A Letter Book Part 22

An infinitely small jest occurs to me in connection with the historic umbrella: and perhaps its infinite smallness attracts me. Would you mind handing it to Rudyard Kipling with the enclosed note?[136] It seems to me fitly to consecrate and commemorate this most absurd episode.

Yours very sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

[_Enclosure_]

This Umbrella purchased in the year 1878 by Robert Louis Stevenson (and faithfully stabled for more than twelve years in the halls of George Saintsbury) is now handed on at the suggestion of the first and by the loyal hands of the second, to Rudyard Kipling.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, GLASGOW.

FOOTNOTES:

[130] Of this _moratorium_ I believe I duly advised R. L. S. and I don't think he objected. There was, if I remember rightly, a further reason for it--that I was living in two places at the time and the subject was not immediately at hand.

[131] Lockhart's (self-given) name in the "_Chaldee MS._" was "the Scorpion that delighteth to sting the faces of men."

[132] Maupa.s.sant's ineffable hero and t.i.tle-giver.

[133] Hardly any school-boy of my or Stevenson's generation would have needed a reference to the _Essay on Murder_. But I am told that De Quincey has gone out of fashion, with school-boys and others.

[134] We know now: also what "The Duke" said when consulted. They did not agree with Stevenson, but then they knew all the facts and he did not.

[135] I should have held it myself, if the facts had been what R. L. S.

thought them.

[136] Which of course is Mr. Kipling's property, not mine. But he has most kindly joined in, authorising its publication, and that of the rest of the letter as far as he is concerned.