The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson — Volume 1
Transcribed from the 1906 Methuen and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
SELECTED AND EDITED WITH NOTES AND INTRODUCTIONS BY
SIDNEY COLVIN
VOLUME I
LONDON METHUEN AND CO. 36 ESSEX STREET
Seventh Edition
S. C.
Frontispiece —PORTRAIT OF R. L. STEVENSON, æt. 35 From a photograph by Mr. Lloyd Osbourne
The scanty leisure of an official life (chiefly employed as it was for several years in seeing my friend’s collected and posthumous works through the press) did not allow me to complete the remainder of my task without considerable delay. For one thing, the body of correspondence which came in from various quarters turned out much larger than had been anticipated, and the labour of sifting and arranging it much greater. The author of Treasure Island and Across the Plains and Weir of Hermiston did not love writing letters, and will be found somewhere in the following pages referring to himself as one ‘essentially and originally incapable of the art epistolary.’ That he was a bad correspondent had even come to be an accepted view among his friends; but in truth it was only during one particular period of his life (see below, vol. i. p. 103) that he at all deserved such a reproach. At other times, as is now apparent, he had shown a degree of industry and spirit in letter-writing extraordinary considering his health and occupations, and especially considering his declared aversion for the task. His letters, it is true, were often the most informal in the world, and he generally neglected to date them, a habit which is the despair of editors; but after his own whim and fashion he wrote a vast number; so that for every one here included some half-a-dozen at least have had to be rejected.
In considering the scale and plan on which my friend’s instruction should be carried out, it seemed necessary to take into account, not his own always modest opinion of himself, but the place which, as time went on, he seemed likely to take ultimately in the world’s regard. The four or five years following the death of a writer much applauded in his lifetime are generally the years when the decline of his reputation begins, if it is going to suffer decline at all. At present, certainly, Stevenson’s name seems in no danger of going down. On the stream of daily literary reference and allusion it floats more actively than ever. In another sense its vitality is confirmed by the material test of continued sales and of the market. Since we have lost him other writers, whose beginnings he watched with sympathetic interest, have come to fill a greater immediate place in public attention; one especially has struck notes which appeal to dominant fibres in our Anglo-Saxon stock with irresistible force; but none has exercised Stevenson’s peculiar and personal power to charm, to attach, and to inspirit. By his study of perfection in form and style—qualities for which his countrymen in general have been apt to care little—he might seem destined to give pleasure chiefly to the fastidious and the artistically minded. But as to its matter, the main appeal of his work is not to any mental tastes and fashions of the few; it is rather to universal, hereditary instincts, to the primitive sources of imaginative excitement and entertainment in the race.
Robert Louis Stevenson
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to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to Mrs. Churchill babington
to Alison Cunningham
to Charles Baxter
to Charles Baxter
to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to Thomas Stevenson
to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Sidney Colvin
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Sidney Colvin
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Sidney Colvin
to Sidney Colvin
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Mrs. de Mattos
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Sidney Colvin
to Mrs. Sitwell
to W. E. Henley
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Sidney Colvin
to A. Patchett Martin
to A. Patchett Martin
to Sidney Colvin
to Sidney Colvin
to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to Charles Baxter
to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to W. E. Henley
to Edmund Gosse
to W. E. Henley
to Edmund Gosse
to Edmund Gosse
to Sidney Colvin
to W. E. Henley
to Sidney Colvin
to Sidney Colvin
to Sidney Colvin
to Edmund Gosse
to W. E. Henley
to W. E. Henley
to P. G. Hamerton
to Edmund Gosse
to Sidney Colvin
to Edmund Gosse
to Sidney Colvin
to Charles Baxter
to Sidney Colvin
to W. E. Henley
to Edmund Gosse
to Dr. W. Bamford
to Sidney Colvin
to Sidney Colvin
to Sidney Colvin
to C. W. Stoddard
to Sidney Colvin
to Thomas Stevenson
to Edmund Gosse
to Edmund Gosse
to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to Sidney Colvin
to Horatio F. Brown
to Horatio F. Brown
to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to Edmund Gosse
to Sidney Colvin
to Professor Æneas Mackay
to Professor Æneas Mackay
to Edmund Gosse
to Edmund Gosse
to P. G. Hamerton
to Sidney Colvin
to W. E. Henley
to W. E. Henley
to Sidney Colvin
to Dr. Alexander Japp
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Edmund Gosse
to Edmund Gosse
to W. E. Henley
to Dr. Alexander Japp
to W. E. Henley
to Thomas Stevenson
to P. G. Hamerton
to Charles Baxter
to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to Alison Cunningham
to Charles Baxter
to W. E. Henley
to W. E. Henley
to Alexander Ireland
to Edmund Gosse.
to Dr. Alexander Japp
to Dr. Alexander Japp
to Edmund Gosse
to Edmund Gosse
to W. E. Henley
to R. A. M. Stevenson
to Thomas Stevenson
to Charles Baxter
to Alison Cunningham
to W. E. Henley
to Mrs. Sitwell
to Edmund Gosse
to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to W. E. Henley
to W. E. Henley
to Alison Cunningham
to Edmund Gosse
to W. E. Henley
to Edmund Gosse
to Sidney Colvin
to W. H. Low
to R. A. M. Stevenson
to Thomas Stevenson
to W. H. Low
to W. E. Henley
to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to Sidney Colvin
to Mrs. Milne
to Miss Ferrier
to W. H. Low
to Thomas Stevenson
to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to Sidney Colvin
to Mr. Dick
to Edmund Gosse
to Miss Ferrier
to W. H. Low
to Thomas Stevenson
to Cosmo Monkhouse
to W. E. Henley
to the Rev. Professor Lewis Campbell
to Andrew Chatto
to Thomas Stevenson
to W. E. Henley
to Charles Baxter
to Miss Ferrier
to Edmund Gosse
to Austin Dobson
to Henry James
to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
to W. E. Henley
to W. E. Henley
to H. A. Jones
to Sidney Colvin
to Thomas Stevenson
to Sidney Colvin
to Sidney Colvin
to J. A. Symonds
to Edmund Gosse
to W. H. Low
to William Archer
to Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin
to Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin
to W. H. Low
to W. E. Henley
to William Archer
to Thomas Stevenson
to Henry James
to William Archer
to William Archer
to W. H. Low
FOOTNOTES
