Chapter XV: Act II: On Graham's arrival I gave him my room and came out to Lloyd's (3)

I am proud to think you are a Scotchman--though to be sure I know nothing of that country, being only an English tourist, quo' Gavin Ogilvy. I commend the hard case of Mr. Gavin Ogilvy to J. M. Barrie, whose work is to me a source of living pleasure and heartfelt national pride. There are two of us now that the Shirra might have patted on the head. And please do not think when I thus seem to bracket myself with you, that I am wholly blinded with vanity. Jess is beyond my frontier line; I could not touch her skirt; I have no such glamour of twilight on my pen. I am a capable artist; but it begins to look to me as if you were a man of genius. Take care of yourself for my sake. It's a devilish hard thing for a man who writes so many novels as I do, that I should get so few to read. And I can read yours, and I love them.

A pity for you that my amanuensis is not on stock to-day, and my own hand perceptibly worse than usual.--Yours,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

_December 5th, 1892._

_P.S._--They tell me your health is not strong. Man, come out here and try the Prophet's chamber. There's only one bad point to us--we do rise early. The Amanuensis states that you are a lover of silence--and that ours is a noisy house--and she is a chatterbox--I am not answerable for these statements, though I do think there is a touch of garrulity about my premises. We have so little to talk about, you see. The house is three miles from town, in the midst of great silent forests. There is a burn close by, and when we are not talking you can hear the burn, and the birds, and the sea breaking on the coast three miles away and six hundred feet below us, and about three times a month a bell--I don't know where the bell is, nor who rings it; it may be the bell in Hans Andersen's story for all I know. It is never hot here--86 in the shade is about our hottest--and it is never cold except just in the early mornings. Take it for all in all, I suppose this island climate to be by far the healthiest in the world--even the influenza entirely lost its sting. Only two patients died, and one was a man nearly eighty, and the other a child below four months. I won't tell you if it is beautiful, for I want you to come here and see for yourself. Everybody on the premises except my wife has some Scotch blood in their veins--I beg your pardon--except the natives--and then my wife is a Dutchwoman--and the natives are the next thing conceivable to Highlanders before the forty-five. We would have some grand cracks!

R. L. S.

Come, it will broaden your mind, and be the making of me.

To CHARLES BAXTER

This correspondent had lately been on a tour in Sweden.

_[Vailima] December 28th, 1892._

MY DEAR CHARLES,--Your really decent letter to hand. And here I am answering it, to the merry note of the carpenter's hammer, in an upper room of the New House. This upper floor is almost done now, but the Grrrrrreat 'All below is still unlined; it is all to be varnished redwood. I paid a big figure but do not repent; the trouble has been so minimised, the work has been so workmanlike, and all the parties have been so obliging. What a pity when you met the Buried Majesty of Sweden--the sovereign of my Cedercrantz--you did not breathe in his ear a word of Samoa!

O Sovereign of my Cedercrantz,
Conceive how his plump carcase pants
To leave the spot he now is tree'd in,
And skip with all the dibbs to Sweden.
O Sovereign of my Cedercrantz,
The lowly plea I now advantz;
Remove this man of light and leadin'
From us to more congenial Sweden.

This kind of thing might be kept up a Lapland night. "Let us bury the great joke"--Shade of Tennyson, forgive!

I am glad to say, you can scarce receive the second bill for the house until next mail, which gives more room to turn round in. Yes, my rate of expenditure is hellish. It is funny, it crept up and up; and when we sat upon one vent another exploded. Lloyd and I grew grey over the monthly returns; but every damned month, there is a new extra. However, we always hope the next will prove less recalcitrant; in which faith we advance trembling.

The desiderated advertisement, I think I have told you, was mighty near supplied: that is, if deportation would suit your view: the ship was actually sought to be hired. Yes, it would have been an advertisement, and rather a lark, and yet a blooming nuisance. For my part, I shall try to do without.

No one has thought fit to send me Atalanta[55]; and I have no proof at all of _D. Balfour_, which is far more serious. How about the _D. B._ map? As soon as there is a proof it were well I should see it to accord the text thereto--or t'other way about if needs must. Remember I had to go much on memory in writing that work. Did you observe the dedication? and how did you like it? If it don't suit you, I am to try my hand again.--Yours ever,

R. L. S.

FOOTNOTES:

[32] Editors and publishers (since those days we have been _deniaises_
with a vengeance) had actually been inclined to shy at the terms of
the fraudulent marriage contract, which is the pivot of the whole
story; see below, p. 187.

[33] For a lively account of this plantation and its history, see
Lord Pembroke's _South Sea Bubbles_, chap. i.

[34] The native wife of a carpenter in Apia.

[35] The sequel to _Kidnapped_, published in the following year under
the title _Catriona_.

[36] Most of the work on the plantations in Samoa is done by "black
boys," _i.e._ imported labourers from other (Melanesian) islands.

[37] By Howard Pyle.

[38] In answer to the obvious remark that the length and style of
_The Wrecker_, then running in Scribner's Magazine, were out of
keeping with what professed at the outset to be a spoken yarn.

[39] Of Ballantrae: the story is the unfinished _Young Chevalier_.

[40] Afterwards changed into _The Ebb Tide_.

[41] Wordsworth's _Ode to Duty_, a shade misquoted.

[42] "Kava, properly Ava, is a drink more or less intoxicating, made
from the root of the _Piper Methysticum_, a Pepper plant. The root
is grated: formerly it was chewed by fair damsels. The root thus
broken up is rubbed about in a great pail, with water slowly added.
A strainer of bark cloth is plunged into it at times, and wrung out
so as to carry away the small fragments of root. The drink is made
and used in ceremony. Every detail is regulated by rules, and the
manner of the mixture of the water, the straining, the handling of
the cup, the drinking out of it and returning, should all be done
according to a well-established manner and in certain cadences." I
borrow this explanation from the late Mr. Lafarge's notes to his
catalogue of South Sea Drawings. It may serve to make clearer
several passages in later letters of the present collection. Readers
of the late Lord Pembroke's _South Sea Bubbles_ will remember the
account of this beverage and its preparation in Chap. viii. of that
volume.

[43] Referring to the marriage contract in the _Beach of Falesa:_ see
above, p. 152.

[44] This about the consulship was only a passing notion on the part
of R. L. S. No vacancy occurred, and in his correspondence he does
not recur to the subject.

[45] I had not cared to send him the story as thus docked and
rechristened in its serial shape.

[46] Austin Strong, on his way to school in California.

[47] By Emile Zola.

[48] The reference is to the writer's maternal cousin, Mr. Graham
Balfour (_Samoice_, "Pelema"), who during these months and again
later was an inmate of the home at Vailima: see above, p. 223.

[49] Robert MacQueen, Lord Braxfield, the "Hanging Judge,"
(1722-1799). This historical personage furnished the conception of
the chief character, but by no means the details or incidents of the
story, which is indeed dated some years after his death.

[50] The allusion is to _Tess_: a book R. L. S. did not like.

[51] A character in _The Wrecker_.

[52] Exactly what in the end actually happened.

[53] Austin Strong.

[54] This tale was withheld from the volume accordingly.

[55] The magazine in which _Catriona_ first appeared in this
country, under the title _David Balfour_.

XIII

LIFE IN SAMOA--_Continued_

THIRD YEAR AT VAILIMA

JANUARY-DECEMBER 1893

By the New Year of 1893 the fine addition to the house at Vailima was finished, and its pleasantness and comfort went far to console Stevenson for the cost. But the year was on the whole a less fortunate one for the inmates than the last. A proclamation concerning penalties for sedition in the Samoan Islands, which from its tenor could have been aimed at no one else but Stevenson, had been issued at the close of 1892 by the High Commissioner at Fiji; and with its modification and practical withdrawal, by order of the Foreign Office at home, the last threat of unpleasant consequences in connection with his political action disappeared. But a sharp second attack of influenza in January lowered his vitality, and from a trip which the family took for the sake of change to Sydney, in the month of February, they returned with health unimproved. In April the illness of Mrs. Stevenson caused her husband some weeks of acute distress and anxiety. In August he suffered the chagrin of witnessing the outbreak of the war which he had vainly striven to prevent between the two rival kings, and the defeat and banishment of Mataafa, whom he knew to be the one man of governing capacity among the native chiefs, and whom, in the interest alike of whites and natives, he had desired to see the Powers not crush, but conciliate. On the other hand, he had the satisfaction of seeing the Chief Justice and President removed from the posts they had so incompetently filled, and superseded by new and better men. The task imposed by the three Powers upon these officials was in truth an impossible one; but their characters and endeavours earned respect, and with the American Chief Justice in particular, Mr. C. J. Ide (whom he had already known as one of the Land Commissioners), and with his family the Vailima household lived on terms of cordial friendship. In September Stevenson took a health-trip to Honolulu, which again turned out unsuccessful. For some weeks he was down with a renewed attack of fever and prostration, and his wife had to come from Samoa to nurse and fetch him home. Later in the autumn he mended again.

During no part of the year were Stevenson's working powers up to the mark. In the early summer he finished _The Ebb Tide_, but on a plan much abridged from its original intention, and with an unusual degree of strain and effort. With _St. Ives_ and his own family history he made fair progress, but both of these he regarded as in a manner holiday tasks, not calling for any very serious exercise of his powers. In connection with the latter, he took an eager interest, as his correspondence will show, in the researches which friends and kinsmen undertook for him in Scotland. He fell into arrears in regard to one or two magazine stories for which he had contracted; and with none of his more ambitious schemes of romance, _Sophia Scarlet_, _The Young Chevalier_, _Heathercat_, and _Weir of Hermiston_, did he feel himself well able to cope. This falling-off of his power of production brought with it no small degree of inward strain and anxiety. He had not yet put by any provision for his wife and step-family (the income from the moderate fortune left by his father naturally going to his mother during her life). His earnings had since 1887 been considerable, at the rate of L4,000 a year or thereabouts; but his building expenses and large mode of life at Vailima, together with his habitual generosity, which scarce knew check or limit, towards the less fortunate of his friends and acquaintances in various parts of the world, made his expenditure about equal to his income. The idea originally entertained of turning part of the Vailima estate into a profitable plantation turned out chimerical. The thought began to haunt him, What if his power of earning were soon to cease? And occasional signs of inward depression and life-weariness began to appear in his correspondence. But it was only in writing, and then but rarely, that he let such signs appear: to those about him he retained the old affectionate charm and inspiring gaiety undiminished, fulfilling without failure the words of his own prayer, "Give us to awake with smiles, give us to labour smiling; as the sun lightens the world, so let our loving-kindness make bright this house of our habitation."

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

_[Vailima] January 1893._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--You are properly paid at last, and it is like you will have but a shadow of a letter. I have been pretty thoroughly out of kilter; first a fever that would neither come on nor go off, then acute dyspepsia, in the weakening grasp of which I get wandering between the waking state and one of nightmare. Why the devil does no one send me Atalanta? And why are there no proofs of _D. Balfour_? Sure I should have had the whole, at least the half, of them by now; and it would be all for the advantage of the Atalantans. I have written to Cassell & Co. (matter of _Falesa_) "you will please arrange with him" (meaning you). "What he may decide I shall abide." So consider your hand free, and act for me without fear or favour. I am greatly pleased with the illustrations. It is very strange to a South-Seayer to see Hawaiian women dressed like Samoans, but I guess that's all one to you in Middlesex. It's about the same as if London city men were shown going to the Stock Exchange as _pifferari_; but no matter, none will sleep worse for it. I have accepted Cassell's proposal as an amendment to one of mine; that _D. B._ is to be brought out first under the title _Catriona_ without pictures; and, when the hour strikes, _Kidnapped_ and _Catriona_ are to form vols. I. and II. of the heavily illustrated _Adventures of David Balfour_ at 7s. 6d. each, sold separately.

----'s letter was vastly sly and dry and shy.[56] I am not afraid now. Two attempts have been made, both have failed, and I imagine these failures strengthen me. Above all this is true of the last, where my weak point was attempted. On every other, I am strong. Only force can dislodge me, for public opinion is wholly on my side. All races and degrees are united in heartfelt opposition to the Men of Mulinuu. The news of the fighting was of no concern to mortal man; it was made much of because men love talk of battles, and because the Government pray God daily for some scandal not their own; but it was only a brisk episode in a clan fight which has grown apparently endemic in the west of Tutuila. At the best it was a twopenny affair, and never occupied my mind five minutes.

I am so weary of reports that are without foundation and threats that go without fulfilment, and so much occupied besides by the raging troubles of my own wame, that I have been very slack on politics, as I have been in literature. With incredible labour, I have rewritten the First Chapter of the _Justice-Clerk_; it took me about ten days, and requires another athletic dressing after all. And that is my story for the month. The rest is grunting and grutching.

Consideranda for _The Beach_:--

I. Whether to add one or both the tales I sent you?

II. Whether to call the whole volume _Island Nights' Entertainments_?

III. Whether, having waited so long, it would not be better to give me another mail, in case I could add another member to the volume and a little better justify the name?

If I possibly can draw up another story, I will. What annoyed me about the use of _The Bottle Imp_ was that I had always meant it for the centre-piece of a volume of _Maerchen_ which I was slowly to elaborate. You always had an idea that I depreciated the _B. I._; I can't think wherefore; I always particularly liked it--one of my best works, and ill to equal; and that was why I loved to keep it in portfolio till I had time to grow up to some other fruit of the same _venue_. However, that is disposed of now, and we must just do the best we can.

I am not aware that there is anything to add; the weather is hellish, waterspouts, mists, chills, the foul fiend's own weather, following on a week of expurgated heaven; so it goes at this bewildering season. I write in the upper floor of my new house, of which I will send you some day a plan to measure. 'Tis an elegant structure, surely, and the proid of me oi. Was asked to pay for it just now, and genteelly refused, and then agreed, in view of general good-will, to pay a half of what is still due.

_24th January 1893._--This ought to have gone last mail and was forgotten. My best excuse is that I was engaged in starting an influenza, to which class of exploit our household has been since then entirely dedicated. We had eight cases, one of them very bad, and one--mine--complicated with my old friend Bluidy Jack.[57] Luckily neither Fanny, Lloyd, or Belle took the confounded thing, and they were able to run the household and nurse the sick to admiration.

Some of our boys behaved like real trumps. Perhaps the prettiest performance was that of our excellent Henry Simele, or, as we sometimes call him, Davy Balfour. Henry, I maun premeese, is a chief; the humblest Samoan recoils from emptying slops as you would from cheating at cards; now the last nights of our bad time, when we had seven down together, it was enough to have made anybody laugh or cry to see Henry going the rounds with a slop-bucket and going inside the mosquito net of each of the sick, Protestant and Catholic alike, to pray with them.

I must tell you that in my sickness I had a huge alleviation and began a new story. This I am writing by dictation, and really think it is an art I can manage to acquire. The relief is beyond description; it is just like a school-treat to me, and the amanuensis bears up extraordinar'. The story is to be called _St. Ives_; I give you your choice whether or not it should bear the sub-title, "Experiences of a French prisoner in England." We were just getting on splendidly with it, when this cursed mail arrived and requires to be attended to. It looks to me very like as if _St. Ives_ would be ready before any of the others, but you know me and how impossible it is I should predict. The Amanuensis has her head quite turned and believes herself to be the author of this novel (and is to some extent)--and as the creature (!) has not been wholly useless in the matter (I told you so! A.M.) I propose to foster her vanity by a little commemoration gift! The name of the hero is Anne de St. Yves--he Englishes his name to St. Ives during his escape. It is my idea to get a ring made which shall either represent _Anne_ or A. S. Y. A., of course, would be Amethyst and S. Sapphire, which is my favourite stone anyway and was my father's before me. But what would the ex-Slade professor do about the letter Y? Or suppose he took the other version, how would he meet the case, the two N.'s? These things are beyond my knowledge, which it would perhaps be more descriptive to call ignorance. But I place the matter in the meanwhile under your consideration and beg to hear your views. I shall tell you on some other occasion and when the A.M. is out of hearing how _very_ much I propose to invest in this testimonial; but I may as well inform you at once that I intend it to be cheap, sir, damned cheap! My idea of running amanuenses is by praise, not pudding, flattery and not coins! I shall send you when the time is ripe a ring to measure by.

To resume our sad tale. After the other seven were almost wholly recovered Henry lay down to influenza on his own account. He is but just better and it looks as though Fanny were about to bring up the rear. As for me, I am all right, though I _was_ reduced to dictating _Anne_ in the deaf-and-dumb alphabet, which I think you will admit is a _comble_.

Politics leave me extraordinary cold. It seems that so much of my purpose has come off, and Cedercrantz and Pilsach are sacked. The rest of it has all gone to water. The triple-headed ass at home, in his plenitude of ignorance, prefers to collect the taxes and scatter the Mataafas by force or the threat of force. It may succeed, and I suppose it will. It is none the less for that expensive, harsh, unpopular and unsettling. I am young enough to have been annoyed, and altogether eject and renegate the whole idea of political affairs. Success in that field appears to be the organisation of failure enlivened with defamation of character; and, much as I love pickles and hot water (in your true phrase) I shall take my pickles in future from Crosse and Blackwell and my hot water with a dose of good Glenlivat.

Do not bother at all about the wall-papers. We have had the whole of our new house varnished, and it looks beautiful. I wish you could see the hall; poor room, it had to begin life as an infirmary during our recent visitation; but it is really a handsome comely place, and when we get the furniture, and the pictures, and what is so very much more decorative, the picture frames, will look sublime.

_Jan. 30th._--I have written to Charles asking for Rowlandson's _Syntax_ and _Dance of Death_ out of our house, and begging for anything about fashions and manners (fashions particularly) for 1814. Can you help? Both the Justice Clerk and St. Ives fall in that fated year. Indeed I got into St. Ives while going over the Annual Register for the other. There is a kind of fancy list of Chaps. of St. Ives. (It begins in Edin^b Castle.) I. Story of a lion rampant (that was a toy he had made, and given to a girl visitor). II. Story of a pair of scissors. III. St. Ives receives a bundle of money. IV. St. Ives is shown a house. V. The Escape. VI. The Cottage (Swanston Cottage). VII. The Hen-house. VIII. Three is company and four none. IX. The Drovers. X. The Great North Road. XI. Burchell Fenn. XII. The covered cart. XIII. The doctor. XIV. The Luddites. XV. Set a thief to catch a thief. XVI. M. le Comte de Kerouaille (his uncle, the rich _emigre_, whom he finds murdered). XVII. The cousins. XVIII. Mr. Sergeant Garrow. XIX. A meeting at the Ship, Dover. XX. Diane. XXI. The Duke's Prejudices. XXII. The False Messenger. XXIII. The gardener's ladder. XXIV. The officers. XXV. Trouble with the Duke. XXVI. Fouquet again. XXVII. The Aeronaut. XXVIII. The True-Blooded Yankee. XXIX. In France. I don't know where to stop. Apropos, I want a book about Paris, and the _first return_ of the _emigres_ and all up to the _Cent Jours_: d'ye ken anything in my way? I want in particular to know about them and the Napoleonic functionaries and officers, and to get the colour and some vital details of the business of exchange of departments from one side to the other.[58] Ten chapters are drafted, and VIII. re-copied by me, but will want another dressing for luck. It is merely a story of adventure, rambling along; but that is perhaps the guard that "sets my genius best," as Alan might have said. I wish I could feel as easy about the other! But there, all novels are a heavy burthen while they are doing, and a sensible disappointment when they are done.

For God's sake, let me have a copy of the new German Samoa White Book.

R. L. S.

TO CHARLES BAXTER

Telling how the projected tale, _The Pearl Fisher_, had been cut down
and in its new form was to be called _The Schooner Farallone_
(afterwards changed to _The Ebb Tide_).

[_Vailima, February 1893._]

MY DEAR CHARLES,--I have had the influenza, as I believe you know: this has been followed by two goes of my old friend Bloodie Jacke, and I have had fefe--the island complaint--for the second time in two months. All this, and the fact that both my womenkind require to see a doctor: and some wish to see Lord Jersey before he goes home: all send me off on a month's holiday to Sydney. I may get my mail: or I may not: depends on freight, weather, and the captain's good-nature--he is one of those who most religiously fear Apia harbour: it is quite a superstition with American captains. (Odd note: American sailors, who make British hair grey by the way they carry canvas, appear to be actually _more_ nervous when it comes to coast and harbour work.) This is the only holiday I have had for more than 2 years; I dare say it will be as long again before I take another. And I am going to spend a lot of money. Ahem!

On the other hand, you can prepare to dispose of the serial rights of the _Schooner Farallone:_ a most grim and gloomy tale. It will run to something between _Jekyll and Hyde_ and _Treasure Island_. I will not commit myself beyond this, but I anticipate from 65 to 70,000 words, could almost pledge myself not shorter than 65,000, but won't. The tale can be sent as soon as you have made arrangements; I hope to finish it in a month; six weeks, bar the worst accidents, for certain. I should say this is the butt end of what was once _The Pearl Fisher_. There is a peculiarity about this tale in its new form: it ends with a conversion! We have been tempted rather to call it _The Schooner Farallone: a tract by R. L. S._ and _L. O._ It would make a boss tract; the three main characters--and there are only four--are barats, insurance frauds, thieves and would-be murderers; so the company's good. Devil a woman there, by good luck; so it's "pure." 'Tis a most--what's the expression?--unconventional work.

R. L. S.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

_At Sea, s.s._ Mariposa, _Feb. 19th, '93_.

MY DEAR COLVIN,--You will see from this heading that I am not dead yet nor likely to be. I was pretty considerably out of sorts, and that is indeed one reason why Fanny, Belle, and I have started out for a month's lark. To be quite exact, I think it will be about five weeks before we get home. We shall stay between two and three in Sydney. Already, though we only sailed yesterday, I am feeling as fit as a fiddle. Fanny ate a whole fowl for breakfast, to say nothing of a tower of hot cakes. Belle and I floored another hen betwixt the pair of us, and I shall be no sooner done with the present amanuensing racket than I shall put myself outside a pint of Guinness. If you think this looks like dying of consumption in Apia I can only say I differ from you. In the matter of _David_, I have never yet received my proofs at all, but shall certainly wait for your suggestions. Certainly, Chaps. 17 to 20 are the hitch, and I confess I hurried over them with both wings spread. This is doubtless what you complain of. Indeed, I placed my single reliance on Miss Grant. If she couldn't ferry me over, I felt I had to stay there.

About _Island Nights' Entertainments_ all you say is highly satisfactory. Go in and win.

The extracts from the Times I really cannot trust myself to comment upon. They were infernally satisfactory; so, and perhaps still more so, was a letter I had at the same time from Lord Pembroke. If I have time as I go through Auckland, I am going to see Sir George Grey.

Now I really think that's all the business. I have been rather sick and have had two small hemorrhages, but the second I believe to have been accidental. No good denying that this annoys, because it do. However, you must expect influenza to leave some harm, and my spirits, appetite, peace on earth and goodwill to men are all on a rising market. During the last week the amanuensis was otherwise engaged, whereupon I took up, pitched into, and about one half demolished another tale, once intended to be called _The Pearl Fisher_, but now razeed and called _The Schooner Farallone_.[59] We had a capital start, the steamer coming in at sunrise, and just giving us time to get our letters ere she sailed again. The manager of the German Firm (O strange, changed days!) danced attendance upon us all morning; his boat conveyed us to and from the steamer.

_Feb. 21st._--All continues well. Amanuensis bowled over for a day, but afoot again and jolly; Fanny enormously bettered by the voyage; I have been as jolly as a sand-boy as usual at sea. The Amanuensis sits opposite to me writing to her offspring. Fanny is on deck. I have just supplied her with the Canadian Pacific Agent, and so left her in good hands. You should hear me at table with the Ulster purser and a little punning microscopist called Davis. Belle does some kind of abstruse Boswell-ising; after the first meal, having gauged the kind of jests that would pay here, I observed, "Boswell is Barred during this cruise."

_23rd._--We approach Auckland and I must close my mail. All goes well with the trio. Both the ladies are hanging round a beau--the same--that I unearthed for them: I am general provider, and especially great in the beaux business. I corrected some proofs for Fanny yesterday afternoon, fell asleep over them in the saloon--and the whole ship seems to have been down beholding me. After I woke up, had a hot bath, a whisky punch and a cigarette, and went to bed, and to sleep too, at 8.30; a recrudescence of Vailima hours. Awoke to-day, and had to go to the saloon clock for the hour--no sign of dawn--all heaven grey rainy fog. Have just had breakfast, written up one letter, register and close this.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

Bad pen, bad ink, _S.S._ Mariposa, _at Sea_.
bad light, bad _Apia due by daybreak to-morrow,
blotting-paper. 9 p.m._ [_March 1st, 1893._]

MY DEAR COLVIN,--Have had an amusing but tragic holiday, from which we return in disarray. Fanny quite sick, but I think slowly and steadily mending; Belle in a terrific state of dentistry troubles which now seem calmed; and myself with a succession of gentle colds out of which I at last succeeded in cooking up a fine pleurisy. By stopping and stewing in a perfectly airless state-room I seem to have got rid of the pleurisy. Poor Fanny had very little fun of her visit, having been most of the time on a diet of maltine and slops--and this while the rest of us were rioting on oysters and mushrooms. Belle's only devil in the hedge was the dentist. As for me, I was entertained at the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, likewise at a sort of artistic club; made speeches at both, and may therefore be said to have been, like Saint Paul, all things to all men. I have an account of the latter racket which I meant to have enclosed in this.... Had some splendid photos taken, likewise a medallion by a French sculptor; met Graham, who returned with us as far as Auckland. Have seen a good deal too of Sir George Grey; what a wonderful old historic figure to be walking on your arm and recalling ancient events and instances! It makes a man small, and yet the extent to which he approved what I had done--or rather have tried to do--encouraged me. Sir George is an expert at least, he knows these races: he is not a small employe with an ink-pot and a Whitaker.

Take it for all in all, it was huge fun: even Fanny had some lively sport at the beginning; Belle and I all through. We got Fanny a dress on the sly, gaudy black velvet and Duchesse lace. And alas! she was only able to wear it once. But we'll hope to see more of it at Samoa; it really is lovely. Both dames are royally outfitted in silk stockings, etc. We return, as from a raid, with our spoils and our wounded. I am now very dandy: I announced two years ago that I should change. Slovenly youth, all right--not slovenly age. So really now I am pretty spruce; always a white shirt, white necktie, fresh shave, silk socks, O a great sight!--No more possible.

R. L. S.

TO CHARLES BAXTER

Of the books mentioned below, _Dr. Syntax's Tour_ and Rowlandson's
_Dance of Death_ had been for use in furnishing customs and manners
in the English part of _St. Ives_; _Pitcairn_ is Pitcairn's _Criminal
Trials of Scotland from 1488 to 1624_. As to the name of Stevenson
and its adoption by some members of the proscribed clan of Macgregor,
Stevenson had been greatly interested by the facts laid before him by
his correspondent here mentioned, Mr. Macgregor Stevenson of New
York, and had at first delightedly welcomed the idea that his own
ancestors might have been fellow-clansmen of Rob Roy. But further
correspondence on the subject of his own descent held with a trained
genealogist, his namesake Mr. J. Horne Stevenson of Edinburgh,
convinced him that the notion must be abandoned.

[_April 1893._]

... About _The Justice-Clerk_, I long to go at it, but will first try to get a short story done. Since January I have had two severe illnesses, my boy, and some heartbreaking anxiety over Fanny; and am only now convalescing. I came down to dinner last night for the first time, and that only because the service had broken down, and to relieve an inexperienced servant. Nearly four months now I have rested my brains; and if it be true that rest is good for brains, I ought to be able to pitch in like a giant refreshed. Before the autumn, I hope to send you some _Justice-Clerk_, or _Weir of Hermiston_, as Colvin seems to prefer; I own to indecision. Received _Syntax_, _Dance of Death_, and _Pitcairn_, which last I have read from end to end since its arrival, with vast improvement. What a pity it stops so soon! I wonder is there nothing that seems to prolong the series? Why doesn't some young man take it up? How about my old friend Fountainhall's _Decisions?_ I remember as a boy that there was some good reading there. Perhaps you could borrow me that, and send it on loan; and perhaps Laing's _Memorials_ therewith; and a work I'm ashamed to say I have never read, _Balfour's Letters_.... I have come by accident, through a correspondent, on one very curious and interesting fact--namely, that Stevenson was one of the names adopted by the Macgregors at the proscription. The details supplied by my correspondent are both convincing and amusing; but it would be highly interesting to find out more of this.

R. L. S.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

These notes are in reply to a set of queries and suggestions as to
points that seemed to need clearing in the tale of _Catriona_, as
first published in Atalanta under the title _David Balfour_.

_[Vailima] April 1893._

1. _Slip_ 3. Davie would be _attracted_ into a similar dialect, as he is later--_e.g._ with Doig, chapter XIX. This is truly Scottish.

4, _to lightly_; correct; "to lightly" is a good regular Scots verb.

15. See Allan Ramsay's works.

15, 16. Ay, and that is one of the pigments with which I am trying to draw the character of Prestongrange. 'Tis a most curious thing to render that kind, insignificant mask. To make anything precise is to risk my effect. And till the day he died, Davie was never sure of what P. was after. Not only so; very often P. didn't know himself. There was an element of mere liking for Davie; there was an element of being determined, in case of accidents, to keep well with him. He hoped his Barbara would bring him to her feet, besides, and make him manageable. That was why he sent him to Hope Park with them. But Davie cannot _know_; I give you the inside of Davie, and my method condemns me to give only the outside both of Prestongrange and his policy.

- -I'll give my mind to the technicalities. Yet to me they seem a part of the story, which is historical, after all.

- -I think they wanted Alan to escape. But when or where to say so? I will try.

- -20, _Dean_. I'll try and make that plainer.

_Chap._ XIII., I fear it has to go without blows. If I could get the pair--No, can't be.

- -XIV. All right, will abridge.

- -XV. I'd have to put a note to every word; and he who can't read Scots can _never_ enjoy Tod Lapraik.

- -XVII. Quite right. I _can_ make this plainer, and will.

- -XVIII. I know, but I have to hurry here; this is the broken back of my story; some business briefly transacted, I am leaping for Barbara's apron-strings.

_Slip_ 57. Quite right again; I shall make it plain.

_Chap._ XX. I shall make all these points clear. About Lady Prestongrange (not _Lady_ Grant, only _Miss_ Grant, my dear, though _Lady_ Prestongrange, quoth the dominie) I am taken with your idea of her death, and have a good mind to substitute a featureless aunt.

_Slip_ 78. I don't see how to lessen this effect. There is really not much said of it; and I know Catriona did it. But I'll try.

- -89. I know. This is an old puzzle of mine. You see C.'s dialect is not wholly a bed of roses. If only I knew the Gaelic. Well, I'll try for another expression.

_The end._ I shall try to work it over. James was at Dunkirk ordering post-horses for his own retreat. Catriona did have her suspicions aroused by the letter, and careless gentleman, I told you so--or she did at least.--Yes, the blood money.--I am bothered about the portmanteau; it is the presence of Catriona that bothers me; the rape of the pockmantie is historic....

To me, I own, it seems in the proof a very pretty piece of workmanship. David himself I refuse to discuss; he _is_. The Lord Advocate I think a strong sketch of a very difficult character, James More, sufficient; and the two girls very pleasing creatures. But O dear me, I came near losing my heart to Barbara! I am not quite so constant as David, and even he--well, he didn't know it, anyway! _Tod Lapraik_ is a piece of living Scots: if I had never writ anything but that and _Thrawn Janet_, still I'd have been a writer. The defects of _D. B._ are inherent, I fear. But on the whole, I am far indeed from being displeased with the tailie. One thing is sure, there has been no such drawing of Scots character since Scott; and even he never drew a full length like Davie, with his shrewdness and simplicity, and stockishness and charm. Yet, you'll see, the public won't want it; they want more Alan! Well, they can't get it. And readers of _Tess_ can have no use for my David, and his innocent but real love affairs.

I found my fame much grown on this return to civilisation. _Digito monstrari_ is a new experience; people all looked at me in the streets in Sydney; and it was very queer. Here, of course, I am only the white chief in the Great House to the natives; and to the whites, either an ally or a foe. It is a much healthier state of matters. If I lived in an atmosphere of adulation, I should end by kicking against the pricks. O my beautiful forest, O my beautiful shining, windy house, what a joy it was to behold them again! No chance to take myself too seriously here.

The difficulty of the end is the mass of matter to be attended to, and the small time left to transact it in. I mean from Alan's danger of arrest. But I have just seen my way out, I do believe.

_Easter Sunday._--I have now got as far as slip 28, and finished the chapter of the law technicalities. Well, these seemed to me always of the essence of the story, which is the story of a _cause celebre_; moreover, they are the justification of my inventions; if these men went so far (granting Davie sprung on them) would they not have gone so much further? But of course I knew they were a difficulty; determined to carry them through in a conversation; approached this (it seems) with cowardly anxiety; and filled it with gabble, sir, gabble. I have left all my facts, but have removed 42 lines. I should not wonder but what I'll end by re-writing it. It is not the technicalities that shocked you, it was my bad art. It is very strange that X. should be so good a chapter and IX. and XI. so uncompromisingly bad. It looks as if XI. also would have to be re-formed. If X. had not cheered me up, I should be in doleful dumps, but X. is alive anyway, and life is all in all.

_Thursday, April 5th._--Well, there's no disguise possible; Fanny is not well, and we are miserably anxious....

_Friday, 7th._--I am thankful to say the new medicine relieved her at once. A crape has been removed from the day for all of us. To make things better, the morning is ah! such a morning as you have never seen; heaven upon earth for sweetness, freshness, depth upon depth of unimaginable colour, and a huge silence broken at this moment only by the far-away murmur of the Pacific and the rich piping of a single bird. You can't conceive what a relief this is; it seems a new world. She has such extraordinary recuperative power that I do hope for the best. I am as tired as man can be. This is a great trial to a family, and I thank God it seems as if ours was going to bear it well. And O! if it only lets up, it will be but a pleasant memory. We are all seedy, bar Lloyd: Fanny, as per above; self nearly extinct; Belle, utterly overworked and bad toothache; Cook, down with a bad foot; Butler, prostrate with a bad leg. Eh, what a faim'ly!

_Sunday._--Grey heaven, raining torrents of rain; occasional thunder and lightning. Everything to dispirit; but my invalids are really on the mend. The rain roars like the sea; in the sound of it there is a strange and ominous suggestion of an approaching tramp; something nameless and measureless seems to draw near, and strikes me cold, and yet is welcome. I lie quiet in bed to-day, and think of the universe with a good deal of equanimity. I have, at this moment, but the one objection to it; the _fracas_ with which it proceeds. I do not love noise; I am like my grandfather in that; and so many years in these still islands has ingrained the sentiment perhaps. Here are no trains, only men pacing barefoot. No cars or carriages; at worst the rattle of a horse's shoes among the rocks. Beautiful silence; and so soon as this robustious rain takes off, I am to drink of it again by oceanfuls.

_April 16th._--Several pages of this letter destroyed as beneath scorn; the wailings of a crushed worm; matter in which neither you nor I can take stock. Fanny is distinctly better, I believe all right now; I too am mending, though I have suffered from crushed wormery, which is not good for the body, and damnation to the soul. I feel to-night a baseless anxiety to write a lovely poem _a propos des bottes de ma grand'mere, qui etaient a revers_. I see I am idiotic. I'll try the poem.

_17th._--The poem did not get beyond plovers and lovers. I am still, however, harassed by the unauthentic Muse; if I cared to encourage her--but I have not the time, and anyway we are at the vernal equinox. It is funny enough, but my pottering verses are usually made (like the God-gifted organ voice's) at the autumnal; and this seems to hold at the Antipodes. There is here some odd secret of Nature. I cannot speak of politics; we wait and wonder. It seems (this is partly a guess) Ide won't take the C. J. ship, unless the islands are disarmed; and that England hesitates and holds off. By my own idea, strongly corroborated by Sir George, I am writing no more letters. But I have put as many irons in against this folly of the disarming as I could manage. It did not reach my ears till nearly too late. What a risk to take! What an expense to incur! And for how poor a gain! Apart from the treachery of it. My dear fellow, politics is a vile and a bungling business. I used to think meanly of the plumber; but how he shines beside the politician!

_Thursday._--A general, steady advance; Fanny really quite chipper and jolly--self on the rapid mend, and with my eye on _forests_ that are to fall--and my finger on the axe, which wants stoning.

_Saturday_, 22.--Still all for the best; but I am having a heartbreaking time over _David_. I have nearly all corrected. But have to consider _The Heather on Fire_, _The Wood by Silvermills_, and the last chapter. They all seem to me off colour; and I am not fit to better them yet. No proof has been sent of the title, contents, or dedication.

TO A. CONAN DOYLE

The reference in the postscript here is, I believe, to the Journals
of the Society for Psychical Research.

_Vailima, Apia, Samoa, April 5th, 1893._

DEAR SIR,--You have taken many occasions to make yourself very agreeable to me, for which I might in decency have thanked you earlier. It is now my turn; and I hope you will allow me to offer you my compliments on your very ingenious and very interesting adventures of Sherlock Holmes. That is the class of literature that I like when I have the toothache. As a matter of fact, it was a pleurisy I was enjoying when I took the volume up; and it will interest you as a medical man to know that the cure was for the moment effectual. Only the one thing troubles me; can this be my old friend Joe Bell?--I am, yours very truly,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

_P.S._--And lo, here is your address supplied me here in Samoa! But do not take mine, O frolic fellow Spookist, from the same source; mine is wrong.

R. L. S.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

The outbreak of hostilities was at this date imminent between Mulinuu
(the party of Laupepa, recognised and supported by the Three Powers)
and Malie (the party of Mataafa).

_[Vailima] 25th April [1893]._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--To-day early I sent down to Maben (Secretary of State) an offer to bring up people from Malie, keep them in my house, and bring them down day by day for so long as the negotiation should last. I have a favourable answer so far. This I would not have tried, had not old Sir George Grey put me on my mettle; "Never despair," was his word; and "I am one of the few people who have lived long enough to see how true that is." Well, thereupon I plunged in; and the thing may do me great harm, but yet I do not think so--for I think jealousy will prevent the trial being made. And at any rate it is another chance for this distracted archipelago of children, sat upon by a clique of fools. If, by the gift of God, I can do--I am allowed to try to do--and succeed: but no, the prospect is too bright to be entertained.

To-day we had a ride down to Tanugamanono, and then by the new wood paths. One led us to a beautiful clearing, with four native houses; taro, yams, and the like, excellently planted, and old Folau--"the Samoan Jew"--sitting and whistling there in his new-found and well-deserved well-being. It was a good sight to see a Samoan thus before the world. Further up, on our way home, we saw the world clear, and the wide die of the shadow lying broad; we came but a little further, and found in the borders of the bush a banyan. It must have been 150 feet in height; the trunk, and its acolytes, occupied a great space; above that, in the peaks of the branches, quite a forest of ferns and orchids were set; and over all again the huge spread of the boughs rose against the bright west, and sent their shadow miles to the eastward. I have not often seen anything more satisfying than this vast vegetable.

_Sunday._--A heavenly day again! the world all dead silence, save when, from far down below us in the woods, comes up the crepitation of the little wooden drum that beats to church. Scarce a leaf stirs; only now and again a great, cool gush of air that makes my papers fly, and is gone.--The king of Samoa has refused my intercession between him and Mataafa; and I do not deny this is a good riddance to me of a difficult business, in which I might very well have failed. What else is to be done for these silly folks?

_May 12th._--And this is where I had got to, before the mail arrives with, I must say, a real gentlemanly letter from yourself. Sir, that is the sort of letter I want! Now, I'll make my little proposal.[60] I will accept _Child's Play_ and _Pan's Pipes_. Then I want _Pastoral_, _The Manse_, _The Islet_, leaving out if you like all the prefacial matter and beginning at I. Then the portrait of Robert Hunter, beginning "Whether he was originally big or little," and ending "fearless and gentle." So much for _Mem. and Portraits_. _Beggars_, sections I. and II., _Random Memories_ II., and _Lantern Bearers_; I'm agreeable. These are my selections. I don't know about _Pulvis et Umbra_ either, but must leave that to you. But just what you please.

About _Davie_ I elaborately wrote last time, but still _Davie_ is not done; I am grinding singly at _The Ebb Tide_, as we now call the _Farallone_; the most of it will go this mail. About the following, let there be no mistake: I will not write the abstract of _Kidnapped_; write it who will, I will not. Boccaccio must have been a clever fellow to write both argument and story; I am not, _et je me recuse_.

We call it _The Ebb Tide: a Trio and Quartette_; but that secondary name you may strike out if it seems dull to you. The book, however, falls in two halves, when the fourth character appears. I am on p. 82 if you want to know, and expect to finish on I suppose 110 or so; but it goes slowly, as you may judge from the fact that this three weeks past, I have only struggled from p. 58 to p. 82: twenty-four pages, _et encore_ sure to be re-written, in twenty-one days. This is no prize-taker; not much Waverley Novels about this!