Message from the author of this blog

Sorry, but I will be in Edinburgh for three weeks. Maybe I will not be able to edit any letter.

See you anyway in the second half of May.

Thank you.

Mafalda

“I am more human than is wholly convenient”

[As usual, dots between square brackets indicate cuts made by Sidney Colvin. For full, correct and critical edition of this letter, see Mehew 8, 2765.]

To Dr. Robert Bakewell [Colvin 1911, 4, pp. 340-1]

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.

Robert Hall Bakewell (1831-1908), English physician and surgeon who served in the Crimean war. He went to New Zealand in 1873 and settled in Aucklang in 1888. He was a frequent contributor to the medical press and also contributed to English periodicals on the female franchise question. Dr Bakewell had told RLS about a New Zealand boy who, when asked whether he had read Treasure Island, replied: ‘Every boy’s read Treasure Island. I’ve read it four times.’ Bakewell remarked that RLS must be ‘more than human,’ if he did not appreciate the compliment. He went on to caution him against the danger of overwork of the brain (Cf. Mehew) [www.findagrave.com]

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, today 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.

Cocoa pods, Samoa [www.skia.ws]

[…] – Yours, etc.,

R.L.S.

[…]

“I have in view a sort of child’s party for grown-up persons with kissing games, etc., here at Vailima”

[Dots between square brackets indicate cuts made by Sidney Colvin. For full, correct and critical edition of this letter, see Mehew 8, 2762.]

To Sidney Colvin [Colvin 1911, 4, pp. 327-30]

[Vailima, 17 July, 1894]

My dear Colvin,

I have to thank you this time for a very good letter, and will announce for the future, though I cannot now begin to put in practice, good intentions for our correspondence. I will try to return to the old system and write from time to time during the month; but truly you did not much encourage me to continue! However, that is all by-past. I do not know that there is much in your letter that calls for answer. Your questions about St. Ives were practically answered in my last; so were your wails about the edition, Amateur Emigrant, etc. By the end of the year St. I. will be practically finished, whatever it be worth, and that I know not. When shall I receive proofs of the Magnum Opus? or shall I receive them at all?

The Edinburgh Edition of RLS’s Collected Works, 1894-7. Baxter had written to RLS on 15 June announcing that the Edition (comprising 1000 sets of 20 volumes sold to subscribers at 12/6 per volume) had been sold, save for 100 sets reserved for the Colonies [www.ebay.it]

[Belle takes over]

The return of the Amanuensis feebly lightens my heart. You can see the heavy weather I was making of it with my unaided pen. The last month has been particularly cheery largely owing to the presence of our good friends the Curaçoas. She is really a model ship, charming officers and charming seamen.

H.M.S Curaçoa, a Comus-class corvette of the Royal Navy, launched in 1878, and sold in 1904 to be broken up. She served on the Cape of Good Hope and West Africa Station, the Australia Station and as a training cruiser in the Atlantic. She arrived in Australia in August 1890 and recommissioned at Sydney in November 1891. Her captain, Herbert William Sumner Gibson (1846-1923) had joined the Navy in 1859 and retired in 1901 [https://en.wikipedia.org]

They gave a ball last month, which was very rackety and joyous and naval.

On the following day, about one o’clock, three horsemen might have been observed approaching Vailima, who gradually resolved themselves into two petty officers and a native guide. Drawing himself up and saluting, the spokesman (a corporal of Marines) addressed me thus. ‘Me and my shipmates inwites Mr. and Mrs. Stevens, Mrs. Strong, Mr. Osbourne, and Mr. Balfour to a ball to be given to-night in the self-same ‘all.’ It was of course impossible to refuse, though I contented myself with putting in a very brief appearance. […] One glance was sufficient; the ball went off like a rocket from the start. I had only time to watch Belle careering around with a gallant bluejacket of exactly her own height – the standard of the British navy – an excellent dancer and conspicuously full of small-talk – and to hear a remark from a beach-comber, ‘It’s a nice sight this some way, to see the officers dancing like this with the men, but I tell you, sir, these are the men that’ll fight together!’

Belle and RLS, Sydney 1893.

[…] I tell you, Colvin, the acquaintance of the men – and boys – makes me feel patriotic. Eeles in particular is a man whom I respect.

Group portrait of officers of the 12 Regiment in uniform, on the deck of H.M.S. Curaçoa, date uncertain. One of RLS’s best friends among the officers of the Curaçoa, the Lieutenant of the ship Charles Gerald Sheperd Eeles (1854-1940), had been for some time on the South Pacific station (no picture of him, unfortunately). He entered in the Navy in 1866 and retired with the rank of captain in 1903. During the Egyptian campaign 1884 he was engaged on hydrographic work and a bay in the Red Sea was named after him (Cf. Mehew 7, p. 363 n. 3) [www.aucklandmuseum.com]

I am half in a mind to give him a letter of introduction to you when he goes home. In case you feel inclined to make a little of him, give him a dinner, ask Henry James to come to meet him, etc. – you might let me know.

Henry James (1843-1915) [www.loyola.edu]

I don’t know that he would show his best, but he is a remarkably fine fellow, in every department of life […].

We have other visitors in port. A Count Festetics de Tolna, an Austrian officer, a very pleasant, simple, boyish creature, with his young wife, daughter of an American millionaire;

Count Rudolph Festetics von Tolna (Paris 1865-1952) was born into an aristocratic Hungarian family. His early life was spent in Paris where he was a lieutenant in the Austrian Imperial Guard and where he led a sophisticated Parisian lifestyle. In 1892 he married Eila Butterworth Haggin (1873-1936), who then joined the ranks of the 450 American heiresses. Soon after their marriage, they were in San Francisco where Rudolph began his plans for a leisurely exploration of the South Pacific financed by Haggin cash. The two divorced in 1901 [https://dustyheaps.blogspot.com/]

Count Festetics von Tolna gave an account of his meeting with RLS in his book Chez les cannibales: huit ans de croisière dans l’Océan Pacifique à bord du yacht ‘Le Tolna’, 1903.

he is a friend of our own Captain Wurmbrand, and it is a great pity Wurmbrand is away. […]

Glad you saw and liked Lysaght.

Coat of arms of Wurmbrand-Stuppach family. Count Robert Carl Erwein Wilhelm Maria von Wurmbrand-Stuppach (1851-1911), a member of this old Austrian noble family, was then in control of Apia prison. Sidney Royse Lysaght (1856-1941) was a British poet and novelist of Irish ancestry. Lysaght had recently visited Vailima, with a letter of introduction from George Meredith [https://en.wikipedia.org/]

He has left in our house a most cheerful and pleasing memory, as a good, pleasant, brisk fellow with good health and brains, and who enjoys himself and makes other people happy. I am glad he gave you a good report of our surroundings and way of life; but I knew he would, for I believe he had a glorious time and gave one.

Sidney Colvin (1845-1927). He quoted the following sentence from a letter of Lysaght written when the news of RLS’s death reached England:  ‘So great was his power of winning love that though I knew him for less than a week I could have borne the loss of many a more intimate friend with less sorrow than Stevenson’s. When I saw him, last Easter, there was no suggestion of failure of strength. After all I had heard of his delicacy I was astonished at his vigour. He was up at five, and at work soon after, and at eleven o’clock at night he was dancing on the floor of the big room while I played Scotch and Irish reels on the rickety piano. He would talk to me for hours of home and old friends, but with a wonderful cheerfulness, knowing himself banished from them for life and yet brought close to them by love. I confidently counted on his living; he took keen interest in my own poor work, and it was one of my ambitions to send him a book some day which would better deserve his attention.’ [http://media.vam.ac.uk]

I am on fair terms with the two Treaty officials, though all such intimacies are precarious; with the consuls, I need not say, my position is deplorable.

he American, British and German consuls of Samoa, the ‘three Consuls’ 1890-8 [https://upload.wikimedia.org]

The President (Herr Emil Schmidt) is a rather dreamy man, whom I like […]. […] Lloyd,

Lloyd Osbourne (1868-1947), RLS’s stepson [www.robert-louis-stevenson.org]

Graham

Graham Balfour (1858-1929), RLS’s cousin.

and I go to breakfast with him to-morrow; the next day the whole party of us lunch on the Curaçoa and go in the evening to a Bierabend at Dr. Funk’s.

Dr. Bernhard Funk (1844-1911), a German physician, arrived in Samoa in 1879. He was reputedly the first medical practitioner in Apia.
Dr. Funk first achieved public notoriety soon after his arrival with his marriage to Leonora Hayes, daughter of the notorious American pirate, Captain Bully Hayes. The Captain’s own infamy had come about through his involvement in a whole range of activities that encompassed blackbirding, gun and alcohol running and alleged piracy. Funk’s marriage to Leonora only lasted six months and ended disastrously and quite publicly.
In spite of Funk’s initial calamitous marriage, by 1888, there was a new Mrs. Funk: he married a Samoan woman named Senitima, the daughter of Chief Talea. She was described by many as charming and delightful.
Dr. Funk also became friends RLS and was his bedside doctor until his death in 1894. RLS wrote of him: “it would never do to quarrel with the doctor and the doctor, though he tipples a little and gabbles much, is a good man whom I respect.” Dr. Funk was not only a skilled doctor, but also a mixologist in his own right. His medicinal tonic, originally prescribed to those plagued with the cafard, became a favorite libation among locals in the late 1800s and early 1900s and is still drunk in the Pacific today [https://drfunksj.com/]

We are getting up a paper-chase for the following week with some of the young German clerks, and have in view a sort of child’s party for grown-up persons with kissing games, etc., here at Vailima. Such is the gay scene in which we move. Now I have done something, though not as much as I wanted, to give you an idea of how we are getting on, and I am keenly conscious that there are other letters to do before the mail goes. […] Yours ever,

R.L. Stevenson

“Thinks Mr. Stevenson must be a very kind man; he little knows me”

This refers to the printing of some of RLS’s books in Braille type for the blind (See Letter 266: https://lettersofrobertlouisstevenson.wordpress.com/2023/09/08/this-braille-writing-is-a-kind-of-consecration/)

[As usual, for correct and critical edition of this letter, see Mehew 8, 2761.]

To Harriet Baker [Colvin 1911, 4, p. 326]

[Beginning dictated to Belle]

Vailima, Samoa, July 16, 1894

Dear Mrs. Baker,

Harriet Emma Lockhart Cox (1826-1909) had married (1859) in New Zealand the Revd Arthur Baker (1817-1868), a graduate of Wadham College (who was a minister in New Zealand for 5 years). In 1858, before his marriage with Harriet Cox he had been pleaded not guilty to girl’s indecent assault at Wellington vicarage. At the time of his death in 1868 he was Rector of Addington, Buckinghamshire. In 1893 Harriet Baker was living in Oxford [https://ehive.com]

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.

[www.allaboutvision.com]

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

“I feel as if I were near the end of my production”

[For correct and critical edition of this letter, see Mehew 8, 2759.]

To Charles Baxter [Baxter Letters, pp. 361-5]

[Vailima, c. 15 July 1894]

My dear Baxter,

I have received the balloon books from your bookseller, and I must say he is a daisy. I could not have chosen better myself. I desire you to communicate to him this certificate of merit. I would write it to him but cannot for my soul recollect his name.

Your great success over the Edition leaves me gaping. Hip, hip, hurray!

The Edinburgh Edition of RLS’s Collected Works, 1894-7. Baxter had written to RLS on 15 June announcing that the Edition (comprising 1000 sets of 20 volumes sold to subscribers at 12/6 per volume) had been sold, save for 100 sets reserved for the Colonies [www.ebay.it]

[Belle takes over]

Allow me to congratulate you on the return to duty of the Amanuensis. ‘Tis a damned good thing for you and me. I do not quite understand what you mean by the Astor bargain.

William Waldorf Astor (1848-1919), an American-English attorney, politician, businessman, and philanthropist. He had founded the Pall Mall Magazine in 1893. Baxter had written to RLS: “Tomorrow I hope to get from Astor £22,11 per M for St. Ives” [https://en.wikipedia.org/]

Does it mean £22,10 for a thousand words? If it does, it means a big deal.

I have still to expect explanations about my American publisher, but I hope to hear next mail and to be satisfied. The eight sets will do me admirably – you must have already received my disposition of (I think) six of them. The exact number I do not remember. But if I am right, the seventh must go to my mother with the dedication: To My Mother.

Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson (1829-1897) [www.wikimedia.org]

Well, I don’t know what I want in the way of this dedication. Colvin might help. I want something to express (in Latin) that I am her only son and that these are her grandchildren. I know it can be well said in Latin, but not by me, who have not so much as a Latin grammar to aid my stumbling steps.

I have had a letter from Henley, which I thought in very good taste and rather touching. My wife, with that appalling instinct of the injured female to see mischief, thought it was a letter preparatory to the asking of money; and truly, when I read it again, it will bear this construction.

William Ernest Henley (1849-1903). The friendship between RLS and W.E. Henley had grown strained for many reasons. Henley disliked RLS’s wife, and felt that she interfered with their friendship. Furthermore, he was more convinced than RLS about the viability of the plays that the writers had been collaborating on: Henley, who was often worried about money, thought the plays would be lucrative, while RLS felt that the plays were not a literary success. The two men had already quarreled, but their biggest quarrel came in March 1888. Henley accused Fanny Stevenson of plagiarism when she published the short story “The Nixie” in Scribner’s Magazine. He argued that it had actually been taken from one of Katharine De Mattos’s own stories.  RLS’s cousin, Bob Stevenson, took his sister Katharine’s and Henley’s view of the event, while RLS took Fanny’s side. The quarrel damaged his relationship not only with Henley, but also with both of his cousins. Even after all of their difficulties, RLS still missed his friend, though they never fully recovered their friendship [http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk]

This leads us direct to the consideration of what is to be done if H. does ask for money. I may say at once that I give it with a great deal of distaste. He has had bad luck of course; but he has had good luck too and has never known how to behave under it. On the other hand I feel as if I were near the end of my production. If it were nothing else, the growing effort and time that it takes me to produce anything forms a very broad hint. Now I want all the money that I can make for my family and, alas, for my possible old age, which is on the cards and will never be a lively affair for me, money or no money, but which would be a hideous humiliation to me if I had squandered all this money in the meawhile and had to come forward as a beggar at last. All which premised, I hereby authorise you to pay (when necessary) five pounds a month to Henley. He can’t starve at that; it’s enough – more than he had when I first knew him; and if I gave him more, it would only lead to his starting a gig and a Pomeranian dog.

Queen Victoria and his Pomeranian dog Turi, acquired in 1893. RLS’s previous sentence was the reason for the bitterness of Henley’s posthumous attack in the Pall Mall Magazine, Dec. 1901 [www.facebook.com]

I hope you won’t think me hard about this. If you think the sum insufficient, you can communicate with me by return on the subject. And by the bye, don’t forget to let me know exactly how I stand. It is possible that I forge myself fears that need not exist. The sheet of questions was not returned in my last letter, owing to some hurry on the day of making up the mail. I believe, however, all the questions were answered in the body of my letter, but send it on anyway.

The dummy has never come to hand. Was it registered? It is no use sending anything connected with business unless you register it. Now I must end my letter with the same subject that it began with, your excellent if nameless bookseller. He is to choose at his own peril the very nicest illustrated edition of Robinson Crusoe in existence and despatch it to Master Louis Sanchez, Monterey, Monterey Co., California.

Louis Sanchez was the son of Fanny’s sister, Nellie Vandegrift Sanchez. Cf. the Envoy “To My Name-Child” in A Child’s Garden of Verses [www.wikidata.org]

Understand, I mean the nicest edition from the point of view of a young schoolboy of ten, not at all from the point of view of the bibliophile.

Your admirable man will certainly be able to fill the bill. There is another thing in his way. We want an old school-book, in use I imagine twenty years ago if not now, called The Child’s Guide to Knowledge.

The child in question is guided by a sort of catechism inculcating as far as I can find out every species of wisdom, from How to Take Care of a Cold, the Remedies of Different Poisons, down to How to Grease your Boots.

If Mr. Johnson – there’s his name – finds this book not very expensive, he might even send two copies or even three. This is for the deserving native.

I have been and am in communication with Mr. Edmund Baxter, Jr. I trust I am giving satisfaction as his agent in these distant parts. Should he have to complain of any neglect, I’m of opinion that the civility with which the correspondence has been throughout conducted gives me a decided claim to receive a statement and to be allowed to answer it with an explanation.

Ever affectionately yours,

R.L. Stevenson    P.T.O. [in RLS’s hand]

P.S. The account of Mrs. Isobel Strong, Amanuensis and Housekeeper, is to be increased by the sum of £3,8.

RLS dictating to Isobel (Belle) Strong, aka ‘the amanuensis’ or ‘the housekeeper’, Vailima 1893.

She begs to ask you for a statement of the amount already to her credit. The amount that the Amanuensis has gained this month is 12/-. The Housekeeper by certain arts known to Housekeepers over the world has earned or claims the balance. Besides which she has been bursting into Authorship in Harper’s Weekly (June 2^nd) and has supplied me with a cheque for $108.35, which please translate into human money and credit to her.

“Within the Reef,” by Teuila (Belle’s Samoan name, meaning “beautifier of the ugly”), Harper’s Weekly, 2 June 1894.

R.L.S. [in RLS’s hand]

I have drawn upon you this month for £150 on George Dunnet, Jr. of Auckland and for John Lloyd, San Francisco, the sum of £20.

R.L.S. [in RLS’s hand]

[Enclosure in Baxter’s hand with answers by RLS]

To be returned by first mail

Answers to questions raised in C. Baxter’s letter of 14-18 May 1894 requiring immediate answer.

Par. In Letter / Question / Answer

12 / Do you approve Colvin being named as Editor on title page of Colld Edition? / Yes by God.

22 / Have you any suggestions as to general appearance, size, shape of volume as shewn by “Dummy”? / Not to hand.

24 / What do you say to editing an edition of Whitman? / I wunna.

28 / What do you wish done about book rights to St. Ives? / Leave it to you, sir!

29 / What about Moral Emblems etc.? / Rather like the idea of Moral Emblems.

30 / What is H. Henderson’s address? / c/o John Williams, 2 Macquaire Place, Sydney, N.S.W.

“You cannot change ancestral feelings of right and wrong without what is practically soul-murder”

[As usual, dots between square brackets indicate cuts made by Sidney Colvin. For full, correct and critical edition of this letter, see Mehew 8, 2755.]

To Adelaide Boodle [Colvin 1911, 4, pp. 323-6]

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;

Caravaggio, The Conversion of St. Paul, 1601 [www.christiancentury.org]

in the case of an Andaman islander they mean less than nothing.

Group of Andaman islanders, The Graphic, 15 May 1886 [www.semanticscholar.org]

In fact, what you have to do is to teach the parents in the interests of their great-grandchildren.

Great Andamanese men, women and children, 1876. They are wearing a wide variety of hairstyles and cuts, and body painting patterns. Notable also on the extreme left and right two women with bands for carrying infants. The people to the left of the centre pole are said to be showing body paint signifying mourning, those on the right celebratory paint. The girl, second from the right, in the middle row is said to be painted in red ochre as a sign for rejoicing [https://en.wikipedia.org/]

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.

RLS is quoting his Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin, ch. III.

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.

RLS is quoting Ovid, Metamorphoses, VII.20-21: ‘I see and approve better things, but follow worse’.

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 penance. 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 [RLS crossed through his first attempt to write the word] 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,

RLS with his step daughter and amanuensis, Belle, March 1893.

and I can hear her ‘steering the boys’ up and down the verandahs –

Family group, Vailima, September 1893.

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.

Miss Adelaide Ann Boodle (1858-1934), “the Gamekeeper”, had been neighbour of the Stevensons at Bournemouth. She had become devoted friend of the Stevensons and had taken care of their house there, Skerryvore Cottage. Adelaide’s mother, Julia, died on 25 January 1894 [https://babel.hathitrust.org]

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;

Thomas Stevenson (aged 48) and RLS (aged 16), Callander, August-September 1866.

and as a younger man, running down the sands into the sea near North Berwick, myself – aet. 11 – somwhat horrified at finding him so beautiful when stripped!

Thomas Stevenson (aged 41) and RLS (aged 9), 1859.

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

“There will be a meeting of the twa Hoasting Scots Makers in spite of fate, fortune and the Devil”

[Dots between square brackets indicate cuts made by Sidney Colvin. For full, correct and critical edition of this letter, see Mehew 8, 2754.]

To J.M. Barrie

[Colvin 1911, 4, pp. 330-7; 1899, 2, pp. 349-50]

[Beginning dictated to Belle]

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 today, 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.

James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937), 1895 [https://en.wikipedia.org/]

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.

Evidently the basis of the engraving forming the frontispiece of Barrie’s Margaret Ogilvy (1896). The book was written in tribute to Barrie’s mother and includes family reminiscences. In the book, Barrie recounts his mother telling tales of her childhood, and credits her with inspiring his interest in literature.

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 after noon 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.

Kirriemuir, Angus, Scotland, Barrie’s birthplace, early 1900s [ww.mediastorehouse.com]

J.M. Barrie’s birthplace, Kirriemuir [www.mediastorehouse.co.uk]

J.M. Barrie’s birthplace, Kirriemuir [www.tripadvisor.co.uk]

Glenogil, 10 miles north-east of Barrie’s birthplace of Kirriemuir. RLS had visited Glenogil in September 1871 [www.glenogilestate.com]

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.

Glenogil Reservoir, Angus [www.flickr.com]

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.

Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587)[https://en.wikipedia.org/]

It formed an epoch in my life, being the end of all my trout-fishing.

RLS with his fishing rod, 1865.

RLS’s fishing rod, Writers’ Museum, Edinburgh.

RLS’s fishing basket, Writers’ Museum, Edinburgh.

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,’

‘Some wee, short hour ayont the twal’ (i.e. twelve, midnight), in the last verse of Burns, ‘Death and Doctor Hornbook’.

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.

Barrie identified the Free Kirk as being at Memus, 5 miles NE of Kirriemuir [https://en.wikipedia.org/]

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.

RLS, c. 1871.

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[arnegie] A[rbuthnotts] of Balnamoon.

The two ladies were Anne Carnegy-Arbuthnott (1817-72) and her sister Helen (1819-92), daughters of James Carnegy-Arbuthnott, 8^th Laird of Balnamoon [https://digital.nls.uk/]

At table I was exceedingly funny, and entertained the company with tales of geese and bubbly-jocks.

[https://birdfact.com/]

[https://sco.wikipedia.org/]

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.

[RLS takes over]

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,

RLS is quoting Spenser’s The Faerie Queen, II.VI.7, l. 9

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! –

RLS is quoting Coleridge’s The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner [https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/]

say, when the day is dawning – and you should see the turquoise mountain tops of Upolu coming hand over fist above the horizon?

[www.booking.com]

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 –

RLS is quoting Poe’s poem ‘Ulalume’, 1847 [https://en.wikipedia.org/]

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:

Barrie’s new work, Sentimental Tommy, was to be published in 1896. Barrie had written about his idea for basing his boy hero on RLS; in the event, the character owed more to Barrie’s own childhood.

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 paperchase 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.’

RLS is quoting Matt’RLS is quoting Matt’s air in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, II.2, 1728.

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 Magiagi,

from the misconduct of his little raving lunatic of an old beast of a pony.

RLS on his pony Jack.

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,

Crockets on a gothic spire [https://buffaloah.com/]

Samuel Rutherford Crockett (1859-1919) had dedicated to RLS the first edition of his novel The Stickit Minister and Some Common Men. He had been acquainted with RLS since Bournemouth days, and had remained in friendly correspondence with him since. The Bookman for May 1894 reported that Crockett was to contribute to Good Words a serial story called The Killing Time. Crockett later changed the title to The Men of the Moss Hags [https://balmaghiekirk.com/]

a small but impervious Barrièer at the entrance, an arch at the top, an Archer of a pleasing but solid character at the bottom;

RLS’s friend William Archer (1856-1924), Scottish dramatic critic, journalist, translator and editor of Ibsen [www.npg.org.uk]

the colour will be genuine William-Black;

William Black (1841-98),Scottish novelist. During his lifetime, Black’s novels were immensely popular and compared favourably with those of Anthony Trollope. However, his fame and popularity did not survive long into the 20th century.[https://en.wikipedia.org/]

and Lang,

RLS’s friend Andrew Lang (1844-1912), Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales [htt p://media.vam.ac.uk]

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 flyblawn, it’s nane too shune.

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 Vailele plantation,

RLS’s is quoting Scott’s poem ‘Lochinvar’ [www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk]

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.

Barrie married Mary Ansell (1861-1950), the actress who had appeared in his play Walker, London, on 9 July 1894. She had helped to nurse him through his illness. See her life here: https://rumble.com/v3zzs8b-the-mysterious-mary-ansell.html

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.’

Tamaitai was Fanny’s Samoan name.

This letter, about nothing, has already endured too long. I shall just present the family to Mrs. Barrie – Tamaitai, Tamaitai Matua,

Tamaitai Matua was Margaret Stevenson’s Samoan name [www.wikimedia.org]

Teuila,

Teuila was Belle’s Samoan name.

Palema,

Palema was Graham Balfour’s Samoan name.

Loia,

Loia was Lloyd’s Samoan name.

and with an extra low bow, Yours

Tusitala

“I believe it to be a speaking likeness, and not flattered at all”

[As usual, dots between square brackets indicate cuts made by Sidney Colvin. For full, correct and critical edition of this letter, see Mehew 8, 2752.]

To Augustus Saint-Gaudens [Colvin 1911, 4, p. 322]

[Dictated to Belle]

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.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens, RLS medallion 1887–88, bronze cast 1893. Tate Britain, London. The medallion – a circular plate of bronze, 36 inches in diameter, mounted on an oak frame – bears, in addition to the portrait of RLS, the text of RLS’s poem to Low, beginning ‘Youth now fleets on feathered foot’. It was sold in 1914 by Anderson Auction Company [www.19thc-artworldwide.org]

The tapa room, Vailima [www.facebook.com]

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.

The medallion bears, in addition to the portrait of RLS, the text of RLS’s poem To Will. H. Low, published in Underwoods, 1887.

[…]

Please do not longer delay, but send me an account for the expense of the gilt letters.

19th century zinc letters [www.1stdibs.com]. In a previous letter to Saint-Gaudens, RLS had ordered ‘an alphabet of gilt letters mounted on spikes like drawing-pins’ to put together inscriptions on the inner walls of Vailima, see Letter 2578:
https://lettersofrobertlouisstevenson.wordpress.com/2023/04/02/the-other-day-in-sydney-i-was-sculpt-a-second-time/
and Letter 2628:
https://lettersofrobertlouisstevenson.wordpress.com/2023/06/21/the-battle-of-the-golden-letters-will-never-be-delivered/.

I was sorry indeed that they proved beyond the means of a small farmer. – Yours very sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson

“Life is a series of farewells, even in art; even our proficiencies are deciduous and evanescent”

[As usual, for correct and critical edition of this letter, see Mehew 8, 2750.]

To Marcel Schwob [Colvin 1911, 4, pp. 321-2]

[Probably dictated to Belle]

Vailima, Upolu, Samoa, July 7, 1894

Dear Mr. Marcel Schwob,

Thank you for having remembered me in my exile.

Mayer André Marcel Schwob (1867-1905), French essayist and author of a number of imaginatives tales. He had a gift for languages and become multilingual. In 1884, he had discovered RLS who became one of his friends and models [https://img6.bdbphotos.com]

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 savoury 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 semiarticulate 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

“Do not suppose from this that I am ill in body; it is the numskull that I complain of”

[For correct and critical edition of this letter, see Mehew 8, 2748.]

To Henry James [Colvin 1911, 4, pp. 317-21]

[Dictated to Belle]

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 tomorrow, 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.

H.M.S Curaçoa, a Comus-class corvette of the Royal Navy, built by John Elder & Co., Govan, launched in 1878, and sold in 1904 to be broken up. She served on the Cape of Good Hope and West Africa Station, the Australia Station and as a training cruiser in the Atlantic. She arrived in Australia in August 1890 and recommissioned at Sydney in November 1891. Her captain, Herbert William Sumner Gibson (1846-1923) had joined the Navy in 1859 and retired in 1901 [https://en.wikipedia.org]

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.

Group portrait of officers of the 12 Regiment in uniform, on the deck of H.M.S. Curaçoa, date uncertain [www.aucklandmuseum.com]

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.

RLS had visited Manu’a in 1891, see Letter 2308: https://lettersofrobertlouisstevenson.wordpress.com/2021/01/10/i-hope-you-will-remember-to-register-your-letters-or-i-may-never-receive-them/ [www.nps.gov]

The goodwill of all on board; the grim playfulness of [word missing] 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 dustcoloured 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 palmtrees on the village street, and listening to the surf.

Tui Manu’a Matelita, born Margaret Young, and also known as Makelita, Matelika or Lika (1872-1895) was the Tui Manu’a (paramount chief or queen) of Manu’a, a group of islands in the eastern part of the Samoan Islands, from 1891 to 1895. During her tenure, she served largely a ceremonial role at her residence on Ta’ū where she received RLS. Matelita never married because she would not marry any of the eligible native chieftains and no other men were regarded as having the proper rank to marry her. She died of illness in 1895, although later reports claimed she died by a more violent means. American anthropologist Margaret Mead, who conducted research in Samoa between 1925 and 1926, was given the name Makelita by locals in her memory. During a local marriage ceremony, Mead also wore a dress woven by the late queen [https://en.wikipedia.org/]

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.

The Abbé Jérôme Coignard is the chief character in Anatole France’s novel, La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque (1893)[www.abebooks.fr]

[RLS concludes]

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.

Henry James (1843-1915) wrote to Sidney Colvin expressing his disappointment: ‘He writes mainly – indeed exclusively – of an excursion he had taken in an English warship and of the pleasure he had had in her officers; but literally not a word of anything else save that he was bad in the head and languid in the heart… Meanwhile any direct word from him gives me joy, as hinting that he hasn’t forgotten a fellow – or sacrificed one wholly to cannibal friendships’ [www.loyola.edu]