Whatever you do, do not neglect to send me what you publish on Villon: I look forward to that with lively interest. I have no photograph at hand, but I will send one when I can. It would be kind if you would do the like, for I do not see much chance of our meeting in the flesh: and a name, and a handwriting, and an address, and even a style? I know about as much of Tacitus, and more of Horace; it is not enough between contemporaries, such as we still are. I have just remembered another of my books, which I re-read the other day, and thought in places good—Prince Otto. It is not as good as either of the others; but it has one recommendation—it has female parts, so it might perhaps please better in France.
I will ask Chatto to send you, then—Prince Otto, Memories and Portraits, Underwoods, and Ballads, none of which you seem to have seen. They will be too late for the New Year: let them be an Easter present.
You must translate me soon; you will soon have better to do than to transvase the work of others.—Yours very truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson,
With the worst pen in the South Pacific.
To Charles Baxter
Stevenson had been indignant with an old friend at Edinburgh, who had received much kindness from his mother, for neglecting to call on her after her return from her wanderings in the Pacific.
S.S. Lübeck, at sea [on the return voyage from Sydney, February 1891].
MY DEAR CHARLES,—Perhaps in my old days I do grow irascible; “the old man virulent” has long been my pet name for myself. Well, the temper is at least all gone now; time is good at lowering these distemperatures; far better is a sharp sickness, and I am just (and scarce) afoot again after a smoking hot little malady at Sydney. And the temper being gone, I still think the same.... We have not our parents for ever; we are never very good to them; when they go and we have lost our front-file man we begin to feel all our neglects mighty sensibly. I propose a proposal. My mother is here on board with me; to-day for once I mean to make her as happy as I am able, and to do that which I know she likes. You, on the other hand, go and see your father, and do ditto, and give him a real good hour or two. We shall both be glad hereafter.—Yours ever,
R. L. S.