I am chilled by your description of the man in question, though I had almost argued so much from his cold and undigested volume.  If the republication does not interfere with my publisher, it will not interfere with me; but there, of course, comes the hitch.  I do not know Mr. Bentley, and I fear all publishers like the devil from legend and experience both.  However, when I come to town, we shall, I hope, meet and understand each other as well as author and publisher ever do.  I liked his letters; they seemed hearty, kind, and personal.  Still—I am notedly suspicious of the trade—your news of this republication alarms me.

The best of the present French novelists seems to me, incomparably, Daudet.  Les Rois en Exil comes very near being a masterpiece.  For Zola I have no toleration, though the curious, eminently bourgeois, and eminently French creature has power of a kind.  But I would he were deleted.  I would not give a chapter of old Dumas (meaning himself, not his collaborators) for the whole boiling of the Zolas.  Romance with the smallpox—as the great one: diseased anyway and blackhearted and fundamentally at enmity with joy.

Robert Louis Stevenson.

P.S.—My father was in the old High School the last year, and walked in the procession to the new.  I blush to own I am an Academy boy; it seems modern, and smacks not of the soil.

P.P.S.—I enclose a good joke—at least, I think so—my first efforts at wood engraving printed by my stepson, a boy of thirteen.  I will put in also one of my later attempts.  I have been nine days at the art—observe my progress.

R. L. S.

to Edmund Gosse.

Davos, March 23, 1882.

MY DEAR WEG,—And I had just written the best note to Mrs. Gosse that was in my power.  Most blameable.

I now send (for Mrs. Gosse).

BLACK CANYON.

Also an advertisement of my new appearance as poet (bard, rather) and hartis on wood.  The cut represents the Hero and the Eagle, and is emblematic of Cortez first viewing the Pacific Ocean, which (according to the bard Keats) it took place in Darien.  The cut is much admired for the sentiment of discovery, the manly proportions of the voyager, and the fine impression of tropical scenes and the untrodden WASTE, so aptly rendered by the hartis.

I hope you will be able to decipher this, written at steam speed with a breaking pen, the hotfast postman at my heels.  No excuse, says you.  None, sir, says I, and touches my ’at most civil (extraordinary evolution of pen, now quite doomed—to resume—)  I have not put pen to the Bloody Murder yet.  But it is early on my list; and when once I get to it, three weeks should see the last bloodstain—maybe a fortnight.  For I am beginning to combine an extraordinary laborious slowness while at work, with the most surprisingly quick results in the way of finished manuscripts.  How goes Gray?  Colvin is to do Keats.  My wife is still not well.—Yours ever,

R. L. S.

to Dr. Alexander Japp

[Chalet am Stein, Davos, March 1882.]

MY DEAR DR. JAPP,—You must think me a forgetful rogue, as indeed I am; for I have but now told my publisher to send you a copy of the Familiar Studies.  However, I own I have delayed this letter till I could send you the enclosed.  Remembering the nights at Braemar when we visited the Picture Gallery, I hoped they might amuse you.  You see, we do some publishing hereaway.  I shall hope to see you in town in May.—Always yours faithfully,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

to Dr. Alexander Japp

Châlet Buol, Davos, April 1, 1882.

Symonds was actually dining with us when your letter came, and I communicated your remarks. . . . He is a far better and more interesting thing than any of his books.

The Elephant was my wife’s; so she is proportionately elate you should have picked it out for praise—from a collection, let me add, so replete with the highest qualities of art.

My wicked carcase, as John Knox calls it, holds together wonderfully.  In addition to many other things, and a volume of travel, I find I have written, since December, 90 Cornhill pages of magazine work—essays and stories: 40,000 words, and I am none the worse—I am the better.  I begin to hope I may, if not outlive this wolverine upon my shoulders, at least carry him bravely like Symonds and Alexander Pope.  I begin to take a pride in that hope.

I shall be much interested to see your criticisms; you might perhaps send them to me.  I believe you know that is not dangerous; one folly I have not—I am not touchy under criticism.

Lloyd and my wife both beg to be remembered; and Lloyd sends as a present a work of his own.  I hope you feel flattered; for this is simply the first time he has ever given one away.  I have to buy my own works, I can tell you.—Yours very sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

[Chalet am Stein, Davos, April 1882.]

MY DEAR HENLEY,—I hope and hope for a long letter—soon I hope to be superseded by long talks—and it comes not.  I remember I have never formally thanked you for that hundred quid, nor in general for the introduction to Chatto and Windus, and continue to bury you in copy as if you were my private secretary.  Well, I am not unconscious of it all; but I think least said is often best, generally best; gratitude is a tedious sentiment, it’s not ductile, not dramatic.

If Chatto should take both, cui dedicare?  I am running out of dedikees; if I do, the whole fun of writing is stranded.  Treasure Island, if it comes out, and I mean it shall, of course goes to Lloyd.  Lemme see, I have now dedicated to

W. E. H. [William Ernest Henley].

S. C. [Sidney Colvin].

T. S. [Thomas Stevenson].

Simp. [Sir Walter Simpson].

There remain: C. B., the Williamses—you know they were the parties who stuck up for us about our marriage, and Mrs. W. was my guardian angel, and our Best Man and Bridesmaid rolled in one, and the only third of the wedding party—my sister-in-law, who is booked for Prince Otto—Jenkin I suppose sometime—George Meredith, the only man of genius of my acquaintance, and then I believe I’ll have to take to the dead, the immortal memory business.

Talking of which, Heywood, as a small immortal, an immortalet, claims some attention.  The Woman killed with Kindness is one of the most striking novels—not plays, though it’s more of a play than anything else of his—I ever read.  He had such a sweet, sound soul, the old boy.  The death of the two pirates in Fortune by Sea and Land is a document.  He had obviously been present, and heard Purser and Clinton take death by the beard with similar braggadocios.  Purser and Clinton, names of pirates; Scarlet and Bobbington, names of highwaymen.  He had the touch of names, I think.  No man I ever knew had such a sense, such a tact, for English nomenclature: Rainsforth, Lacy, Audley, Forrest, Acton, Spencer, Frankford—so his names run.

Byron not only wrote Don Juan; he called Joan of Arc ‘a fanatical strumpet.’  These are his words.  I think the double shame, first to a great poet, second to an English noble, passes words.

Here is a strange gossip.—I am yours loquaciously,

R. L. S.

My lungs are said to be in a splendid state.  A cruel examination, an exanimation I may call it, had this brave result.  Taïaut!  Hillo!  Hey!  Stand by!  Avast!  Hurrah!

[Chalet am Stein, Davos, April 9, 1882.]

MY DEAR MOTHER,—Herewith please find belated birthday present.  Fanny has another.

My dear mother, how can I keep up with your breathless changes?   Innerleithen, Cramond, Bridge of Allan, Dunblane, Selkirk.  I lean to Cramond, but I shall be pleased anywhere, any respite from Davos; never mind, it has been a good, though a dear lesson.  Now, with my improved health, if I can pass the summer, I believe I shall be able no more to exceed, no more to draw on you.  It is time I sufficed for myself indeed.  And I believe I can.

I am still far from satisfied about Fanny; she is certainly better, but it is by fits a good deal, and the symptoms continue, which should not be.  I had her persuaded to leave without me this very day (Saturday 8th), but the disclosure of my mismanagement broke up that plan; she would not leave me lest I should mismanage more.  I think this an unfair revenge; but I have been so bothered that I cannot struggle.  All Davos has been drinking our wine.  During the month of March, three litres a day were drunk—O it is too sickening—and that is only a specimen.  It is enough to make any one a misanthrope, but the right thing is to hate the donkey that was duped—which I devoutly do.

R. L. Stevenson.

to Edmund Gosse

[Edinburgh] Sunday [June 1882].

. . . Note turned up, but no gray opuscule, which, however, will probably turn up to-morrow in time to go out with me to Stobo Manse, Peeblesshire, where, if you can make it out, you will be a good soul to pay a visit.  I shall write again about the opuscule; and about Stobo, which I have not seen since I was thirteen, though my memory speaks delightfully of it.

I have been very tired and seedy, or I should have written before, inter alia, to tell you that I had visited my murder place and found living traditions not yet in any printed book; most startling.  I also got photographs taken, but the negatives have not yet turned up.  I lie on the sofa to write this, whence the pencil; having slept yesterdays—1 + 4 + 7½ = 12½ hours and being (9 A.M.) very anxious to sleep again.  The arms of Porpus, quoi!  A poppy gules, etc.

R. L. S.

—Did I say I had seen a verse on two of the Buccaneers?  I did, and ça-y-est.

to Edmund Gosse

Stobo Manse, Peeblesshire [July 1882].

I would shoot you, but I have no bow:
The place is not called Stobs, but Stobo.
As Gallic Kids complain of ‘Bobo,’
I mourn for your mistake of Stobo.

First, we shall be gone in September.  But if you think of coming in August, my mother will hunt for you with pleasure.  We should all be overjoyed—though Stobo it could not be, as it is but a kirk and manse, but possibly somewhere within reach.  Let us know.

Second, I have read your Gray with care.  A more difficult subject I can scarce fancy; it is crushing; yet I think you have managed to shadow forth a man, and a good man too; and honestly, I doubt if I could have done the same.  This may seem egoistic; but you are not such a fool as to think so.  It is the natural expression of real praise.  The book as a whole is readable; your subject peeps every here and there out of the crannies like a shy violet—he could do no more—and his aroma hangs there.

I write to catch a minion of the post.  Hence brevity.  Answer about the house.—Yours affectionately,

R. L S.

to W. E. Henley

DEAR HENLEY, . . . I am not worth an old damn.  I am also crushed by bad news of Symonds; his good lung going; I cannot help reading it as a personal hint; God help us all!  Really I am not very fit for work; but I try, try, and nothing comes of it.

I believe we shall have to leave this place; it is low, damp, and mauchy; the rain it raineth every day; and the glass goes tol-de-rol-de riddle.

Yet it’s a bonny bit; I wish I could live in it, but doubt.  I wish I was well away somewhere else.  I feel like flight some days; honour bright.

I thought this would interest you, so scribbled it down.  I still hope to get more out of him about Hazlitt, though he utterly pooh-poohed the idea of writing H.’s life.  ‘Ma life now,’ he said, ‘there’s been queer things in it.’  He is seventy-nine! but may well last to a hundred!—Yours ever,

R. L S.

Terminus Hotel, Marseilles, October 16, 1882.

SIR,—It has come to my ears that you have lent the authority of your columns to an error.

More than half in pleasantry—and I now think the pleasantry ill-judged—I complained in a note to my New Arabian Nights that some one, who shall remain nameless for me, had borrowed the idea of a story from one of mine.  As if I had not borrowed the ideas of the half of my own!  As if any one who had written a story ill had a right to complain of any other who should have written it better!  I am indeed thoroughly ashamed of the note, and of the principle which it implies.

But it is no mere abstract penitence which leads me to beg a corner of your paper—it is the desire to defend the honour of a man of letters equally known in America and England, of a man who could afford to lend to me and yet be none the poorer; and who, if he would so far condescend, has my free permission to borrow from me all that he can find worth borrowing.

But what is far more monstrous—what argues total ignorance of the man in question—is the idea that James Payn could ever have transgressed the limits of professional propriety.  I may tell his thousands of readers on your side of the Atlantic that there breathes no man of letters more inspired by kindness and generosity to his brethren of the profession, and, to put an end to any possibility of error, I may be allowed to add that I often have recourse, and that I had recourse once more but a few weeks ago, to the valuable practical help which he makes it his pleasure to extend to younger men.

I send a duplicate of this letter to a London weekly; for the mistake, first set forth in your columns, has already reached England, and my wanderings have made me perhaps last of the persons interested to hear a word of it.—I am, etc.,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

to R. A. M. Stevenson

Terminus Hotel, Marseille, Saturday (October 1882).

£48 per annum.

It is called Campagne Defli! query Campagne Debug?  The Campagne Demosquito goes on here nightly, and is very deadly.  Ere we can get installed, we shall be beggared to the door, I see.

I vote for separations; F.’s arrival here, after our separation, was better fun to me than being married was by far.  A separation completed is a most valuable property; worth piles.—Ever your affectionate cousin,

R. L. S.

to Thomas Stevenson

Terminus Hotel, Marseille, le 17th October 1882.

MY DEAR FATHER,—.  We grow, every time we see it, more delighted with our house.  It is five miles out of Marseilles, in a lovely spot, among lovely wooded and cliffy hills—most mountainous in line—far lovelier, to my eyes, than any Alps.  To-day we have been out inventorying; and though a mistral blew, it was delightful in an open cab, and our house with the windows open was heavenly, soft, dry, sunny, southern.  I fear there are fleas—it is called Campagne Defli—and I look forward to tons of insecticide being employed.

I have had to write a letter to the New York Tribune and the Athenæum.  Payn was accused of stealing my stories!  I think I have put things handsomely for him.

Just got a servant! ! !—Ever affectionate son,

R. L. Stevenson.

Our servant is a Muckle Hash of a Weedy!

Campagne Defli, St. Marcel,
Banlieue de Marseille, November 13, 1882.

MY DEAR MOTHER,—Your delightful letters duly arrived this morning.  They were the only good feature of the day, which was not a success.  Fanny was in bed—she begged I would not split upon her, she felt so guilty; but as I believe she is better this evening, and has a good chance to be right again in a day or two, I will disregard her orders.  I do not go back, but do not go forward—or not much.  It is, in one way, miserable—for I can do no work; a very little wood-cutting, the newspapers, and a note about every two days to write, completely exhausts my surplus energy; even Patience I have to cultivate with parsimony.  I see, if I could only get to work, that we could live here with comfort, almost with luxury.  Even as it is, we should be able to get through a considerable time of idleness.  I like the place immensely, though I have seen so little of it—I have only been once outside the gate since I was here!  It puts me in mind of a summer at Prestonpans and a sickly child you once told me of.

Thirty-two years now finished!  My twenty-ninth was in San Francisco, I remember—rather a bleak birthday.  The twenty-eighth was not much better; but the rest have been usually pleasant days in pleasant circumstances.

Love to you and to my father and to Cummy.

From me and Fanny and Wogg.

R. L. S.

to Charles Baxter

DEAR CHARLES,—Thanks for your good letter.  It is true, man, God’s trüth, what ye say about the body Stevison.  The deil himsel, it’s my belief, couldnae get the soul harled oot o’ the creature’s wame, or he had seen the hinder end o’ they proofs.  Ye crack o’ Mæcenas, he’s naebody by you!  He gied the lad Horace a rax forrit by all accounts; but he never gied him proofs like yon.  Horace may hae been a better hand at the clink than Stevison—mind, I’m no sayin’ ‘t—but onyway he was never sae weel prentit.  Damned, but it’s bonny!  Hoo mony pages will there be, think ye?  Stevison maun hae sent ye the feck o’ twenty sangs—fifteen I’se warrant.  Weel, that’ll can make thretty pages, gin ye were to prent on ae side only, whilk wad be perhaps what a man o’ your great idees would be ettlin’ at, man Johnson.  Then there wad be the Pre-face, an’ prose ye ken prents oot langer than po’try at the hinder end, for ye hae to say things in’t.  An’ then there’ll be a title-page and a dedication and an index wi’ the first lines like, and the deil an’ a’.  Man, it’ll be grand.  Nae copies to be given to the Liberys.

Thomson.

to Alison Cunningham

[Nice, February 1883.]

MY DEAR CUMMY,—You must think, and quite justly, that I am one of the meanest rogues in creation.  But though I do not write (which is a thing I hate), it by no means follows that people are out of my mind.  It is natural that I should always think more or less about you, and still more natural that I should think of you when I went back to Nice.  But the real reason why you have been more in my mind than usual is because of some little verses that I have been writing, and that I mean to make a book of; and the real reason of this letter (although I ought to have written to you anyway) is that I have just seen that the book in question must be dedicated to

Alison Cunningham,

Do you know, we came very near sending for you this winter.  If we had not had news that you were ill too, I almost believe we should have done so, we were so much in trouble.

I am now very well; but my wife has had a very, very bad spell, through overwork and anxiety, when I was lost!  I suppose you heard of that.  She sends you her love, and hopes you will write to her, though she no more than I deserves it.  She would add a word herself, but she is too played out.—I am, ever your old boy,

R. L. S.

to W. E. Henley

[Nice, March 1883.]

MY DEAR LAD,—This is to announce to you the MS. of Nursery Verses, now numbering XLVIII. pieces or 599 verses, which, of course, one might augment ad infinitum.

But here is my notion to make all clear.

I do not want a big ugly quarto; my soul sickens at the look of a quarto.  I want a refined octavo, not large—not larger than the Donkey Book, at any price.

The designs should not be in the text, but facing the poem; so that if the artist liked, he might give two pages of design to every poem that turned the leaf, i.e. longer than eight lines, i.e. to twenty-eight out of the forty-six.  I should say he would not use this privilege (?) above five times, and some he might scorn to illustrate at all, so we may say fifty drawings.  I shall come to the drawings next.

But now you see my book of the thickness, since the drawings count two pages, of 180 pages; and since the paper will perhaps be thicker, of near two hundred by bulk.  It is bound in a quiet green with the words in thin gilt.  Its shape is a slender, tall octavo.  And it sells for the publisher’s fancy, and it will be a darling to look at; in short, it would be like one of the original Heine books in type and spacing.

Now for the pictures.  I take another sheet and begin to jot notes for them when my imagination serves: I will run through the book, writing when I have an idea.  There, I have jotted enough to give the artist a notion.  Of course, I don’t do more than contribute ideas, but I will be happy to help in any and every way.  I may as well add another idea; when the artist finds nothing much to illustrate, a good drawing of any object mentioned in the text, were it only a loaf of bread or a candlestick, is a most delightful thing to a young child.  I remember this keenly.

Of course, if the artist insists on a larger form, I must I suppose, bow my head.  But my idea I am convinced is the best, and would make the book truly, not fashionably pretty.

I will add no more to this lest you should want to communicate with the artist; try another sheet.  I wonder how many I’ll keep wandering to.

O I forgot.  As for the title, I think ‘Nursery Verses’ the best.  Poetry is not the strong point of the text, and I shrink from any title that might seem to claim that quality; otherwise we might have ‘Nursery Muses’ or ‘New Songs of Innocence’ (but that were a blasphemy), or ‘Rimes of Innocence’: the last not bad, or—an idea—‘The Jews’ Harp,’ or—now I have it—‘The Penny Whistle.’

THE PENNY WHISTLE:
NURSERY VERSES
BY
Robert Louis Stevenson.
ILLUSTRATED BY — — —

And here we have an excellent frontispiece, of a party playing on a P. W. to a little ring of dancing children.

THE PENNY WHISTLE
is the name for me.

Fool! this is all wrong, here is the true name:—

PENNY WHISTLES
FOR SMALL WHISTLERS.

The second title is queried, it is perhaps better, as simply PENNY WHISTLES.

Nor you, O Penny Whistler, grudge
   That I your instrument debase:
By worse performers still we judge,
   And give that fife a second place!

SUGGESTIONS.

IV. The procession—the child running behind it.  The procession tailing off through the gates of a cloudy city.

IX. Foreign Lands.—This will, I think, want two plates—the child climbing, his first glimpse over the garden wall, with what he sees—the tree shooting higher and higher like the beanstalk, and the view widening.  The river slipping in.  The road arriving in Fairyland.

X. Windy Nights.—The child in bed listening—the horseman galloping.

XII. The child helplessly watching his ship—then he gets smaller, and the doll joyfully comes alive—the pair landing on the island—the ship’s deck with the doll steering and the child firing the penny canon.  Query two plates?  The doll should never come properly alive.

XV. Building of the ship—storing her—Navigation—Tom’s accident, the other child paying no attention.

XXXI. The Wind.—I sent you my notion of already.

XXXVII. Foreign Children.—The foreign types dancing in a jing-a-ring, with the English child pushing in the middle.  The foreign children looking at and showing each other marvels.  The English child at the leeside of a roast of beef.  The English child sitting thinking with his picture-books all round him, and the jing-a-ring of the foreign children in miniature dancing over the picture-books.

XXXIX.  Dear artist, can you do me that?

XLII. The child being started off—the bed sailing, curtains and all, upon the sea—the child waking and finding himself at home; the corner of toilette might be worked in to look like the pier.

XLVII. The lighted part of the room, to be carefully distinguished from my child’s dark hunting grounds.  A shaded lamp.

R. L. S.

Hotel des Iles d’Or, Hyères, Var, March 2, [1883].

MY DEAR MOTHER,—It must be at least a fortnight since we have had a scratch of a pen from you; and if it had not been for Cummy’s letter, I should have feared you were worse again: as it is, I hope we shall hear from you to-day or to-morrow at latest.

Health.

Our news is good: Fanny never got so bad as we feared, and we hope now that this attack may pass off in threatenings.  I am greatly better, have gained flesh, strength, spirits; eat well, walk a good deal, and do some work without fatigue.  I am off the sick list.

Lodging.

We have found a house up the hill, close to the town, an excellent place though very, very little.  If I can get the landlord to agree to let us take it by the month just now, and let our month’s rent count for the year in case we take it on, you may expect to hear we are again installed, and to receive a letter dated thus:—

La Solitude,
      Hyères-les-Palmiers,
            Var.

If the man won’t agree to that, of course I must just give it up, as the house would be dear enough anyway at 2000 f.  However, I hope we may get it, as it is healthy, cheerful, and close to shops, and society, and civilisation.  The garden, which is above, is lovely, and will be cool in summer.  There are two rooms below with a kitchen, and four rooms above, all told.—Ever your affectionate son,

R. L. Stevenson.

Hotel des Iles d’Or, but my address will be Chalet la Solitude,
Hyères-le-Palmiers, Var, France, March 17, 1883.

DEAR SIR,—Your undated favour from Eastbourne came to hand in course of post, and I now hasten to acknowledge its receipt.  We must ask you in future, for the convenience of our business arrangements, to struggle with and tread below your feet this most unsatisfactory and uncommercial habit.  Our Mr. Cassandra is better; our Mr. Wogg expresses himself dissatisfied with our new place of business; when left alone in the front shop, he bawled like a parrot; it is supposed the offices are haunted.

The weather here is greatly improved, and I hope in three days to be in the chalet.  That is, if I get some money to float me there.

I hope you are all right again, and will keep better.  The month of March is past its mid career; it must soon begin to turn toward the lamb; here it has already begun to do so; and I hope milder weather will pick you up.  Wogg has eaten a forpet of rice and milk, his beard is streaming, his eyes wild.  I am besieged by demands of work from America.

The £50 has just arrived; many thanks; I am now at ease.—Ever your affectionate son, pro Cassandra, Wogg and Co.,

R. L. S.

to Mrs. Sitwell

Chalet la Solitude, Hyères, [April 1883].

I am going to make a fortune, it has not yet begun, for I am not yet clear of debt; but as soon as I can, I begin upon the fortune.  I shall begin it with a halfpenny, and it shall end with horses and yachts and all the fun of the fair.  This is the first real grey hair in my character: rapacity has begun to show, the greed of the protuberant guttler.  Well, doubtless, when the hour strikes, we must all guttle and protube.  But it comes hard on one who was always so willow-slender and as careless as the daisies.

Truly I am in excellent spirits.  I have crushed through a financial crisis; Fanny is much better; I am in excellent health, and work from four to five hours a day—from one to two above my average, that is; and we all dwell together and make fortunes in the loveliest house you ever saw, with a garden like a fairy story, and a view like a classical landscape.

Little?  Well, it is not large.  And when you come to see us, you will probably have to bed at the hotel, which is hard by.  But it is Eden, madam, Eden and Beulah and the Delectable Mountains and Eldorado and the Hesperidean Isles and Bimini.

We both look forward, my dear friend, with the greatest eagerness to have you here.  It seems it is not to be this season; but I appoint you with an appointment for next season.  You cannot see us else: remember that.  Till my health has grown solid like an oak-tree, till my fortune begins really to spread its boughs like the same monarch of the woods (and the acorn, ay de mi! is not yet planted), I expect to be a prisoner among the palms.

Both of our loves to your sister and yourself.  As for me, if I am here and happy, I know to whom I owe it; I know who made my way for me in life, if that were all, and I remain, with love, your faithful friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

to Edmund Gosse

Chalet la Solitude, Hyères, [April 1883].

MY DEAR GOSSE,—I am very guilty; I should have written to you long ago; and now, though it must be done, I am so stupid that I can only boldly recapitulate.  A phrase of three members is the outside of my syntax.

First, I liked the Rover better than any of your other verse.  I believe you are right, and can make stories in verse.  The last two stanzas and one or two in the beginning—but the two last above all—I thought excellent.  I suggest a pursuit of the vein.  If you want a good story to treat, get the Memoirs of the Chevalier Johnstone, and do his passage of the Tay; it would be excellent: the dinner in the field, the woman he has to follow, the dragoons, the timid boatmen, the brave lasses.  It would go like a charm; look at it, and you will say you owe me one.

Second, Gilder asking me for fiction, I suddenly took a great resolve, and have packed off to him my new work, The Silverado Squatters.  I do not for a moment suppose he will take it; but pray say all the good words you can for it.  I should be awfully glad to get it taken.  But if it does not mean dibbs at once, I shall be ruined for life.  Pray write soon and beg Gilder your prettiest for a poor gentleman in pecuniary sloughs.

R. L. S.

P.S.—I see I have led you to conceive the Squatters are fiction.  They are not, alas!

to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

Chalet Solitude, May 5, [1883].

MY DEAREST PEOPLE,—I have had a great piece of news.  There has been offered for Treasure Island—how much do you suppose?  I believe it would be an excellent jest to keep the answer till my next letter.  For two cents I would do so.  Shall I?  Anyway, I’ll turn the page first.  No—well—A hundred pounds, all alive, O!  A hundred jingling, tingling, golden, minted quid.  Is not this wonderful?  Add that I have now finished, in draft, the fifteenth chapter of my novel, and have only five before me, and you will see what cause of gratitude I have.

The weather, to look at the per contra sheet, continues vomitable; and Fanny is quite out of sorts.  But, really, with such cause of gladness, I have not the heart to be dispirited by anything.  My child’s verse book is finished, dedication and all, and out of my hands—you may tell Cummy; Silverado is done, too, and cast upon the waters; and this novel so near completion, it does look as if I should support myself without trouble in the future.  If I have only health, I can, I thank God.  It is dreadful to be a great, big man, and not be able to buy bread.

O that this may last!

I have to-day paid my rent for the half year, till the middle of September, and got my lease: why they have been so long, I know not.

I wish you all sorts of good things.

When is our marriage day?—Your loving and ecstatic son,

Treesure Eilaan,

It has been for me a Treasure Island verily.

La Solitude, Hyères, May 8, 1883.

MY DEAR PEOPLE,—I was disgusted to hear my father was not so well.  I have a most troubled existence of work and business.  But the work goes well, which is the great affair.  I meant to have written a most delightful letter; too tired, however, and must stop.  Perhaps I’ll find time to add to it ere post.

I have returned refreshed from eating, but have little time, as Lloyd will go soon with the letters on his way to his tutor, Louis Robert (!!!!), with whom he learns Latin in French, and French, I suppose, in Latin, which seems to me a capital education.  He, Lloyd, is a great bicycler already, and has been long distances; he is most new-fangled over his instrument, and does not willingly converse on other subjects.

Our lovely garden is a prey to snails; I have gathered about a bushel, which, not having the heart to slay, I steal forth withal and deposit near my neighbour’s garden wall.  As a case of casuistry, this presents many points of interest.  I loathe the snails, but from loathing to actual butchery, trucidation of multitudes, there is still a step that I hesitate to take.  What, then, to do with them?  My neighbour’s vineyard, pardy!  It is a rich, villa, pleasure-garden of course; if it were a peasant’s patch, the snails, I suppose, would have to perish.

The weather these last three days has been much better, though it is still windy and unkind.  I keep splendidly well, and am cruelly busy, with mighty little time even for a walk.  And to write at all, under such pressure, must be held to lean to virtue’s side.

My financial prospects are shining.  O if the health will hold, I should easily support myself.—Your ever affectionate son,

R. L. S.

La Solitude, Hyères-les-Palmiers, Var,
[May 20, 1883].

MY DEAR GOSSE,—I enclose the receipt and the corrections.  As for your letter and Gilder’s, I must take an hour or so to think; the matter much importing—to me.  The £40 was a heavenly thing.

I send the MS. by Henley, because he acts for me in all matters, and had the thing, like all my other books, in his detention.  He is my unpaid agent—an admirable arrangement for me, and one that has rather more than doubled my income on the spot.

If I have been long silent, think how long you were so and blush, sir, blush.

I was rendered unwell by the arrival of your cheque, and, like Pepys, ‘my hand still shakes to write of it.’  To this grateful emotion, and not to D.T., please attribute the raggedness of my hand.

This year I should be able to live and keep my family on my own earnings, and that in spite of eight months and more of perfect idleness at the end of last and beginning of this.  It is a sweet thought.

This spot, our garden and our view, are sub-celestial.  I sing daily with my Bunyan, that great bard,

‘I dwell already the next door to Heaven!’

If you could see my roses, and my aloes, and my fig-marigolds, and my olives, and my view over a plain, and my view of certain mountains as graceful as Apollo, as severe as Zeus, you would not think the phrase exaggerated.

It is blowing to-day a hot mistral, which is the devil or a near connection of his.

This to catch the post.—Yours affectionately,

R. L. Stevenson.

La Solitude, Hyères-les-Palmiers, Var, France,
May 21, 1883.

[Hyères, May 1883.]

. . . The influenza has busted me a good deal; I have no spring, and am headachy.  So, as my good Red Lion Counter begged me for another Butcher’s Boy—I turned me to—what thinkest ’ou?—to Tushery, by the mass!  Ay, friend, a whole tale of tushery.  And every tusher tushes me so free, that may I be tushed if the whole thing is worth a tush.  The Black Arrow: A Tale of Tunstall Forest is his name: tush! a poor thing!

Will Treasure Island proofs be coming soon, think you?

I will now make a confession.  It was the sight of your maimed strength and masterfulness that begot John Silver in Treasure Island.  Of course, he is not in any other quality or feature the least like you; but the idea of the maimed man, ruling and dreaded by the sound, was entirely taken from you.

Otto is, as you say, not a thing to extend my public on.  It is queer and a little, little bit free; and some of the parties are immoral; and the whole thing is not a romance, nor yet a comedy; nor yet a romantic comedy; but a kind of preparation of some of the elements of all three in a glass jar.  I think it is not without merit, but I am not always on the level of my argument, and some parts are false, and much of the rest is thin; it is more a triumph for myself than anything else; for I see, beyond it, better stuff.  I have nine chapters ready, or almost ready, for press.  My feeling would be to get it placed anywhere for as much as could be got for it, and rather in the shadow, till one saw the look of it in print.—Ever yours,

Pretty Sick.

La Solitude, Hyères-les-Palmiers, May 1883.

MY DEAR LAD,—The books came some time since, but I have not had the pluck to answer: a shower of small troubles having fallen in, or troubles that may be very large.

I have had to incur a huge vague debt for cleaning sewers; our house was (of course) riddled with hidden cesspools, but that was infallible.  I have the fever, and feel the duty to work very heavy on me at times; yet go it must.  I have had to leave Fontainebleau, when three hours would finish it, and go full-tilt at tushery for a while.  But it will come soon.

I think I can give you a good article on Hokusai; but that is for afterwards; Fontainebleau is first in hand

By the way, my view is to give the Penny Whistles to Crane or Greenaway.  But Crane, I think, is likeliest; he is a fellow who, at least, always does his best.

Shall I ever have money enough to write a play?  O dire necessity!

A word in your ear: I don’t like trying to support myself.  I hate the strain and the anxiety; and when unexpected expenses are foisted on me, I feel the world is playing with false dice.—Now I must Tush, adieu,

An Aching, Fevered, Penny-Journalist.

A lytle Jape of TUSHERIE.

By A. Tusher.

The pleasant river gushes
   Among the meadows green;
At home the author tushes;
   For him it flows unseen.

The Birds among the Bûshes
   May wanton on the spray;
But vain for him who tushes
   The brightness of the day!

The task entirely crushes
   The spirit of the bard:
God pity him who tushes—
   His task is very hard.

The filthy gutter slushes,
   The clouds are full of rain,
But doomed is he who tushes
   To tush and tush again.

At morn with his hair-brushes,
   Still, ‘tush’ he says, and weeps;
At night again he tushes,
   And tushes till he sleeps.

And when at length he pushes
   Beyond the river dark—
‘Las, to the man who tushes,
   ‘Tush’ shall be God’s remark!

to W. E. Henley

[Chalet La Solitude, Hyères, May 1883.]

DEAR HENLEY,—You may be surprised to hear that I am now a great writer of verses; that is, however, so.  I have the mania now like my betters, and faith, if I live till I am forty, I shall have a book of rhymes like Pollock, Gosse, or whom you please.  Really, I have begun to learn some of the rudiments of that trade, and have written three or four pretty enough pieces of octosyllabic nonsense, semi-serious, semi-smiling.  A kind of prose Herrick, divested of the gift of verse, and you behold the Bard.  But I like it.

R. L. S.

Hyères [June 1883].

DEAR LAD,—I was delighted to hear the good news about —.  Bravo, he goes uphill fast.  Let him beware of vanity, and he will go higher; let him be still discontented, and let him (if it might be) see the merits and not the faults of his rivals, and he may swarm at last to the top-gallant.  There is no other way.  Admiration is the only road to excellence; and the critical spirit kills, but envy and injustice are putrefaction on its feet.

Thus far the moralist.  The eager author now begs to know whether you may have got the other Whistles, and whether a fresh proof is to be taken; also whether in that case the dedication should not be printed therewith; Bulk Delights Publishers (original aphorism; to be said sixteen times in succession as a test of sobriety).

Your wild and ravening commands were received; but cannot be obeyed.  And anyway, I do assure you I am getting better every day; and if the weather would but turn, I should soon be observed to walk in hornpipes.  Truly I am on the mend.  I am still very careful.  I have the new dictionary; a joy, a thing of beauty, and—bulk.  I shall be raked i’ the mools before it’s finished; that is the only pity; but meanwhile I sing.

I beg to inform you that I, Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Brashiana and other works, am merely beginning to commence to prepare to make a first start at trying to understand my profession.  O the height and depth of novelty and worth in any art! and O that I am privileged to swim and shoulder through such oceans!  Could one get out of sight of land—all in the blue?  Alas not, being anchored here in flesh, and the bonds of logic being still about us.

And yet I produce nothing, am the author of Brashiana and other works: tiddy-iddity—as if the works one wrote were anything but ‘prentice’s experiments.  Dear reader, I deceive you with husks, the real works and all the pleasure are still mine and incommunicable.  After this break in my work, beginning to return to it, as from light sleep, I wax exclamatory, as you see.

Sursum Corda:

Heave ahead:

Here’s luck.

Art and Blue Heaven,

April and God’s Larks.

Green reeds and the sky-scattering river.

A stately music.

Enter God!

R. L. S.

Ay, but you know, until a man can write that ‘Enter God,’ he has made no art!  None!  Come, let us take counsel together and make some!