I wish you would tell your father—not that I like to encourage my rival—that we have had a wonderful time here of late, and that they are having a cold day on Mulinuu, and the consuls are writing reports, and I am writing to the Times, and if we don’t get rid of our friends this time I shall begin to despair of everything but my name-daughter.
You are quite wrong as to the effect of the birthday on your age. From the moment the deed was registered (as it was in the public press with every solemnity), the 13th of November became your own and only birthday, and you ceased to have been born on Christmas Day. Ask your father: I am sure he will tell you this is sound law. You are thus become a month and twelve days younger than you were, but will go on growing older for the future in the regular and human manner from one 13th November to the next. The effect on me is more doubtful; I may, as you suggest, live for ever; I might, on the other hand, come to pieces like the one-horse shay at a moment’s notice; doubtless the step was risky, but I do not the least regret that which enables me to sign myself your revered and delighted name-father,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Charles Baxter
[Vailima, November 1891.]
DEAR CHARLES,—[After dealing with some matters of business] I believe that’s a’. By this time, I suppose you will have heard from McClure, and the Beach of Falesá will be decided on for better for worse. The end of The Wrecker goes by this mail, an awfae relief. I am now free and can do what I please. What do I please? I kenna. I’ll bide a wee. There’s a child’s history in the wind; and there’s my grandfather’s life begun; and there’s a histry of Samoa in the last four or five years begun—there’s a kind of sense to this book; it may help the Samoans, it may help me, for I am bound on the altar here for anti-Germanism. Then there’s The Pearl Fisher about a quarter done; and there’s various short stories in various degrees of incompleteness. De’il, there’s plenty grist; but the mill’s unco slaw! To-morrow or next day, when the mail’s through, I’ll attack one or other, or maybe something else. All these schemes begin to laugh at me, for the day’s far through, and I believe the pen grows heavy. However, I believe The Wrecker is a good yarn of its poor sort, and it is certainly well nourished with facts; no realist can touch me there; for by this time I do begin to know something of life in the XIXth century, which no novelist either in France or England seems to know much of. You must have great larks over masonry. You’re away up in the ranks now and (according to works that I have read) doubtless design assassinations. But I am an outsider; and I have a certain liking for a light unto my path which would deter me from joining the rank and file of so vast and dim a confraternity. At your altitude it becomes (of course) amusing and perhaps useful. Yes, I remember the L.J.R.,[26] and the constitution, and my homily on Liberty, and yours on Reverence, which was never written—so I never knew what reverence was. I remember I wanted to write Justice also; but I forget who had the billet. My dear papa was in a devil of a taking; and I had to go and lunch at Ferrier’s in a strangely begrutten state, which was infra dig. for a homilist on liberty. It was about four, I suppose, that we met in the Lothian Road,—had we the price of two bitters between us? questionable!
Your bookseller (I have lost his letter, I mean the maid has, arranging my room, and so have to send by you) wrote me a letter about Old Bailey Papers. Gosh, I near swarfed; dam’d, man, I near had dee’d o’t. It’s only yin or twa volumes I want; say 500 or 1000 pages of the stuff; and the worthy man (much doubting) proposed to bury me in volumes. Please allay his rage, and apologise that I have not written him direct. His note was civil and purposelike. And please send me a copy of Henley’s Book of Verses; mine has disappeared.
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin
Nov. 25th, 1891.