Chapter I (7)

MY DEAR DELIGHTFUL JAMES,--To quote your heading to my wife, I think no man writes so elegant a letter, I am sure none so kind, unless it be Colvin, and there is more of the stern parent about him. I was vexed at your account of my admired Meredith: I wish I could go and see him; as it is I will try to write; and yet (do you understand me?) there is something in that potent, _genialisch_ affectation that puts one on the strain even to address him in a letter. He is not an easy man to be yourself with: there is so much of him, and veracity and the high athletic intellectual humbug are so intermixed.[26] I read with indescribable admiration your _Emerson_. I begin to long for the day when these portraits of yours shall be collected: do put me in. But Emerson is a higher flight. Have you a _Tourgueneff_? You have told me many interesting things of him, and I seem to see them written, and forming a graceful and _bildend_ sketch. (I wonder whence comes this flood of German--I haven't opened a German book since I teethed.) My novel is a tragedy; four parts out of six or seven are written, and gone to Burlingame. Five parts of it are sound, human tragedy; the last one or two, I regret to say, not so soundly designed; I almost hesitate to write them; they are very picturesque, but they are fantastic; they shame, perhaps degrade, the beginning. I wish I knew; that was how the tale came to me however. I got the situation; it was an old taste of mine: The older brother goes out in the '45, the younger stays; the younger, of course, gets title and estate and marries the bride designate of the elder--a family match, but he (the younger) had always loved her, and she had really loved the elder. Do you see the situation? Then the devil and Saranac suggested this _denouement_, and I joined the two ends in a day or two of constant feverish thought, and began to write. And now--I wonder if I have not gone too far with the fantastic? The elder brother is an INCUBUS: supposed to be killed at Culloden, he turns up again and bleeds the family of money; on that stopping he comes and lives with them, whence flows the real tragedy, the nocturnal duel of the brothers (very naturally, and indeed, I think, inevitably arising), and second supposed death of the elder. Husband and wife now really make up, and then the cloven hoof appears. For the third supposed death and the manner of the third reappearance is steep; steep, sir. It is even very steep, and I fear it shames the honest stuff so far; but then it is highly pictorial, and it leads up to the death of the elder brother at the hands of the younger in a perfectly cold-blooded murder, of which I wish (and mean) the reader to approve. You see how daring is the design. There are really but six characters, and one of these episodic, and yet it covers eighteen years, and will be, I imagine, the longest of my works.--Yours ever,

R. L. S.

_Read Gosse's Raleigh._ First-rate.--Yours ever,

R. L. S.

TO THE REV. DR. CHARTERIS

_Saranac Lake, Adirondacks, New York, U.S.A. [Spring 1888]._

MY DEAR DR. CHARTERIS,--The funeral letter, your notes, and many other things, are reserved for a book, _Memorials of a Scottish Family_, if ever I can find time and opportunity. I wish I could throw off all else and sit down to it to-day. Yes, my father was a "distinctly religious man," but not a pious. The distinction painfully and pleasurably recalls old conflicts; it used to be my great gun--and you, who suffered for the whole Church, know how needful it was to have some reserve artillery! His sentiments were tragic; he was a tragic thinker. Now, granted that life is tragic to the marrow, it seems the proper function of religion to make us accept and serve in that tragedy, as officers in that other and comparable one of war. Service is the word, active service, in the military sense; and the religious man--I beg pardon, the pious man--is he who has a military joy in duty--not he who weeps over the wounded. We can do no more than try to do our best. Really, I am the grandson of the manse--I preach you a kind of sermon. Box the brat's ears!

My mother--to pass to matters more within my competence--finely enjoys herself. The new country, some new friends we have made, the interesting experiment of this climate--which (at least) is tragic--all have done her good. I have myself passed a better winter than for years, and now that it is nearly over have some diffident hopes of doing well in the summer and "eating a little more air" than usual.

I thank you for the trouble you are taking, and my mother joins with me in kindest regards to yourself and Mrs. Charteris.--Yours very truly,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO S. R. CROCKETT

[_Saranac Lake, Spring 1888_].

DEAR MINISTER OF THE FREE KIRK AT PENICUIK,--For O, man, I cannae read your name!--That I have been so long in answering your delightful letter sits on my conscience badly. The fact is I let my correspondence accumulate until I am going to leave a place; and then I pitch in, overhaul the pile, and my cries of penitence might be heard a mile about. Yesterday I despatched thirty-five belated letters: conceive the state of my conscience, above all as the Sins of Omission (see boyhood's guide, the Shorter Catechism) are in my view the only serious ones; I call it my view, but it cannot have escaped you that it was also Christ's. However, all that is not to the purpose, which is to thank you for the sincere pleasure afforded by your charming letter. I get a good few such; how few that please me at all, you would be surprised to learn--or have a singularly just idea of the dulness of our race; how few that please me as yours did, I can tell you in one word--_None_. I am no great kirkgoer, for many reasons--and the sermon's one of them, and the first prayer another, but the chief and effectual reason is the stuffiness. I am no great kirkgoer, says I, but when I read yon letter of yours, I thought I would like to sit under ye. And then I saw ye were to send me a bit buik, and says I, I'll wait for the bit buik, and then I'll mebbe can read the man's name, and anyway I'll can kill twa birds wi' ae stane. And, man! the buik was ne'er heard tell o'!

That fact is an adminicle of excuse for my delay.

And now, dear minister of the illegible name, thanks to you, and greeting to your wife, and may you have good guidance in your difficult labours, and a blessing on your life.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

(No just sae young's he was, though--
I'm awfae near forty, man.)
Address c/o Charles Scribner's Sons,
743 Broadway, New York.

Don't put "N.B." in your paper: put SCOTLAND, and be done with it. Alas, that I should be thus stabbed in the home of my friends! The name of my native land is not NORTH BRITAIN, whatever may be the name of yours.

R. L. S.

TO MISS FERRIER

[_Saranac Lake, April 1888._]

MY DEAREST COGGIE,--I wish I could find the letter I began to you some time ago when I was ill; but I can't and I don't believe there was much in it anyway. We have all behaved like pigs and beasts and barn-door poultry to you; but I have been sunk in work, and the lad is lazy and blind and has been working too; and as for Fanny, she has been (and still is) really unwell. I had a mean hope you might perhaps write again before I got up steam: I could not have been more ashamed of myself than I am, and I should have had another laugh.

They always say I cannot give news in my letters: I shall shake off that reproach. On Monday, if she is well enough, Fanny leaves for California to see her friends; it is rather an anxiety to let her go alone; but the doctor simply forbids it in my case, and she is better anywhere than here--a bleak, blackguard, beggarly climate, of which I can say no good except that it suits me and some others of the same or similar persuasions whom (by all rights) it ought to kill. It is a form of Arctic St. Andrews, I should imagine; and the miseries of forty degrees below zero, with a high wind, have to be felt to be appreciated. The greyness of the heavens here is a circumstance eminently revolting to the soul; I have near forgot the aspect of the sun--I doubt if this be news; it is certainly no news to us. My mother suffers a little from the inclemency of the place, but less on the whole than would be imagined. Among other wild schemes, we have been projecting yacht voyages; and I beg to inform you that Cogia Hassan was cast for the part of passenger. They may come off!--Again this is not news. The lad? Well, the lad wrote a tale this winter, which appeared to me so funny that I have taken it in hand, and some of these days you will receive a copy of a work entitled "_A Game of Bluff_, by Lloyd Osbourne and Robert Louis Stevenson."

Otherwise he (the lad) is much as usual. There remains, I believe, to be considered only R. L. S., the house-bond, prop, pillar, bread-winner, and bully of the establishment. Well, I do not think him much better; he is making piles of money; the hope of being able to hire a yacht ere long dances before his eyes; otherwise he is not in very high spirits at this particular moment, though compared with last year at Bournemouth an angel of joy.

And now is this news, Cogia, or is it not? It all depends upon the point of view, and I call it news. The devil of it is that I can think of nothing else, except to send you all our loves, and to wish exceedingly you were here to cheer us all up. But we'll see about that on board the yacht.--Your affectionate friend,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

The Mutiny novel here foreshadowed never got written.

_[Saranac Lake] April 9th!! 1888._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--I have been long without writing to you, but am not to blame. I had some little annoyances quite for a private eye, but they ran me so hard that I could not write without lugging them in, which (for several reasons) I did not choose to do. Fanny is off to San Francisco, and next week I myself flit to New York: address Scribner's. Where we shall go I know not, nor (I was going to say) care; so bald and bad is my frame of mind. Do you know our--ahem!--fellow clubman, Colonel Majendie? I had such an interesting letter from him. Did you see my sermon? It has evoked the worst feeling: I fear people don't care for the truth, or else I don't tell it. Suffer me to wander without purpose. I have sent off twenty letters to-day, and begun and stuck at a twenty-first, and taken a copy of one which was on business, and corrected several galleys of proof, and sorted about a bushel of old letters; so if any one has a right to be romantically stupid it is I--and I am. Really deeply stupid, and at that stage when in old days I used to pour out words without any meaning whatever and with my mind taking no part in the performance. I suspect that is now the case. I am reading with extraordinary pleasure the life of Lord Lawrence: Lloyd and I have a mutiny novel--

(_Next morning, after twelve other letters_)--mutiny novel on hand--a tremendous work--so we are all at Indian books. The idea of the novel is Lloyd's: I call it a novel. 'Tis a tragic romance, of the most tragic sort: I believe the end will be almost too much for human endurance--when the hero is thrown to the ground with one of his own (Sepoy) soldier's knees upon his chest, and the cries begin in the Beebeeghar. O truly, you know it is a howler! The whole last part is--well the difficulty is that, short of resuscitating Shakespeare, I don't know who is to write it.

I still keep wonderful. I am a great performer before the Lord on the penny whistle.--Dear sir, sincerely yours,

ANDREW JACKSON.

TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE

_[Saranac Lake, April 1888.]
Address, c/o Messrs. Scribner's Sons,
743 Broadway, N.Y._

MY DEAR GAMEKEEPER,--Your p.c. (proving you a good student of Micawber) has just arrived, and it paves the way to something I am anxious to say. I wrote a paper the other day--_Pulvis et Umbra_;--I wrote it with great feeling and conviction: to me it seemed bracing and healthful, it is in such a world (so seen by me), that I am very glad to fight out my battle, and see some fine sunsets, and hear some excellent jests between whiles round the camp fire. But I find that to some people this vision of mine is a nightmare, and extinguishes all ground of faith in God or pleasure in man. Truth I think not so much of; for I do not know it. And I could wish in my heart that I had not published this paper, if it troubles folk too much: all have not the same digestion, nor the same sight of things. And it came over me with special pain that perhaps this article (which I was at the pains to send to her) might give dismalness to my _Gamekeeper at Home_. Well, I cannot take back what I have said; but yet I may add this. If my view be everything but the nonsense that it may be--to me it seems self-evident and blinding truth--surely of all things it makes this world holier. There is nothing in it but the moral side--but the great battle and the breathing times with their refreshments. I see no more and no less. And if you look again, it is not ugly, and it is filled with promise.

Pray excuse a desponding author for this apology. My wife is away off to the uttermost parts of the States, all by herself. I shall be off, I hope, in a week; but where? Ah! that I know not. I keep wonderful, and my wife a little better, and the lad flourishing. We now perform duets on two D tin whistles; it is no joke to make the bass; I think I must really send you one, which I wish you would correct.... I may be said to live for these instrumental labours now, but I have always some childishness on hand.--I am, dear Gamekeeper, your indulgent but intemperate Squire,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

Having spent the last fortnight of April at New York, Stevenson and
his stepson moved at the beginning of May to the small New Jersey
watering-place from whence the following few letters are dated: his
wife having meanwhile gone to San Francisco, where she presently made
arrangements for the Pacific yachting trip.

_Union House, Manasquan, New Jersey [May 1888]._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--We are here at a delightful country inn, like a country French place, the only people in the house, a cat-boat at our disposal, the sea always audible on the outer beach, the lagoon as smooth as glass, all the little, queer, many coloured villas standing shuttered and empty; in front of ours, across the lagoon, two long wooden bridges; one for the rail, one for the road, sounding with intermittent traffic. It is highly pleasant, and a delightful change from Saranac. My health is much better for the change; I am sure I walked about four miles yesterday, one time with another--well, say three and a half; and the day before, I was out for four hours in the cat-boat, and was as stiff as a board in consequence. More letters call.--Yours ever,

R. L. S.

TO CHARLES BAXTER

_Union House, Manasquan, N. J., but address to
Scribner's, 11th May 1888._

_MY DEAR CHARLES_,--I have found a yacht, and we are going the full pitch for seven months. If I cannot get my health back (more or less), 'tis madness; but, of course, there is the hope, and I will play big.... If this business fails to set me up, well, L2000 is gone, and I know I can't get better. We sail from San Francisco, June 15th, for the South Seas in the yacht _Casco_.--With a million thanks for all your dear friendliness, ever yours affectionately,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO LADY TAYLOR

[_Manasquan, May 1888._]

MY DEAR LADY TAYLOR,--I have to announce our great news. On June 15th we sail from San Francisco in the schooner yacht _Casco_, for a seven months' cruise in the South Seas. You can conceive what a state of excitement we are in; Lloyd perhaps first; but this is an old dream of mine which actually seems to be coming true, and I am sun-struck. It seems indeed too good to be true; and that we have not deserved so much good fortune. From Skerryvore to the Galapagos is a far cry! And from poking in a sick-room all winter to the deck of one's own ship, is indeed a heavenly change.

All these seven months I doubt if we can expect more than three mails at the best of it: and I do hope we may hear something of your news by each. I have no very clear views as to where the three addresses ought to be, but if you hear no later news, Charles Scribner's Sons will always have the run of our intended movements. And an early letter there would probably catch us at the Sandwich Islands. Tahiti will probably be the second point: and (as I roughly guess) Quito the third. But the whole future is invested with heavenly clouds.

I trust you are all well and content, and have good news of the Shelleys, to whom I wish you would pass on ours. They should be able to sympathise with our delight.

Now I have all my miserable Scribner articles to rake together in the inside of a fortnight: so you must not expect me to be more copious. I have you all in the kindest memory, and am, your affectionate friend,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Remember me to Aubrey de Vere.

TO HOMER ST. GAUDENS

The following is addressed from Manasquan to a boy, the son of the
writer's friend, the sculptor St. Gaudens; for the rest, it explains
itself.

_Manasquan, New Jersey, 27th May 1888._

DEAR HOMER ST. GAUDENS,--Your father has brought you this day to see me, and he tells me it is his hope you may remember the occasion. I am going to do what I can to carry out his wish; and it may amuse you, years after, to see this little scrap of paper and to read what I write. I must begin by testifying that you yourself took no interest whatever in the introduction, and in the most proper spirit displayed a single-minded ambition to get back to play, and this I thought an excellent and admirable point in your character. You were also (I use the past tense, with a view to the time when you shall read, rather than to that when I am writing) a very pretty boy, and (to my European views) startlingly self-possessed. My time of observation was so limited that you must pardon me if I can say no more: what else I marked, what restlessness of foot and hand, what graceful clumsiness, what experimental designs upon the furniture, was but the common inheritance of human youth. But you may perhaps like to know that the lean flushed man in bed, who interested you so little, was in a state of mind extremely mingled and unpleasant: harassed with work which he thought he was not doing well, troubled with difficulties to which you will in time succeed, and yet looking forward to no less a matter than a voyage to the South Seas and the visitation of savage and desert islands.--Your father's friend,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO HENRY JAMES

_Manasquan (ahem!), New Jersey, May 28th, 1888._

MY DEAR JAMES,--With what a torrent it has come at last! Up to now, what I like best is the first number of a _London Life_. You have never done anything better, and I don't know if perhaps you have ever done anything so good as the girl's outburst: tip-top. I have been preaching your later works in your native land. I had to present the Beltraffio volume to Low, and it has brought him to his knees; he was _amazed_ at the first part of Georgina's Reasons, although (like me) not so well satisfied with Part II. It is annoying to find the American public as stupid as the English, but they will waken up in time: I wonder what they will think of _Two Nations_?...

This, dear James, is a valedictory. On June 15th the schooner yacht _Casco_ will (weather and a jealous providence permitting) steam through the Golden Gates for Honolulu, Tahiti, the Galapagos, Guayaquil, and--I hope _not_ the bottom of the Pacific. It will contain your obedient 'umble servant and party. It seems too good to be true, and is a very good way of getting through the green-sickness of maturity which, with all its accompanying ills, is now declaring itself in my mind and life. They tell me it is not so severe as that of youth; if I (and the _Casco_) are spared, I shall tell you more exactly, as I am one of the few people in the world who do not forget their own lives.

Good-bye, then, my dear fellow, and please write us a word; we expect to have three mails in the next two months: Honolulu, Tahiti, and Guayaquil. But letters will be forwarded from Scribner's, if you hear nothing more definite directly. In 3 (three) days I leave for San Francisco.--Ever yours most cordially,

R. L. S.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] For the actual sum, see below, p. 243.

[22] "But she was more than usual calm,
She did not give a single dam."

_Marjorie Fleming._

[23] Of the play _Deacon Brodie_.

[24] "Smith opens out his cauld harangues
On practice and on morals."

The Rev. George Smith of Galston, the minister thus referred to by
Burns (in the _Holy Fair_), was a great-grandfather of Stevenson on
the mother's side; and against Stevenson himself, in his didactic
moods, the passage was often quoted by his friends when they wished
to tease him.

[25] Afterwards changed to Alison.

[26] Alluding to a kind of lofty, posturing manner of G. M.'s in mind
and speech, quite different from any real insincerity.

X

PACIFIC VOYAGES

YACHT _CASCO_--SCHOONER _EQUATOR_--S.S. _JANET NICOLL_

JUNE 1888-OCTOBER 1890

In the following section are printed nearly all the letters which reached Stevenson's correspondents in England and the United States, at intervals necessarily somewhat rare, during the eighteen months of his Pacific voyages. It was on the 28th of June 1888 that he started from the harbour of San Francisco on what was only intended to be a health and pleasure excursion of a few months' duration, but turned into a voluntary exile prolonged until the hour of his death. His company consisted, besides himself, of his wife, his mother, his stepson Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, and the servant Valentine Roch. They sailed on board the schooner yacht _Casco_, Captain Otis, and made straight for the Marquesas, dropping anchor on the 28th of July in Anaho Bay, the harbour of the island of Nukahiva. The magic effect of this first island landfall on his mind he has described in the opening chapter of his book _In the South Seas_. After spending six weeks in this group they sailed south-eastwards, visiting (a sufficiently perilous piece of navigation) several of the coral atolls of the Paumotus or Low Archipelago. Thence they arrived in the first week of October at the Tahitian group or "Society" islands. In these their longest stay was not at the chief town, Papeete, where Stevenson fell sharply ill, but in a more secluded and very beautiful station, Tautira, whither he went to recruit, and where they were detained by the necessity of remasting the schooner. Here Stevenson and one of the local chiefs, Ori a Ori, made special friends and parted with heartfelt mutual regret. Mrs. Stevenson is good enough to allow me to supplement the somewhat fragmentary account of these adventures given in his letters with one or two of her own, in which they are told with full vividness and detail.

Sailing from Tahiti due northwards through forty degrees of latitude, the party arrived about Christmas at Honolulu, the more than semi-civilised capital of the Hawaiian group (Sandwich Islands), where they paid off the yacht _Casco_ and made a stay of nearly six months. Here Stevenson finished _The Master of Ballantrae_ and _The Wrong Box_; and hence his mother returned for a while to Scotland, to rejoin her son's household when it was fairly installed two years later at Vailima. From Honolulu Stevenson made several excursions, including one, which profoundly impressed him, to the leper settlement at Molokai, the scene of Father Damien's ministrations and death.

This first year of cruising and residence among the Pacific Islands had resulted in so encouraging a renewal of health, with so keen a zest added to life by the restored capacity for outdoor activity and adventure, that Stevenson determined to prolong his experiences in yet more remote archipelagoes of the same ocean. He started accordingly from Honolulu in June 1889 on a trading schooner, the _Equator_, bound to the Gilberts, one of the least visited and most primitively mannered of all the island groups of the Western Pacific; emerged towards Christmas of the same year into semi-civilisation again at Apia, on the island of Upolu in Samoa, where he wrote his first Polynesian story, _The Bottle Imp_. Enchanted with the scenery and the people, he stayed for six weeks, first in the house of Mr. H. J. Moors, a leading American trader, then with his family in a separate cottage not far off; bought an estate on the densely wooded mountain side above Apia, with the notion of making there, if not a home, at least a place of rest and call on later projected excursions among the islands; and began to make collections for his studies in recent Samoan history. In February he went on to Sydney to find his correspondence and consider future plans. It was during this stay at Sydney that he was moved to give expression to his righteous indignation at the terms of a letter concerning Father Damien by the Rev. Dr. Hyde of Honolulu. Here also he fell once more seriously ill, with a renewal of all his old symptoms; and the conclusion was forced upon him that he must take up his residence for the rest of his life in the tropics--though with occasional excursions, as he then hoped, at least half-way homeward to places where it might be possible for friends from England to meet him. In order to shake off the effects of this attack, he started with his party on a fresh sea voyage from Sydney, this time on a trading steamer, the _Janet Nicoll_, which took him by a very devious course to the Gilberts again, the Marshalls, and among many other remote islands during the months of April-August 1890. During the voyage he began to put into shape the notes for a volume on the South Seas which he had been compiling ever since he left San Francisco. Unfortunately, he persisted in the endeavour to make his work impersonal and full of information, or what he called "serious interest," exactly in the manner which his wife had foreseen before they left Honolulu, and from which she had wisely tried to dissuade him (see her letter printed on pp. 347 foll.). On the return voyage Stevenson left the _Janet Nicoll_ to land in New Caledonia, staying for some days at Noumea before he went on to Sydney, where he spent four or five weeks of later August and September. Thence he returned in October to take up his abode for good on his Samoan property, where the work of clearing, planting, and building a habitable cottage had been going on busily during his absence.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

It should be remembered that the Marquesas, the Paumotus, and the
Tahitian group are all dependencies of France.

_Yacht Casco, Anaho Bay, Nukahiva, Marquesas Islands [July 1888]._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--From this somewhat (ahem) out of the way place, I write to say how d'ye do. It is all a swindle: I chose these isles as having the most beastly population, and they are far better, and far more civilised than we. I know one old chief Ko-o-amua, a great cannibal in his day, who ate his enemies even as he walked home from killing 'em, and he is a perfect gentleman and exceedingly amiable and simple-minded: no fool, though.

The climate is delightful; and the harbour where we lie one of the loveliest spots imaginable. Yesterday evening we had near a score natives on board; lovely parties. We have a native god; very rare now. Very rare and equally absurd to view.

This sort of work is not favourable to correspondence: it takes me all the little strength I have to go about and see, and then come home and note, the strangeness around us. I shouldn't wonder if there came trouble here some day, all the same. I could name a nation that is not beloved in certain islands--and it does not know it! Strange: like ourselves, perhaps, in India! Love to all and much to yourself.

R. L. S.

TO CHARLES BAXTER

_Yacht Casco, at sea, near the Paumotus,
7 A.M., September 6th, 1888, with a dreadful pen._

MY DEAR CHARLES,--Last night as I lay under my blanket in the cockpit, courting sleep, I had a comic seizure. There was nothing visible but the southern stars, and the steersman there out by the binnacle lamp; we were all looking forward to a most deplorable landfall on the morrow, praying God we should fetch a tuft of palms which are to indicate the Dangerous Archipelago; the night was as warm as milk, and all of a sudden I had a vision of--Drummond Street. It came on me like a flash of lightning: I simply returned thither, and into the past. And when I remember all I hoped and feared as I pickled about Rutherford's in the rain and the east wind; how I feared I should make a mere shipwreck, and yet timidly hoped not; how I feared I should never have a friend, far less a wife, and yet passionately hoped I might; how I hoped (if I did not take to drink) I should possibly write one little book, etc. etc. And then now--what a change! I feel somehow as if I should like the incident set upon a brass plate at the corner of that dreary thoroughfare for all students to read, poor devils, when their hearts are down. And I felt I must write one word to you. Excuse me if I write little: when I am at sea, it gives me a headache; when I am in port, I have my diary crying "Give, give." I shall have a fine book of travels, I feel sure; and will tell you more of the South Seas after very few months than any other writer has done--except Herman Melville perhaps, who is a howling cheese. Good luck to you, God bless you.--Your affectionate friend,

R. L. S.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

The signature used at foot of this letter and occasionally elsewhere,
"The Old Man Virulent," alludes to the fits of uncontrollable anger
to which he was often in youth, but by this time very rarely,
subject: fits occasioned sometimes by instances of official stolidity
or impertinence or what he took for such, more often by acts
savouring of cruelty, meanness, or injustice.

_Fakarava, Low Archipelago, September 21st, 1888._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--Only a word. Get out your big atlas, and imagine a straight line from San Francisco to Anaho, the N.E. corner of Nukahiva, one of the Marquesas Islands; imagine three weeks there: imagine a day's sail on August 12th round the eastern end of the island to Tai-o-hae, the capital; imagine us there till August 22nd: imagine us skirt the east side of Ua-pu--perhaps Rona-Poa on your atlas--and through the Bordelais straits to Taa-hauku in Hiva-Oa, where we arrive on the 23rd; imagine us there until September 4th, when we sailed for Fakarava, which we reached on the 9th, after a very difficult and dangerous passage among these isles. Tuesday, we shall leave for Taiti, where I shall knock off and do some necessary work ashore. It looks pretty bald in the atlas; not in fact; nor I trust in the 130 odd pages of diary which I have just been looking up for these dates: the interest, indeed, has been _incredible_: I did not dream there were such places or such races. My health has stood me splendidly; I am in for hours wading over the knees for shells; I have been five hours on horseback: I have been up pretty near all night waiting to see where the _Casco_ would go ashore, and with my diary all ready--simply the most entertaining night of my life. Withal I still have colds; I have one now, and feel pretty sick too; but not as at home: instead of being in bed, for instance, I am at this moment sitting snuffling and writing in an undershirt and trousers; and as for colour, hands, arms, feet, legs, and face, I am browner than the berry: only my trunk and the aristocratic spot on which I sit retain the vile whiteness of the north.

Please give my news and kind love to Henley, Henry James, and any whom you see of well-wishers. Accept from me the very best of my affection: and believe me ever yours,

THE OLD MAN VIRULENT.

_Papeete, Taiti, October 7th, 1888._

Never having found a chance to send this off, I may add more of my news. My cold took a very bad turn, and I am pretty much out of sorts at this particular, living in a little bare one-twentieth-furnished house, surrounded by mangoes, etc. All the rest are well, and I mean to be soon. But these Taiti colds are very severe and, to children, often fatal; so they were not the thing for me. Yesterday the brigantine came in from San Francisco, so we can get our letters off soon. There are in Papeete at this moment, in a little wooden house with grated verandahs, two people who love you very much, and one of them is

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO CHARLES BAXTER

_Taiti, as ever was, 6th October 1888._

MY DEAR CHARLES,-- ... You will receive a lot of mostly very bad proofs of photographs: the paper was so bad. Please keep them very private, as they are for the book. We send them, having learned so dread a fear of the sea, that we wish to put our eggs in different baskets. We have been thrice within an ace of being ashore: we were lost (!) for about twelve hours in the Low Archipelago, but by God's blessing had quiet weather all the time; and once in a squall, we cam so near gaun heels ower hurdies, that I really dinnae ken why we didnae a'thegither. Hence, as I say, a great desire to put our eggs in different baskets, particularly on the Pacific (aw-haw-haw) Pacific Ocean.

You can have no idea what a mean time we have had, owing to incidental beastlinesses, nor what a glorious, owing to the intrinsic interest of these isles. I hope the book will be a good one; nor do I really very much doubt that--the stuff is so curious; what I wonder is, if the public will rise to it. A copy of my journal, or as much of it as is made, shall go to you also; it is, of course, quite imperfect, much being to be added and corrected; but O, for the eggs in the different baskets.

All the rest are well enough, and all have enjoyed the cruise so far, in spite of its drawbacks. We have had an awfae time in some ways, Mr. Baxter; and if I wasnae sic a verra patient man (when I ken that I _have_ to be) there wad hae been a braw row; and ance if I hadnae happened to be on deck about three in the marnin', I _think_ there would have been _murder_ done. The American Mairchant Marine is a kent service; ye'll have heard its praise, I'm thinkin'; an' if ye never did, ye can get _Twa Years Before the Mast_, by Dana, whaur forbye a great deal o' pleisure, ye'll get a' the needcessary information. Love to your father and all the family.--Ever your affectionate friend,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE

This lady, as we have seen, had made Stevenson a present of a
paper-cutter when he left Bournemouth; and it is in the character of
the paper-cutter that he now writes.

_Taiti, October 10th, 1888._

DEAR GIVER,--I am at a loss to conceive your object in giving me to a person so locomotory as my proprietor. The number of thousand miles that I have travelled, the strange bed-fellows with which I have been made acquainted, I lack the requisite literary talent to make clear to your imagination. I speak of bed-fellows; pocket-fellows would be a more exact expression, for the place of my abode is in my master's right-hand trouser-pocket; and there, as he waded on the resounding beaches of Nukahiva, or in the shallow tepid water on the reef of Fakarava, I have been overwhelmed by and buried among all manner of abominable South Sea shells, beautiful enough in their way, I make no doubt, but singular company for any self-respecting paper-cutter. He, my master--or as I more justly call him, my bearer; for although I occasionally serve him, does not he serve me daily and all day long, carrying me like an African potentate on my subject's legs?--_he_ is delighted with these isles, and this climate, and these savages, and a variety of other things. He now blows a flageolet with singular effects: sometimes the poor thing appears stifled with shame, sometimes it screams with agony; he pursues his career with truculent insensibility. Health appears to reign in the party. I was very nearly sunk in a squall. I am sorry I ever left England, for here there are no books to be had, and without books there is no stable situation for, dear Giver, your affectionate

WOODEN PAPER-CUTTER.

A neighbouring pair of scissors snips a kiss in your direction.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

The ballad referred to in the letter which follows is the _Feast of
Famine_, published with others in the collection of 1890 _Ballads_
(Chatto & Windus). I never very much admired his South Sea ballads
for any quality except their narrative vigour, thinking them unequal
and uncertain both in metre and style.

_Taiti, October 16th, 1888._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--The cruiser for San Francisco departs to-morrow morning bearing you some kind of a scratch. This much more important packet will travel by way of Auckland. It contains a ballant; and I think a better ballant than I expected ever to do. I can imagine how you will wag your pow over it; and how ragged you will find it, etc., but has it not spirit all the same? and though the verse is not all your fancy painted it, has it not some life? And surely, as narrative, the thing has considerable merit! Read it, get a typewritten copy taken, and send me that and your opinion to the Sandwiches. I know I am only courting the most excruciating mortification; but the real cause of my sending the thing is that I could bear to go down myself, but not to have much MS. go down with me. To say truth, we are through the most dangerous; but it has left in all minds a strong sense of insecurity, and we are all for putting eggs in various baskets.

We leave here soon, bound for Uahiva, Raiatea, Bora-Bora, and the Sandwiches.

O, how my spirit languishes
To step ashore on the Sanguishes;
For there my letters wait,
There shall I know my fate.
O, how my spirit languidges
To step ashore on the Sanguidges.

_18th._--I think we shall leave here if all is well on Monday. I am quite recovered, astonishingly recovered. It must be owned these climates and this voyage have given me more strength than I could have thought possible. And yet the sea is a terrible place, stupefying to the mind and poisonous to the temper, the sea, the motion, the lack of space, the cruel publicity, the villainous tinned foods, the sailors, the captain, the passengers--but you are amply repaid when you sight an island, and drop anchor in a new world. Much trouble has attended this trip, but I must confess more pleasure. Nor should I ever complain, as in the last few weeks, with the curing of my illness indeed, as if that were the bursting of an abscess, the cloud has risen from my spirits and to some degree from my temper. Do you know what they called the _Casco_ at Fakarava? The _Silver Ship_. Is that not pretty? Pray tell Mrs. Jenkin, _die silberne Frau_, as I only learned it since I wrote her. I think of calling the book by that name: _The Cruise of the Silver Ship_--so there will be one poetic page at least--the title. At the Sandwiches we shall say farewell to the _S. S._ with mingled feelings. She is a lovely creature: the most beautiful thing at this moment in Taiti.

Well, I will take another sheet, though I know I have nothing to say. You would think I was bursting: but the voyage is all stored up for the book, which is to pay for it, we fondly hope; and the troubles of the time are not worth telling; and our news is little.

Here I conclude (Oct. 24th, I think), for we are now stored, and the Blue Peter metaphorically flies.

R. L. S.

TO WILLIAM AND THOMAS ARCHER

Stevenson addresses a part of this letter, as well as the whole of
another later on, to a young son of Mr. Archer's, but rather to amuse
himself than his nominal correspondent, who was then aged three

_Taiti, October 17th, 1888._

DEAR ARCHER,--Though quite unable to write letters I nobly send you a line signifying nothing. The voyage has agreed well with all; it has had its pains, and its extraordinary pleasures; nothing in the world can equal the excitement of the first time you cast anchor in some bay of a tropical island, and the boats begin to surround you, and the tattooed people swarm aboard. Tell Tomarcher, with my respex, that hide-and-seek is not equal to it; no, nor hidee-in-the-dark; which, for the matter of that, is a game for the unskilful: the artist prefers daylight, a good-sized garden, some shrubbery, an open paddock, and--come on, Macduff.

TOMARCHER, I am now a distinguished litterytour, but that was not the real bent of my genius. I was the best player of hide-and-seek going; not a good runner, I was up to every shift and dodge, I could jink very well, I could crawl without any noise through leaves, I could hide under a carrot plant, it used to be my favourite boast that I always _walked_ into the den. You may care to hear, Tomarcher, about the children in these parts; their parents obey them, they do not obey their parents; and I am sorry to tell you (for I dare say you are already thinking the idea a good one) that it does not pay one halfpenny. There are three sorts of civilisation, Tomarcher: the real old-fashioned one, in which children either had to find out how to please their dear papas, or their dear papas cut their heads off. This style did very well, but is now out of fashion. Then the modern European style: in which children have to behave reasonably well, and go to school and say their prayers, or their dear papas _will know the reason why_. This does fairly well. Then there is the South Sea Island plan, which does not do one bit. The children beat their parents here; it does not make their parents any better; so do not try it.

Dear Tomarcher, I have forgotten the address of your new house, but will send this to one of your papa's publishers. Remember us all to all of you, and believe me, yours respectably,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO CHARLES BAXTER

_Tautira (The Garden of the World), otherwise called
Hans-Christian-Andersen-ville [November 1888]._

MY DEAR CHARLES,--Whether I have a penny left in the wide world, I know not, nor shall know, till I get to Honolulu, where I anticipate a devil of an awakening. It will be from a mighty pleasant dream at least: Tautira being mere Heaven. But suppose, for the sake of argument, any money to be left in the hands of my painful doer, what is to be done with it? Save us from exile would be the wise man's choice, I suppose; for the exile threatens to be eternal. But yet I am of opinion--in case there should be _some_ dibbs in the hand of the P.D., _i.e._ painful doer; because if there be none, I shall take to my flageolet on the high-road, and work home the best way I can, having previously made away with my family--I am of opinion that if ---- and his are in the customary state, and you are thinking of an offering, and there should be still some funds over, you would be a real good P.D. to put some in with yours and tak' the credit o't, like a wee man! I know it's a beastly thing to ask, but it, after all, does no earthly harm, only that much good. And besides, like enough there's nothing in the till, and there is an end. Yet I live here in the full lustre of millions; it is thought I am the richest son of man that has yet been to Tautira: I!--and I am secretly eaten with the fear of lying in pawn, perhaps for the remainder of my days, in San Francisco. As usual, my colds have much hashed my finances.

Do tell Henley I write this just after having dismissed Ori the sub-chief, in whose house I live, Mrs. Ori, and Pairai, their adopted child, from the evening hour of music: during which I Publickly (with a k) Blow on the Flageolet. These are words of truth. Yesterday I told Ori about W. E. H., counterfeited his playing on the piano and the pipe, and succeeded in sending the six feet four there is of that sub-chief somewhat sadly to his bed; feeling that his was not the genuine article after all. Ori is exactly like a colonel in the Guards.--I am, dear Charles, ever yours affectionately,

R. L. S.

TO CHARLES BAXTER

The stanzas which end this letter are well known, having been
printed, with one additional, in _Songs of Travel_; but they gain
effect, I think, from being given here in their place.

_Tautira, 10th November '88._

MY DEAR CHARLES,--Our mainmast is dry-rotten, and we are all to the devil; I shall lie in a debtor's jail. Never mind, Tautira is first chop. I am so besotted that I shall put on the back of this my attempt at words to Wandering Willie; if you can conceive at all the difficulty, you will also conceive the vanity with which I regard any kind of result; and whatever mine is like, it has some sense, and Burns's has none.

Home no more home to me, whither must I wander?
Hunger my driver, I go where I must.
Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather;
Thick drives the rain, and my roof is in the dust.
Loved of wise men was the shade of my roof-tree;
The true word of welcome was spoken in the door--
Dear days of old, with the faces in the firelight,
Kind folks of old, you come again no more.

Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces,
Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child.
Fire and the windows bright glittered on the moorland;
Song, tuneful song, built a palace in the wild.
Now, when day dawns on the brow of the moorland,
Lone stands the house, and the chimney-stone is cold.
Lone let it stand, now the friends are all departed,
The kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place of old.

R. L. S.

TO JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

The following is the draft of a proposed dedication to the South Sea
travel-book which was to be the fruit of the present voyages, as is
explained in a note at the end.

_November 11th, 1888._

_One November night, in the village of Tautira, we sat at the high table in the hall of assembly, hearing the natives sing. It was dark in the hall, and very warm; though at times the land wind blew a little shrewdly through the chinks, and at times, through the larger openings, we could see the moonlight on the lawn. As the songs arose in the rattling Tahitian chorus, the chief translated here and there a verse. Farther on in the volume you shall read the songs themselves; and I am in hopes that not you only, but all who can find a savour in the ancient poetry of places, will read them with some pleasure. You are to conceive us, therefore, in strange circumstances and very pleasing; in a strange land and climate, the most beautiful on earth; surrounded by a foreign race that all travellers have agreed to be the most engaging; and taking a double interest in two foreign arts._

_We came forth again at last, in a cloudy moonlight, on the forest lawn which is the street of Tautira. The Pacific roared outside upon the reef. Here and there one of the scattered palm-built lodges shone out under the shadow of the wood, the lamplight bursting through the crannies of the wall. We went homeward slowly, Ori a Ori carrying behind us the lantern and the chairs, properties with which we had just been enacting our part of the distinguished visitor. It was one of those moments in which minds not altogether churlish recall the names and deplore the absence of congenial friends; and it was your name that first rose upon our lips. "How Symonds would have enjoyed this evening!" said one, and then another. The word caught in my mind; I went to bed, and it was still there. The glittering, frosty solitudes in which your days are cast arose before me: I seemed to see you walking there in the late night, under the pine-trees and the stars; and I received the image with something like remorse._

_There is a modern attitude towards Fortune; in this place I will not use a graver name. Staunchly to withstand her buffets and to enjoy with equanimity her favours was the code of the virtuous of old. Our fathers, it should seem, wondered and doubted how they had merited their misfortunes: we, rather how we have deserved our happiness. And we stand often abashed, and sometimes revolted, at those partialities of fate by which we profit most. It was so with me on that November night: I felt that our positions should be changed. It was you, dear Symonds, who should have gone upon that voyage and written this account. With your rich stores of knowledge, you could have remarked and understood a thousand things of interest and beauty that escaped my ignorance; and the brilliant colours of your style would have carried into a thousand sickrooms the sea air and the strong sun of tropic islands. It was otherwise decreed. But suffer me at least to connect you, if only in name and only in the fondness of imagination, with the voyage of the_ Silver Ship.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

DEAR SYMONDS,--I send you this (November 11th), the morning of its completion. If I ever write an account of this voyage, may I place this letter at the beginning? It represents--I need not tell you, for you too are an artist--a most genuine feeling, which kept me long awake last night; and though perhaps a little elaborate, I think it a good piece of writing. We are _in heaven here_. Do not forget.

R. L. S.

Please keep this: I have no perfect copy.

_Tautira, on the peninsula of Taiti._

TO THOMAS ARCHER

_Tautira, Island of Taiti [November 1888]._