“We shall leave none to come after us, and I have been spared the pain – and the pleasure”

[As usual, for correct and critical edition of this letter, see Mehew 8, 2714.]

To Charles Baxter [Baxter Letters, pp. 348-50: www.hathitrust.org]

[Beginning dictated to Belle.]

Vailima, Samoa, 26 March 1894

My dear Charles,

1. Received bills of lading for Wynand Fockink,

The Dutch firm Wynand Fockink ran a distillery in Amsterdam since the 17th century [www.wynand-fockink.nl]

[www.thewhiskyexchange.com]

and wine from No. 17.

RLS’s mother had gone to Edinburgh to attend to the sale of 17 Heriot Row. On 22 January 1894 Baxter had wrote to RLS: “Your mother will tell you that 17 Heriot Row is sold. We got £3800, a big price as times go” [https://commons.wikimedia.org/]

2. I am glad to hear you have arranged for the publication of The Ebb Tide.

RLS’s story, The Ebb-Tide, was serialised in the first 13 issues of the twopenny weekly magazine To-day, founded by Jerome K. Jerome, 11 November 1893 – 3 February 1894. Baxter had written to RLS on 21 February 1894: “Looking to the holiday and the absolute necessity of keeping up funds, we have decided to publish Ebb Tide as a volume. Colvin don’t like, but other people do, and even if they don’t like it when they have bought it, you are too well established for it to do any harm. I personally think some of it magnificent, but then I am one of the outcasts who love The Wrecker. I have asked Scribner £600 for it, and McClure is giving £200 down on a royalty of 20%. This with £600 previously is not bad business”.

Colvin (between ourselves) is a bit of an old wife, and has so often predicted that a book would be my ruin in January, and by July defied me to do anything as good, that I have ceased to pay very much regard. I am sorry, however, if I understand you right, for one point. You say “McClure is giving two hundred down on a royalty of 20 per cent.” These are good terms, but I had never meant McClure to be my book publisher.

Samuel Sidney McClure (1857-1949). He got the serial rights to RLS’s letters from the South Seas, serialised in Black and White magazine. Pinkerton, the character in The Wrecker, was based on him
[https://alchetron.com]

He was always begging me to give him a book; I always steadily refused to hear of it; and if he has told you something else, he should be confronted with his lie. This is just to repeat my former error of disseminating my books among several publishers. I really mean to keep them all for the future in the hands of one; and I am not at all certain that I should not do better to give up my liberty openly, and sell myself outright to Cassells. You might think of this.

The Ebb Tide was being serialised by McClure’s Magazine too, February-July 1894.

3. I propose that you should take Mr. McClure in hand upon another matter. He is publishing for Fanny a series of articles for which he agreed to pay au fur et à mesure.

Fanny Stevenson was apparently writing articles for McClure’s newspapers, but they are not traced yet.

I need scarce tell you we have as yet received nothing. Not only that, but such of them as we have seen have appeared in a mutilated state, with receipts, which were an essential feature, left out. Now I wish you to arrange with him on two points. First – money. My wife wishes to receive this money herself; and we had arranged with McClure to send it direct. That had better be changed. You will receive the money from him and send it on to her as it arrives. Second, as to the MS. We intend to produce them in book form when they have done appearing; and it is absolutely essential, in view of his mutilated publications, that he should be reminded that he must finally produce the MS entire. It is really a cookery book, and he has published the plums and left out the cookery. I need not remind you that I have a weakness for McClure, confound him! And I wish you to go about these necessary huntings with not more than the necessary rigour.

4. Pentland Rising.

RLS’s youthful enthusiasm for the Covenanters (those Scotsmen who had banded together to defend their version of Presbyterianism in the 17th century) had led to his writing The Pentland Rising, his first printed work, at the age of 16. Baxter wrote to RLS on 21 February 1894: “You will remember this little pamphlet printed by Elliott in 1866. It has been quoted for some time in London catalogues at £5.5, but I don’t know that any sales have taken place at that figure. There was a trouvaille of some 50 copies here lately, however, and I am gradually disposing of them. I sold the first the other day for £3.3. I did not of course give any guarantee as to quantity. I merely said the price is £3.3: take it or leave it. I shall see that a sufficient reserve is kept, but we may as well get three guineas a piece for the surplus as not”.

Your proceedings are approved and applauded.

5. I have unhappily mislaid the copy of your firm’s letter to my mother and cannot quite recall the dispositions proposed. But whatever they were, I am sure they were perfectly fair.

Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson (1829-1897). RLS’s mother had gone back to Scotland in April 1893. Baxter wrote to RLS on 21 February 1894: “Your mother has been here and has approved of the proposals I put before her in the letter (a copy of which is enclosed) regarding the distribution of removal and repairing expenses. I trust they will meet your views, and in any case I think they are logical and founded on principle. I therefore recommend them to your acceptance”. Margaret had agreed Baxter’s proposals for apportioning the expenses of repairing and freighting the forniture from Heriot Row, Edinburgh, to Samoa, total cost about £300 [www.wikimedia.org]

6. You will get, as otherwise advised, a pretty heavy bill in favour of the German Firm.

Headquarters of the late large trading and plantation company, the German Firm D.H. & P.G. (Deutsche Handels und Plantagen Gesellschaft der Südsee Inseln zu Hamburg), Apia; now the Apia Hotel [https://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz]

I must draw upon you also in favour of Messrs Gordon and Young (E.B. Young) of San Francisco for £200.

E.B. Young was RLS’s lawyer in San Francisco [www.sanfranciscostory.com]

7. This is certainly a heavy draft. But I have a word of hope. I had fully intended sending you by this mail the first hundred pages of St. Ives. This cannot be, owing to the infernal conduct of Chas. Scribner’s Sons in not sending me a book. I estimate it at about 115,000 words, and some of it shall certainly be sent to you next mail. I am puzzled as to the best method of disposal. I always had an idea of Scribner’s for St. Ives. Perhaps it might be well to try the Pall Mall Magazine, or let Cassells have the run of the whole thing, if you think better. The full title is St. Ives: The Adventures of a French Prisoner in England.

RLS’s unfinished novel St. Ives: The Adventures of a French Prisoner in England, was first to be serialised in the Pall Mall Magazine, Nov 1896 – Nov 1897.

[Continued in RLS’s hand]

8. I inclose a Rev. Mr. Beeching’s letter, for which I beg a favourable answer, but I regard this as entirely your attribution.

Rev. Henry Charles Beeching (1859-1919), B.A. at Oxford, Rector of Yattendon, Berkshire, 1885, minor poet minor poet, essayst and editor of Milton. His Lyra Sacra. A Book of Religious Verse, 1895 included RLS’s ‘The Celestial Surgeon’ and ‘The House Beautiful’ [http://www.hymntime.com/]

9. Of Henley I cannot speak. It is too sad.

William Ernest Henley (1849-1903). Baxter had written to RLS on 21 February 1894: “Poor Henley has had great disasters. He has lost his beautiful little girl, and the Observer has changed hands, the purchaser becoming editor. How it is that misfortunes never come but in troops!” [https://en.wikipedia.org/]

I never envied anyone more than I did him when he had that child, and it proved – or seemed to prove – healthy.

Henley’s daughter, Margaret Emma (1888-1894). She was to be immortalised by J.M. Barrie in his children’s classic, Peter Pan. Unable to speak clearly, young Margaret had called her friend Barrie her “fwendy-wendy”, resulting in the use of the name “Wendy” for a feminine character in the book. As a direct result, it is now a popular girl’s name. Margaret did not survive long enough to read the book [https://en.wikipedia.org/]

Alas! I might have spared my envy. After all, the doom is common to us: we shall leave none to come after us, and I have been spared the pain – and the pleasure. But I still sometimes wish I had been more bold.

10. Desire plan very much, by the intervention of your excellent bookseller, to have Faithful Contendings Displayed. Faithful Contendings Displayed, to try to be more legible,

and Choderlos de Laclos’s Liaisons dangereuses.

I believe I must now take to ordering all my books through your bookseller. Of course I don’t want Choderlos registered: he is published at 2 ffs. in Paris.

Sleep in peace. Adieu. The mail goes.

R.L.S.