To A. Conan Doyle
The following refers to the papers originally contributed by various writers to Mr. Jerome’s periodical The Idler, under the title My First Book, and afterwards republished in a volume. The references towards the end are to the illustrations in the pages of The Idler.
Vailima, Samoa, September 9, 1894.
MY DEAR CONAN DOYLE,—If you found anything to entertain you in my Treasure Island article, it may amuse you to know that you owe it entirely to yourself. Your “First Book” was by some accident read aloud one night in my Baronial ’All. I was consumedly amused by it, so was the whole family, and we proceeded to hunt up back Idlers and read the whole series. It is a rattling good series, even people whom you would not expect came in quite the proper tone—Miss Braddon, for instance, who was really one of the best where all are good—or all but one!... In short, I fell in love with “The First Book” series, and determined that it should be all our first books, and that I could not hold back where the white plume of Conan Doyle waved gallantly in the front. I hope they will republish them, though it’s a grievous thought to me that that effigy in the German cap—likewise the other effigy of the noisome old man with the long hair, telling indelicate stories to a couple of deformed negresses in a rancid shanty full of wreckage—should be perpetuated. I may seem to speak in pleasantry—it is only a seeming—that German cap, sir, would be found, when I come to die, imprinted on my heart. Enough—my heart is too full. Adieu.—Yours very truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
(in a German cap, damn ’em!).
To Sidney Colvin
[Vailima, September 1894.]
MY DEAR COLVIN,—This must be a very measly letter. I have been trying hard to get along with St. Ives. I should now lay it aside for a year and I dare say I should make something of it after all. Instead of that, I have to kick against the pricks, and break myself, and spoil the book, if there were anything to spoil, which I am far from saying. I’m as sick of the thing as ever any one can be; it’s a rudderless hulk; it’s a pagoda, and you can just feel—or I can feel—that it might have been a pleasant story, if it had been only blessed at baptism.
Our politics have gone on fairly well, but the result is still doubtful.
Sept. 10th.—I know I have something else to say to you, but unfortunately I awoke this morning with colly-wobbles, and had to take a small dose of laudanum with the usual consequences of dry throat, intoxicated legs, partial madness and total imbecility; and for the life of me I cannot remember what it is. I have likewise mislaid your letter amongst the accumulations on my table, not that there was anything in it. Altogether I am in a poor state. I forgot to tell Baxter that the dummy had turned up and is a fine, personable-looking volume and very good reading. Please communicate this to him.