Memories and Portraits

Transcribed from the 1912 Chatto and Windus edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
fine-paper edition
london CHATTO & WINDUS 1912
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh
to MY MOTHER in the name of past joy and present sorrow I DEDICATE these memories and portraits
S.S. “ Ludgate Hill ” within sight of Cape Race
This volume of papers, unconnected as they are, it will be better to read through from the beginning, rather than dip into at random. A certain thread of meaning binds them. Memories of childhood and youth, portraits of those who have gone before us in the battle—taken together, they build up a face that “I have loved long since and lost awhile,” the face of what was once myself. This has come by accident; I had no design at first to be autobiographical; I was but led away by the charm of beloved memories and by regret for the irrevocable dead; and when my own young face (which is a face of the dead also) began to appear in the well as by a kind of magic, I was the first to be surprised at the occurrence.
My grandfather the pious child, my father the idle eager sentimental youth, I have thus unconsciously exposed. Of their descendant, the person of to-day, I wish to keep the secret: not because I love him better, but because, with him, I am still in a business partnership, and cannot divide interests.
Of the papers which make up the volume, some have appeared already in The Cornhill , Longman’s , Scribner , The English Illustrated , The Magazine of Art , The Contemporary Review ; three are here in print for the first time; and two others have enjoyed only what may he regarded as a private circulation.
R. L S.
“This is no my ain house; I ken by the biggin’ o’t.”