Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson Volume 2 Part 30

Do you wish to ill.u.s.trate 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 pa.s.s 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 ill.u.s.trations, 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 ill.u.s.tration.

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 QUANt.i.tY OF LITTLE BOOKS.

Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME