To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
La Solitude, Hyères [November 1883].
MY DEAR MOTHER,—You must not blame me too much for my silence; I am over head and ears in work, and do not know what to do first. I have been hard at Otto, hard at Silverado proofs, which I have worked over again to a tremendous extent; cutting, adding, rewriting, until some of the worst chapters of the original are now, to my mind, as good as any. I was the more bound to make it good, as I had such liberal terms; it’s not for want of trying if I have failed.
I got your letter on my birthday; indeed, that was how I found it out about three in the afternoon, when postie comes. Thank you for all you said. As for my wife, that was the best investment ever made by man; but “in our branch of the family” we seem to marry well. I, considering my piles of work, am wonderfully well; I have not been so busy for I know not how long. I hope you will send me the money I asked however, as I am not only penniless, but shall remain so in all human probability for some considerable time. I have got in the mass of my expectations; and the £100 which is to float us on the new year cannot come due till Silverado is all ready; I am delaying it myself for the moment; then will follow the binders and the travellers and an infinity of other nuisances; and only at the last, the jingling-tingling.
Do you know that Treasure Island has appeared? In the November number of Henley’s Magazine, a capital number anyway, there is a funny publisher’s puff of it for your book; also a bad article by me. Lang dotes on Treasure Island: “Except Tom Sawyer and the Odyssey,” he writes, “I never liked any romance so much.” I will inclose the letter though. The Bogue is angelic, although very dirty. It has rained—at last! It was jolly cold when the rain came.
I was overjoyed to hear such good news of my father. Let him go on at that!—Ever your affectionate,
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin
Of the “small ships” here mentioned, Fontainebleau and The Character of Dogs are well known: A Misadventure in France is probably a draft of the Epilogue to an Inland Voyage, not published till five years later. The Travelling Companion (of which I remember little except that its scene was partly laid in North Italy and that a publisher to whom it was shown declared it a work of genius but indecent) was abandoned some two years later, as set forth on p. 193 of this volume.
La Solitude, Hyères [November 1883].