrote to him no more.  And now the strange, poignant, pathetic, 
+brilliant creature is gone into the night, and the voice is silent 
+that uttered so much excellent discourse; and I am sorry that I did 
+not write to him again.  Yet I am glad for him; light lie the turf!  
+The SATURDAY is the only obituary I have seen, and I thought it 
+very good upon the whole.  I should be half tempted to write an IN 
+MEMORIAM, but I am submerged with other work.  Are you going to do 
+it?  I very much admire your efforts that way; you are our only 
+academician.
+
+So you have tried fiction?  I will tell you the truth:  when I saw 
+it announced, I was so sure you would send it to me, that I did not 
+order it!  But the order goes this mail, and I will give you news 
+of it.  Yes, honestly, fiction is very difficult; it is a terrible 
+strain to CARRY your characters all that time.  And the difficulty 
+of according the narrative and the dialogue (in a work in the third 
+person) is extreme.  That is one reason out of half a dozen why I 
+so often prefer the first.  It is much in my mind just now, because 
+of my last work, just off the stocks three days ago, THE EBB TIDE:  
+a dreadful, grimy business in the third person, where the strain 
+between a vilely realistic dialogue and a narrative style pitched 
+about (in phrase) 'four notes higher' than it should have been, has 
+sown my head with grey hairs; or I believe so - if my head escaped, 
+my heart has them.
+
+The truth is, I have a little lost my way, and stand bemused at the 
+cross-roads.  A subject?  Ay, I have dozens; I have at least four 
+novels begun, they are none good enough; and the mill waits, and 
+I'll have to take second best.  THE EBB TIDE I make the world a 
+present of; I expect, and, I suppose, deserve to be torn to pieces; 
+but there was all that good work lying useless, and I had to finish 
+it!
+
+All your news of your family is pleasant to hear.  My wife has been 
+very ill, but is now better; I may say I am ditto, THE EBB TIDE 
+having left me high and dry, which is a good example of the mixed 
+metaphor.  Our home, and estate, and our boys, and the politics of 
+the island, keep us perpetually amused and busy; and I grind away 
+with an odd, dogged, down sensation - and an idea IN PETTO that the 
+game is about played out.  I have got too realistic, and I must 
+break the trammels - I mean I would if I could; but the yoke is 
+heavy.  I saw with amusement that Zola says the same thing; and 
+truly the DEBACLE was a mighty big book, I have no need for a 
+bigger, though the last part is a mere mistake in my opinion.  But 
+the Emperor, and Sedan, and the doctor at the ambulance, and the 
+horses in the field of battle, Lord, how gripped it is!  What an 
+epical performance!  According to my usual opinion, I believe I 
+could go over that book and leave a masterpiece by blotting and no 
+ulterior art.  But that is an old story, ever new with me.  Taine 
+gone, and Renan, and Symonds, and Tennyson, and Browning; the suns 
+go swiftly out, and I see no suns to follow, nothing but a 
+universal twilight of the demi-divinities, with parties like you 
+and me and Lang beating on toy drums and playing on penny whistles 
+about glow-worms.  But Zola is big anyway; he has plenty in his 
+belly; too much, that is all; he wrote the DEBACLE and he wrote LA 
+BETE HUMAINE, perhaps the most excruciatingly silly book that I 
+ever read to an end.  And why did I read it to an end, W. E. G.?  
+Because the animal in me was interested in the lewdness.  Not 
+sincerely, of course, my mind refusing to partake in it; but the 
+flesh was slightly pleased.  And when it was done, I cast it from 
+me with a peal of laughter, and forgot it, as I would forget a 
+Montepin.  Taine is to me perhaps the chief of these losses; I did 
+luxuriate in his ORIGINES; it was something beyond literature, not 
+quite so good, if you please, but so much more systematic, and the 
+pages that had to be 'written' always so adequate.  Robespierre, 
+Napoleon, were both excellent good.
+
+JUNE 18TH, '93
+
+Well, I have left fiction wholly, and gone to my GRANDFATHER, and 
+on the whole found peace.  By next month my GRANDFATHER will begin 
+to be quite grown up.  I have already three chapters about as good 
+as done; by which, of course, as you know, I mean till further 
+notice or the next discovery.  I like biography far better than 
+fiction myself:  fiction is too free.  In biography you have your 
+little handful of facts, little bits of a puzzle, and you sit and 
+think, and fit 'em together this way and that, and get up and throw 
+'em down, and say damn, and go out for a walk.  And it's real 
+soothing; and when done, gives an idea of finish to the writer that 
+is very peaceful.  Of course, it's not really so finished as quite 
+a rotten novel; it always has and always must have the incurable 
+illogicalities of life about it, the fathoms of slack and the miles 
+of tedium.  Still, that's where the fun comes in; and when you have 
+at last managed to shut up the castle spectre (dulness), the very 
+outside of his door looks beautiful by contrast.  There are pages 
+in these books that may seem nothing to the reader; but you 
+REMEMBER WHAT THEY WERE, YOU KNOW WHAT THEY MIGHT HAVE BEEN, and 
+they seem to you witty beyond comparison.  In my GRANDFATHER I've 
+had (for instance) to give up the temporal order almost entirely; 
+doubtless the temporal order is the great foe of the biographer; it 
+is so tempting, so easy, and lo! there you are in the bog! - Ever 
+yours,
+
+R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+With all kind messages from self and wife to you and yours.  My 
+wife is very much better, having been the early part of this year 
+alarmingly ill.  She is now all right, only complaining of trifles, 
+annoying to her, but happily not interesting to her friends.  I am 
+in a hideous state, having stopped drink and smoking; yes, both.  
+No wine, no tobacco; and the dreadful part of it is that - looking 
+forward - I have - what shall I say? - nauseating intimations that 
+it ought to be for ever.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+
+VAILIMA PLANTATION, SAMOAN ISLANDS, JUNE 17TH, 1893.
+
+MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - I believe I have neglected a mail in 
+answering yours.  You will be very sorry to hear that my wife was 
+exceedingly ill, and very glad to hear that she is better.  I 
+cannot say that I feel any more anxiety about her.  We shall send 
+you a photograph of her taken in Sydney in her customary island 
+habit as she walks and gardens and shrilly drills her brown 
+assistants.  She was very ill when she sat for it, which may a 
+little explain the appearance of the photograph.  It reminds me of 
+a friend of my grandmother's who used to say when talking to 
+younger women, 'Aweel, when I was young, I wasnae just exactly what 
+ye wad call BONNY, but I was pale, penetratin', and interestin'.'  
+I would not venture to hint that Fanny is 'no bonny,' but there is 
+no doubt but that in this presentment she is 'pale, penetratin', 
+and interesting.'
+
+As you are aware, I have been wading deep waters and contending 
+with the great ones of the earth, not wholly without success.  It 
+is, you may be interested to hear, a dreary and infuriating 
+business.  If you can get the fools to admit one thing, they will 
+always save their face by denying another.  If you can induce them 
+to take a step to the right hand, they generally indemnify 
+themselves by cutting a caper to the left.  I always held (upon no 
+evidence whatever, from a mere sentiment or intuition) that 
+politics was the dirtiest, the most foolish, and the most random of 
+human employments.  I always held, but now I know it!  Fortunately, 
+you have nothing to do with anything of the kind, and I may spare 
+you the horror of further details.
+
+I received from you a book by a man by the name of Anatole France.  
+Why should I disguise it?  I have no use for Anatole.  He writes 
+very prettily, and then afterwards?  Baron Marbot was a different 
+pair of shoes.  So likewise is the Baron de Vitrolles, whom I am 
+now perusing with delight.  His escape in 1814 is one of the best 
+pages I remember anywhere to have read.  But Marbot and Vitrolles 
+are dead, and what has become of the living?  It seems as if 
+literature were coming to a stand.  I am sure it is with me; and I 
+am sure everybody will say so when they have the privilege of 
+reading THE EBB TIDE.  My dear man, the grimness of that story is 
+not to be depicted in words.  There are only four characters, to be 
+sure, but they are such a troop of swine!  And their behaviour is 
+really so deeply beneath any possible standard, that on a 
+retrospect I wonder I have been able to endure them myself until 
+the yarn was finished.  Well, there is always one thing; it will 
+serve as a touchstone.  If the admirers of Zola admire him for his 
+pertinent ugliness and pessimism, I think they should admire this; 
+but if, as I have long suspected, they neither admire nor 
+understand the man's art, and only wallow in his rancidness like a 
+hound in offal, then they will certainly be disappointed in THE EBB 
+TIDE.  ALAS! poor little tale, it is not EVEN rancid.
+
+By way of an antidote or febrifuge, I am going on at a great rate 
+with my HISTORY OF THE STEVENSONS, which I hope may prove rather 
+amusing, in some parts at least.  The excess of materials weighs 
+upon me.  My grandfather is a delightful comedy part; and I have to 
+treat him besides as a serious and (in his way) a heroic figure, 
+and at times I lose my way, and I fear in the end will blur the 
+effect.  However, A LA GRACE DE DIEU!  I'll make a spoon or spoil a 
+horn.  You see, I have to do the Building of the Bell Rock by 
+cutting down and packing my grandsire's book, which I rather hope I 
+have done, but do not know.  And it makes a huge chunk of a very 
+different style and quality between Chapters II. and IV.  And it 
+can't be helped!  It is just a delightful and exasperating 
+necessity.  You know, the stuff is really excellent narrative:  
+only, perhaps there's too much of it!  There is the rub.  Well, 
+well, it will be plain to you that my mind is affected; it might be 
+with less.  THE EBB TIDE and NORTHERN LIGHTS are a full meal for 
+any plain man.
+
+I have written and ordered your last book, THE REAL THING, so be 
+sure and don't send it.  What else are you doing or thinking of 
+doing?  News I have none, and don't want any.  I have had to stop 
+all strong drink and all tobacco, and am now in a transition state 
+between the two, which seems to be near madness.  You never smoked, 
+I think, so you can never taste the joys of stopping it.  But at 
+least you have drunk, and you can enter perhaps into my annoyance 
+when I suddenly find a glass of claret or a brandy-and-water give 
+me a splitting headache the next morning.  No mistake about it; 
+drink anything, and there's your headache.  Tobacco just as bad for 
+me.  If I live through this breach of habit, I shall be a white-
+livered puppy indeed.  Actually I am so made, or so twisted, that I 
+do not like to think of a life without the red wine on the table 
+and the tobacco with its lovely little coal of fire.  It doesn't 
+amuse me from a distance.  I may find it the Garden of Eden when I 
+go in, but I don't like the colour of the gate-posts.  Suppose 
+somebody said to you, you are to leave your home, and your books, 
+and your clubs, and go out and camp in mid-Africa, and command an 
+expedition, you would howl, and kick, and flee.  I think the same 
+of a life without wine and tobacco; and if this goes on, I've got 
+to go and do it, sir, in the living flesh!
+
+I thought Bourget was a friend of yours?  And I thought the French 
+were a polite race?  He has taken my dedication with a stately 
+silence that has surprised me into apoplexy.  Did I go and dedicate 
+my book to the nasty alien, and the 'norrid Frenchman, and the 
+Bloody Furrineer?  Well, I wouldn't do it again; and unless his 
+case is susceptible of explanation, you might perhaps tell him so 
+over the walnuts and the wine, by way of speeding the gay hours.  
+Sincerely, I thought my dedication worth a letter.
+
+If anything be worth anything here below!  Do you know the story of 
+the man who found a button in his hash, and called the waiter?  
+'What do you call that?' says he.  'Well,' said the waiter, 'what 
+d'you expect?  Expect to find a gold watch and chain?'  Heavenly 
+apologue, is it not?  I expected (rather) to find a gold watch and 
+chain; I expected to be able to smoke to excess and drink to 
+comfort all the days of my life; and I am still indignantly staring 
+on this button!  It's not even a button; it's a teetotal badge! - 
+Ever yours,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+
+APIA, JULY 1893.
+
+MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - Yes.  LES TROPHEES, on the whole, a book.  
+It is excellent; but is it a life's work?  I always suspect YOU of 
+a volume of sonnets up your sleeve; when is it coming down?  I am 
+in one of my moods of wholesale impatience with all fiction and all 
+verging on it, reading instead, with rapture, FOUNTAINHALL'S 
+DECISIONS.  You never read it:  well, it hasn't much form, and is 
+inexpressibly dreary, I should suppose, to others - and even to me 
+for pages.  It's like walking in a mine underground, and with a 
+damned bad lantern, and picking out pieces of ore.  This, and war, 
+will be my excuse for not having read your (doubtless) charming 
+work of fiction.  The revolving year will bring me round to it; and 
+I know, when fiction shall begin to feel a little SOLID to me 
+again, that I shall love it, because it's James.  Do you know, when 
+I am in this mood, I would rather try to read a bad book?  It's not 
+so disappointing, anyway.  And FOUNTAINHALL is prime, two big folio 
+volumes, and all dreary, and all true, and all as terse as an 
+obituary; and about one interesting fact on an average in twenty 
+pages, and ten of them unintelligible for technicalities.  There's 
+literature, if you like!  It feeds; it falls about you genuine like 
+rain.  Rain:  nobody has done justice to rain in literature yet:  
+surely a subject for a Scot.  But then you can't do rain in that 
+ledger-book style that I am trying for - or between a ledger-book 
+and an old ballad.  How to get over, how to escape from, the 
+besotting PARTICULARITY of fiction.  'Roland approached the house; 
+it had green doors and window blinds; and there was a scraper on 
+the upper step.'  To hell with Roland and the scraper! - Yours 
+ever,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO A. CONAN DOYLE
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, JULY 12, 1893.
+
+MY DEAR DR. CONAN DOYLE, - The WHITE COMPANY has not yet turned up; 
+but when it does - which I suppose will be next mail - you shall 
+hear news of me.  I have a great talent for compliment, accompanied 
+by a hateful, even a diabolic frankness.
+
+Delighted to hear I have a chance of seeing you and Mrs. Doyle; 
+Mrs. Stevenson bids me say (what is too true) that our rations are 
+often spare.  Are you Great Eaters?  Please reply.
+
+As to ways and means, here is what you will have to do.  Leave San 
+Francisco by the down mail, get off at Samoa, and twelve days or a 
+fortnight later, you can continue your journey to Auckland per 
+Upolu, which will give you a look at Tonga and possibly Fiji by the 
+way.  Make this a FIRST PART OF YOUR PLANS.  A fortnight, even of 
+Vailima diet, could kill nobody.
+
+We are in the midst of war here; rather a nasty business, with the 
+head-taking; and there seem signs of other trouble.  But I believe 
+you need make no change in your design to visit us.  All should be 
+well over; and if it were not, why! you need not leave the steamer. 
+- Yours very truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+19TH JULY '93.
+
+. . . We are in the thick of war - see ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS - we 
+have only two outside boys left to us.  Nothing is doing, and PER 
+CONTRA little paying. . .  My life here is dear; but I can live 
+within my income for a time at least - so long as my prices keep up 
+- and it seems a clear duty to waste none of it on gadding about. . 
+. .  My life of my family fills up intervals, and should be an 
+excellent book when it is done, but big, damnably big.
+
+My dear old man, I perceive by a thousand signs that we grow old, 
+and are soon to pass away!  I hope with dignity; if not, with 
+courage at least.  I am myself very ready; or would be - will be - 
+when I have made a little money for my folks.  The blows that have 
+fallen upon you are truly terrifying; I wish you strength to bear 
+them.  It is strange, I must seem to you to blaze in a Birmingham 
+prosperity and happiness; and to myself I seem a failure.  The 
+truth is, I have never got over the last influenza yet, and am 
+miserably out of heart and out of kilter.  Lungs pretty right, 
+stomach nowhere, spirits a good deal overshadowed; but we'll come 
+through it yet, and cock our bonnets.  (I confess with sorrow that 
+I am not yet quite sure about the INTELLECTS; but I hope it is only 
+one of my usual periods of non-work.  They are more unbearable now, 
+because I cannot rest.  NO REST BUT THE GRAVE FOR SIR WALTER!  O 
+the words ring in a man's head.)
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO A. CONAN DOYLE
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, AUGUST 23RD, 1893.
+
+MY DEAR DR. CONAN DOYLE, - I am reposing after a somewhat severe 
+experience upon which I think it my duty to report to you.  
+Immediately after dinner this evening it occurred to me to re-
+narrate to my native overseer Simele your story of THE ENGINEER'S 
+THUMB.  And, sir, I have done it.  It was necessary, I need hardly 
+say, to go somewhat farther afield than you have done.  To explain 
+(for instance) what a railway is, what a steam hammer, what a coach 
+and horse, what coining, what a criminal, and what the police.  I 
+pass over other and no less necessary explanations.  But I did 
+actually succeed; and if you could have seen the drawn, anxious 
+features and the bright, feverish eyes of Simele, you would have 
+(for the moment at least) tasted glory.  You might perhaps think 
+that, were you to come to Samoa, you might be introduced as the 
+Author of THE ENGINEER'S THUMB.  Disabuse yourself.  They do not 
+know what it is to make up a story.  THE ENGINEER'S THUMB (God 
+forgive me) was narrated as a piece of actual and factual history.  
+Nay, and more, I who write to you have had the indiscretion to 
+perpetrate a trifling piece of fiction entitled THE BOTTLE IMP.  
+Parties who come up to visit my unpretentious mansion, after having 
+admired the ceilings by Vanderputty and the tapestry by Gobbling, 
+manifest towards the end a certain uneasiness which proves them to 
+be fellows of an infinite delicacy.  They may be seen to shrug a 
+brown shoulder, to roll up a speaking eye, and at last secret 
+bursts from them:  'Where is the bottle?'  Alas, my friends (I feel 
+tempted to say), you will find it by the Engineer's Thumb!  Talofa-
+soifuia.
+
+Oa'u, O lau no moni, O Tusitala.
+
+More commonly known as,
+
+R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+Have read the REFUGEES; Conde and old P.  Murat very good; Louis 
+XIV. and Louvois with the letter bag very rich.  You have reached a 
+trifle wide perhaps; too MANY celebrities?  Though I was delighted 
+to re-encounter my old friend Du Chaylu.  Old Murat is perhaps your 
+high water mark; 'tis excellently human, cheerful and real.  Do it 
+again.  Madame de Maintenon struck me as quite good.  Have you any 
+document for the decapitation?  It sounds steepish.  The devil of 
+all that first part is that you see old Dumas; yet your Louis XIV. 
+is DISTINCTLY GOOD.  I am much interested with this book, which 
+fulfils a good deal, and promises more.  Question:  How far a 
+Historical Novel should be wholly episodic?  I incline to that 
+view, with trembling.  I shake hands with you on old Murat.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO GEORGE MEREDITH
+
+
+
+SEPT. 5TH, 1893, VAILIMA PLANTATION, UPOLU, SAMOA.
+
+MY DEAR MEREDITH, - I have again and again taken up the pen to 
+write to you, and many beginnings have gone into the waste paper 
+basket (I have one now - for the second time in my life - and feel 
+a big man on the strength of it).  And no doubt it requires some 
+decision to break so long a silence.  My health is vastly restored, 
+and I am now living patriarchally in this place six hundred feet 
+above the sea on the shoulder of a mountain of 1500.  Behind me, 
+the unbroken bush slopes up to the backbone of the island (3 to 
+4000) without a house, with no inhabitants save a few runaway black 
+boys, wild pigs and cattle, and wild doves and flying foxes, and 
+many parti-coloured birds, and many black, and many white:  a very 
+eerie, dim, strange place and hard to travel.  I am the head of a 
+household of five whites, and of twelve Samoans, to all of whom I 
+am the chief and father:  my cook comes to me and asks leave to 
+marry - and his mother, a fine old chief woman, who has never lived 
+here, does the same.  You may be sure I granted the petition.  It 
+is a life of great interest, complicated by the Tower of Babel, 
+that old enemy.  And I have all the time on my hands for literary 
+work.  My house is a great place; we have a hall fifty feet long 
+with a great red-wood stair ascending from it, where we dine in 
+state - myself usually dressed in a singlet and a pair of trousers 
+- and attended on by servants in a single garment, a kind of kilt - 
+also flowers and leaves - and their hair often powdered with lime.  
+The European who came upon it suddenly would think it was a dream.  
+We have prayers on Sunday night - I am a perfect pariah in the 
+island not to have them oftener, but the spirit is unwilling and 
+the flesh proud, and I cannot go it more.  It is strange to see the 
+long line of the brown folk crouched along the wall with lanterns 
+at intervals before them in the big shadowy hall, with an oak 
+cabinet at one end of it and a group of Rodin's (which native taste 
+regards as PRODIGIEUSEMENT LESTE) presiding over all from the top - 
+and to hear the long rambling Samoan hymn rolling up (God bless me, 
+what style!  But I am off business to-day, and this is not meant to 
+be literature.).
+
+I have asked Colvin to send you a copy of CATRIONA, which I am 
+sometimes tempted to think is about my best work.  I hear word 
+occasionally of the AMAZING MARRIAGE.  It will be a brave day for 
+me when I get hold of it.  Gower Woodseer is now an ancient, lean, 
+grim, exiled Scot, living and labouring as for a wager in the 
+tropics; still active, still with lots of fire in him, but the 
+youth - ah, the youth where is it?  For years after I came here, 
+the critics (those genial gentlemen) used to deplore the relaxation 
+of my fibre and the idleness to which I had succumbed.  I hear less 
+of this now; the next thing is they will tell me I am writing 
+myself out! and that my unconscientious conduct is bringing their 
+grey hairs with sorrow to the dust.  I do not know - I mean I do 
+know one thing.  For fourteen years I have not had a day's real 
+health; I have wakened sick and gone to bed weary; and I have done 
+my work unflinchingly.  I have written in bed, and written out of 
+it, written in hemorrhages, written in sickness, written torn by 
+coughing, written when my head swam for weakness; and for so long, 
+it seems to me I have won my wager and recovered my glove.  I am 
+better now, have been rightly speaking since first I came to the 
+Pacific; and still, few are the days when I am not in some physical 
+distress.  And the battle goes on - ill or well, is a trifle; so as 
+it goes.  I was made for a contest, and the Powers have so willed 
+that my battlefield should be this dingy, inglorious one of the bed 
+and the physic bottle.  At least I have not failed, but I would 
+have preferred a place of trumpetings and the open air over my 
+head.
+
+This is a devilish egotistical yarn.  Will you try to imitate me in 
+that if the spirit ever moves you to reply?  And meantime be sure 
+that away in the midst of the Pacific there is a house on a wooded 
+island where the name of George Meredith is very dear, and his 
+memory (since it must be no more) is continually honoured. - Ever 
+your friend,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+Remember me to Mariette, if you please; and my wife sends her most 
+kind remembrances to yourself.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO AUGUSTUS ST. GAUDENS
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SEPTEMBER 1893.
+
+MY DEAR ST. GAUDENS, - I had determined not to write to you till I 
+had seen the medallion, but it looks as if that might mean the 
+Greek Kalends or the day after to-morrow.  Reassure yourself, your 
+part is done, it is ours that halts - the consideration of 
+conveyance over our sweet little road on boys' backs, for we cannot 
+very well apply the horses to this work; there is only one; you 
+cannot put it in a panier; to put it on the horse's back we have 
+not the heart.  Beneath the beauty of R. L. S., to say nothing of 
+his verses, which the publishers find heavy enough, and the genius 
+of the god-like sculptor, the spine would snap and the well-knit 
+limbs of the (ahem) cart-horse would be loosed by death.  So you 
+are to conceive me, sitting in my house, dubitative, and the 
+medallion chuckling in the warehouse of the German firm, for some 
+days longer; and hear me meanwhile on the golden letters.
+
+Alas! they are all my fancy painted, but the price is prohibitive.  
+I cannot do it.  It is another day-dream burst.  Another gable of 
+Abbotsford has gone down, fortunately before it was builded, so 
+there's nobody injured - except me.  I had a strong conviction that 
+I was a great hand at writing inscriptions, and meant to exhibit 
+and test my genius on the walls of my house; and now I see I can't.  
+It is generally thus.  The Battle of the Golden Letters will never 
+be delivered.  On making preparation to open the campaign, the King 
+found himself face to face with invincible difficulties, in which 
+the rapacity of a mercenary soldiery and the complaints of an 
+impoverished treasury played an equal part. - Ever yours,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+I enclose a bill for the medallion; have been trying to find your 
+letter, quite in vain, and therefore must request you to pay for 
+the bronze letters yourself and let me know the damage.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO J. HORNE STEVENSON
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, NOVEMBER 5TH, 1893.
+
+MY DEAR STEVENSON, - A thousand thanks for your voluminous and 
+delightful collections.  Baxter - so soon as it is ready - will let 
+you see a proof of my introduction, which is only sent out as a 
+sprat to catch whales.  And you will find I have a good deal of 
+what you have, only mine in a perfectly desultory manner, as is 
+necessary to an exile.  My uncle's pedigree is wrong; there was 
+never a Stevenson of Caldwell, of course, but they were tenants of 
+the Muirs; the farm held by them is in my introduction; and I have 
+already written to Charles Baxter to have a search made in the 
+Register House.  I hope he will have had the inspiration to put it 
+under your surveillance.  Your information as to your own family is 
+intensely interesting, and I should not wonder but what you and we 
+and old John Stevenson, 'land labourer in the parish of Dailly,' 
+came all of the same stock.  Ayrshire - and probably Cunningham - 
+seems to be the home of the race - our part of it.  From the 
+distribution of the name - which your collections have so much 
+extended without essentially changing my knowledge of - we seem 
+rather pointed to a British origin.  What you say of the Engineers 
+is fresh to me, and must be well thrashed out.  This introduction 
+of it will take a long while to walk about! - as perhaps I may be 
+tempted to let it become long; after all, I am writing THIS for my 
+own pleasure solely.  Greetings to you and other Speculatives of 
+our date, long bygone, alas! - Yours very sincerely,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+P.S. - I have a different version of my grandfather's arms - or my 
+father had if I could find it.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO JOHN P-N
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, DECEMBER 3RD, 1893.
+
+DEAR JOHNNIE, - Well, I must say you seem to be a tremendous 
+fellow!  Before I was eight I used to write stories - or dictate 
+them at least - and I had produced an excellent history of Moses, 
+for which I got 1 pound from an uncle; but I had never gone the 
+length of a play, so you have beaten me fairly on my own ground.  I 
+hope you may continue to do so, and thanking you heartily for your 
+nice letter, I shall beg you to believe me yours truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO RUSSELL P-N
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, DECEMBER 3RD, 1893.
+
+DEAR RUSSELL, - I have to thank you very much for your capital 
+letter, which came to hand here in Samoa along with your mother's.  
+When you 'grow up and write stories like me,' you will be able to 
+understand that there is scarce anything more painful than for an 
+author to hold a pen; he has to do it so much that his heart 
+sickens and his fingers ache at the sight or touch of it; so that 
+you will excuse me if I do not write much, but remain (with 
+compliments and greetings from one Scot to another - though I was 
+not born in Ceylon - you're ahead of me there). - Yours very truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, DECEMBER 5, 1893.
+
+MY DEAREST CUMMY, - This goes to you with a Merry Christmas and a 
+Happy New Year.  The Happy New Year anyway, for I think it should 
+reach you about NOOR'S DAY.  I dare say it may be cold and frosty.  
+Do you remember when you used to take me out of bed in the early 
+morning, carry me to the back windows, show me the hills of Fife, 
+and quote to me.
+
+
+'A' the hills are covered wi' snaw,
+An' winter's noo come fairly'?
+
+
+There is not much chance of that here!  I wonder how my mother is 
+going to stand the winter.  If she can, it will be a very good 
+thing for her.  We are in that part of the year which I like the 
+best - the Rainy or Hurricane Season.  'When it is good, it is 
+very, very good; and when it is bad, it is horrid,' and our fine 
+days are certainly fine like heaven; such a blue of the sea, such 
+green of the trees, and such crimson of the hibiscus flowers, you 
+never saw; and the air as mild and gentle as a baby's breath, and 
+yet not hot!
+
+The mail is on the move, and I must let up. - With much love, I am, 
+your laddie,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+6TH DECEMBER 1893.
+
+'OCTOBER 25, 1685. - At Privy Council, George Murray, Lieutenant of 
+the King's Guard, and others, did, on the 21st of September last, 
+obtain a clandestine order of Privy Council to apprehend the person 
+of Janet Pringle, daughter to the late Clifton, and she having 
+retired out of the way upon information, he got an order against 
+Andrew Pringle, her uncle, to produce her. . . . But she having 
+married Andrew Pringle, her uncle's son (to disappoint all their 
+designs of selling her), a boy of thirteen years old.'  But my boy 
+is to be fourteen, so I extract no further. - FOUNTAINHALL, i. 320.
+
+'MAY 6, 1685. - Wappus Pringle of Clifton was still alive after 
+all, and in prison for debt, and transacts with Lieutenant Murray, 
+giving security for 7000 marks.' - i. 372.
+
+No, it seems to have been HER brother who had succeeded.
+
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES, - The above is my story, and I wonder if any light 
+can be thrown on it.  I prefer the girl's father dead; and the 
+question is, How in that case could Lieutenant George Murray get 
+his order to 'apprehend' and his power to 'sell' her in marriage?
+
+Or - might Lieutenant G. be her tutor, and she fugitive to the 
+Pringles, and on the discovery of her whereabouts hastily married?
+
+A good legal note on these points is very ardently desired by me; 
+it will be the corner-stone of my novel.
+
+This is for - I am quite wrong to tell you - for you will tell 
+others - and nothing will teach you that all my schemes are in the 
+air, and vanish and reappear again like shapes in the clouds - it 
+is for HEATHERCAT:  whereof the first volume will be called THE 
+KILLING TIME, and I believe I have authorities ample for that.  But 
+the second volume is to be called (I believe) DARIEN, and for that 
+I want, I fear, a good deal of truck:-
+
+
+DARIEN PAPERS,
+CARSTAIRS PAPERS,
+MARCHMONT PAPERS,
+JERVISWOODE CORRESPONDENCE,
+
+
+I hope may do me.  Some sort of general history of the Darien 
+affair (if there is a decent one, which I misdoubt), it would also 
+be well to have - the one with most details, if possible.  It is 
+singular how obscure to me this decade of Scots history remains, 
+1690-1700 - a deuce of a want of light and grouping to it!  
+However, I believe I shall be mostly out of Scotland in my tale; 
+first in Carolina, next in Darien.  I want also - I am the daughter 
+of the horse-leech truly - 'Black's new large map of Scotland,' 
+sheets 3, 4, and 5, a 7s. 6d. touch.  I believe, if you can get the
+
+
+CALDWELL PAPERS,
+
+
+they had better come also; and if there be any reasonable work - 
+but no, I must call a halt. . . .
+
+I fear the song looks doubtful, but I'll consider of it, and I can 
+promise you some reminiscences which it will amuse me to write, 
+whether or not it will amuse the public to read of them.  But it's 
+an unco business to SUPPLY deid-heid coapy.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO J. M. BARRIE
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, DECEMBER 7TH, 1893.
+
+MY DEAR BARRIE, - I have received duly the MAGNUM OPUS, and it 
+really is a MAGNUM OPUS.  It is a beautiful specimen of Clark's 
+printing, paper sufficient, and the illustrations all my fancy 
+painted.  But the particular flower of the flock to whom I have 
+hopelessly lost my heart is Tibby Birse.  I must have known Tibby 
+Birse when she was a servant's mantua-maker in Edinburgh and 
+answered to the name of Miss BRODDIE.  She used to come and sew 
+with my nurse, sitting with her legs crossed in a masculine manner; 
+and swinging her foot emphatically, she used to pour forth a 
+perfectly unbroken stream of gossip.  I didn't hear it, I was 
+immersed in far more important business with a box of bricks, but 
+the recollection of that thin, perpetual, shrill sound of a voice 
+has echoed in my ears sinsyne.  I am bound to say she was younger 
+than Tibbie, but there is no mistaking that and the indescribable 
+and eminently Scottish expression.
+
+I have been very much prevented of late, having carried out 
+thoroughly to my own satisfaction two considerable illnesses, had a 
+birthday, and visited Honolulu, where politics are (if possible) a 
+shade more exasperating than they are with us.  I am told that it 
+was just when I was on the point of leaving that I received your 
+superlative epistle about the cricket eleven.  In that case it is 
+impossible I should have answered it, which is inconsistent with my 
+own recollection of the fact.  What I remember is, that I sat down 
+under your immediate inspiration and wrote an answer in every way 
+worthy.  If I didn't, as it seems proved that I couldn't, it will 
+never be done now.  However, I did the next best thing, I equipped 
+my cousin Graham Balfour with a letter of introduction, and from 
+him, if you know how - for he is rather of the Scottish character - 
+you may elicit all the information you can possibly wish to have as 
+to us and ours.  Do not be bluffed off by the somewhat stern and 
+monumental first impression that he may make upon you.  He is one 
+of the best fellows in the world, and the same sort of fool that we 
+are, only better-looking, with all the faults of Vailimans and some 
+of his own - I say nothing about virtues.
+
+I have lately been returning to my wallowing in the mire.  When I 
+was a child, and indeed until I was nearly a man, I consistently 
+read Covenanting books.  Now that I am a grey-beard - or would be, 
+if I could raise the beard - I have returned, and for weeks back 
+have read little else but Wodrow, Walker, Shields, etc.  Of course 
+this is with an idea of a novel, but in the course of it I made a 
+very curious discovery.  I have been accustomed to hear refined and 
+intelligent critics - those who know so much better what we are 
+than we do ourselves, - trace down my literary descent from all 
+sorts of people, including Addison, of whom I could never read a 
+word.  Well, laigh i' your lug, sir - the clue was found.  My style 
+is from the Covenanting writers.  Take a particular case - the 
+fondness for rhymes.  I don't know of any English prose-writer who 
+rhymes except by accident, and then a stone had better be tied 
+around his neck and himself cast into the sea.  But my Covenanting 
+buckies rhyme all the time - a beautiful example of the unconscious 
+rhyme above referred to.
+
+Do you know, and have you really tasted, these delightful works?  
+If not, it should be remedied; there is enough of the Auld Licht in 
+you to be ravished.
+
+I suppose you know that success has so far attended my banners - my 
+political banners I mean, and not my literary.  In conjunction with 
+the Three Great Powers I have succeeded in getting rid of My 
+President and My Chief-Justice.  They've gone home, the one to 
+Germany, the other to Souwegia.  I hear little echoes of footfalls 
+of their departing footsteps through the medium of the newspapers. 
+. . .
+
+Whereupon I make you my salute with the firm remark that it is time 
+to be done with trifling and give us a great book, and my ladies 
+fall into line with me to pay you a most respectful courtesy, and 
+we all join in the cry, 'Come to Vailima!'
+
+My dear sir, your soul's health is in it - you will never do the 
+great book, you will never cease to work in L., etc., till you come 
+to Vailima.
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO R. LE GALLIENNE
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, DECEMBER 28TH, 1893.
+
+DEAR MR. LE GALLIENNE, - I have received some time ago, through our 
+friend Miss Taylor, a book of yours.  But that was by no means my 
+first introduction to your name.  The same book had stood already 
+on my shelves; I had read articles of yours in the ACADEMY; and by 
+a piece of constructive criticism (which I trust was sound) had 
+arrived at the conclusion that you were 'Log-roller.'  Since then I 
+have seen your beautiful verses to your wife.  You are to conceive 
+me, then, as only too ready to make the acquaintance of a man who 
+loved good literature and could make it.  I had to thank you, 
+besides, for a triumphant exposure of a paradox of my own:  the 
+literary-prostitute disappeared from view at a phrase of yours - 
+'The essence is not in the pleasure but the sale.'  True:  you are 
+right, I was wrong; the author is not the whore, but the libertine; 
+and yet I shall let the passage stand.  It is an error, but it 
+illustrated the truth for which I was contending, that literature - 
+painting - all art, are no other than pleasures, which we turn into 
+trades.
+
+And more than all this, I had, and I have to thank you for the 
+intimate loyalty you have shown to myself; for the eager welcome 
+you give to what is good - for the courtly tenderness with which 
+you touch on my defects.  I begin to grow old; I have given my top 
+note, I fancy; - and I have written too many books.  The world 
+begins to be weary of the old booth; and if not weary, familiar 
+with the familiarity that breeds contempt.  I do not know that I am 
+sensitive to criticism, if it be hostile; I am sensitive indeed, 
+when it is friendly; and when I read such criticism as yours, I am 
+emboldened to go on and praise God.
+
+You are still young, and you may live to do much.  The little, 
+artificial popularity of style in England tends, I think, to die 
+out; the British pig returns to his true love, the love of the 
+styleless, of the shapeless, of the slapdash and the disorderly.  
+There is trouble coming, I think; and you may have to hold the fort 
+for us in evil days.
+
+Lastly, let me apologise for the crucifixion that I am inflicting 
+on you (BIEN A CONTRE-COEUR) by my bad writing.  I was once the 
+best of writers; landladies, puzzled as to my 'trade,' used to have 
+their honest bosoms set at rest by a sight of a page of manuscript. 
+- 'Ah,' they would say, 'no wonder they pay you for that'; - and 
+when I sent it in to the printers, it was given to the boys!  I was 
+about thirty-nine, I think, when I had a turn of scrivener's palsy; 
+my hand got worse; and for the first time, I received clean proofs.  
+But it has gone beyond that now, I know I am like my old friend 
+James Payn, a terror to correspondents; and you would not believe 
+the care with which this has been written. - Believe me to be, very 
+sincerely yours,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MRS. A. BAKER
+
+
+
+DECEMBER 1893.
+
+DEAR MADAM, - There is no trouble, and I wish I could help instead.  
+As it is, I fear I am only going to put you to trouble and 
+vexation.  This Braille writing is a kind of consecration, and I 
+would like if I could to have your copy perfect.  The two volumes 
+are to be published as Vols. I. and II. of THE ADVENTURES OF DAVID 
+BALFOUR.  1st, KIDNAPPED; 2nd, CATRIONA.  I am just sending home a 
+corrected KIDNAPPED for this purpose to Messrs. Cassell, and in 
+order that I may if possible be in time, I send it to you first of 
+all.  Please, as soon as you have noted the changes, forward the 
+same to Cassell and Co., La Belle Sauvage Yard, Ludgate Hill.
+
+I am writing to them by this mail to send you CATRIONA.
+
+You say, dear madam, you are good enough to say, it is 'a keen 
+pleasure' to you to bring my book within the reach of the blind.
+
+Conceive then what it is to me! and believe me, sincerely yours,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+I was a barren tree before,
+I blew a quenched coal,
+I could not, on their midnight shore,
+The lonely blind console.
+
+A moment, lend your hand, I bring
+My sheaf for you to bind,
+And you can teach my words to sing
+In the darkness of the blind.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+
+APIA, DECEMBER 1893.
+
+MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - The mail has come upon me like an armed man 
+three days earlier than was expected; and the Lord help me!  It is 
+impossible I should answer anybody the way they should be.  Your 
+jubilation over CATRIONA did me good, and still more the subtlety 
+and truth of your remark on the starving of the visual sense in 
+that book.  'Tis true, and unless I make the greater effort - and 
+am, as a step to that, convinced of its necessity - it will be more 
+true I fear in the future.  I HEAR people talking, and I FEEL them 
+acting, and that seems to me to be fiction.  My two aims may be 
+described as -
+
+1ST.  War to the adjective.
+2ND.  Death to the optic nerve.
+
+Admitted we live in an age of the optic nerve in literature.  For 
+how many centuries did literature get along without a sign of it?  
+However, I'll consider your letter.
+
+How exquisite is your character of the critic in ESSAYS IN LONDON!  
+I doubt if you have done any single thing so satisfying as a piece 
+of style and of insight. - Yours ever,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+1ST JANUARY '94.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES, - I am delighted with your idea, and first, I will 
+here give an amended plan and afterwards give you a note of some of 
+the difficulties.
+
+[Plan of the Edinburgh edition - 14 vols.]
+
+. . . It may be a question whether my TIMES letters might not be 
+appended to the 'Footnote' with a note of the dates of discharge of 
+Cedercrantz and Pilsach.
+
+I am particularly pleased with this idea of yours, because I am 
+come to a dead stop.  I never can remember how bad I have been 
+before, but at any rate I am bad enough just now, I mean as to 
+literature; in health I am well and strong.  I take it I shall be 
+six months before I'm heard of again, and this time I could put in 
+to some advantage in revising the text and (if it were thought 
+desirable) writing prefaces.  I do not know how many of them might 
+be thought desirable.  I have written a paper on TREASURE ISLAND, 
+which is to appear shortly.  MASTER OF BALLANTRAE - I have one 
+drafted.  THE WRECKER is quite sufficiently done already with the 
+last chapter, but I suppose an historic introduction to DAVID 
+BALFOUR is quite unavoidable.  PRINCE OTTO I don't think I could 
+say anything about, and BLACK ARROW don't want to.  But it is 
+probable I could say something to the volume of TRAVELS.  In the 
+verse business I can do just what I like better than anything else, 
+and extend UNDERWOODS with a lot of unpublished stuff.  APROPOS, if 
+I were to get printed off a very few poems which are somewhat too 
+intimate for the public, could you get them run up in some luxuous 
+manner, so that fools might be induced to buy them in just a 
+sufficient quantity to pay expenses and the thing remain still in a 
+manner private?  We could supply photographs of the illustrations - 
+and the poems are of Vailima and the family - I should much like to 
+get this done as a surprise for Fanny.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO H. B. BAILDON
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, JANUARY 15TH, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR BAILDON, - Last mail brought your book and its Dedication.  
+'Frederick Street and the gardens, and the short-lived Jack o' 
+Lantern,' are again with me - and the note of the east wind, and 
+Froebel's voice, and the smell of soup in Thomson's stair.  Truly, 
+you had no need to put yourself under the protection of any other 
+saint, were that saint our Tamate himself!  Yourself were enough, 
+and yourself coming with so rich a sheaf.
+
+For what is this that you say about the Muses?  They have certainly 
+never better inspired you than in 'Jael and Sisera,' and 'Herodias 
+and John the Baptist,' good stout poems, fiery and sound.  ''Tis 
+but a mask and behind it chuckles the God of the Garden,' I shall 
+never forget.  By the by, an error of the press, page 49, line 4, 
+'No infant's lesson are the ways of God.'  THE is dropped.
+
+And this reminds me you have a bad habit which is to be comminated 
+in my theory of letters.  Same page, two lines lower:  'But the 
+vulture's track' is surely as fine to the ear as 'But vulture's 
+track,' and this latter version has a dreadful baldness.  The 
+reader goes on with a sense of impoverishment, of unnecessary 
+sacrifice; he has been robbed by footpads, and goes scouting for 
+his lost article!  Again, in the second Epode, these fine verses 
+would surely sound much finer if they began, 'As a hardy climber 
+who has set his heart,' than with the jejune 'As hardy climber.'  I 
+do not know why you permit yourself this license with grammar; you 
+show, in so many pages, that you are superior to the paltry sense 
+of rhythm which usually dictates it - as though some poetaster had 
+been suffered to correct the poet's text.  By the way, I confess to 
+a heartfelt weakness for AURICULAS. - Believe me the very grateful 
+and characteristic pick-thank, but still sincere and affectionate,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO W. H. LOW.
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, JANUARY 15th, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR LOW, - . . . Pray you, stoop your proud head, and sell 
+yourself to some Jew magazine, and make the visit out.  I assure 
+you, this is the spot for a sculptor or painter.  This, and no 
+other - I don't say to stay there, but to come once and get the 
+living colour into them.  I am used to it; I do not notice it; 
+rather prefer my grey, freezing recollections of Scotland; but 
+there it is, and every morning is a thing to give thanks for, and 
+every night another - bar when it rains, of course.
+
+About THE WRECKER - rather late days, and I still suspect I had 
+somehow offended you; however, all's well that ends well, and I am 
+glad I am forgiven - did you not fail to appreciate the attitude of 
+Dodd?  He was a fizzle and a stick, he knew it, he knew nothing 
+else, and there is an undercurrent of bitterness in him.  And then 
+the problem that Pinkerton laid down:  why the artist can DO 
+NOTHING ELSE? is one that continually exercises myself.  He cannot:  
+granted.  But Scott could.  And Montaigne.  And Julius Caesar.  And 
+many more.  And why can't R. L. S.?  Does it not amaze you?  It 
+does me.  I think of the Renaissance fellows, and their all-round 
+human sufficiency, and compare it with the ineffable smallness of 
+the field in which we labour and in which we do so little.  I think 
+DAVID BALFOUR a nice little book, and very artistic, and just the 
+thing to occupy the leisure of a busy man; but for the top flower 
+of a man's life it seems to me inadequate.  Small is the word; it 
+is a small age, and I am of it.  I could have wished to be 
+otherwise busy in this world.  I ought to have been able to build 
+lighthouses and write DAVID BALFOURS too.  HINC ILLAE LACRYMAE.  I 
+take my own case as most handy, but it is as illustrative of my 
+quarrel with the age.  We take all these pains, and we don't do as 
+well as Michael Angelo or Leonardo, or even Fielding, who was an 
+active magistrate, or Richardson, who was a busy bookseller.  J'AI 
+HONTE POUR NOUS; my ears burn.
+
+I am amazed at the effect which this Chicago exhibition has 
+produced upon you and others.  It set Mrs. Fairchild literally mad 
+- to judge by her letters.  And I wish I had seen anything so 
+influential.  I suppose there was an aura, a halo, some sort of 
+effulgency about the place; for here I find you louder than the 
+rest.  Well, it may be there is a time coming; and I wonder, when 
+it comes, whether it will be a time of little, exclusive, one-eyed 
+rascals like you and me, or parties of the old stamp who can paint 
+and fight, and write and keep books of double entry, and sculp, and 
+scalp.  It might be.  You have a lot of stuff in the kettle, and a 
+great deal of it Celtic.  I have changed my mind progressively 
+about England, practically the whole of Scotland is Celtic, and the 
+western half of England, and all Ireland, and the Celtic blood 
+makes a rare blend for art.  If it is stiffened up with Latin 
+blood, you get the French.  We were less lucky:  we had only 
+Scandinavians, themselves decidedly artistic, and the Low-German 
+lot.  However, that is a good starting-point, and with all the 
+other elements in your crucible, it may come to something great 
+very easily.  I wish you would hurry up and let me see it.  Here is 
+a long while I have been waiting for something GOOD in art; and 
+what have I seen?  Zola's DEBACLE and a few of Kipling's tales.  
+Are you a reader of Barbey d'Aurevilly?  He is a never-failing 
+source of pleasure to me, for my sins, I suppose.  What a work is 
+the RIDEAU CRAMOISI! and L'ENSORCELEE! and LE CHEVALIER DES 
+TOUCHES!
+
+This is degenerating into mere twaddle.  So please remember us all 
+most kindly to Mrs. Low, and believe me ever yours,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+P.S. - Were all your privateers voiceless in the war of 1812?  Did 
+NO ONE of them write memoirs?  I shall have to do my privateer from 
+chic, if you can't help me.  My application to Scribner has been 
+quite in vain.  See if you can get hold of some historic sharp in 
+the club, and tap him; they must some of them have written memoirs 
+or notes of some sort; perhaps still unprinted; if that be so, get 
+them copied for me.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO H. B. BAILDON
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, JANUARY 30TH, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR BAILDON, - 'Call not blessed.' - Yes, if I could die just 
+now, or say in half a year, I should have had a splendid time of it 
+on the whole.  But it gets a little stale, and my work will begin 
+to senesce; and parties to shy bricks at me; and now it begins to 
+look as if I should survive to see myself impotent and forgotten.  
+It's a pity suicide is not thought the ticket in the best circles.
+
+But your letter goes on to congratulate me on having done the one 
+thing I am a little sorry for; a little - not much - for my father 
+himself lived to think that I had been wiser than he.  But the 
+cream of the jest is that I have lived to change my mind; and think 
+that he was wiser than I.  Had I been an engineer, and literature 
+my amusement, it would have been better perhaps.  I pulled it off, 
+of course, I won the wager, and it is pleasant while it lasts; but 
+how long will it last?  I don't know, say the Bells of Old Bow.
+
+All of which goes to show that nobody is quite sane in judging 
+himself.  Truly, had I given way and gone in for engineering, I 
+should be dead by now.  Well, the gods know best.
+
+I hope you got my letter about the RESCUE. - Adieu,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+True for you about the benefit:  except by kisses, jests, song, ET 
+HOC GENUS OMNE, man CANNOT convey benefit to another.  The 
+universal benefactor has been there before him.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO J. H. BATES
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, MARCH 25TH, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR MR. JOE H. BATES, - I shall have the greatest pleasure in 
+acceding to your complimentary request.  I shall think it an honour 
+to be associated with your chapter, and I need not remind you (for 
+you have said it yourself) how much depends upon your own exertions 
+whether to make it to me a real honour or only a derision.  This is 
+to let you know that I accept the position that you have seriously 
+offered to me in a quite serious spirit.  I need scarce tell you 
+that I shall always be pleased to receive reports of your 
+proceedings; and if I do not always acknowledge them, you are to 
+remember that I am a man very much occupied otherwise, and not at 
+all to suppose that I have lost interest in my chapter.
+
+In this world, which (as you justly say) is so full of sorrow and 
+suffering, it will always please me to remember that my name is 
+connected with some efforts after alleviation, nor less so with 
+purposes of innocent recreation which, after all, are the only 
+certain means at our disposal for bettering human life.
+
+With kind regards, to yourself, to Mr. L. C. Congdon, to E. M. G. 
+Bates, and to Mr. Edward Hugh Higlee Bates, and the heartiest 
+wishes for the future success of the chapter, believe me, yours 
+cordially,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO WILLIAM ARCHER
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, MARCH 27TH, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR ARCHER, - Many thanks for your THEATRICAL WORLD.  Do you 
+know, it strikes me as being really very good?  I have not yet read 
+much of it, but so far as I have looked, there is not a dull and 
+not an empty page in it.  Hazlitt, whom you must often have thought 
+of, would have been pleased.  Come to think of it, I shall put this 
+book upon the Hazlitt shelf.  You have acquired a manner that I can 
+only call august; otherwise, I should have to call it such amazing 
+impudence.  The BAUBLE SHOP and BECKET are examples of what I mean.  
+But it 'sets you weel.'
+
+Marjorie Fleming I have known, as you surmise, for long.  She was 
+possibly - no, I take back possibly - she was one of the greatest 
+works of God.  Your note about the resemblance of her verses to 
+mine gave me great joy, though it only proved me a plagiarist.  By 
+the by, was it not over THE CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES that we first 
+scraped acquaintance?  I am sorry indeed to hear that my esteemed 
+correspondent Tomarcher has such poor taste in literature.  I fear 
+he cannot have inherited this trait from his dear papa.  Indeed, I 
+may say I know it, for I remember the energy of papa's disapproval 
+when the work passed through his hands on its way to a second 
+birth, which none regrets more than myself.  It is an odd fact, or 
+perhaps a very natural one; I find few greater pleasures than 
+reading my own works, but I never, O I never read THE BLACK ARROW.  
+In that country Tomarcher reigns supreme.  Well, and after all, if 
+Tomarcher likes it, it has not been written in vain.
+
+We have just now a curious breath from Europe.  A young fellow just 
+beginning letters, and no fool, turned up here with a letter of 
+introduction in the well-known blue ink and decorative hieroglyphs 
+of George Meredith.  His name may be known to you.  It is Sidney 
+Lysaght.  He is staying with us but a day or two, and it is strange 
+to me and not unpleasant to hear all the names, old and new, come 
+up again.  But oddly the new are so much more in number.  If I 
+revisited the glimpses of the moon on your side of the ocean, I 
+should know comparatively few of them.
+
+My amanuensis deserts me - I should have said you, for yours is the 
+loss, my script having lost all bond with humanity.  One touch of 
+nature makes the whole world kin:  that nobody can read my hand.  
+It is a humiliating circumstance that thus evens us with printers!
+
+You must sometimes think it strange - or perhaps it is only I that 
+should so think it - to be following the old round, in the gas 
+lamps and the crowded theatres, when I am away here in the tropical 
+forest and the vast silences!
+
+My dear Archer, my wife joins me in the best wishes to yourself and 
+Mrs. Archer, not forgetting Tom; and I am yours very cordially,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO W. B. YEATS
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, APRIL 14, 1894.
+
+DEAR SIR, - Long since when I was a boy I remember the emotions 
+with which I repeated Swinburne's poems and ballads.  Some ten 
+years ago, a similar spell was cast upon me by Meredith's LOVE IN 
+THE VALLEY; the stanzas beginning 'When her mother tends her' 
+haunted me and made me drunk like wine; and I remember waking with 
+them all the echoes of the hills about Hyeres.  It may interest you 
+to hear that I have a third time fallen in slavery:  this is to 
+your poem called the LAKE ISLE OF INNISFRAE.  It is so quaint and 
+airy, simple, artful, and eloquent to the heart - but I seek words 
+in vain.  Enough that 'always night and day I hear lake water 
+lapping with low sounds on the shore,' and am, yours gratefully,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO GEORGE MEREDITH
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, APRIL 17TH, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR MEREDITH, - Many good things have the gods sent to me of 
+late.  First of all there was a letter from you by the kind hand of 
+Mariette, if she is not too great a lady to be remembered in such a 
+style; and then there came one Lysaght with a charming note of 
+introduction in the well-known hand itself.  We had but a few days 
+of him, and liked him well.  There was a sort of geniality and 
+inward fire about him at which I warmed my hands.  It is long since 
+I have seen a young man who has left in me such a favourable 
+impression; and I find myself telling myself, 'O, I must tell this 
+to Lysaght,' or, 'This will interest him,' in a manner very unusual 
+after so brief an acquaintance.  The whole of my family shared in 
+this favourable impression, and my halls have re-echoed ever since, 
+I am sure he will be amused to know, with WIDDICOMBE FAIR.
+
+He will have told you doubtless more of my news than I could tell 
+you myself; he has your European perspective, a thing long lost to 
+me.  I heard with a great deal of interest the news of Box Hill.  
+And so I understand it is to be enclosed!  Allow me to remark, that 
+seems a far more barbaric trait of manners than the most barbarous 
+of ours.  We content ourselves with cutting off an occasional head.
+
+I hear we may soon expect the AMAZING MARRIAGE.  You know how long, 
+and with how much curiosity, I have looked forward to the book.  
+Now, in so far as you have adhered to your intention, Gower 
+Woodsere will be a family portrait, age twenty-five, of the highly 
+respectable and slightly influential and fairly aged TUSITALA.  You 
+have not known that gentleman; console yourself, he is not worth 
+knowing.  At the same time, my dear Meredith, he is very sincerely 
+yours - for what he is worth, for the memories of old times, and in 
+the expectation of many pleasures still to come.  I suppose we 
+shall never see each other again; flitting youths of the Lysaght 
+species may occasionally cover these unconscionable leagues and 
+bear greetings to and fro.  But we ourselves must be content to 
+converse on an occasional sheet of notepaper, and I shall never see 
+whether you have grown older, and you shall never deplore that 
+Gower Woodsere should have declined into the pantaloon TUSITALA.  
+It is perhaps better so.  Let us continue to see each other as we 
+were, and accept, my dear Meredith, my love and respect.
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+P.S. - My wife joins me in the kindest messages to yourself and 
+Mariette.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+[VAILIMA], APRIL 17, '94.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES, - ST. IVES is now well on its way into the second 
+volume.  There remains no mortal doubt that it will reach the three 
+volume standard.
+
+I am very anxious that you should send me -
+
+1ST.  TOM AND JERRY, a cheap edition.
+
+2nd.  The book by Ashton - the DAWN OF THE CENTURY, I think it was 
+called - which Colvin sent me, and which has miscarried, and
+
+3rd.  If it is possible, a file of the EDINBURGH COURANT for the 
+years 1811, 1812, 1813, or 1814.  I should not care for a whole 
+year.  If it were possible to find me three months, winter months 
+by preference, it would do my business not only for ST. IVES, but 
+for the JUSTICE-CLERK as well.  Suppose this to be impossible, 
+perhaps I could get the loan of it from somebody; or perhaps it 
+would be possible to have some one read a file for me and make 
+notes.  This would be extremely bad, as unhappily one man's food is 
+another man's poison, and the reader would probably leave out 
+everything I should choose.  But if you are reduced to that, you 
+might mention to the man who is to read for me that balloon 
+ascensions are in the order of the day.
+
+4th.  It might be as well to get a book on balloon ascension, 
+particularly in the early part of the century.
+
+. . . . .
+
+III.  At last this book has come from Scribner, and, alas!  I have 
+the first six or seven chapters of ST. IVES to recast entirely.  
+Who could foresee that they clothed the French prisoners in yellow?  
+But that one fatal fact - and also that they shaved them twice a 
+week - damns the whole beginning.  If it had been sent in time, it 
+would have saved me a deal of trouble. . . .
+
+I have had a long letter from Dr. Scott Dalgleish, 25 Mayfield 
+Terrace, asking me to put my name down to the Ballantyne Memorial 
+Committee.  I have sent him a pretty sharp answer in favour of 
+cutting down the memorial and giving more to the widow and 
+children.  If there is to be any foolery in the way of statues or 
+other trash, please send them a guinea; but if they are going to 
+take my advice and put up a simple tablet with a few heartfelt 
+words, and really devote the bulk of the subscriptions to the wife 
+and family, I will go to the length of twenty pounds, if you will 
+allow me (and if the case of the family be at all urgent), and at 
+least I direct you to send ten pounds.  I suppose you had better 
+see Scott Dalgleish himself on the matter.  I take the opportunity 
+here to warn you that my head is simply spinning with a multitude 
+of affairs, and I shall probably forget a half of my business at 
+last.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MRS. SITWELL
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, APRIL 1894.
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND, - I have at last got some photographs, and hasten 
+to send you, as you asked, a portrait of Tusitala.  He is a strange 
+person; not so lean, say experts, but infinitely battered; mighty 
+active again on the whole; going up and down our break-neck road at 
+all hours of the day and night on horseback; holding meetings with 
+all manner of chiefs; quite a political personage - God save the 
+mark! - in a small way, but at heart very conscious of the 
+inevitable flat failure that awaits every one.  I shall never do a 
+better book than CATRIONA, that is my high-water mark, and the 
+trouble of production increases on me at a great rate - and mighty 
+anxious about how I am to leave my family:  an elderly man, with 
+elderly preoccupations, whom I should be ashamed to show you for 
+your old friend; but not a hope of my dying soon and cleanly, and 
+'winning off the stage.'  Rather I am daily better in physical 
+health.  I shall have to see this business out, after all; and I 
+think, in that case, they should have - they might have - spared me 
+all my ill-health this decade past, if it were not to unbar the 
+doors.  I have no taste for old age, and my nose is to be rubbed in 
+it in spite of my face.  I was meant to die young, and the gods do 
+not love me.
+
+This is very like an epitaph, bar the handwriting, which is 
+anything but monumental, and I dare say I had better stop.  Fanny 
+is down at her own cottage planting or deplanting or replanting, I 
+know not which, and she will not be home till dinner, by which time 
+the mail will be all closed, else she would join me in all good 
+messages and remembrances of love.  I hope you will congratulate 
+Burne Jones from me on his baronetcy.  I cannot make out to be 
+anything but raspingly, harrowingly sad; so I will close, and not 
+affect levity which I cannot feel.  Do not altogether forget me; 
+keep a corner of your memory for the exile
+
+LOUIS.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+[VAILIMA, MAY 1894.]
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES, - My dear fellow, I wish to assure you of the 
+greatness of the pleasure that this Edinburgh Edition gives me.  I 
+suppose it was your idea to give it that name.  No other would have 
+affected me in the same manner.  Do you remember, how many years 
+ago - I would be afraid to hazard a guess - one night when I 
+communicated to you certain intimations of early death and 
+aspirations after fame?  I was particularly maudlin; and my remorse 
+the next morning on a review of my folly has written the matter 
+very deeply in my mind; from yours it may easily have fled.  If any 
+one at that moment could have shown me the Edinburgh Edition, I 
+suppose I should have died.  It is with gratitude and wonder that I 
+consider 'the way in which I have been led.'  Could a more 
+preposterous idea have occurred to us in those days when we used to 
+search our pockets for coppers, too often in vain, and combine 
+forces to produce the threepence necessary for two glasses of beer, 
+or wander down the Lothian Road without any, than that I should be 
+strong and well at the age of forty-three in the island of Upolu, 
+and that you should be at home bringing out the Edinburgh Edition?  
+If it had been possible, I should almost have preferred the Lothian 
+Road Edition, say, with a picture of the old Dutch smuggler on the 
+covers.  I have now something heavy on my mind.  I had always a 
+great sense of kinship with poor Robert Fergusson - so clever a 
+boy, so wild, of such a mixed strain, so unfortunate, born in the 
+same town with me, and, as I always felt, rather by express 
+intimation than from evidence, so like myself.  Now the injustice 
+with which the one Robert is rewarded and the other left out in the 
+cold sits heavy on me, and I wish you could think of some way in 
+which I could do honour to my unfortunate namesake.  Do you think 
+it would look like affectation to dedicate the whole edition to his 
+memory?  I think it would.  The sentiment which would dictate it to 
+me is too abstruse; and besides, I think my wife is the proper 
+person to receive the dedication of my life's work.  At the same 
+time, it is very odd - it really looks like the transmigration of 
+souls - I feel that I must do something for Fergusson; Burns has 
+been before me with the gravestone.  It occurs to me you might take 
+a walk down the Canongate and see in what condition the stone is.  
+If it be at all uncared for, we might repair it, and perhaps add a 
+few words of inscription.
+
+I must tell you, what I just remembered in a flash as I was walking 
+about dictating this letter - there was in the original plan of the 
+MASTER OF BALLANTRAE a sort of introduction describing my arrival 
+in Edinburgh on a visit to yourself and your placing in my hands 
+the papers of the story.  I actually wrote it, and then condemned 
+the idea - as being a little too like Scott, I suppose.  Now I must 
+really find the MS. and try to finish it for the E. E.  It will 
+give you, what I should so much like you to have, another corner of 
+your own in that lofty monument.
+
+Suppose we do what I have proposed about Fergusson's monument, I 
+wonder if an inscription like this would look arrogant -
+
+
+This stone originally erected
+by Robert Burns has been
+repaired at the
+charges of Robert Louis Stevenson,
+and is by him re-dedicated to
+the memory of Robert Fergusson,
+as the gift of one Edinburgh
+lad to another.
+
+
+In spacing this inscription I would detach the names of Fergusson 
+and Burns, but leave mine in the text.
+
+Or would that look like sham modesty, and is it better to bring out 
+the three Roberts?
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO R. A. M. STEVENSON
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, JUNE 1894.
+
+MY DEAR BOB, - I must make out a letter this mail or perish in the 
+attempt.  All the same, I am deeply stupid, in bed with a cold, 
+deprived of my amanuensis, and conscious of the wish but not the 
+furnished will.  You may be interested to hear how the family 
+inquiries go.  It is now quite certain that we are a second-rate 
+lot, and came out of Cunningham or Clydesdale, therefore BRITISH 
+folk; so that you are Cymry on both sides, and I Cymry and Pict.  
+We may have fought with King Arthur and known Merlin.  The first of 
+the family, Stevenson of Stevenson, was quite a great party, and 
+dates back to the wars of Edward First.  The last male heir of 
+Stevenson of Stevenson died 1670, 220 pounds, 10s. to the bad, from 
+drink.  About the same time the Stevensons, who were mostly in 
+Cunningham before, crop up suddenly in the parish of Neilston, over 
+the border in Renfrewshire.  Of course, they may have been there 
+before, but there is no word of them in that parish till 1675 in 
+any extracts I have.  Our first traceable ancestor was a tenant 
+farmer of Muir of Cauldwells - James in Nether-Carsewell.  
+Presently two families of maltmen are found in Glasgow, both, by 
+re-duplicated proofs, related to James (the son of James) in Nether 
+Carsewell.  We descend by his second marriage from Robert; one of 
+these died 1733.  It is not very romantic up to now, but has 
+interested me surprisingly to fish out, always hoping for more - 
+and occasionally getting at least a little clearness and 
+confirmation.  But the earliest date, 1655, apparently the marriage 
+of James in Nether Carsewell, cannot as yet be pushed back.  From 
+which of any number of dozen little families in Cunningham we 
+should derive, God knows!  Of course, it doesn't matter a hundred 
+years hence, an argument fatal to all human enterprise, industry, 
+or pleasure.  And to me it will be a deadly disappointment if I 
+cannot roll this stone away!  One generation further might be 
+nothing, but it is my present object of desire, and we are so near 
+it!  There is a man in the same parish called Constantine; if I 
+could only trace to him, I could take you far afield by that one 
+talisman of the strange Christian name of Constantine.  But no such 
+luck!  And I kind of fear we shall stick at James.
+
+So much, though all inchoate, I trouble you with, knowing that you, 
+at least, must take an interest in it.  So much is certain of that 
+strange Celtic descent, that the past has an interest for it 
+apparently gratuitous, but fiercely strong.  I wish to trace my 
+ancestors a thousand years, if I trace them by gallowses.  It is 
+not love, not pride, not admiration; it is an expansion of the 
+identity, intimately pleasing, and wholly uncritical; I can expend 
+myself in the person of an inglorious ancestor with perfect 
+comfort; or a disgraced, if I could find one.  I suppose, perhaps, 
+it is more to me who am childless, and refrain with a certain shock 
+from looking forwards.  But, I am sure, in the solid grounds of 
+race, that you have it also in some degree.
+
+I. JAMES, a tenant of the Muirs, in Nether-Carsewell,
+                 Neilston, married (1665?) Jean Keir.
+     ||                                        |
+     ||                                        |
+     ||                                        |
+     +-----------------------------------------+
+       II.  ROBERT (Maltman in Glasgow), died 1733,
+              |    married 1st;     married second,
+              |    Elizabeth Cumming.
+              |            ||
+              |            ||
+    William (Maltman in    ||
+        Glasgow).          +--------------+
+              |                           |
+              |                           |
++-------------+--------------+         III. ROBERT (Maltman
+ROBERT,     MARION,      ELIZABETH.      in Glasgow), married
+                                         Margaret Fulton (had
+NOTE. - Between 1730-1766 flourished     a large family).
+in Glasgow Alan the Coppersmith, who      ||
+acts as a kind of a pin to the whole      ||
+Stevenson system there.  He was caution   IV. ALAN, West India
+to Robert the Second's will, and to          merchant, married
+William's will, and to the will of a         Jean Lillie.
+John, another maltman.                       ||
+                                             ||
+                                         V. ROBERT, married
+                                            Jean Smith.
+                                             |
+                                         VI. ALAN. - Margaret
+                                             Jones
+                                             |
+                                         VII. R. A. M. S.
+
+
+Enough genealogy.  I do not know if you will be able to read my 
+hand.  Unhappily, Belle, who is my amanuensis, is out of the way on 
+other affairs, and I have to make the unwelcome effort.  (O this is 
+beautiful, I am quite pleased with myself.)  Graham has just 
+arrived last night (my mother is coming by the other steamer in 
+three days), and has told me of your meeting, and he said you 
+looked a little older than I did; so that I suppose we keep step 
+fairly on the downward side of the hill.  He thought you looked 
+harassed, and I could imagine that too.  I sometimes feel harassed.  
+I have a great family here about me, a great anxiety.  The loss (to 
+use my grandfather's expression), the 'loss' of our family is that 
+we are disbelievers in the morrow - perhaps I should say, rather, 
+in next year.  The future is ALWAYS black to us; it was to Robert 
+Stevenson; to Thomas; I suspect to Alan; to R. A. M. S. it was so 
+almost to his ruin in youth; to R. L. S., who had a hard hopeful 
+strain in him from his mother, it was not so much so once, but 
+becomes daily more so.  Daily so much more so, that I have a 
+painful difficulty in believing I can ever finish another book, or 
+that the public will ever read it.
+
+I have so huge a desire to know exactly what you are doing, that I 
+suppose I should tell you what I am doing by way of an example.  I 
+have a room now, a part of the twelve-foot verandah sparred in, at 
+the most inaccessible end of the house.  Daily I see the sunrise 
+out of my bed, which I still value as a tonic, a perpetual tuning 
+fork, a look of God's face once in the day.  At six my breakfast 
+comes up to me here, and I work till eleven.  If I am quite well, I 
+sometimes go out and bathe in the river before lunch, twelve.  In 
+the afternoon I generally work again, now alone drafting, now with 
+Belle dictating.  Dinner is at six, and I am often in bed by eight.  
+This is supposing me to stay at home.  But I must often be away, 
+sometimes all day long, sometimes till twelve, one, or two at 
+night, when you might see me coming home to the sleeping house, 
+sometimes in a trackless darkness, sometimes with a glorious tropic 
+moon, everything drenched with dew - unsaddling and creeping to 
+bed; and you would no longer be surprised that I live out in this 
+country, and not in Bournemouth - in bed.
+
+My great recent interruptions have (as you know) come from 
+politics; not much in my line, you will say.  But it is impossible 
+to live here and not feel very sorely the consequences of the 
+horrid white mismanagement.  I tried standing by and looking on, 
+and it became too much for me.  They are such illogical fools; a 
+logical fool in an office, with a lot of red tape, is conceivable.  
+Furthermore, he is as much as we have any reason to expect of 
+officials - a thoroughly common-place, unintellectual lot.  But 
+these people are wholly on wires; laying their ears down, skimming 
+away, pausing as though shot, and presto! full spread on the other 
+tack.  I observe in the official class mostly an insane jealousy of 
+the smallest kind, as compared to which the artist's is of a grave, 
+modest character - the actor's, even; a desire to extend his little 
+authority, and to relish it like a glass of wine, that is 
+IMPAYABLE.  Sometimes, when I see one of these little kings 
+strutting over one of his victories - wholly illegal, perhaps, and 
+certain to be reversed to his shame if his superiors ever heard of 
+it - I could weep.  The strange thing is that they HAVE NOTHING 
+ELSE.  I auscultate them in vain; no real sense of duty, no real 
+comprehension, no real attempt to comprehend, no wish for 
+information - you cannot offend one of them more bitterly than by 
+offering information, though it is certain that you have MORE, and 
+obvious that you have OTHER, information than they have; and 
+talking of policy, they could not play a better stroke than by 
+listening to you, and it need by no means influence their action.  
+TENEZ, you know what a French post office or railway official is?  
+That is the diplomatic card to the life.  Dickens is not in it; 
+caricature fails.
+
+All this keeps me from my work, and gives me the unpleasant side of 
+the world.  When your letters are disbelieved it makes you angry, 
+and that is rot; and I wish I could keep out of it with all my 
+soul.  But I have just got into it again, and farewell peace!
+
+My work goes along but slowly.  I have got to a crossing place, I 
+suppose; the present book, SAINT IVES, is nothing; it is in no 
+style in particular, a tissue of adventures, the central character 
+not very well done, no philosophic pith under the yarn; and, in 
+short, if people will read it, that's all I ask; and if they won't, 
+damn them!  I like doing it though; and if you ask me why! - after 
+that I am on WEIR OF HERMISTON and HEATHERCAT, two Scotch stories, 
+which will either be something different, or I shall have failed.  
+The first is generally designed, and is a private story of two or 
+three characters in a very grim vein.  The second - alas! the 
+thought - is an attempt at a real historical novel, to present a 
+whole field of time; the race - our own race - the west land and 
+Clydesdale blue bonnets, under the influence of their last trial, 
+when they got to a pitch of organisation in madness that no other 
+peasantry has ever made an offer at.  I was going to call it THE 
+KILLING TIME, but this man Crockett has forestalled me in that.  
+Well, it'll be a big smash if I fail in it; but a gallant attempt.  
+All my weary reading as a boy, which you remember well enough, will 
+come to bear on it; and if my mind will keep up to the point it was 
+in a while back, perhaps I can pull it through.
+
+For two months past, Fanny, Belle, Austin (her child), and I have 
+been alone; but yesterday, as I mentioned, Graham Balfour arrived, 
+and on Wednesday my mother and Lloyd will make up the party to its 
+full strength.  I wish you could drop in for a month or a week, or 
+two hours.  That is my chief want.  On the whole, it is an 
+unexpectedly pleasant corner I have dropped into for an end of it, 
+which I could scarcely have foreseen from Wilson's shop, or the 
+Princes Street Gardens, or the Portobello Road.  Still, I would 
+like to hear what my ALTER EGO thought of it; and I would sometimes 
+like to have my old MAITRE ES ARTS express an opinion on what I do.  
+I put this very tamely, being on the whole a quiet elderly man; but 
+it is a strong passion with me, though intermittent.  Now, try to 
+follow my example and tell me something about yourself, Louisa, the 
+Bab, and your work; and kindly send me some specimens of what 
+you're about.  I have only seen one thing by you, about Notre Dame 
+in the WESTMINSTER or ST. JAMES'S, since I left England, now I 
+suppose six years ago.
+
+I have looked this trash over, and it is not at all the letter I 
+wanted to write - not truck about officials, ancestors, and the 
+like rancidness - but you have to let your pen go in its own 
+broken-down gait, like an old butcher's pony, stop when it pleases, 
+and go on again as it will. - Ever, my dear Bob, your affectionate 
+cousin,
+
+R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO HENRY JAMES
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, JULY 7TH, 1894.
+
+DEAR HENRY JAMES, - I am going to try and dictate to you a letter 
+or a note, and begin the same without any spark of hope, my mind 
+being entirely in abeyance.  This malady is very bitter on the 
+literary man.  I have had it now coming on for a month, and it 
+seems to get worse instead of better.  If it should prove to be 
+softening of the brain, a melancholy interest will attach to the 
+present document.  I heard a great deal about you from my mother 
+and Graham Balfour; the latter declares that you could take a First 
+in any Samoan subject.  If that be so, I should like to hear you on 
+the theory of the constitution.  Also to consult you on the force 
+of the particles O LO 'O and UA, which are the subject of a dispute 
+among local pundits.  You might, if you ever answer this, give me 
+your opinion on the origin of the Samoan race, just to complete the 
+favour.
+
+They both say that you are looking well, and I suppose I may 
+conclude from that that you are feeling passably.  I wish I was.  
+Do not suppose from this that I am ill in body; it is the numskull 
+that I complain of.  And when that is wrong, as you must be very 
+keenly aware, you begin every day with a smarting disappointment, 
+which is not good for the temper.  I am in one of the humours when 
+a man wonders how any one can be such an ass as to embrace the 
+profession of letters, and not get apprenticed to a barber or keep 
+a baked-potato stall.  But I have no doubt in the course of a week, 
+or perhaps to-morrow, things will look better.
+
+We have at present in port the model warship of Great Britain.  She 
+is called the CURACOA, and has the nicest set of officers and men 
+conceivable.  They, the officers, are all very intimate with us, 
+and the front verandah is known as the Curacoa Club, and the road 
+up to Vailima is known as the Curacoa Track.  It was rather a 
+surprise to me; many naval officers have I known, and somehow had 
+not learned to think entirely well of them, and perhaps sometimes 
+ask myself a little uneasily how that kind of men could do great 
+actions? and behold! the answer comes to me, and I see a ship that 
+I would guarantee to go anywhere it was possible for men to go, and 
+accomplish anything it was permitted man to attempt.  I had a 
+cruise on board of her not long ago to Manu'a, and was delighted.  
+The goodwill of all on board; the grim playfulness of - quarters, 
+with the wounded falling down at the word; the ambulances hastening 
+up and carrying them away; the Captain suddenly crying, 'Fire in 
+the ward-room!' and the squad hastening forward with the hose; and, 
+last and most curious spectacle of all, all the men in their dust-
+coloured fatigue clothes, at a note of the bugle, falling 
+simultaneously flat on deck, and the ship proceeding with its 
+prostrate crew - QUASI to ram an enemy; our dinner at night in a 
+wild open anchorage, the ship rolling almost to her gunwales, and 
+showing us alternately her bulwarks up in the sky, and then the 
+wild broken cliffy palm-crested shores of the island with the surf 
+thundering and leaping close aboard.  We had the ward-room mess on 
+deck, lit by pink wax tapers, everybody, of course, in uniform but 
+myself, and the first lieutenant (who is a rheumaticky body) 
+wrapped in a boat cloak.  Gradually the sunset faded out, the 
+island disappeared from the eye, though it remained menacingly 
+present to the ear with the voice of the surf; and then the captain 
+turned on the searchlight and gave us the coast, the beach, the 
+trees, the native houses, and the cliffs by glimpses of daylight, a 
+kind of deliberate lightning.  About which time, I suppose, we must 
+have come as far as the dessert, and were probably drinking our 
+first glass of port to Her Majesty.  We stayed two days at the 
+island, and had, in addition, a very picturesque snapshot at the 
+native life.  The three islands of Manu'a are independent, and are 
+ruled over by a little slip of a half-caste girl about twenty, who 
+sits all day in a pink gown, in a little white European house with 
+about a quarter of an acre of roses in front of it, looking at the 
+palm-trees on the village street, and listening to the surf.  This, 
+so far as I could discover, was all she had to do.  'This is a very 
+dull place,' she said.  It appears she could go to no other village 
+for fear of raising the jealousy of her own people in the capital.  
+And as for going about 'tafatafaoing,' as we say here, its cost was 
+too enormous.  A strong able-bodied native must walk in front of 
+her and blow the conch shell continuously from the moment she 
+leaves one house until the moment she enters another.  Did you ever 
+blow the conch shell?  I presume not; but the sweat literally 
+hailed off that man, and I expected every moment to see him burst a 
+blood-vessel.  We were entertained to kava in the guest-house with 
+some very original features.  The young men who run for the KAVA 
+have a right to misconduct themselves AD LIBITUM on the way back; 
+and though they were told to restrain themselves on the occasion of 
+our visit, there was a strange hurly-burly at their return, when 
+they came beating the trees and the posts of the houses, leaping, 
+shouting, and yelling like Bacchants.
+
+I tasted on that occasion what it is to be great.  My name was 
+called next after the captain's, and several chiefs (a thing quite 
+new to me, and not at all Samoan practice) drank to me by name.
+
+And now, if you are not sick of the CURACOA and Manu'a, I am, at 
+least on paper.  And I decline any longer to give you examples of 
+how not to write.
+
+By the by, you sent me long ago a work by Anatole France, which I 
+confess I did not TASTE.  Since then I have made the acquaintance 
+of the ABBE COIGNARD, and have become a faithful adorer.  I don't 
+think a better book was ever written.
+
+And I have no idea what I have said, and I have no idea what I 
+ought to have said, and I am a total ass, but my heart is in the 
+right place, and I am, my dear Henry James, yours,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MR. MARCEL SCHWOB
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, UPOLU, SAMOA, JULY 7, 1894.
+
+DEAR MR. MARCEL SCHWOB, - Thank you for having remembered me in my 
+exile.  I have read MIMES twice as a whole; and now, as I write, I 
+am reading it again as it were by accident, and a piece at a time, 
+my eye catching a word and travelling obediently on through the 
+whole number.  It is a graceful book, essentially graceful, with 
+its haunting agreeable melancholy, its pleasing savour of 
+antiquity.  At the same time, by its merits, it shows itself rather 
+as the promise of something else to come than a thing final in 
+itself.  You have yet to give us - and I am expecting it with 
+impatience - something of a larger gait; something daylit, not 
+twilit; something with the colours of life, not the flat tints of a 
+temple illumination; something that shall be SAID with all the 
+clearnesses and the trivialities of speech, not SUNG like a semi-
+articulate lullaby.  It will not please yourself as well, when you 
+come to give it us, but it will please others better.  It will be 
+more of a whole, more worldly, more nourished, more commonplace - 
+and not so pretty, perhaps not even so beautiful.  No man knows 
+better than I that, as we go on in life, we must part from 
+prettiness and the graces.  We but attain qualities to lose them; 
+life is a series of farewells, even in art; even our proficiencies 
+are deciduous and evanescent.  So here with these exquisite pieces 
+the XVIIth, XVIIIth, and IVth of the present collection.  You will 
+perhaps never excel them; I should think the 'Hermes,' never.  
+Well, you will do something else, and of that I am in expectation. 
+- Yours cordially,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO A. ST. GAUDENS
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, JULY 8, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR ST. GAUDENS, - This is to tell you that the medallion has 
+been at last triumphantly transported up the hill and placed over 
+my smoking-room mantelpiece.  It is considered by everybody a 
+first-rate but flattering portrait.  We have it in a very good 
+light, which brings out the artistic merits of the god-like 
+sculptor to great advantage.  As for my own opinion, I believe it 
+to be a speaking likeness, and not flattered at all; possibly a 
+little the reverse.  The verses (curse the rhyme) look remarkably 
+well.
+
+Please do not longer delay, but send me an account for the expense 
+of the gilt letters.  I was sorry indeed that they proved beyond 
+the means of a small farmer. - Yours very sincerely,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, JULY 14, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR ADELAIDE, - . . . So, at last, you are going into mission 
+work? where I think your heart always was.  You will like it in a 
+way, but remember it is dreary long.  Do you know the story of the 
+American tramp who was offered meals and a day's wage to chop with 
+the back of an axe on a fallen trunk.  'Damned if I can go on 
+chopping when I can't see the chips fly!'  You will never see the 
+chips fly in mission work, never; and be sure you know it 
+beforehand.  The work is one long dull disappointment, varied by 
+acute revulsions; and those who are by nature courageous and 
+cheerful and have grown old in experience, learn to rub their hands 
+over infinitesimal successes.  However, as I really believe there 
+is some good done in the long run - GUTTA CAVAT LAPIDEM NON VI in 
+this business - it is a useful and honourable career in which no 
+one should be ashamed to embark.  Always remember the fable of the 
+sun, the storm, and the traveller's cloak.  Forget wholly and for 
+ever all small pruderies, and remember that YOU CANNOT CHANGE 
+ANCESTRAL FEELINGS OF RIGHT AND WRONG WITHOUT WHAT IS PRACTICALLY 
+SOUL-MURDER.  Barbarous as the customs may seem, always hear them 
+with patience, always judge them with gentleness, always find in 
+them some seed of good; see that you always develop them; remember 
+that all you can do is to civilise the man in the line of his own 
+civilisation, such as it is.  And never expect, never believe in, 
+thaumaturgic conversions.  They may do very well for St. Paul; in 
+the case of an Andaman islander they mean less than nothing.  In 
+fact, what you have to do is to teach the parents in the interests 
+of their great-grandchildren.
+
+Now, my dear Adelaide, dismiss from your mind the least idea of 
+fault upon your side; nothing is further from the fact.  I cannot 
+forgive you, for I do not know your fault.  My own is plain enough, 
+and the name of it is cold-hearted neglect; and you may busy 
+yourself more usefully in trying to forgive me.  But ugly as my 
+fault is, you must not suppose it to mean more than it does; it 
+does not mean that we have at all forgotten you, that we have 
+become at all indifferent to the thought of you.  See, in my life 
+of Jenkin, a remark of his, very well expressed, on the friendships 
+of men who do not write to each other.  I can honestly say that I 
+have not changed to you in any way; though I have behaved thus ill, 
+thus cruelly.  Evil is done by want of - well, principally by want 
+of industry.  You can imagine what I would say (in a novel) of any 
+one who had behaved as I have done, DETERIORA SEQUOR.  And you must 
+somehow manage to forgive your old friend; and if you will be so 
+very good, continue to give us news of you, and let us share the 
+knowledge of your adventures, sure that it will be always followed 
+with interest - even if it is answered with the silence of 
+ingratitude.  For I am not a fool; I know my faults, I know they 
+are ineluctable, I know they are growing on me.  I know I may 
+offend again, and I warn you of it.  But the next time I offend, 
+tell me so plainly and frankly like a lady, and don't lacerate my 
+heart and bludgeon my vanity with imaginary faults of your own and 
+purely gratuitous penitence.  I might suspect you of irony!
+
+We are all fairly well, though I have been off work and off - as 
+you know very well - letter-writing.  Yet I have sometimes more 
+than twenty letters, and sometimes more than thirty, going out each 
+mail.  And Fanny has had a most distressing bronchitis for some 
+time, which she is only now beginning to get over.  I have just 
+been to see her; she is lying - though she had breakfast an hour 
+ago, about seven - in her big cool, mosquito-proof room, 
+ingloriously asleep.  As for me, you see that a doom has come upon 
+me:  I cannot make marks with a pen - witness 'ingloriously' above; 
+and my amanuensis not appearing so early in the day, for she is 
+then immersed in household affairs, and I can hear her 'steering 
+the boys' up and down the verandahs - you must decipher this 
+unhappy letter for yourself and, I fully admit, with everything 
+against you.  A letter should be always well written; how much more 
+a letter of apology!  Legibility is the politeness of men of 
+letters, as punctuality of kings and beggars.  By the punctuality 
+of my replies, and the beauty of my hand-writing, judge what a fine 
+conscience I must have!
+
+Now, my dear gamekeeper, I must really draw to a close.  For I have 
+much else to write before the mail goes out three days hence.  
+Fanny being asleep, it would not be conscientious to invent a 
+message from her, so you must just imagine her sentiments.  I find 
+I have not the heart to speak of your recent loss.  You remember 
+perhaps, when my father died, you told me those ugly images of 
+sickness, decline, and impaired reason, which then haunted me day 
+and night, would pass away and be succeeded by things more happily 
+characteristic.  I have found it so.  He now haunts me, strangely 
+enough, in two guises; as a man of fifty, lying on a hillside and 
+carving mottoes on a stick, strong and well; and as a younger man, 
+running down the sands into the sea near North Berwick, myself - 
+AETAT. II - somewhat horrified at finding him so beautiful when 
+stripped!  I hand on your own advice to you in case you have 
+forgotten it, as I know one is apt to do in seasons of bereavement. 
+- Ever yours, with much love and sympathy,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MRS. BAKER
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, JULY 16, 1894.
+
+DEAR MRS. BAKER, - I am very much obliged to you for your letter 
+and the enclosure from Mr. Skinner.  Mr. Skinner says he 'thinks 
+Mr. Stevenson must be a very kind man'; he little knows me.  But I 
+am very sure of one thing, that you are a very kind woman.  I envy 
+you - my amanuensis being called away, I continue in my own hand, 
+or what is left of it - unusually legible, I am thankful to see - I 
+envy you your beautiful choice of an employment.  There must be no 
+regrets at least for a day so spent; and when the night falls you 
+need ask no blessing on your work.
+
+'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these.' - Yours truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO J. M. BARRIE
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, JULY 13, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR BARRIE, - This is the last effort of an ulcerated 
+conscience.  I have been so long owing you a letter, I have heard 
+so much of you, fresh from the press, from my mother and Graham 
+Balfour, that I have to write a letter no later than to-day, or 
+perish in my shame.  But the deuce of it is, my dear fellow, that 
+you write such a very good letter that I am ashamed to exhibit 
+myself before my junior (which you are, after all) in the light of 
+the dreary idiot I feel.  Understand that there will be nothing 
+funny in the following pages.  If I can manage to be rationally 
+coherent, I shall be more than satisfied.
+
+In the first place, I have had the extreme satisfaction to be shown 
+that photograph of your mother.  It bears evident traces of the 
+hand of an amateur.  How is it that amateurs invariably take better 
+photographs than professionals?  I must qualify invariably.  My own 
+negatives have always represented a province of chaos and old night 
+in which you might dimly perceive fleecy spots of twilight, 
+representing nothing; so that, if I am right in supposing the 
+portrait of your mother to be yours, I must salute you as my 
+superior.  Is that your mother's breakfast?  Or is it only 
+afternoon tea?  If the first, do let me recommend to Mrs. Barrie to 
+add an egg to her ordinary.  Which, if you please, I will ask her 
+to eat to the honour of her son, and I am sure she will live much 
+longer for it, to enjoy his fresh successes.  I never in my life 
+saw anything more deliciously characteristic.  I declare I can hear 
+her speak.  I wonder my mother could resist the temptation of your 
+proposed visit to Kirriemuir, which it was like your kindness to 
+propose.  By the way, I was twice in Kirriemuir, I believe in the 
+year '71, when I was going on a visit to Glenogil.  It was 
+Kirriemuir, was it not?  I have a distinct recollection of an inn 
+at the end - I think the upper end - of an irregular open place or 
+square, in which I always see your characters evolve.  But, indeed, 
+I did not pay much attention; being all bent upon my visit to a 
+shooting-box, where I should fish a real trout-stream, and I 
+believe preserved.  I did, too, and it was a charming stream, clear 
+as crystal, without a trace of peat - a strange thing in Scotland - 
+and alive with trout; the name of it I cannot remember, it was 
+something like the Queen's River, and in some hazy way connected 
+with memories of Mary Queen of Scots.  It formed an epoch in my 
+life, being the end of all my trout-fishing.  I had always been 
+accustomed to pause and very laboriously to kill every fish as I 
+took it.  But in the Queen's River I took so good a basket that I 
+forgot these niceties; and when I sat down, in a hard rain shower, 
+under a bank, to take my sandwiches and sherry, lo! and behold, 
+there was the basketful of trouts still kicking in their agony.  I 
+had a very unpleasant conversation with my conscience.  All that 
+afternoon I persevered in fishing, brought home my basket in 
+triumph, and sometime that night, 'in the wee sma' hours ayont the 
+twal,' I finally forswore the gentle craft of fishing.  I dare say 
+your local knowledge may identify this historic river; I wish it 
+could go farther and identify also that particular Free kirk in 
+which I sat and groaned on Sunday.  While my hand is in I must tell 
+you a story.  At that antique epoch you must not fall into the 
+vulgar error that I was myself ancient.  I was, on the contrary, 
+very young, very green, and (what you will appreciate, Mr. Barrie) 
+very shy.  There came one day to lunch at the house two very 
+formidable old ladies - or one very formidable, and the other what 
+you please - answering to the honoured and historic name of the 
+Miss C- A-'s of Balnamoon.  At table I was exceedingly funny, and 
+entertained the company with tales of geese and bubbly-jocks.  I 
+was great in the expression of my terror for these bipeds, and 
+suddenly this horrid, severe, and eminently matronly old lady put 
+up a pair of gold eye-glasses, looked at me awhile in silence, and 
+pronounced in a clangorous voice her verdict.  'You give me very 
+much the effect of a coward, Mr. Stevenson!'  I had very nearly 
+left two vices behind me at Glenogil - fishing and jesting at 
+table.  And of one thing you may be very sure, my lips were no more 
+opened at that meal.
+
+JULY 29TH
+
+No, Barrie, 'tis in vain they try to alarm me with their bulletins.  
+No doubt, you're ill, and unco ill, I believe; but I have been so 
+often in the same case that I know pleurisy and pneumonia are in 
+vain against Scotsmen who can write, (I once could.)  You cannot 
+imagine probably how near me this common calamity brings you.  CE 
+QUE J'AI TOUSSE DANS MA VIE!  How often and how long have I been on 
+the rack at night and learned to appreciate that noble passage in 
+the Psalms when somebody or other is said to be more set on 
+something than they 'who dig for hid treasures - yea, than those 
+who long for the morning' - for all the world, as you have been 
+racked and you have longed.  Keep your heart up, and you'll do.  
+Tell that to your mother, if you are still in any danger or 
+suffering.  And by the way, if you are at all like me - and I tell 
+myself you are very like me - be sure there is only one thing good 
+for you, and that is the sea in hot climates.  Mount, sir, into 'a 
+little frigot' of 5000 tons or so, and steer peremptorily for the 
+tropics; and what if the ancient mariner, who guides your frigot, 
+should startle the silence of the ocean with the cry of land ho! - 
+say, when the day is dawning - and you should see the turquoise 
+mountain tops of Upolu coming hand over fist above the horizon?  
+Mr. Barrie, sir, 'tis then there would be larks!  And though I 
+cannot be certain that our climate would suit you (for it does not 
+suit some), I am sure as death the voyage would do you good - would 
+do you BEST - and if Samoa didn't do, you needn't stay beyond the 
+month, and I should have had another pleasure in my life, which is 
+a serious consideration for me.  I take this as the hand of the 
+Lord preparing your way to Vailima - in the desert, certainly - in 
+the desert of Cough and by the ghoul-haunted woodland of Fever - 
+but whither that way points there can be no question - and there 
+will be a meeting of the twa Hoasting Scots Makers in spite of 
+fate, fortune, and the Devil.  ABSIT OMEN!
+
+My dear Barrie, I am a little in the dark about this new work of 
+yours:  what is to become of me afterwards?  You say carefully - 
+methought anxiously - that I was no longer me when I grew up?  I 
+cannot bear this suspense:  what is it?  It's no forgery?  And AM I 
+HANGIT?  These are the elements of a very pretty lawsuit which you 
+had better come to Samoa to compromise.  I am enjoying a great 
+pleasure that I had long looked forward to, reading Orme's HISTORY 
+OF INDOSTAN; I had been looking out for it everywhere; but at last, 
+in four volumes, large quarto, beautiful type and page, and with a 
+delectable set of maps and plans, and all the names of the places 
+wrongly spelled - it came to Samoa, little Barrie.  I tell you 
+frankly, you had better come soon.  I am sair failed a'ready; and 
+what I may be if you continue to dally, I dread to conceive.  I may 
+be speechless; already, or at least for a month or so, I'm little 
+better than a teetoller - I beg pardon, a teetotaller.  It is not 
+exactly physical, for I am in good health, working four or five 
+hours a day in my plantation, and intending to ride a paper-chase 
+next Sunday - ay, man, that's a fact, and I havena had the hert to 
+breathe it to my mother yet - the obligation's poleetical, for I am 
+trying every means to live well with my German neighbours - and, O 
+Barrie, but it's no easy!  To be sure, there are many exceptions.  
+And the whole of the above must be regarded as private - strictly 
+private.  Breathe it not in Kirriemuir:  tell it not to the 
+daughters of Dundee!  What a nice extract this would make for the 
+daily papers! and how it would facilitate my position here! . . .
+
+AUGUST 5TH.
+
+This is Sunday, the Lord's Day.  'The hour of attack approaches.'  
+And it is a singular consideration what I risk; I may yet be the 
+subject of a tract, and a good tract too - such as one which I 
+remember reading with recreant awe and rising hair in my youth, of 
+a boy who was a very good boy, and went to Sunday Schule, and one 
+day kipped from it, and went and actually bathed, and was dashed 
+over a waterfall, and he was the only son of his mother, and she 
+was a widow.  A dangerous trade, that, and one that I have to 
+practise.  I'll put in a word when I get home again, to tell you 
+whether I'm killed or not.  'Accident in the (Paper) Hunting Field:  
+death of a notorious author.  We deeply regret to announce the 
+death of the most unpopular man in Samoa, who broke his neck at the 
+descent of Magagi, from the misconduct of his little raving lunatic 
+of an old beast of a pony.  It is proposed to commemorate the 
+incident by the erection of a suitable pile.  The design (by our 
+local architect, Mr. Walker) is highly artificial, with a rich and 
+voluminous Crockett at each corner, a small but impervious Barrieer 
+at the entrance, an arch at the top, an Archer of a pleasing but 
+solid character at the bottom; the colour will be genuine William-
+Black; and Lang, lang may the ladies sit wi' their fans in their 
+hands.'  Well, well, they may sit as they sat for me, and little 
+they'll reck, the ungrateful jauds!  Muckle they cared about 
+Tusitala when they had him!  But now ye can see the difference; 
+now, leddies, ye can repent, when ower late, o' your former 
+cauldness and what ye'll perhaps allow me to ca' your TEPEEDITY!  
+He was beautiful as the day, but his day is done!  And perhaps, as 
+he was maybe gettin' a wee thing fly-blawn, it's nane too shune.
+
+MONDAY, AUGUST 6TH.
+
+Well, sir, I have escaped the dangerous conjunction of the widow's 
+only son and the Sabbath Day.  We had a most enjoyable time, and 
+Lloyd and I were 3 and 4 to arrive; I will not tell here what 
+interval had elapsed between our arrival and the arrival of 1 and 
+2; the question, sir, is otiose and malign; it deserves, it shall 
+have no answer.  And now without further delay to the main purpose 
+of this hasty note.  We received and we have already in fact 
+distributed the gorgeous fahbrics of Kirriemuir.  Whether from the 
+splendour of the robes themselves, or from the direct nature of the 
+compliments with which you had directed us to accompany the 
+presentations, one young lady blushed as she received the proofs of 
+your munificence. . . . Bad ink, and the dregs of it at that, but 
+the heart in the right place.  Still very cordially interested in 
+my Barrie and wishing him well through his sickness, which is of 
+the body, and long defended from mine, which is of the head, and by 
+the impolite might be described as idiocy.  The whole head is 
+useless, and the whole sitting part painful:  reason, the recent 
+Paper Chase.
+
+
+There was racing and chasing in Vailile plantation,
+And vastly we enjoyed it,
+But, alas! for the state of my foundation,
+For it wholly has destroyed it.
+
+
+Come, my mind is looking up.  The above is wholly impromptu. - On 
+oath,
+
+TUSITALA.
+
+AUGUST 12, 1894
+
+And here, Mr. Barrie, is news with a vengeance.  Mother Hubbard's 
+dog is well again - what did I tell you?  Pleurisy, pneumonia, and 
+all that kind of truck is quite unavailing against a Scotchman who 
+can write - and not only that, but it appears the perfidious dog is 
+married.  This incident, so far as I remember, is omitted from the 
+original epic -
+
+
+She went to the graveyard
+To see him get him buried,
+And when she came back
+The Deil had got merried.
+
+
+It now remains to inform you that I have taken what we call here 
+'German offence' at not receiving cards, and that the only 
+reparation I will accept is that Mrs. Barrie shall incontinently 
+upon the receipt of this Take and Bring you to Vailima in order to 
+apologise and be pardoned for this offence.  The commentary of 
+Tamaitai upon the event was brief but pregnant:  'Well, it's a 
+comfort our guest-room is furnished for two.'
+
+This letter, about nothing, has already endured too long.  I shall 
+just present the family to Mrs. Barrie - Tamaitai, Tamaitai Matua, 
+Teuila, Palema, Loia, and with an extra low bow, Yours,
+
+TUSITALA.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO DR. BAKEWELL
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, AUGUST 7, 1894.
+
+DEAR DR. BAKEWELL, - I am not more than human.  I am more human 
+than is wholly convenient, and your anecdote was welcome.  What you 
+say about UNWILLING WORK, my dear sir, is a consideration always 
+present with me, and yet not easy to give its due weight to.  You 
+grow gradually into a certain income; without spending a penny 
+more, with the same sense of restriction as before when you 
+painfully scraped two hundred a year together, you find you have 
+spent, and you cannot well stop spending, a far larger sum; and 
+this expense can only be supported by a certain production.  
+However, I am off work this month, and occupy myself instead in 
+weeding my cacao, paper chases, and the like.  I may tell you, my 
+average of work in favourable circumstances is far greater than you 
+suppose:  from six o'clock till eleven at latest, and often till 
+twelve, and again in the afternoon from two to four.  My hand is 
+quite destroyed, as you may perceive, to-day to a really unusual 
+extent.  I can sometimes write a decent fist still; but I have just 
+returned with my arms all stung from three hours' work in the 
+cacao. - Yours, etc.,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO JAMES PAYN
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, UPOLU, SAMOA [AUGUST 11, 1894].
+
+MY DEAR JAMES PAYN, - I hear from Lang that you are unwell, and it 
+reminds me of two circumstances:  First, that it is a very long 
+time since you had the exquisite pleasure of hearing from me; and 
+second, that I have been very often unwell myself, and sometimes 
+had to thank you for a grateful anodyne.
+
+They are not good, the circumstances, to write an anodyne letter.  
+The hills and my house at less than (boom) a minute's interval 
+quake with thunder; and though I cannot hear that part of it, 
+shells are falling thick into the fort of Luatuanu'u (boom).  It is 
+my friends of the CURACOA, the FALKE, and the BUSSARD bombarding 
+(after all these - boom - months) the rebels of Atua.  (Boom-boom.)  
+It is most distracting in itself; and the thought of the poor 
+devils in their fort (boom) with their bits of rifles far from 
+pleasant.  (Boom-boom.)  You can see how quick it goes, and I'll 
+say no more about Mr. Bow-wow, only you must understand the 
+perpetual accompaniment of this discomfortable sound, and make 
+allowances for the value of my copy.  It is odd, though, I can well 
+remember, when the Franco-Prussian war began, and I was in Eilean 
+Earraid, far enough from the sound of the loudest cannonade, I 
+could HEAR the shots fired, and I felt the pang in my breast of a 
+man struck.  It was sometimes so distressing, so instant, that I 
+lay in the heather on the top of the island, with my face hid, 
+kicking my heels for agony.  And now, when I can hear the actual 
+concussion of the air and hills, when I KNOW personally the people 
+who stand exposed to it, I am able to go on TANT BIEN QUE MAL with 
+a letter to James Payn!  The blessings of age, though mighty small, 
+are tangible.  I have heard a great deal of them since I came into 
+the world, and now that I begin to taste of them - Well!  But this 
+is one, that people do get cured of the excess of sensibility; and 
+I had as lief these people were shot at as myself - or almost, for 
+then I should have some of the fun, such as it is.
+
+You are to conceive me, then, sitting in my little gallery room, 
+shaken by these continual spasms of cannon, and with my eye more or 
+less singly fixed on the imaginary figure of my dear James Payn.  I 
+try to see him in bed; no go.  I see him instead jumping up in his 
+room in Waterloo Place (where EX HYPOTHESI he is not), sitting on 
+the table, drawing out a very black briar-root pipe, and beginning 
+to talk to a slim and ill-dressed visitor in a voice that is good 
+to hear and with a smile that is pleasant to see.  (After a little 
+more than half an hour, the voice that was ill to hear has ceased, 
+the cannonade is over.)  And I am thinking how I can get an 
+answering smile wafted over so many leagues of land and water, and 
+can find no way.
+
+I have always been a great visitor of the sick; and one of the sick 
+I visited was W. E. Henley, which did not make very tedious visits, 
+so I'll not get off much purgatory for them.  That was in the 
+Edinburgh Infirmary, the old one, the true one, with Georgius 
+Secundus standing and pointing his toe in a niche of the facade; 
+and a mighty fine building it was!  And I remember one winter's 
+afternoon, in that place of misery, that Henley and I chanced to 
+fall in talk about James Payn himself.  I am wishing you could have 
+heard that talk!  I think that would make you smile.  We had mixed 
+you up with John Payne, for one thing, and stood amazed at your 
+extraordinary, even painful, versatility; and for another, we found 
+ourselves each students so well prepared for examinations on the 
+novels of the real Mackay.  Perhaps, after all, this is worth 
+something in life - to have given so much pleasure to a pair so 
+different in every way as were Henley and I, and to be talked of 
+with so much interest by two such (beg pardon) clever lads!
+
+The cheerful Lang has neglected to tell me what is the matter with 
+you; so, I'm sorry to say, I am cut off from all the customary 
+consolations.  I can't say, 'Think how much worse it would be if 
+you had a broken leg!' when you may have the crushing repartee up 
+your sleeve, 'But it is my leg that is broken.'  This is a pity.  
+But there are consolations.  You are an Englishman (I believe); you 
+are a man of letters; you have never been made C.B.; your hair was 
+not red; you have played cribbage and whist; you did not play 
+either the fiddle or the banjo; you were never an aesthete; you 
+never contributed to -'S JOURNAL; your name is not Jabez Balfour; 
+you are totally unconnected with the Army and Navy departments; I 
+understand you to have lived within your income - why, cheer up! 
+here are many legitimate causes of congratulation.  I seem to be 
+writing an obituary notice.  ABSIT OMEN!  But I feel very sure that 
+these considerations will have done you more good than medicine.
+
+By the by, did you ever play piquet?  I have fallen a victim to 
+this debilitating game.  It is supposed to be scientific; God save 
+the mark, what self-deceivers men are!  It is distinctly less so 
+than cribbage.  But how fascinating!  There is such material 
+opulence about it, such vast ambitions may be realised - and are 
+not; it may be called the Monte Cristo of games.  And the thrill 
+with which you take five cards partakes of the nature of lust - and 
+you draw four sevens and a nine, and the seven and nine of a suit 
+that you discarded, and O! but the world is a desert!  You may see 
+traces of discouragement in my letter:  all due to piquet!  There 
+has been a disastrous turn of the luck against me; a month or two 
+ago I was two thousand ahead; now, and for a week back, I have been 
+anything from four thousand eight hundred to five thousand two 
+hundred astern.  If I have a sixieme, my beast of a partner has a 
+septieme; and if I have three aces, three kings, three queens, and 
+three knaves (excuse the slight exaggeration), the devil holds 
+quatorze of tens! - I remain, my dear James Payn, your sincere and 
+obliged friend - old friend let me say,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO MISS MIDDLETON
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, SEPTEMBER 9, 1894.
+
+DEAR MISS MIDDLETON, - Your letter has been like the drawing up of 
+a curtain.  Of course I remember you very well, and the Skye 
+terrier to which you refer - a heavy, dull, fatted, graceless 
+creature he grew up to be - was my own particular pet.  It may 
+amuse you, perhaps, as much as 'The Inn' amused me, if I tell you 
+what made this dog particularly mine.  My father was the natural 
+god of all the dogs in our house, and poor Jura took to him of 
+course.  Jura was stolen, and kept in prison somewhere for more 
+than a week, as I remember.  When he came back Smeoroch had come 
+and taken my father's heart from him.  He took his stand like a 
+man, and positively never spoke to my father again from that day 
+until the day of his death.  It was the only sign of character he 
+ever showed.  I took him up to my room and to be my dog in 
+consequence, partly because I was sorry for him, and partly because 
+I admired his dignity in misfortune.
+
+With best regards and thanks for having reminded me of so many 
+pleasant days, old acquaintances, dead friends, and - what is 
+perhaps as pathetic as any of them - dead dogs, I remain, yours 
+truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO A. CONAN DOYLE
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, SEPTEMBER 9, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR CONAN DOYLE, - If you found anything to entertain you in my 
+TREASURE ISLAND article, it may amuse you to know that you owe it 
+entirely to yourself.  YOUR 'First Book' was by some accident read 
+aloud one night in my Baronial 'All.  I was consumedly amused by 
+it, so was the whole family, and we proceeded to hunt up back 
+IDLERS and read the whole series.  It is a rattling good series, 
+even people whom you would not expect came in quite the proper tone 
+- Miss Braddon, for instance, who was really one of the best where 
+all are good - or all but one! ...  In short, I fell in love with 
+'The First Book' series, and determined that it should be all our 
+first books, and that I could not hold back where the white plume 
+of Conan Doyle waved gallantly in the front.  I hope they will 
+republish them, though it's a grievous thought to me that that 
+effigy in the German cap - likewise the other effigy of the noisome 
+old man with the long hair, telling indelicate stories to a couple 
+of deformed negresses in a rancid shanty full of wreckage - should 
+be perpetuated.  I may seem to speak in pleasantry - it is only a 
+seeming - that German cap, sir, would be found, when I come to die, 
+imprinted on my heart.  Enough - my heart is too full.  Adieu. - 
+Yours very truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+
+(in a German cap, damn 'em!)
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+
+[VAILIMA, SEPTEMBER 1894.]
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES, - . . . Well, there is no more Edmund Baxter now; 
+and I think I may say I know how you feel.  He was one of the best, 
+the kindest, and the most genial men I ever knew.  I shall always 
+remember his brisk, cordial ways and the essential goodness which 
+he showed me whenever we met with gratitude.  And the always is 
+such a little while now!  He is another of the landmarks gone; when 
+it comes to my own turn to lay my weapons down, I shall do so with 
+thankfulness and fatigue; and whatever be my destiny afterward, I 
+shall be glad to lie down with my fathers in honour.  It is human 
+at least, if not divine.  And these deaths make me think of it with 
+an ever greater readiness.  Strange that you should be beginning a 
+new life, when I, who am a little your junior, am thinking of the 
+end of mine.  But I have had hard lines; I have been so long 
+waiting for death, I have unwrapped my thoughts from about life so 
+long, that I have not a filament left to hold by; I have done my 
+fiddling so long under Vesuvius, that I have almost forgotten to 
+play, and can only wait for the eruption, and think it long of 
+coming.  Literally, no man has more wholly outlived life than I.  
+And still it's good fun.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO R. A. M. STEVENSON
+
+
+
+[VAILIMA, SEPTEMBER 1894.]
+
+DEAR BOB, - You are in error about the Picts.  They were a Gaelic 
+race, spoke a Celtic tongue, and we have no evidence that I know of 
+that they were blacker than other Celts.  The Balfours, I take it, 
+were plainly Celts; their name shows it - the 'cold croft,' it 
+means; so does their country.  Where the BLACK Scotch come from 
+nobody knows; but I recognise with you the fact that the whole of 
+Britain is rapidly and progressively becoming more pigmented; 
+already in one man's life I can decidedly trace a difference in the 
+children about a school door.  But colour is not an essential part 
+of a man or a race.  Take my Polynesians, an Asiatic people 
+probably from the neighbourhood of the Persian gulf.  They range 
+through any amount of shades, from the burnt hue of the Low 
+Archipelago islander, which seems half negro, to the 'bleached' 
+pretty women of the Marquesas (close by on the map), who come out 
+for a festival no darker than an Italian; their colour seems to 
+vary directly with the degree of exposure to the sun.  And, as with 
+negroes, the babes are born white; only it should seem a LITTLE 
+SACK of pigment at the lower part of the spine, which presently 
+spreads over the whole field.  Very puzzling.  But to return.  The 
+Picts furnish to-day perhaps a third of the population of Scotland, 
+say another third for Scots and Britons, and the third for Norse 
+and Angles is a bad third.  Edinburgh was a Pictish place.  But the 
+fact is, we don't know their frontiers.  Tell some of your 
+journalist friends with a good style to popularise old Skene; or 
+say your prayers, and read him for yourself; he was a Great 
+Historian, and I was his blessed clerk, and did not know it; and 
+you will not be in a state of grace about the Picts till you have 
+studied him.  J. Horne Stevenson (do you know him?) is working this 
+up with me, and the fact is - it's not interesting to the public - 
+but it's interesting, and very interesting, in itself, and just now 
+very embarrassing - this rural parish supplied Glasgow with such a 
+quantity of Stevensons in the beginning of last century!  There is 
+just a link wanting; and we might be able to go back to the 
+eleventh century, always undistinguished, but clearly traceable.  
+When I say just a link, I guess I may be taken to mean a dozen.  
+What a singular thing is this undistinguished perpetuation of a 
+family throughout the centuries, and the sudden bursting forth of 
+character and capacity that began with our grandfather!  But as I 
+go on in life, day by day, I become more of a bewildered child; I 
+cannot get used to this world, to procreation, to heredity, to 
+sight, to hearing; the commonest things are a burthen.  The prim 
+obliterated polite face of life, and the broad, bawdy, and 
+orgiastic - or maenadic - foundations, form a spectacle to which no 
+habit reconciles me; and 'I could wish my days to be bound each to 
+each' by the same open-mouthed wonder.  They ARE anyway, and 
+whether I wish it or not.
+
+I remember very well your attitude to life, this conventional 
+surface of it.  You had none of that curiosity for the social stage 
+directions, the trivial FICELLES of the business; it is simian, but 
+that is how the wild youth of man is captured; you wouldn't 
+imitate, hence you kept free - a wild dog, outside the kennel - and 
+came dam' near starving for your pains.  The key to the business is 
+of course the belly; difficult as it is to keep that in view in the 
+zone of three miraculous meals a day in which we were brought up.  
+Civilisation has become reflex with us; you might think that hunger 
+was the name of the best sauce; but hunger to the cold solitary 
+under a bush of a rainy night is the name of something quite 
+different.  I defend civilisation for the thing it is, for the 
+thing it has COME to be, the standpoint of a real old Tory.  My 
+ideal would be the Female Clan.  But how can you turn these 
+crowding dumb multitudes BACK?  They don't do anything BECAUSE; 
+they do things, write able articles, stitch shoes, dig, from the 
+purely simian impulse.  Go and reason with monkeys!
+
+No, I am right about Jean Lillie.  Jean Lillie, our double great-
+grandmother, the daughter of David Lillie, sometime Deacon of the 
+Wrights, married, first, Alan Stevenson, who died May 26, 1774, 'at 
+Santt Kittes of a fiver,' by whom she had Robert Stevenson, born 
+8th June 1772; and, second, in May or June 1787, Thomas Smith, a 
+widower, and already the father of our grandmother.  This 
+improbable double connection always tends to confuse a student of 
+the family, Thomas Smith being doubly our great-grandfather.
+
+I looked on the perpetuation of our honoured name with veneration.  
+My mother collared one of the photos, of course; the other is stuck 
+up on my wall as the chief of our sept.  Do you know any of the 
+Gaelic-Celtic sharps? you might ask what the name means.  It 
+puzzles me.  I find a M'STEIN and a MACSTEPHANE; and our own great-
+grandfather always called himself Steenson, though he wrote it 
+Stevenson.  There are at least three PLACES called Stevenson - 
+STEVENSON in Cunningham, STEVENSON in Peebles, and STEVENSON in 
+Haddington.  And it was not the Celtic trick, I understand, to call 
+places after people.  I am going to write to Sir Herbert Maxwell 
+about the name, but you might find some one.
+
+Get the Anglo-Saxon heresy out of your head; they superimposed 
+their language, they scarce modified the race; only in Berwickshire 
+and Roxburgh have they very largely affected the place names.  The 
+Scandinavians did much more to Scotland than the Angles.  The 
+Saxons didn't come.
+
+Enough of this sham antiquarianism.  Yes, it is in the matter of 
+the book, of course, that collaboration shows; as for the manner, 
+it is superficially all mine, in the sense that the last copy is 
+all in my hand.  Lloyd did not even put pen to paper in the Paris 
+scenes or the Barbizon scene; it was no good; he wrote and often 
+rewrote all the rest; I had the best service from him on the 
+character of Nares.  You see, we had been just meeting the man, and 
+his memory was full of the man's words and ways.  And Lloyd is an 
+impressionist, pure and simple.  The great difficulty of 
+collaboration is that you can't explain what you mean.  I know what 
+kind of effect I mean a character to give - what kind of TACHE he 
+is to make; but how am I to tell my collaborator in words?  Hence 
+it was necessary to say, 'Make him So-and-so'; and this was all 
+right for Nares and Pinkerton and Loudon Dodd, whom we both knew, 
+but for Bellairs, for instance - a man with whom I passed ten 
+minutes fifteen years ago - what was I to say? and what could Lloyd 
+do?  I, as a personal artist, can begin a character with only a 
+haze in my head, but how if I have to translate the haze into words 
+before I begin?  In our manner of collaboration (which I think the 
+only possible - I mean that of one person being responsible, and 
+giving the COUP DE POUCE to every part of the work) I was spared 
+the obviously hopeless business of trying to explain to my 
+collaborator what STYLE I wished a passage to be treated in.  These 
+are the times that illustrate to a man the inadequacy of spoken 
+language.  Now - to be just to written language - I can (or could) 
+find a language for my every mood, but how could I TELL any one 
+beforehand what this effect was to be, which it would take every 
+art that I possessed, and hours and hours of deliberate labour and 
+selection and rejection, to produce?  These are the impossibilities 
+of collaboration.  Its immediate advantage is to focus two minds 
+together on the stuff, and to produce in consequence an 
+extraordinarily greater richness of purview, consideration, and 
+invention.  The hardest chapter of all was 'Cross Questions and 
+Crooked Answers.'  You would not believe what that cost us before 
+it assumed the least unity and colour.  Lloyd wrote it at least 
+thrice, and I at least five times - this is from memory.  And was 
+that last chapter worth the trouble it cost?  Alas, that I should 
+ask the question!  Two classes of men - the artist and the 
+educationalist - are sworn, on soul and conscience, not to ask it.  
+You get an ordinary, grinning, red-headed boy, and you have to 
+educate him.  Faith supports you; you give your valuable hours, the 
+boy does not seem to profit, but that way your duty lies, for which 
+you are paid, and you must persevere.  Education has always seemed 
+to me one of the few possible and dignified ways of life.  A 
+sailor, a shepherd, a schoolmaster - to a less degree, a soldier - 
+and (I don't know why, upon my soul, except as a sort of 
+schoolmaster's unofficial assistant, and a kind of acrobat in 
+tights) an artist, almost exhaust the category.
+
+If I had to begin again - I know not - SI JEUNESSE SAVAIT, SI 
+VIEILLESSE POUVAIT . . . I know not at all - I believe I should try 
+to honour Sex more religiously.  The worst of our education is that 
+Christianity does not recognise and hallow Sex.  It looks askance 
+at it, over its shoulder, oppressed as it is by reminiscences of 
+hermits and Asiatic self-tortures.  It is a terrible hiatus in our 
+modern religions that they cannot see and make venerable that which 
+they ought to see first and hallow most.  Well, it is so; I cannot 
+be wiser than my generation.
+
+But no doubt there is something great in the half-success that has 
+attended the effort of turning into an emotional religion, Bald 
+Conduct, without any appeal, or almost none, to the figurative, 
+mysterious, and constitutive facts of life.  Not that conduct is 
+not constitutive, but dear! it's dreary!  On the whole, conduct is 
+better dealt with on the cast-iron 'gentleman' and duty formula, 
+with as little fervour and poetry as possible; stoical and short.
+
+. . . There is a new something or other in the wind, which 
+exercises me hugely:  anarchy, - I mean, anarchism.  People who 
+(for pity's sake) commit dastardly murders very basely, die like 
+saints, and leave beautiful letters behind 'em (did you see 
+Vaillant to his daughter? it was the New Testament over again); 
+people whose conduct is inexplicable to me, and yet their spiritual 
+life higher than that of most.  This is just what the early 
+Christians must have seemed to the Romans.  Is this, then, a new 
+DRIVE among the monkeys?  Mind you, Bob, if they go on being 
+martyred a few years more, the gross, dull, not unkindly bourgeois 
+may get tired or ashamed or afraid of going on martyring; and the 
+anarchists come out at the top just like the early Christians.  
+That is, of course, they will step into power as a PERSONNEL, but 
+God knows what they may believe when they come to do so; it can't 
+be stranger or more improbable than what Christianity had come to 
+be by the same time.
+
+Your letter was easily read, the pagination presented no 
+difficulty, and I read it with much edification and gusto.  To look 
+back, and to stereotype one bygone humour - what a hopeless thing!  
+The mind runs ever in a thousand eddies like a river between 
+cliffs.  You (the ego) are always spinning round in it, east, west, 
+north, and south.  You are twenty years old, and forty, and five, 
+and the next moment you are freezing at an imaginary eighty; you 
+are never the plain forty-four that you should be by dates.  (The 
+most philosophical language is the Gaelic, which has NO PRESENT 
+TENSE - and the most useless.)  How, then, to choose some former 
+age, and stick there?
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO SIR HERBERT MAXWELL
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, SEPTEMBER 10, 1894.
+
+DEAR SIR HERBERT MAXWELL, - I am emboldened by reading your very 
+interesting Rhind Lectures to put to you a question:  What is my 
+name, Stevenson?
+
+I find it in the forms Stevinetoun, Stevensoune, Stevensonne, 
+Stenesone, Stewinsoune, M'Stein, and MacStephane.  My family, and 
+(as far as I can gather) the majority of the inglorious clan, 
+hailed from the borders of Cunningham and Renfrew, and the upper 
+waters of the Clyde.  In the Barony of Bothwell was the seat of the 
+laird Stevenson of Stevenson; but, as of course you know, there is 
+a parish in Cunningham and places in Peebles and Haddington bearing 
+the same name.
+
+If you can at all help me, you will render me a real service which 
+I wish I could think of some manner to repay. - Believe me, yours 
+truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+P.S. - I should have added that I have perfect evidence before me 
+that (for some obscure reason) Stevenson was a favourite alias with 
+the M'Gregors.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
+
+
+
+[VAILIMA], OCTOBER 8TH 1894.
+
+MY DEAR CUMMY, - So I hear you are ailing?  Think shame to 
+yourself!  So you think there is nothing better to be done with 
+time than that? and be sure we can all do much ourselves to decide 
+whether we are to be ill or well! like a man on the gymnastic bars.  
+We are all pretty well.  As for me, there is nothing the matter 
+with me in the world, beyond the disgusting circumstance that I am 
+not so young as once I was.  Lloyd has a gymnastic machine, and 
+practises upon it every morning for an hour:  he is beginning to be 
+a kind of young Samson.  Austin grows fat and brown, and gets on 
+not so ill with his lessons, and my mother is in great price.  We 
+are having knock-me-down weather for heat; I never remember it so 
+hot before, and I fancy it means we are to have a hurricane again 
+this year, I think; since we came here, we have not had a single 
+gale of wind!  The Pacific is but a child to the North Sea; but 
+when she does get excited, and gets up and girds herself, she can 
+do something good.  We have had a very interesting business here.  
+I helped the chiefs who were in prison; and when they were set 
+free, what should they do but offer to make a part of my road for 
+me out of gratitude?  Well, I was ashamed to refuse, and the trumps 
+dug my road for me, and put up this inscription on a board:-
+
+'CONSIDERING THE GREAT LOVE OF HIS EXCELLENCY TUSITALA IN HIS 
+LOVING CARE OF US IN OUR TRIBULATION IN THE PRISON WE HAVE MADE 
+THIS GREAT GIFT; IT SHALL NEVER BE MUDDY, IT SHALL GO ON FOR EVER, 
+THIS ROAD THAT WE HAVE DUG!'  We had a great feast when it was 
+done, and I read them a kind of lecture, which I dare say Auntie 
+will have, and can let you see.  Weel, guid bye to ye, and joy be 
+wi' ye!  I hae nae time to say mair.  They say I'm gettin' FAT - a 
+fact! - Your laddie, with all love,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO JAMES PAYN
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, NOV. 4, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR JAMES PAYN, - I am asked to relate to you a little incident 
+of domestic life at Vailima.  I had read your GLEAMS OF MEMORY, No. 
+1; it then went to my wife, to Osbourne, to the cousin that is 
+within my gates, and to my respected amanuensis, Mrs. Strong.  
+Sunday approached.  In the course of the afternoon I was attracted 
+to the great 'all - the winders is by Vanderputty, which upon 
+entering I beheld a memorable scene.  The floor was bestrewn with 
+the forms of midshipmen from the CURACOA - 'boldly say a wilderness 
+of gunroom' - and in the midst of this sat Mrs. Strong throned on 
+the sofa and reading aloud GLEAMS OF MEMORY.  They had just come 
+the length of your immortal definition of boyhood in the concrete, 
+and I had the pleasure to see the whole party dissolve under its 
+influence with inextinguishable laughter.  I thought this was not 
+half bad for arthritic gout!  Depend upon it, sir, when I go into 
+the arthritic gout business, I shall be done with literature, or at 
+least with the funny business.  It is quite true I have my 
+battlefields behind me.  I have done perhaps as much work as 
+anybody else under the most deplorable conditions.  But two things 
+fall to be noticed:  In the first place, I never was in actual 
+pain; and in the second, I was never funny.  I'll tell you the 
+worst day that I remember.  I had a haemorrhage, and was not 
+allowed to speak; then, induced by the devil, or an errant doctor, 
+I was led to partake of that bowl which neither cheers nor 
+inebriates - the castor-oil bowl.  Now, when castor-oil goes right, 
+it is one thing; but when it goes wrong, it is another.  And it 
+went WRONG with me that day.  The waves of faintness and nausea 
+succeeded each other for twelve hours, and I do feel a legitimate 
+pride in thinking that I stuck to my work all through and wrote a 
+good deal of Admiral Guinea (which I might just as well not have 
+written for all the reward it ever brought me) in spite of the 
+barbarous bad conditions.  I think that is my great boast; and it 
+seems a little thing alongside of your GLEAMS OF MEMORY illustrated 
+by spasms of arthritic gout.  We really should have an order of 
+merit in the trade of letters.  For valour, Scott would have had 
+it; Pope too; myself on the strength of that castor-oil; and James 
+Payn would be a Knight Commander.  The worst of it is, though Lang 
+tells me you exhibit the courage of Huish, that not even an order 
+can alleviate the wretched annoyance of the business.  I have 
+always said that there is nothing like pain; toothache, dumb-ague, 
+arthritic gout, it does not matter what you call it, if the screw 
+is put upon the nerves sufficiently strong, there is nothing left 
+in heaven or in earth that can interest the sufferer.  Still, even 
+to this there is the consolation that it cannot last for ever.  
+Either you will be relieved and have a good hour again before the 
+sun goes down, or else you will be liberated.  It is something 
+after all (although not much) to think that you are leaving a brave 
+example; that other literary men love to remember, as I am sure 
+they will love to remember, everything about you - your sweetness, 
+your brightness, your helpfulness to all of us, and in particular 
+those one or two really adequate and noble papers which you have 
+been privileged to write during these last years. - With the 
+heartiest and kindest good-will, I remain, yours ever,
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO LIEUTENANT EELES
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, NOVEMBER 24, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR EELES, - The hand, as you will perceive (and also the 
+spelling!), is Teuila's, but the scrannel voice is what remains of 
+Tusitala's.  First of all, for business.  When you go to London you 
+are to charter a hansom cab and proceed to the Museum.  It is 
+particular fun to do this on Sundays when the Monument is shut up.  
+Your cabman expostulates with you, you persist.  The cabman drives 
+up in front of the closed gates and says, 'I told you so, sir.'  
+You breathe in the porter's ears the mystic name of COLVIN, and he 
+immediately unfolds the iron barrier.  You drive in, and doesn't 
+your cabman think you're a swell.  A lord mayor is nothing to it.  
+Colvin's door is the only one in the eastern gable of the building.  
+Send in your card to him with 'From R. L. S.' in the corner, and 
+the machinery will do the rest.  Henry James's address is 34 De 
+Vere Mansions West.  I cannot remember where the place is; I cannot 
+even remember on which side of the park.  But it's one of those big 
+Cromwell Road-looking deserted thoroughfares out west in Kensington 
+or Bayswater, or between the two; and anyway, Colvin will be able 
+to put you on the direct track for Henry James.  I do not send 
+formal introductions, as I have taken the liberty to prepare both 
+of them for seeing you already.
+
+Hoskyn is staying with us.
+
+It is raining dismally.  The Curacoa track is hardly passable, but 
+it must be trod to-morrow by the degenerate feet of their successor 
+the Wallaroos.  I think it a very good account of these last that 
+we don't think them either deformed or habitual criminals - they 
+seem to be a kindly lot.
+
+The doctor will give you all the gossip.  I have preferred in this 
+letter to stick to the strictly solid and necessary.  With kind 
+messages from all in the house to all in the wardroom, all in the 
+gunroom, and (may we dare to breathe it) to him who walks abaft, 
+believe me, my dear Eeles, yours ever,
+
+R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO SIR HERBERT MAXWELL
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, DECEMBER 1, 1894.
+
+DEAR SIR HERBERT, - Thank you very much for your long and kind 
+letter.  I shall certainly take your advice and call my cousin, the 
+Lyon King, into council.  It is certainly a very interesting 
+subject, though I don't suppose it can possibly lead to anything, 
+this connection between the Stevensons and M'Gregors.  Alas! your 
+invitation is to me a mere derision.  My chances of visiting Heaven 
+are about as valid as my chances of visiting Monreith.  Though I 
+should like well to see you, shrunken into a cottage, a literary 
+Lord of Ravenscraig.  I suppose it is the inevitable doom of all 
+those who dabble in Scotch soil; but really your fate is the more 
+blessed.  I cannot conceive anything more grateful to me, or more 
+amusing or more picturesque, than to live in a cottage outside your 
+own park-walls. - With renewed thanks, believe me, dear Sir 
+Herbert, yours very truly,
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO ANDREW LANG
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, DECEMBER 1, 1894.
+
+MY DEAR LANG, - For the portrait of Braxfield, much thanks!  It is 
+engraved from the same Raeburn portrait that I saw in '76 or '77 
+with so extreme a gusto that I have ever since been Braxfield's 
+humble servant, and am now trying, as you know, to stick him into a 
+novel.  Alas! one might as well try to stick in Napoleon.  The 
+picture shall be framed and hung up in my study.  Not only as a 
+memento of you, but as a perpetual encouragement to do better with 
+his Lordship.  I have not yet received the transcripts.  They must 
+be very interesting.  Do you know, I picked up the other day an old 
+LONGMAN'S, where I found an article of yours that I had missed, 
+about Christie's?  I read it with great delight.  The year ends 
+with us pretty much as it began, among wars and rumours of wars, 
+and a vast and splendid exhibition of official incompetence. - 
+Yours ever,
+
+R. L. STEVENSON.
+
+
+
+Letter:  TO EDMUND GOSSE
+
+
+
+VAILIMA, SAMOA, DECEMBER 1, 1894.
+
+I AM afraid, MY DEAR WEG, that this must be the result of bribery 
+and corruption!  The volume to which the dedication stands as 
+preface seems to me to stand alone in your work; it is so natural, 
+so personal, so sincere, so articulate in substance, and what you 
+always were sure of - so rich in adornment.
+
+Let me speak first of the dedication.  I thank you for it from the 
+heart.  It is beautifully said, beautifully and kindly felt; and I 
+should be a churl indeed if I were not grateful, and an ass if I 
+were not proud.  I remember when Symonds dedicated a book to me; I 
+wrote and told him of 'the pang of gratified vanity' with which I 
+had read it.  The pang was present again, but how much more sober 
+and autumnal - like your volume.  Let me tell you a story, or 
+remind you of a story.  In the year of grace something or other, 
+anything between '76 and '78 I mentioned to you in my usual 
+autobiographical and inconsiderate manner that I was hard up.  You 
+said promptly that you had a balance at your banker's, and could 
+make it convenient to let me have a cheque, and I accepted and got 
+the money - how much was it? - twenty or perhaps thirty pounds?  I 
+know not - but it was a great convenience.  The same evening, or 
+the next day, I fell in conversation (in my usual autobiographical 
+and . . . see above) with a denizen of the Savile Club, name now 
+gone from me, only his figure and a dim three-quarter view of his 
+face remaining.  To him I mentioned that you had given me a loan, 
+remarking easily that of course it didn't matter to you.  Whereupon 
+he read me a lecture, and told me how it really stood with you 
+financially.  He was pretty serious; fearing, as I could not help 
+perceiving, that I should take too light a view of the 
+responsibility and the service (I was always thought too light - 
+the irresponsible jester - you remember.  O, QUANTUM MUTATUS AB 
+ILLO!)  If I remember rightly, the money was repaid before the end 
+of the week - or, to be more exact and a trifle pedantic, the 
+sennight - but the service has never been forgotten; and I send you 
+back this piece of ancient history, CONSULE PLANCO, as a salute for 
+your dedication, and propose that we should drink the health of the 
+nameless one, who opened my eyes as to the true nature of what you 
+did for me on that occasion.
+
+But here comes my Amanuensis, so we'll get on more swimmingly now.  
+You will understand perhaps that what so particularly pleased me in 
+the new volume, what seems to me to have so personal and original a 
+note, are the middle-aged pieces in the beginning.  The whole of 
+them, I may say, though I must own an especial liking to -
+
+
+'I yearn not for the fighting fate,
+That holds and hath achieved;
+I live to watch and meditate
+And dream - and be deceived.'
+
+
+You take the change gallantly.  Not I, I must confess.  It is all 
+very well to talk of renunciation, and of course it has to be done.  
+But, for my part, give me a roaring toothache!  I do like to be 
+deceived and to dream, but I have very little use for either 
+watching or meditation.  I was not born for age.  And, curiously 
+enough, I seem to see a contrary drift in my work from that which 
+is so remarkable in yours.  You are going on sedately travelling 
+through your ages, decently changing with the years to the proper 
+tune.  And here am I, quite out of my true course, and with nothing 
+in my foolish elderly head but love-stories.  This must repose upon 
+some curious distinction of temperaments.  I gather from a phrase, 
+boldly autobiographical, that you are - well, not precisely growing 
+thin.  Can that be the difference?
+
+It is rather funny that this matter should come up just now, as I 
+am at present engaged in treating a severe case of middle age in 
+one of my stories - 'The Justice-Clerk.'  The case is that of a 
+woman, and I think that I am doing her justice.  You will be 
+interested, I believe, to see the difference in our treatments.  
+SECRETA VITAE, comes nearer to the case of my poor Kirstie.  Come 
+to think of it, Gosse, I believe the main distinction is that you 
+have a family growing up around you, and I am a childless, rather 
+bitter, very clear-eyed, blighted youth.  I have, in fact, lost the 
+path that makes it easy and natural for you to descend the hill.  I 
+am going at it straight.  And where I have to go down it is a 
+precipice.
+
+I must not forget to give you a word of thanks for AN ENGLISH 
+VILLAGE.  It reminds me strongly of Keats, which is enough to say; 
+and I was particularly pleased with the petulant sincerity of the 
+concluding sentiment.
+
+Well, my dear Gosse, here's wishing you all health and prosperity, 
+as well as to the mistress and the bairns.  May you live long, 
+since it seems as if you would continue to enjoy life.  May you 
+write many more books as good as this one - only there's one thing 
+impossible, you can never write another dedication that can give 
+the same pleasure to the vanished
+
+TUSITALA.
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg eText The Letters of Robert Louis 
+Stevenson, Volume 2
+
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