I was writing your address the other day, ordering a copy of my next, Prince Otto, to go your way. I hope you have not seen it in parts; it was not meant to be so read; and only my poverty (dishonourably) consented to the serial evolution.
I will send you with this a copy of the English edition of the Child's Garden. I have heard there is some vile rule of the post-office in the States against inscriptions; so I send herewith a piece of doggerel which Mr. Bunner may, if he thinks fit, copy off the fly leaf.
Sargent was down again and painted a portrait of me walking about in my own dining-room, in my own velveteen jacket and twisting as I go my own moustache; at one corner a glimpse of my wife, in an Indian dress and seated in a chair that was once my grandfather's, but since some months goes by the name of Henry James's, for it was there the novelist loved to sit—adds a touch of poesy and comicality. It is, I think, excellent; but is too eccentric to be exhibited. I am at one extreme corner; my wife, in this wild dress and looking like a ghost, is at the extreme other end; between us an open door exhibits my palatial entrance hall and a part of my respected staircase. All this is touched in lovely, with that witty touch of Sargent's; but of course it looks dam queer as a whole.
Pray let me hear from you and give me good news of yourself and your wife, to whom please remember me.—Yours most sincerely, my dear Low,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
(To be continued.)
