Several days after.—I have been out once, but now am back in bed. I am better, and keep better, but the weather is a mere injustice. The imitation of Edinburgh is, at times, deceptive; there is a note among the chimney pots that suggests Howe Street; though I think the shrillest spot in Christendom was not upon the Howe Street side, but in front, just under the Miss Graemes’ big chimney stack. It had a fine alto character—a sort of bleat that used to divide the marrow in my joints—say in the wee, slack hours. That music is now lost to us by rebuilding; another air that I remember, not regret, was the solo of the gas-burner in the little front room; a knickering, flighty, fleering, and yet spectral cackle. I mind it above all on winter afternoons, late, when the window was blue and spotted with rare rain-drops, and, looking out, the cold evening was seen blue all over, with the lamps of Queen’s and Frederick’s Street dotting it with yellow, and flaring eastward in the squalls. Heavens, how unhappy I have been in such circumstances—I, who have now positively forgotten the colour of unhappiness; who am full like a fed ox, and dull like a fresh turf, and have no more spiritual life, for good or evil, than a French bagman.
We are at Chabassière’s, for of course it was nonsense to go up the hill when we could not walk.
The child’s poems in a far extended form are likely soon to be heard of—which Cummy I dare say will be glad to know. They will make a book of about one hundred pages.—Ever your affectionate,
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin
I had reported to Stevenson a remark made by one of his greatest admirers, Sir E. Burne-Jones, on some particular analogy, I forget what, between a passage of Defoe and one in Treasure Island.
[Hotel Chabassière, Royat, July 1884.]
... Here is a quaint thing, I have read Robinson, Colonel Jack, Moll Flanders, Memoirs of a Cavalier, History of the Plague, History of the Great Storm, Scotch Church and Union. And there my knowledge of Defoe ends—except a book, the name of which I forget, about Peterborough in Spain, which Defoe obviously did not write, and could not have written if he wanted. To which of these does B. J. refer? I guess it must be the history of the Scottish Church. I jest; for, of course, I know it must be a book I have never read, and which this makes me keen to read—I mean Captain Singleton. Can it be got and sent to me? If Treasure Island is at all like it, it will be delightful. I was just the other day wondering at my folly in not remembering it, when I was writing T. I., as a mine for pirate tips. T. I. came out of Kingsley’s At Last, where I got the Dead Man’s Chest—and that was the seed—and out of the great Captain Johnson’s History of Notorious Pirates. The scenery is Californian in part, and in part chic.
I was downstairs to-day! So now I am a made man—till the next time.