Volume 25 — OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (continued 10)

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Miss Middleton

A letter from the lady to whom this is addressed, and who had been a friend of the Stevenson family in Edinburgh, had called up some memories of a Skye terrier, Jura, of whom readers have heard something already.

Vailima, Samoa, September 9, 1894.

DEAR MISS MIDDLETON,—Your letter has been like the drawing up of a curtain. Of course I remember you very well, and the Skye terrier to which you refer—a heavy, dull, fatted, graceless creature he grew up to be—was my own particular pet. It may amuse you, perhaps, as much as “The Inn” amused me, if I tell you what made this dog particularly mine. My father was the natural god of all the dogs in our house, and poor Jura took to him of course. Jura was stolen, and kept in prison somewhere for more than a week, as I remember. When he came back Smeoroch had come and taken my father’s heart from him. He took his stand like a man, and positively never spoke to my father again from that day until the day of his death. It was the only sign of character he ever showed. I took him up to my room and to be my dog in consequence, partly because I was sorry for him, and partly because I admired his dignity in misfortune.

With best regards and thanks for having reminded me of so many pleasant days, old acquaintances, dead friends, and—what is perhaps as pathetic as any of them—dead dogs, I remain, yours truly,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

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.

I have just remembered an incident that I really must not let pass. You have heard a great deal more than you wanted about our political prisoners. Well, one day, about a fortnight ago, the last of them was set free—Old Poè, whom I think I must have mentioned to you, the father-in-law of my cook, was one that I had had a great deal of trouble with. I had taken the doctor to see him, got him out on sick leave, and when he was put back again gave bail for him. I must not forget that my wife ran away with him out of the prison on the doctor’s orders and with the complicity of our friend the gaoler, who really and truly got the sack for the exploit. As soon as he was finally liberated, Poè called a meeting of his fellow-prisoners. All Sunday they were debating what they were to do, and on Monday morning I got an obscure hint from Talolo that I must expect visitors during the day who were coming to consult me. These consultations I am now very well used to, and seeing first, that I generally don’t know what to advise, and second that they sometimes don’t take my advice—though in some notable cases they have taken it, generally to my own wonder with pretty good results—I am not very fond of these calls. They minister to a sense of dignity, but not peace of mind, and consume interminable time, always in the morning too, when I can’t afford it. However, this was to be a new sort of consultation. Up came Poè and some eight other chiefs, squatted in a big circle around the old dining-room floor, now the smoking-room. And the family, being represented by Lloyd, Graham, Belle, Austin and myself, proceeded to exchange the necessary courtesies. Then their talking man began. He said that they had been in prison, that I had always taken an interest in them, that they had now been set at liberty without condition, whereas some of the other chiefs who had been liberated before them were still under bond to work upon the roads, and that this had set them considering what they might do to testify their gratitude. They had therefore agreed to work upon my road as a free gift. They went on to explain that it was only to be on my road, on the branch that joins my house with the public way.

Now I was very much gratified at this compliment, although (to one used to natives) it seemed rather a hollow one. It meant only that I should have to lay out a good deal of money on tools and food and to give wages under the guise of presents to some workmen who were most of them old and in ill-health. Conceive how much I was surprised and touched when I heard the whole scheme explained to me. They were to return to their provinces, and collect their families; some of the young men were to live in Apia with a boat, and ply up and down the coast to A’ana and Atua (our own Tuamasaga being quite drained of resources) in order to supply the working squad with food. Tools they did ask for, but it was especially mentioned that I was to make no presents. In short, the whole of this little “presentation” to me had been planned with a good deal more consideration than goes usually with a native campaign.

[I sat on the opposite side of the circle to the talking man. His face was quite calm and high-bred as he went through the usual Samoan expressions of politeness and compliment, but when he came on to the object of their visit, on their love and gratitude to Tusitala, how his name was always in their prayers, and his goodness to them when they had no other friend, was their most cherished memory, he warmed up to real, burning, genuine feeling. I had never seen the Samoan mask of reserve laid aside before, and it touched me more than anything else. A.M.]

This morning as ever was, bright and early up came the whole gang of them, a lot of sturdy, common-looking lads they seemed to be for the most part, and fell to on my new road. Old Poè was in the highest of good spirits, and looked better in health than he has done any time in two years, being positively rejuvenated by the success of his scheme. He jested as he served out the new tools, and I am sorry to say damned the Government up hill and down dale, probably with a view to show off his position as a friend of the family before his workboys. Now, whether or not their impulse will last them through the road does not matter to me one hair. It is the fact that they have attempted it, that they have volunteered and are now really trying to execute a thing that was never before heard of in Samoa. Think of it! It is road-making—the most fruitful cause (after taxes) of all rebellions in Samoa, a thing to which they could not be wiled with money nor driven by punishment. It does give me a sense of having done something in Samoa after all.

Now there’s one long story for you about “my blacks.”—Yours ever,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Charles Baxter

The following was written on hearing of the death of his friend’s father.

[Vailima, September 1894.]

MY DEAR CHARLES,—... Well, there is no more Edmund Baxter now; and I think I may say I know how you feel. He was one of the best, the kindest, and the most genial men I ever knew. I shall always remember his brisk, cordial ways and the essential goodness which he showed me whenever we met with gratitude. And the always is such a little while now! He is another of the landmarks gone; when it comes to my own turn to lay my weapons down, I shall do so with thankfulness and fatigue; and whatever be my destiny afterward, I shall be glad to lie down with my fathers in honour. It is human at least, if not divine. And these deaths make me think of it with an ever greater readiness. Strange that you should be beginning a new life, when I, who am a little your junior, am thinking of the end of mine. But I have had hard lines; I have been so long waiting for death, I have unwrapped my thoughts from about life so long, that I have not a filament left to hold by; I have done my fiddling so long under Vesuvius, that I have almost forgotten to play, and can only wait for the eruption, and think it long of coming. Literally, no man has more wholly outlived life than I. And still it’s good fun.

R. L. S.

To R. A. M. Stevenson

Stevenson had received from his cousin a letter announcing, among other things, the birth of a son to the writer, and rambling suggestively, as may be guessed from the following reply, over many disconnected themes: the ethnology of Scotland, paternity and heredity, civilisation versus primitive customs and instincts, the story of their own descent, the method of writing in collaboration, education, Christianity and sex, the religion of conduct, anarchism, etc.; all which matters are here discursively touched on. “Old Skene” is, of course, the distinguished Scottish antiquarian and historian, William Forbes Skene, in whose firm (Skene & Edwards, W.S.) Stevenson had for a time served irregularly enough as an unpaid clerk.

[Vailima, September 1894.]

DEAR BOB,—You are in error about the Picts. They were a Gaelic race, spoke a Celtic tongue, and we have no evidence that I know of that they were blacker than other Celts. The Balfours, I take it, were plainly Celts; their name shows it—the “cold croft,” it means; so does their country. Where the black Scotch come from nobody knows; but I recognise with you the fact that the whole of Britain is rapidly and progressively becoming more pigmented; already in one man’s life I can decidedly trace a difference in the children about a school door. But colour is not an essential part of a man or a race. Take my Polynesians, an Asiatic people probably from the neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf. They range through any amount of shades, from the burnt hue of the Low Archipelago islander, which seems half negro, to the “bleached” pretty women of the Marquesas (close by on the map), who come out for a festival no darker than an Italian; their colour seems to vary directly with the degree of exposure to the sun. And, as with negroes, the babes are born white; only it should seem a little sack of pigment at the lower part of the spine, which presently spreads over the whole field. Very puzzling. But to return. The Picts furnish to-day perhaps a third of the population of Scotland, say another third for Scots and Britons, and the third for Norse and Angles is a bad third. Edinburgh was a Pictish place. But the fact is, we don’t know their frontiers. Tell some of your journalist friends with a good style to popularise old Skene; or say your prayers, and read him for yourself; he was a Great Historian, and I was his blessed clerk, and did not know it; and you will not be in a state of grace about the Picts till you have studied him. J. Horne Stevenson (do you know him?) is working this up with me, and the fact is—it’s not interesting to the public—but it’s interesting, and very interesting, in itself, and just now very embarrassing—this rural parish supplied Glasgow with such a quantity of Stevensons in the beginning of last century! There is just a link wanting; and we might be able to go back to the eleventh century, always undistinguished, but clearly traceable. When I say just a link, I guess I may be taken to mean a dozen. What a singular thing is this undistinguished perpetuation of a family throughout the centuries, and the sudden bursting forth of character and capacity that began with our grandfather! But as I go on in life, day by day, I become more of a bewildered child; I cannot get used to this world, to procreation, to heredity, to sight, to hearing; the commonest things are a burthen. The prim obliterated polite face of life, and the broad, bawdy, and orgiastic—or mænadic—foundations, form a spectacle to which no habit reconciles me; and “I could wish my days to be bound each to each” by the same open-mouthed wonder. They are anyway, and whether I wish it or not.

I remember very well your attitude to life, this conventional surface of it. You had none of that curiosity for the social stage directions, the trivial ficelles of the business; it is simian, but that is how the wild youth of man is captured; you wouldn’t imitate, hence you kept free—a wild dog, outside the kennel—and came dam near starving for your pains. The key to the business is of course the belly; difficult as it is to keep that in view in the zone of three miraculous meals a day in which we were brought up. Civilisation has become reflex with us; you might think that hunger was the name of the best sauce; but hunger to the cold solitary under a bush of a rainy night is the name of something quite different. I defend civilisation for the thing it is, for the thing it has come to be, the standpoint of a real old Tory. My ideal would be the Female Clan. But how can you turn these crowding dumb multitudes back? They don’t do anything because; they do things, write able articles, stitch shoes, dig, from the purely simian impulse. Go and reason with monkeys!

No, I am right about Jean Lillie. Jean Lillie, our double great-grandmother, the daughter of David Lillie, sometime Deacon of the Wrights, married, first, Alan Stevenson, who died May 26, 1774, “at Santt Kittes of a fiver,” by whom she had Robert Stevenson, born 8th June 1772; and, second, in May or June 1787, Thomas Smith, a widower, and already the father of our grandmother. This improbable double connection always tends to confuse a student of the family, Thomas Smith being doubly our great-grandfather.

I looked on the perpetuation of our honoured name with veneration. My mother collared one of the photos, of course; the other is stuck up on my wall as the chief of our sept. Do you know any of the Gaelic-Celtic sharps? you might ask what the name means. It puzzles me. I find a M’Stein and a MacStephane; and our own great-grandfather always called himself Steenson, though he wrote it Stevenson. There are at least three places called Stevenson—Stevenson in Cunningham, Stevenson in Peebles, and Stevenson in Haddington. And it was not the Celtic trick, I understand, to call places after people. I am going to write to Sir Herbert Maxwell about the name, but you might find some one.

Get the Anglo-Saxon heresy out of your head; they superimposed their language, they scarce modified the race; only in Berwickshire and Roxburgh have they very largely affected the place names. The Scandinavians did much more to Scotland than the Angles. The Saxons didn’t come.

Enough of this sham antiquarianism. Yes, it is in the matter of the book82 of course, that collaboration shows; as for the manner, it is superficially all mine in the sense that the last copy is all in my hand. Lloyd did not even put pen to paper in the Paris scenes or the Barbizon scene; it was no good; he wrote and often rewrote all the rest; I had the best service from him on the character of Nares. You see, we had been just meeting the man, and his memory was full of the man’s words and ways. And Lloyd is an impressionist, pure and simple. The great difficulty of collaboration is that you can’t explain what you mean. I know what kind of effect I mean a character to give—what kind of tache he is to make; but how am I to tell my collaborator in words? Hence it was necessary to say, “Make him So-and-so”; and this was all right for Nares and Pinkerton and Loudon Dodd, whom we both knew, but for Bellairs, for instance—a man with whom I passed ten minutes fifteen years ago—what was I to say? and what could Lloyd do? I, as a personal artist, can begin a character with only a haze in my head, but how if I have to translate the haze into words before I begin? In our manner of collaboration (which I think the only possible—I mean that of one person being responsible, and giving the coup de pouce to every part of the work) I was spared the obviously hopeless business of trying to explain to my collaborator what style I wished a passage to be treated in. These are the times that illustrate to a man the inadequacy of spoken language. Now—to be just to written language—I can (or could) find a language for my every mood, but how could I tell any one beforehand what this effect was to be, which it would take every art that I possessed, and hours and hours of deliberate labour and selection and rejection, to produce? These are the impossibilities of collaboration. Its immediate advantage is to focus two minds together on the stuff, and to produce in consequence an extraordinarily greater richness of purview, consideration, and invention. The hardest chapter of all was “Cross Questions and Crooked Answers.” You would not believe what that cost us before it assumed the least unity and colour. Lloyd wrote it at least thrice, and I at least five times—this is from memory. And was that last chapter worth the trouble it cost? Alas, that I should ask the question! Two classes of men—the artist and the educationalist—are sworn, on soul and conscience, not to ask it. You get an ordinary, grinning, red-headed boy, and you have to educate him. Faith supports you; you give your valuable hours, the boy does not seem to profit, but that way your duty lies, for which you are paid, and you must persevere. Education has always seemed to me one of the few possible and dignified ways of life. A sailor, a shepherd, a schoolmaster—to a less degree, a soldier—and (I don’t know why, upon my soul, except as a sort of schoolmaster’s unofficial assistant, and a kind of acrobat in tights) an artist, almost exhaust the category.

If I had to begin again—I know not—si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait ... I know not at all—I believe I should try to honour Sex more religiously. The worst of our education is that Christianity does not recognise and hallow Sex. It looks askance at it, over its shoulder, oppressed as it is by reminiscences of hermits and Asiatic self-tortures. It is a terrible hiatus in our modern religions that they cannot see and make venerable that which they ought to see first and hallow most. Well, it is so; I cannot be wiser than my generation.

But no doubt there is something great in the half-success that has attended the effort of turning into an emotional religion, Bald Conduct, without any appeal, or almost none, to the figurative, mysterious, and constitutive facts of life. Not that conduct is not constitutive, but dear! it’s dreary! On the whole, conduct is better dealt with on the cast-iron “gentleman” and duty formula, with as little fervour and poetry as possible; stoical and short.... There is a new something or other in the wind, which exercises me hugely: anarchy,—I mean, anarchism. People who (for pity’s sake) commit dastardly murders very basely, die like saints, and leave beautiful letters behind ’em (did you see Vaillant to his daughter? it was the New Testament over again); people whose conduct is inexplicable to me, and yet their spiritual life higher than that of most. This is just what the early Christians must have seemed to the Romans. Is this, then, a new drive83 among the monkeys? Mind you, Bob, if they go on being martyred a few years more, the gross, dull, not unkindly bourgeois may get tired or ashamed or afraid of going on martyring; and the anarchists come out at the top just like the early Christians. That is, of course, they will step into power as a personnel, but God knows what they may believe when they come to do so; it can’t be stranger or more improbable than what Christianity had come to be by the same time.

Your letter was easily read, the pagination presented no difficulty, and I read it with much edification and gusto. To look back, and to stereotype one bygone humour—what a hopeless thing! The mind runs ever in a thousand eddies like a river between cliffs. You (the ego) are always spinning round in it, east, west, north, and south. You are twenty years old, and forty, and five, and the next moment you are freezing at an imaginary eighty; you are never the plain forty-four that you should be by dates. (The most philosophical language is the Gaelic, which has no present tense—and the most useless.) How, then, to choose some former age, and stick there?

R. L. S.

To Sir Herbert Maxwell

Vailima, Samoa, September 10, 1894.

DEAR SIR HERBERT MAXWELL,—I am emboldened by reading your very interesting Rhind Lectures to put to you a question: What is my name, Stevenson?

I find it in the forms Stevinetoun, Stevensoune, Stevensonne, Stenesone, Stewinsoune, M’Stein, and MacStephane. My family, and (as far as I can gather) the majority of the inglorious clan, hailed from the borders of Cunningham and Renfrew, and the upper waters of the Clyde. In the Barony of Bothwell was the seat of the laird Stevenson of Stevenson; but, as of course you know, there is a parish in Cunningham and places in Peebles and Haddington bearing the same name.

If you can at all help me, you will render me a real service which I wish I could think of some manner to repay.—Believe me, yours truly,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

P.S.—I should have added that I have perfect evidence before me that (for some obscure reason) Stevenson was a favourite alias with the M’Gregors.

To Sidney Colvin

Vailima, Samoa, October 6th, 1894.

MY DEAR COLVIN,—We have had quite an interesting month and mostly in consideration of that road which I think I told you was about to be made. It was made without a hitch, though I confess I was considerably surprised. When they got through, I wrote a speech to them, sent it down to a Missionary to be translated, and invited the lot to a feast. I thought a good deal of this feast. The occasion was really interesting. I wanted to pitch it in hot. And I wished to have as many influential witnesses present as possible. Well, as it drew towards the day I had nothing but refusals. Everybody supposed it was to be a political occasion, that I had made a hive of rebels up here, and was going to push for new hostilities.

The Amanuensis has been ill, and after the above trial petered out. I must return to my own, lone Waverley. The captain refused, telling me why; and at last I had to beat up for people almost with prayers. However, I got a good lot, as you will see by the accompanying newspaper report. The road contained this inscription, drawn up by the chiefs themselves:

“The Road of Gratitude

“Considering the great love of Tusitala in his loving care of us in our distress in the prison, we have therefore prepared a splendid gift. It shall never be muddy, it shall endure for ever, this road that we have dug.”

This the newspaper reporter could not give, not knowing any Samoan. The same reason explains his references to Seumanutafa’s speech, which was not long and was important, for it was a speech of courtesy and forgiveness to his former enemies. It was very much applauded. Secondly, it was not Poè, it was Mataafā (don’t confuse with Mataafa) who spoke for the prisoners. Otherwise it is extremely correct.

I beg your pardon for so much upon my aboriginals. Even you must sympathise with me in this unheard-of compliment, and my having been able to deliver so severe a sermon with acceptance. It remains a nice point of conscience what I should wish done in the matter. I think this meeting, its immediate results, and the terms of what I said to them, desirable to be known. It will do a little justice to me, who have not had too much justice done me. At the same time, to send this report to the papers is truly an act of self-advertisement, and I dislike the thought. Query, in a man who has been so much calumniated, is that not justifiable? I do not know; be my judge. Mankind is too complicated for me; even myself. Do I wish to advertise? I think I do, God help me! I have had hard times here, as every man must have who mixes up with public business; and I bemoan myself, knowing that all I have done has been in the interest of peace and good government; and having once delivered my mind, I would like it, I think, to be made public. But the other part of me regimbs.84

I know I am at a climacteric for all men who live by their wits, so I do not despair. But the truth is I am pretty nearly useless at literature, and I will ask you to spare St. Ives when it goes to you; it is a sort of Count Robert of Paris. But I hope rather a Dombey and Son, to be succeeded by Our Mutual Friend and Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities. No toil has been spared over the ungrateful canvas; and it will not come together, and I must live, and my family. Were it not for my health, which made it impossible, I could not find it in my heart to forgive myself that I did not stick to an honest, commonplace trade when I was young, which might have now supported me during these ill years. But do not suppose me to be down in anything else; only, for the nonce, my skill deserts me, such as it is, or was. It was a very little dose of inspiration, and a pretty little trick of style, long lost, improved by the most heroic industry. So far, I have managed to please the journalists. But I am a fictitious article and have long known it. I am read by journalists, by my fellow-novelists, and by boys; with these, incipit et explicit my vogue. Good thing anyway! for it seems to have sold the Edition. And I look forward confidently to an aftermath; I do not think my health can be so hugely improved, without some subsequent improvement in my brains. Though, of course, there is the possibility that literature is a morbid secretion, and abhors health! I do not think it is possible to have fewer illusions than I. I sometimes wish I had more. They are amusing. But I cannot take myself seriously as an artist; the limitations are so obvious. I did take myself seriously as a workman of old, but my practice has fallen off. I am now an idler and cumberer of the ground; it may be excused to me perhaps by twenty years of industry and ill-health, which have taken the cream off the milk.

As I was writing this last sentence, I heard the strident rain drawing near across the forest, and by the time I was come to the word “cream” it burst upon my roof, and has since redoubled, and roared upon it. A very welcome change. All smells of the good wet earth, sweetly, with a kind of Highland touch; the crystal rods of the shower, as I look up, have drawn their criss-cross over everything; and a gentle and very welcome coolness comes up around me in little draughts, blessed draughts, not chilling, only equalising the temperature. Now the rain is off in this spot, but I hear it roaring still in the nigh neighbourhood—and that moment, I was driven from the verandah by random raindrops, spitting at me through the Japanese blinds. These are not tears with which the page is spotted! Now the windows stream, the roof reverberates. It is good; it answers something which is in my heart; I know not what; old memories of the wet moorland belike.

Well, it has blown by again, and I am in my place once more, with an accompaniment of perpetual dripping on the verandah—and very much inclined for a chat. The exact subject I do not know! It will be bitter at least, and that is strange, for my attitude is essentially not bitter, but I have come into these days when a man sees above all the seamy side, and I have dwelt some time in a small place where he has an opportunity of reading little motives that he would miss in the great world, and indeed, to-day, I am almost ready to call the world an error. Because? Because I have not drugged myself with successful work, and there are all kinds of trifles buzzing in my ear, unfriendly trifles, from the least to the—well, to the pretty big. All these that touch me are Pretty Big; and yet none touch me in the least, if rightly looked at, except the one eternal burthen to go on making an income for my family. That is rightly the root and ground of my ill. The jingling, tingling, damned mint sauce is the trouble always; and if I could find a place where I could lie down and give up for (say) two years, and allow the sainted public to support me, if it were a lunatic asylum, wouldn’t I go, just! But we can’t have both extremes at once, worse luck! I should like to put my savings into a proprietarian investment, and retire in the meanwhile into a communistic retreat, which is double-dealing. But you men with aries don’t know how alas family weighs on a fellow’s mind.

I hear the article in next week’s Herald is to be a great affair, and all the officials who came to me the other day are to be attacked! This is the unpleasant side of being (without a salary) in public life; I will leave any one to judge if my speech was well intended, and calculated to do good. It was even daring—I assure you one of the chiefs looked like a fiend at my description of Samoan warfare. Your warning was not needed; we are all determined to keep the peace and to hold our peace. I know, my dear fellow, how remote all this sounds! Kindly pardon your friend. I have my life to live here; these interests are for me immediate; and if I do not write of them, I might as soon not write at all. There is the difficulty in a distant correspondence. It is perhaps easy for me to enter into and understand your interests; I own it is difficult for you; but you must just wade through them for friendship’s sake, and try to find tolerable what is vital for your friend. I cannot forbear challenging you to it, as to intellectual lists. It is the proof of intelligence, the proof of not being a barbarian, to be able to enter into something outside of oneself, something that does not touch one’s next neighbour in the city omnibus.

Good-bye, my lord. May your race continue and you flourish.—Yours ever,

Tusitala.

To Alison Cunningham

For a fuller account of the road-making affair here mentioned, see pp. 431, 462.

[Vailima] October 8th, 1894.

MY DEAR CUMMY,—So I hear you are ailing? Think shame to yoursell! So you think there is nothing better to be done with time than that? and be sure we can all do much ourselves to decide whether we are to be ill or well! like a man on the gymnastic bars. We are all pretty well. As for me, there is nothing the matter with me in the world, beyond the disgusting circumstance that I am not so young as once I was. Lloyd has a gymnastic machine, and practises upon it every morning for an hour: he is beginning to be a kind of young Samson. Austin grows fat and brown, and gets on not so ill with his lessons, and my mother is in great price. We are having knock-me-down weather for heat; I never remember it so hot before, and I fancy it means we are to have a hurricane again this year, I think; since we came here, we have not had a single gale of wind! The Pacific is but a child to the North Sea; but when she does get excited, and gets up and girds herself, she can do something good. We have had a very interesting business here. I helped the chiefs who were in prison; and when they were set free, what should they do but offer to make a part of my road for me out of gratitude? Well, I was ashamed to refuse, and the trumps dug my road for me, and put up this inscription on a board:—

“Considering the great love of His Excellency Tusitala in his loving care for us in our tribulation in the prison we have made this great gift; it shall never be muddy, it shall go on for ever, this road that we have dug!” We had a great feast when it was done, and I read them a kind of lecture, which I dare say Auntie will have, and can let you see. Weel, guid bye to ye, and joy be wi’ ye! I hae nae time to say mair. They say I’m gettin’ fat—a fact!—Your laddie, with all love,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To James Payn

Vailima, Samoa, Nov. 4, 1894.

MY DEAR JAMES PAYN,—I am asked to relate to you a little incident of domestic life at Vailima. I had read your Gleams of Memory, No. 1; it then went to my wife, to Osbourne, to the cousin that is within my gates, and to my respected amanuensis, Mrs. Strong. Sunday approached. In the course of the afternoon I was attracted to the great ’all—the winders is by Vanderputty, which upon entering I beheld a memorable scene. The floor was bestrewn with the forms of midshipmen from the Curaçoa—“boldly say a wilderness of gunroom”—and in the midst of this sat Mrs. Strong throned on the sofa and reading aloud Gleams of Memory. They had just come the length of your immortal definition of boyhood in the concrete, and I had the pleasure to see the whole party dissolve under its influence with inextinguishable laughter. I thought this was not half bad for arthritic gout! Depend upon it, sir, when I go into the arthritic gout business, I shall be done with literature, or at least with the funny business. It is quite true I have my battlefields behind me. I have done perhaps as much work as anybody else under the most deplorable conditions. But two things fall to be noticed: In the first place, I never was in actual pain; and in the second, I was never funny. I’ll tell you the worst day that I remember. I had a hemorrhage, and was not allowed to speak; then, induced by the devil, or an errant doctor, I was led to partake of that bowl which neither cheers nor inebriates—the castor-oil bowl. Now, when castor-oil goes right, it is one thing; but when it goes wrong, it is another. And it went wrong with me that day. The waves of faintness and nausea succeeded each other for twelve hours, and I do feel a legitimate pride in thinking that I stuck to my work all through and wrote a good deal of Admiral Guinea (which I might just as well not have written for all the reward it ever brought me) in spite of the barbarous bad conditions. I think that is my great boast; and it seems a little thing alongside of your Gleams of Memory illustrated by spasms of arthritic gout. We really should have an order of merit in the trade of letters. For valour, Scott would have had it; Pope too; myself on the strength of that castor-oil; and James Payn would be a Knight Commander. The worst of it is, though Lang tells me you exhibit the courage of Huish, that not even an order can alleviate the wretched annoyance of the business. I have always said that there is nothing like pain; toothache, dumb-ague, arthritic gout, it does not matter what you call it, if the screw is put upon the nerves sufficiently strong, there is nothing left in heaven or in earth that can interest the sufferer. Still, even to this there is the consolation that it cannot last for ever. Either you will be relieved and have a good hour again before the sun goes down, or else you will be liberated. It is something after all (although not much) to think that you are leaving a brave example; that other literary men love to remember, as I am sure they will love to remember, everything about you—your sweetness, your brightness, your helpfulness to all of us, and in particular those one or two really adequate and noble papers which you have been privileged to write during these last years.—With the heartiest and kindest good-will, I remain, yours ever,

R. L. S.

To Sidney Colvin

This was the last letter I received from my friend. On the morning of his death the following month he spoke of being behindhand with his December letter and of his intention to write it next day.

[Vailima, November 1894.]

DEAR COLVIN,—Saturday there was a ball to the ship, and on Sunday Gurr had a child to be baptized. Belle was to be godmother and had to be got down; which was impossible, as the jester Euclid says. However, we had four men of very different heights take the poles of a sort of bier and carry her shoulder high down the road, till we met a trap. On the return journey on Sunday, they were led by Austin playing (?) on a bugle, and you have no idea how picturesque a business it was; the four half-naked bearers, the cane lounge at that height from the ground, and Belle in black and pretty pale reclining very like a dead warrior of yore. However she wasn’t dead yet. All the rest of the afternoon we hung about and had consultations about the baptism. Just as we went in to dinner, I saw the moon rise accurately full, looking five times greater than nature, and the face that we try to decipher in its silver disk wearing an obliterated but benignant expression. The ball followed; bluejackets and officers danced indiscriminately, after their pleasant fashion; and Belle, who lay in the hotel verandah, and held a sort of reception all night, had her longest visit from one of the blue-jackets, her partner in the last ball. About one on the Sunday morning all was over, and we went to bed—I, alas! only to get up again, my room being in the verandah, where a certain solemnly absurd family conclave (all drunk) was being held until (I suppose) three. By six, I was awake, and went out on the verandah. On the east the dawn had broken, cold and pink and rust colour, and the marshes were all smoking whitely and blowing into the bay like smoke, but on the west, all was golden. The street was empty, and right over it hung the setting moon, accurately round, yellow as an apricot, but slumberous, with an effect of afternoon you would not believe if you had not seen it. Then followed a couple of hours on the verandah I would be glad to forget. By seven X. Y. had joined me, as drunk as they make ’em. As he sat and talked to me, he smelt of the charnel house, methought. He looked so old (he is one month my senior); he spoke so silly; his poor leg is again covered with boils, which will spell death to him; and—enough. That interview has made me a teetotaller. O, it is bad to grow old. For me, it is practically hell. I do not like the consolations of age. I was born a young man; I have continued so; and before I end, a pantaloon, a driveller—enough again. But I don’t enjoy getting elderly. Belle and I got home about three in the afternoon, she having in the meantime renounced all that makes life worth living in the name of little Miss Gurr, and I seriously reflecting on renouncing the kindly bowl in earnest! Presently after arrived the news of Margery Ide (the C.J.’s daughter) being seriously ill, alarmingly ill. Fanny wanted to go down; it was a difficult choice; she was not fit for it; on the other hand (and by all accounts) the patient would die if she did not get better nursing. So we made up our own minds, and F. and I set out about dusk, came to the C.J.’s in the middle of dinner, and announced our errand. I am glad to say the C.J. received her very willingly; and I came home again, leaving her behind, where she was certainly much wanted.

Nov. 4th.—You ask about St. Ives. No, there is no Burford Bridge in it, and no Boney. He is a squire of dames, and there are petticoats in the story, and damned bad ones too, and it is of a tolerable length, a hundred thousand, I believe, at least. Also, since you are curious on the point, St. Ives learned his English from a Mr. Vicary, an English lawyer, a prisoner in France. He must have had a fine gift of languages!

Things are going on here in their usual gently disheartening gait. The Treaty Officials are both good fellows whom I can’t help liking, but who will never make a hand of Samoa.—Yours ever,

R. L. Stevenson.

To Professor Meiklejohn

Congratulating an old friend of Savile Club days (see vol. xxiii. p. 263) on his sailor son.

Vailima, Samoa, Nov. 6th, 1894.

MY DEAR MEIKLEJOHN,—Greeting! This is but a word to say how much we felicitate ourselves on having made the acquaintance of Hughie. He is having a famous good chance on board the Curaçoa, which is the best ship I have ever seen. And as for himself, he is a most engaging boy, of whom you may very well be proud, and I have no mortal manner of doubt but what you are. He comes up here very often, where he is a great favourite with my ladies, and sings me “the melancholy airs of my native land” with much acceptancy. His name has recently become changed in Vailima. Beginning with the courteous “Mr. Meiklejohn,” it shaded off into the familiar “Hughie,” and finally degenerated into “the Whitrett.”85 I hear good reports of him abroad and ashore, and I scarce need to add my own testimony.

Hughie tells me you have gone into the publishing business, whereat I was much shocked. My own affairs with publishers are now in the most flourishing state, owing to my ingenuity in leaving them to be dealt with by a Scotch Writer to the Signet. It has produced revolutions in the book trade and my banking account. I tackled the Whitrett severely on a grammar you had published, which I had not seen and condemned out of hand and in the broadest Lallan. I even condescended on the part of that grammar which I thought to be the worst and condemned your presentation of the English verb unmercifully. It occurs to me, since you are a publisher, that the least thing you could do would be to send me a copy of that grammar to correct my estimate. But I fear I am talking too long to one of the enemy. I begin to hear in fancy the voice of Meiklejohn upraised in the Savile Club: “No quarter to publishers!” So I will ask you to present my compliments to Mrs. Meiklejohn upon her son, and to accept for yourself the warmest reminiscences of auld lang syne.—Yours sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Lieutenant Eeles

Vailima, Samoa, November 24, 1894.

MY DEAR EELES,—The hand, as you will perceive (and also the spelling!), is Teuila’s, but the scrannel voice is what remains of Tusitala’s. First of all, for business. When you go to London you are to charter a hansom cab and proceed to the Museum. It is particular fun to do this on Sundays when the Monument is shut up. Your cabman expostulates with you, you persist. The cabman drives up in front of the closed gates and says, “I told you so, sir.” You breathe in the porter’s ears the mystic name of Colvin, and he immediately unfolds the iron barrier. You drive in, and doesn’t your cabman think you’re a swell. A lord mayor is nothing to it. Colvin’s door is the only one in the eastern gable of the building. Send in your card to him with “From R. L. S.” in the corner, and the machinery will do the rest. Henry James’s address is 34 De Vere Mansions West. I cannot remember where the place is; I cannot even remember on which side of the park. But it’s one of those big Cromwell Road-looking deserted thoroughfares out west in Kensington or Bayswater, or between the two; and anyway Colvin will be able to put you on the direct track for Henry James. I do not send formal introductions, as I have taken the liberty to prepare both of them for seeing you already.

Hoskyn is staying with us.

It is raining dismally. The Curaçoa track is hardly passable, but it must be trod to-morrow by the degenerate feet of their successor the Wallaroos. I think it a very good account of these last that we don’t think them either deformed or habitual criminals—they seem to be a kindly lot.

The doctor will give you all the gossip. I have preferred in this letter to stick to the strictly solid and necessary. With kind messages from all in the house to all in the wardroom, all in the gunroom, and (may we dare to breathe it) to him who walks abaft, believe me, my dear Eeles, yours ever,

R. L. Stevenson.

To Sir Herbert Maxwell

Vailima, Samoa, December 1, 1894.

DEAR SIR HERBERT,—Thank you very much for your long and kind letter. I shall certainly take your advice and call my cousin, the Lyon King, into council. It is certainly a very interesting subject, though I don’t suppose it can possibly lead to anything, this connection between the Stevensons and M’Gregors. Alas! your invitation is to me a mere derision. My chances of visiting Heaven are about as valid as my chances of visiting Monreith. Though I should like well to see you, shrunken into a cottage, a literary Lord of Ravenscraig. I suppose it is the inevitable doom of all those who dabble in Scotch soil; but really your fate is the more blessed. I cannot conceive anything more grateful to me, or more amusing or more picturesque, than to live in a cottage outside your own park-walls.—With renewed thanks, believe me, dear Sir Herbert, yours very truly,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Andrew Lang

The following refers of course to Weir of Hermiston, the chief character of which was studied from the traditions of Lord Braxfield, and on which Stevenson was working at the full height of his powers when death overtook him two days later.

Vailima, Samoa, December 1, 1894.

MY DEAR LANG,—For the portrait of Braxfield, much thanks! It is engraved from the same Raeburn portrait that I saw in ’76 or ’77 with so extreme a gusto that I have ever since been Braxfield’s humble servant, and am now trying, as you know, to stick him into a novel. Alas! one might as well try to stick in Napoleon. The picture shall be framed and hung up in my study. Not only as a memento of you, but as a perpetual encouragement to do better with his Lordship. I have not yet received the transcripts. They must be very interesting. Do you know I picked up the other day an old Longman’s where I found an article of yours that I had missed, about Christie’s? I read it with great delight. The year ends with us pretty much as it began, among wars and rumours of wars, and a vast and splendid exhibition of official incompetence.—Yours ever,

R. L. Stevenson.

To Edmund Gosse

The next, and last, letter is to Mr. Gosse, dated also only two days before the writer’s death. It acknowledges the dedication “To Tusitala” of that gentleman’s volume of poems, In Russet and Silver, just received.

Vailima, Samoa, December 1, 1894.

I am afraid, my dear Weg, that this must be the result of bribery and corruption! The volume to which the dedication stands as preface seems to me to stand alone in your work; it is so natural, so personal, so sincere, so articulate in substance, and what you always were sure of—so rich in adornment.

Let me speak first of the dedication. I thank you for it from the heart. It is beautifully said, beautifully and kindly felt; and I should be a churl indeed if I were not grateful, and an ass if I were not proud. I remember when Symonds dedicated a book to me; I wrote and told him of “the pang of gratified vanity” with which I had read it. The pang was present again, but how much more sober and autumnal—like your volume. Let me tell you a story, or remind you of a story. In the year of grace something or other, anything between ’76 and ’78, I mentioned to you in my usual autobiographical and inconsiderate manner that I was hard up. You said promptly that you had a balance at your banker’s, and could make it convenient to let me have a cheque, and I accepted and got the money—how much was it?—twenty or perhaps thirty pounds? I know not—but it was a great convenience. The same evening, or the next day, I fell in conversation (in my usual autobiographical and ... see above) with a denizen of the Savile Club, name now gone from me, only his figure and a dim three-quarter view of his face remaining. To him I mentioned that you had given me a loan, remarking easily that of course it didn’t matter to you. Whereupon he read me a lecture, and told me how it really stood with you financially. He was pretty serious; fearing, as I could not help perceiving, that I should take too light a view of the responsibility and the service (I was always thought too light—the irresponsible jester—you remember. O, quantum mutatus ab illo!) If I remember rightly, the money was repaid before the end of the week—or, to be more exact and a trifle pedantic, the se’nnight—but the service has never been forgotten; and I send you back this piece of ancient history, consule Planco, as a salute for your dedication, and propose that we should drink the health of the nameless one, who opened my eyes as to the true nature of what you did for me on that occasion.

But here comes my Amanuensis, so we’ll get on more swimmingly now. You will understand perhaps that what so particularly pleased me in the new volume, what seems to me to have so personal and original a note, are the middle-aged pieces in the beginning. The whole of them, I may say, though I must own an especial liking to—

“I yearn not for the fighting fate, That holds and hath achieved; I live to watch and meditate And dream—and be deceived.”

You take the change gallantly. Not I, I must confess. It is all very well to talk of renunciation, and of course it has to be done. But, for my part, give me a roaring toothache! I do like to be deceived and to dream, but I have very little use for either watching or meditation. I was not born for age. And, curiously enough, I seem to see a contrary drift in my work from that which is so remarkable in yours. You are going on sedately travelling through your ages, decently changing with the years to the proper tune. And here am I, quite out of my true course, and with nothing in my foolish elderly head but love-stories. This must repose upon some curious distinction of temperaments. I gather from a phrase, boldly autobiographical, that you are—well, not precisely growing thin. Can that be the difference?

It is rather funny that this matter should come up just now, as I am at present engaged in treating a severe case of middle age in one of my stories—“The Justice-Clerk.” The case is that of a woman, and I think that I am doing her justice. You will be interested, I believe, to see the difference in our treatments. Secreta Vitæ comes nearer to the case of my poor Kirstie. Come to think of it, Gosse, I believe the main distinction is that you have a family growing up around you, and I am a childless, rather bitter, very clear-eyed, blighted youth. I have, in fact, lost the path that makes it easy and natural for you to descend the hill. I am going at it straight. And where I have to go down it is a precipice.

I must not forget to give you a word of thanks for An English Village. It reminds me strongly of Keats, which is enough to say; and I was particularly pleased with the petulant sincerity of the concluding sentiment.

Well, my dear Gosse, here’s wishing you all health and prosperity, as well as to the mistress and the bairns. May you live long, since it seems as if you would continue to enjoy life. May you write many more books as good as this one—only there’s one thing impossible, you can never write another dedication that can give the same pleasure to the vanished

Tusitala.

APPENDIX I

ACCOUNT OF THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF R. L. STEVENSON, BY LLOYD OSBOURNE

He wrote hard all that morning of the last day; his half-finished book, Hermiston, he judged the best he had ever written, and the sense of successful effort made him buoyant and happy as nothing else could. In the afternoon the mail fell to be answered; not business correspondence—for this was left till later—but replies to the long, kindly letters of distant friends, received but two days since, and still bright in memory.

At sunset he came downstairs; rallied his wife about the forebodings she could not shake off; talked of a lecturing tour to America that he was eager to make, “as he was now so well,” and played a game at cards with her to drive away her melancholy. He said he was hungry; begged her assistance to help him make a salad for the evening meal; and to enhance the little feast, he brought up a bottle of old Burgundy from the cellar. He was helping his wife on the verandah, and gaily talking, when suddenly he put both hands to his head, and cried out, “What’s that?” Then he asked quickly, “Do I look strange?” Even as he did so he fell on his knees beside her. He was helped into the great hall, between his wife and his body-servant, Sosimo, losing consciousness instantly as he lay back in the arm-chair that had once been his grandfather’s. Little time was lost in bringing the doctors—Anderson, of the man-of-war, and his friend Dr. Funk. They looked at him and shook their heads; they laboured strenuously, and left nothing undone; but he had passed the bounds of human skill.

The dying man lay back in the chair, breathing heavily, his family about him frenzied with grief, as they realised all hope was past. The dozen and more Samoans that formed part of the little clan of which he was chief sat in a wide semicircle on the floor, their reverent, troubled, sorrow-stricken faces all fixed upon their dying master. Some knelt on one knee, to be instantly ready for any command that might be laid upon them. A narrow bed was brought into the centre of the room, the Master was gently laid upon it, his head supported by a rest, the gift of Shelley’s son. Slower and slower grew his respiration, wider the interval between the long, deep breaths. The Rev. Mr. Clarke was now come, an old and valued friend; he knelt and prayed as the life ebbed away.

He died at ten minutes past eight on Monday evening the 3rd of December, in the forty-fifth year of his age.

The great Union Jack that flew over the house was hauled down, and laid over the body, fit shroud for a loyal Scotsman. He lay in the hall which was ever his pride, where he had passed the gayest and most delightful hours of his life, a noble room with open stairway and mullioned windows. In it were the treasures of his far-off Scottish home: the old carved furniture, the paintings and busts that had been in his father’s house before him. The Samoans passed in procession beside his bed, kneeling and kissing his hand, each in turn, before taking their places for the long night watch beside him. No entreaty could induce them to retire, to rest themselves for the painful and arduous duties of the morrow. It would show little love for Tusitala, they said, if they did not spend their last night beside him. Mournful and silent, they sat in deep dejection, poor, simple, loyal folk, fulfilling the duty they owed their chief.

A messenger was despatched to the few chiefs connected with the family, to announce the tidings and bid them assemble their men on the morrow for the work there was to do.

Sosimo asked on behalf of the Roman Catholics that they might be allowed to recite the prayers for the dead. Till midnight the solemn chants continued, the prolonged, sonorous prayers of the Church of Rome, in commingled Latin and Samoan. Later still, a chief arrived with his retainers, bringing a precious mat to wrap about the dead.

He too knelt and kissed the hand of Tusitala, and took his place amid the sleepless watchers. Another arrived with a fine mat, a man of higher rank, whose incipient consumption had often troubled the Master.

“Talofa Tusitala!” he said as he drew nigh, and took a long, mournful look at the face he knew so well. When, later on, he was momentarily required on some business of the morrow, he bowed reverently before retiring. “Tofa Tusitala!” he said, “Sleep, Tusitala!”

The morning of the 4th of December broke cool and sunny, a beautiful day, rare at this season of the year. More fine mats were brought, until the Union Jack lay nigh concealed beneath them. Among the new-comers was an old Mataafa chief, one of the builders of the “Road of the Loving Hearts,” a man who had spent many days in prison for participation in the rebellion. “I am only a poor Samoan, and ignorant,” said he, as he crouched beside the body; “others are rich, and can give Tusitala the parting presents of rich fine mats; I am poor, and can give nothing this last day he receives his friends. Yet I am not afraid to come and look the last time in my friend’s face, never to see him more till we meet with God. Behold! Tusitala is dead; Mataafa is also dead to us. These two great friends have been taken by God. When Mataafa was taken, who was our support but Tusitala? We were in prison, and he cared for us. We were sick, and he made us well. We were hungry, and he fed us. The day was no longer than his kindness. You are great people and full of love. Yet who among you is so great as Tusitala? What is your love to his love? Our clan was Mataafa’s clan, for whom I speak this day; therein was Tusitala also. We mourn them both.”

A meeting of chiefs was held to apportion the work and divide the men into parties. Forty were sent with knives and axes to cut a path up the steep face of the mountain, and the writer himself led another party to the summit—men chosen from the immediate family—to dig the grave on a spot where it was Mr. Stevenson’s wish that he should lie. Nothing more picturesque can be imagined than the narrow ledge that forms the summit of Vaea, a place no wider than a room, and flat as a table. On either side the land descends precipitously; in front lies the vast ocean and the surf-swept reefs; to the right and left green mountains rise, densely covered with the primeval forest. Two hundred years ago the eyes of another man turned towards that same peak of Vaea as the spot that should ultimately receive his war-worn body: Soalu, a famous chief.

All the morning, Samoans were arriving with flowers; few of these were white, for they have not learned our foreign custom, and the room glowed with the many colours. There were no strangers on that day, no acquaintances; those only were called who would deeply feel the loss. At one o’clock a body of powerful Samoans bore away the coffin, hid beneath a tattered red ensign that had flown above his vessel in many a corner of the South Seas. A path so steep and rugged taxed their strength to the utmost; for not only was the journey difficult in itself, but extreme care was requisite to carry the coffin shoulder-high.

Half an hour later, the rest of his friends followed. It was a formidable ascent, and tried them hard. Nineteen Europeans, and some sixty Samoans, reached the summit. After a short rest, the Rev. W. E. Clarke read the burial service of the Church of England, interposing a prayer that Mr. Stevenson had written and had read aloud to his family only the evening before his death:—

We beseech Thee, Lord, to behold us with favour, folk of many families and nations, gathered together in the peace of this roof; weak men and women, subsisting under the covert of Thy patience.

Be patient still; suffer us yet a while longer—with our broken purposes of good, and our idle endeavours against evil—suffer us a while longer to endure, and (if it may be) help us to do better. Bless to us our extraordinary mercies; if the day come when these must be taken, have us play the man under affliction. Be with our friends; be with ourselves. Go with each of us to rest; if any awake, temper to them the dark hours of watching; and when the day returns to us, our sun and comforter, call us up with morning faces and with morning hearts—eager to labour—eager to be happy, if happiness shall be our portion—and if the day be marked for sorrow, strong to endure it.

We thank Thee and praise Thee; and in the words of Him to whom this day is sacred, close our oblation.

APPENDIX II

ADDRESS OF R. L. STEVENSON TO THE CHIEFS ON THE OPENING OF THE ROAD OF GRATITUDE, OCTOBER 1894

Mr. Stevenson said, “We are met together to-day to celebrate an event and to do honour to certain chiefs, my friends,—Lelei, Mataafa, Salevao, Poè, Teleso, Tupuola Lotofaga, Tupuola Amaile, Muliaiga, Ifopo, and Fatialofa. You are all aware in some degree of what has happened. You know these chiefs to have been prisoners; you perhaps know that during the term of their confinement I had it in my power to do them certain favours. One thing some of you cannot know, that they were immediately repaid by answering attentions. They were liberated by the new administration; by the King, and the Chief Justice, and the Ta’its’ifono, who are here amongst us to-day, and to whom we all desire to tender our renewed and perpetual gratitude for that favour. As soon as they were free men—owing no man anything—instead of going home to their own places and families, they came to me; they offered to do this work for me as a free gift, without hire, without supplies, and I was tempted at first to refuse their offer. I knew the country to be poor, I knew famine threatening; I knew their families long disorganised for want of supervision. Yet I accepted, because I thought the lesson of that road might be more useful to Samoa than a thousand breadfruit trees; and because to myself it was an exquisite pleasure to receive that which was so handsomely offered. It is now done; you have trod it to-day in coming hither. It has been made for me by chiefs; some of them old, some sick, all newly delivered from a harassing confinement, and in spite of weather unusually hot and insalubrious. I have seen these chiefs labour valiantly with their own hands upon the work, and I have set up over it, now that it is finished, the name of ‘The Road of Gratitude’ (the road of loving hearts) and the names of those that built it. ‘In perpetuam memoriam,’ we say, and speak idly. At least so long as my own life shall be spared, it shall be here perpetuated; partly for my pleasure and in my gratitude; partly for others; to continually publish the lesson of this road.”

Addressing himself to the chiefs, Mr. Stevenson then said:—

“I will tell you, Chiefs, that, when I saw you working on that road, my heart grew warm; not with gratitude only, but with hope. It seemed to me that I read the promise of something good for Samoa: it seemed to me, as I looked at you, that you were a company of warriors in a battle, fighting for the defence of our common country against all aggression. For there is a time to fight, and a time to dig. You Samoans may fight, you may conquer twenty times, and thirty times, and all will be in vain. There is but one way to defend Samoa. Hear it before it is too late. It is to make roads, and gardens, and care for your trees, and sell their produce wisely, and, in one word, to occupy and use your country. If you do not, others will.”

The speaker then referred to the Parable of the Talents, Matt. xxv. 14-30, and continuing, impressively asked: “What are you doing with your talent, Samoa? Your three talents, Savaii, Upolu, and Tutuila? Have you buried it in a napkin? Not Upolu at least. You have rather given it out to be trodden under feet of swine: and the swine cut down food trees and burn houses, according to the nature of swine, or of that much worse animal, foolish man, acting according to his folly. ‘Thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed.’ But God has both sown and strawed for you here in Samoa; He has given you a rich soil, a splendid sun, copious rain; all is ready to your hand, half done. And I repeat to you that thing which is sure: if you do not occupy and use your country, others will. It will not continue to be yours or your children’s, if you occupy it for nothing. You and your children will in that case be cast out into outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth; for that is the law of God which passeth not away. I who speak to you have seen these things. I have seen them with my eyes—these judgments of God. I have seen them in Ireland, and I have seen them in the mountains of my own country—Scotland—and my heart was sad. These were a fine people in the past—brave, gay, faithful, and very much like Samoans, except in one particular, that they were much wiser and better at that business of fighting of which you think so much. But the time came to them as it now comes to you, and it did not find them ready. The messenger came into their villages, and they did not know him; they were told, as you are told, to use and occupy their country, and they would not hear. And now you may go through great tracts of the land and scarce meet a man or a smoking house, and see nothing but sheep feeding. The other people that I tell you of have come upon them like a foe in the night, and these are the other people’s sheep who browse upon the foundation of their houses. To come nearer; and I have seen this judgment in Oahu also. I have ridden there the whole day along the coast of an island. Hour after hour went by and I saw the face of no living man except that of the guide who rode with me. All along that desolate coast, in one bay after another, we saw, still standing, the churches that have been built by the Hawaiians of old. There must have been many hundreds, many thousands, dwelling there in old times, and worshipping God in these now empty churches. For to-day they were empty; the doors were closed, the villages had disappeared, the people were dead and gone; only the church stood on like a tombstone over a grave, in the midst of the white men’s sugar fields. The other people had come and used that country, and the Hawaiians who occupied it for nothing had been swept away, ‘where is weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

“I do not speak of this lightly, because I love Samoa and her people. I love the land, I have chosen it to be my home while I live, and my grave after I am dead; and I love the people, and have chosen them to be my people to live and die with. And I see that the day is come now of the great battle; of the great and the last opportunity by which it shall be decided whether you are to pass away like these other races of which I have been speaking, or to stand fast and have your children living on and honouring your memory in the land you received of your fathers.

“The Land Commission and the Chief Justice will soon have ended their labours. Much of your land will be restored to you, to do what you can with. Now is the time the messenger is come into your villages to summon you; the man is come with the measuring rod; the fire is lighted in which you shall be tried, whether you are gold or dross. Now is the time for the true champions of Samoa to stand forth. And who is the true champion of Samoa? It is not the man who blackens his face, and cuts down trees, and kills pigs and wounded men. It is the man who makes roads, who plants food trees, who gathers harvests, and is a profitable servant before the Lord, using and improving that great talent that has been given him in trust. That is the brave soldier; that is the true champion; because all things in a country hang together like the links of the anchor cable, one by another: but the anchor itself is industry.

“There is a friend of most of us, who is far away; not to be forgotten where I am, where Tupuola is, where Poè Lelei, Mataafa, Solevao, Poè Teleso, Tupuola Lotofaga, Tupuolo Amaile, Muliaiga, Ifopo, Fatialofa, Lemusu are. He knew what I am telling you; no man better. He saw the day was come when Samoa had to walk in a new path, and to be defended not only with guns and blackened faces, and the noise of men shouting, but by digging and planting, reaping and sowing. When he was still here amongst us, he busied himself planting cacao; he was anxious and eager about agriculture and commerce, and spoke and wrote continually; so that when we turn our minds to the same matters, we may tell ourselves that we are still obeying Mataafa. Ua tautala mai pea o ia ua mamao.

“I know that I do not speak to idle or foolish hearers. I speak to those who are not too proud to work for gratitude. Chiefs! You have worked for Tusitala, and he thanks you from his heart. In this, I could wish you could be an example to all Samoa—I wish every chief in these islands would turn to, and work, and build roads, and sow fields, and plant food trees, and educate his children and improve his talents—not for love of Tusitala, but for the love of his brothers, and his children, and the whole body of generations yet unborn.

“Chiefs! On this road that you have made many feet shall follow. The Romans were the bravest and greatest of people! mighty men of their hands, glorious fighters and conquerors. To this day in Europe you may go through parts of the country where all is marsh and bush, and perhaps after struggling through a thicket, you shall come forth upon an ancient road, solid and useful as the day it was made. You shall see men and women bearing their burdens along that even way, and you may tell yourself that it was built for them perhaps fifteen hundred years before,—perhaps before the coming of Christ,—by the Romans. And the people still remember and bless them for that convenience, and say to one another, that as the Romans were the bravest men to fight, so they were the best at building roads.

“Chiefs! Our road is not built to last a thousand years, yet in a sense it is. When a road is once built, it is a strange thing how it collects traffic, how every year, as it goes on, more and more people are found to walk thereon and others are raised up to repair and perpetuate it and keep it alive; so that perhaps even this road of ours may, from reparation to reparation, continue to exist and be useful hundreds and hundreds of years after we are mingled in the dust. And it is my hope that our far-away descendants may remember and bless those who laboured for them to-day.”

INDEX TO THE LETTERS

[For short Index to Vols. I.-XXII., see pp. 509-519.]

“Abbé Coignard” (France), xxv. 409, 410

Academy, The, xxiii. intro. xvii., 166; contributions to, xxiii. 184, xxv. 364

“Across the Plains,” xxv. 123 & n. 1, xxv. 207, 224, 301 n. 1; dedication, xxv. 127 & n. 1, xxv. 323 & n. 1; inception, xxv. 97 & n. 1

“Actor’s Wife,” projected, xxiii. 308

Adams, Henry, historian, xxv. 4, 29, 41, 43, 45

“Address to the Unco Guid” (Burns), xxiii. 225

“Adela Chart” (“The Marriages,” H. James), xxv. 108-9, 110

“Adelaïde,” song (Beethoven), xxiii. 64

Adirondack Mountains, stay in, xxiv. 234, 306 et seq.

Admiral Benbow inn (Treasure Island), xxiii. 327

“Admiral Guinea,” play (with Henley), xxiii. 327; xxiv. 106, 119, 120, 146, 147; xxv. 447

“Admiral,” the (Story of a Lie), xxiii. 248, 249; xxiv. 90

“Adventures of David Balfour,” proposed double volume of, xxv. 283, 357, 366

“Æneid,” reading of, xxiv. 186, 265, 306

“Æsthetic Letters” (Schiller), xxiv. 71

Ahab, King, xxv. 304

“Ah perfido spergiuro,” song, xxiii. 166

Aitu fafine, an, xxv. 41, 135

Alabama case, xxiii. 110

“Aladdin” (Pyle), xxv. 164

Alais, visit to, xxiii. 216

“Alan Breck Stewart,” (“Catriona” and “Kidnapped”), xxiv. 201, 203, xxv. 46, 142; letter as from, xxv. 46-8

Alexander, J. W., xxiv. 249, 250; drawing by, of R. L. S., xxiv. 199

Allan Ramsay, Fergusson and Burns, essay on, projected, xxiii. 191, 192, 193

Allen, Grant, ballade by, xxiv. 248

“Amateur Emigrant,” xxiii. 235, 237, 239, 240, 244, 252, 254, 255, 259, 260, 265, 266, 267, 277, 352; xxv. 396-7 & n. 1, 398, 414, 423

“Amazing Marriage” (Meredith), R. L. S. drawn in, xxv. 344, 390-1

“Amelia Balfour,” see Jersey, Countess of

American politics, xxiii. 112

Anderson, Dr., xxv. 457-8

Andrews, Mrs., xxiii. 113

Angelo, Michael, xxiii. 32

Angus, W. Craibe, letters to, xxv. 69, 87, 118

“Annals of the Persecutions in Scotland” (Aikman), xxiii. 18

Anser, xxiii. 22

Anstey, F., xxv. 275

Anstruther, at, xxiii. 12

“Antichrist, L’” (Renan), xxv. 304

“Antiquary, The” (Scott), xxiv. 91

Antwerp, xxiii. 185

Apemama, Gilbert Islands, xxiv. 358

Apia, at, xxiv. 293, 370, 375; xxv. 226; famous hurricane at, xxiv. 345, 346, 369, 371; xxv. 147, 172-3, 174; prisoners at, gratitude shown by, to R. L. S., xxv. 367 et seq.

Apiang, Island, xxiv. 358

Apology, difficulty of, xxiii. 133, 134

“Apology for Idlers,” xxiii. 203, 204, 205, 207, 210

“Appeal to the Clergy of the Church of Scotland,” xxiii. 141, 142

Appin case (Catriona), xxv. 161, 351

Appin country, in, xxiii. 284

Appin Murder, xxiii. 284, 331, 332; xxv. 161, 351

Appleton, Dr., xxiii. intro. xvii. 143, 144, 168, 178

“Arblaster” (Black Arrow), xxiii. intro. xx.

Arbroath, Abbot of, xxiii. 29

Archer, Thomas, letter to, xxiv. 305

Archer, William, xxiv. 105, 161, 214; letters to, xxiv. 147, 156, 161, 163, 247, 270, 272, 273, xxv. 384

Archer, William and Thomas, letter to, xxiv. 300

Areia, chief, xxiv. 315

Arnold, Matthew, xxiii. 15

Arthur’s Seat, xxiii. 71

Artist, the, problem of, xxv. 378-9

“Art of Literature,” projected, xxiii. 342

“Art of Virtue,” xxiii. 265

Asceticism and Christianity, xxiii. 213

Assurance of Faith, xxiii. 299, 300

“As You Like It” (Shakespeare), xxiv. 96

Atalanta, magazine, contributions to, xxv. 279 & n. 1, 283

Athenæum, xxiii. 239

“At Last” (Kingsley), xxiv. 101

“Attwater” (Ebb Tide), xxv. 301, 307, 350, 382

Atua, bombardment of, xxv. 424, 426

Auckland, visits to, xxv. 30, 34; xxv. 290, 291, 292

“Auld Licht Idylls” (Barrie), xxv. 264

“Auntie’s Skirts” (Child’s Garden of Verse), xxiii. 223

Aurévilly, Barbey d’, works of, xxiv. 83; xxv. 174, 314, 379

“Ausfürliche Erklarung der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche” (Lichtenberg), xxiii. 178

“Autolycus at Court,” xxiii. 170

“Autumn Effect, An,” xxiii. 155, 166; xxv. 397-8

Autun, xxiii. 216, 219

Avignon, at, xxiii. 77

Ayrshire and Galloway, walking tour in, xxiii. 182, 202

Babington, Mrs. Churchill, xxiii. 54; letter to, xxiii. 30

Babington, Professor Churchill, xxiii. 30, 54; xxiv. 130

Bacon, Sir F., on Time, xxiii. 81

Baildon, H. B., xxv. 56; letters to, xxv. 56, 377, 381

Baker, Mrs. A., letters to, xxv. 366, 413

Baker, Shirley, of Tonga, xxv. 40, 44

Baker, Sir Samuel, xxv. 175

Bakewell, Dr., letter to, xxv. 424

Balfour, Dr. George, xxiii. 330

Balfour, Graham, xxv. 221, 251 & n. 1, 292, 339, 348, 351, 355, 363, 406, 416; “Life” of R. L. S., by, xxiii. intro. xix.; at Vailima, xxv. 144, 374, 401, 403

Balfour, James, xxiii. 4

Balfour, Miss Jane, letter to, xxiii. 223

Balfour, Mr., of the Shaws, xxv. 47

Balfour, Mrs. Lewis, xxiii. 4, 5

Balfour of Burley (Old Mortality), xxiii. 130

Balfour, Rev. Lewis, xxiii. 4

“Balfour’s Letters,” xxv. 293

“Ballade in Hot Weather” (Henley), xxiv. 248

“Ballades, Rondeaus, etc.” (collected by Gleeson White), xxiv. 248

“Ballads,” xxiv. 380; xxv. 34, 53, 57, 73

Ballantyne, R., xxiii. intro. xxiii.

Balzac, xxv. 154; on literary frenzy, xxiii. 173; style of, xxiv. 60

Bamford, Dr. W., xxiii. 271; letter to, xxiii. 272

“Barbara” (Catriona), xxv. 294-5

Barbizon, visits to, xxiii. 174 et seq., 183

Barmouth, visits to, xxiii. 124, 146

“Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities” (Billing), xxiv. 270

“Barrack Room Ballads” (Kipling), xxv. 48

“Barrel Organ,” xxiii. 171

Barrie, J. M., appreciation, xxv. 276-7: letters to, xxv. 154, 264, 276, 362, 416

Barrie, Mrs. (Margaret Ogilvie), xxv. 417

Bartholomew, Messrs., xxv. 177

Basin, Thomas, xxiii. 203 & n. 1

Basselin, Olivier, poems by, xxiii. 193

Bass Rock, xxiii. 207

Bates, —, xxiii. 89

Bates, Edward Hugh Higlee, xxv. 384

Bates, E. M. G., xxv. 384

Bates, J. H., letter to, xxv. 384

Bathgate, the inn maid at, xxiii. 226, 227

“Bauble Shop,” play (H. A. Jones), xxv. 385

Baudelaire, —, xxiii. 160, 195

Baxter, Charles, xxiii. 3, 159, 174, 285, 336, 341, 353, 356; xxiv. 14, 47, 79; xxv. 174, 240, 266, 273, 306, 357; letters to, xxiii. 33, 34, 46, 49, 52, 92, 193, 217, 262, 285, 336, 341; xxiv. 14, 121, 122, 200, 251, 260, 268, 286, 294, 296, 301, 303, 322, 327, 343, 344, 369, 375, 384, 392; xxv. 53, 82, 120, 177, 213, 270, 278, 288, 292, 337, 345, 360, 376, 392, 394, 433; literary agency of, xxiv. 252; scheme of, for “Edinburgh Edition,” xxv. 372 & n. 1, 373

Baxter, Edmund, xxiv. 394; xxv. 54; death of, xxv. 433

Baynes, Professor Spencer, editor “Encyclopædia Britannica,” xxiii, 202

“Beachcombers” (with Lloyd Osbourne), xxiv. 361

“Beach de Mar,” projected xxv. 187

“Beach of Falesá,” xxv. 5, 20, 25, 76, 97, 102, 103 & n. 1, 120, 122, 131, 138, 147, 152, 221, 224, 235-6, & n. 1, 239, 240, 250, 266, 272, 274, 284; illustrations to, xxv. 253-4, 288; marriage contract in, xxv. 187 & n. 1; publication, xxv. 1.

“Beau Austin,” play (with Henley), xxiv. 106

Becker, Consul, xxv. 139, 141, 268

“Becket” (Tennyson), xxv. 385

“Bedtime” projected, xxiv. 99

“Beggars” (Scribner’s), xxiv. 235, 253; xxv. 97, 209, 301

Bell Rock, book on, xxiv. 78; xxv. 322; controversy on, xxiv. 121

Bell, the, in the Vailima woods, xxv. 277

Ben More, xxiii. 318

Bennet, Dr., xxiii. 84, 101

Bentley, publisher, xxiii. 336, 339, 346

Béranger, article on, xxiii. 186, 191, 193

Bereavement, xxiv. 52

Berlin Convention, xxv. 6

Berlioz, paper on (Henley), xxiii. 318

“Bête Humaine” (Zola), xxiv. 396; xxv. 319

“Betteredge” (Moonstone), xxiii. 18

Bickford, Captain, R.N., C.M.G., xxv. 334, 351

Bitter Creek, xxiii. 234

Black and White, contributions to, xxiii. 286, 337, 341

“Black Arrow,” xxiv. 5, 31, 56, 247, 376, 385 & n. 1; serial issue, xxiv. 55; success, xxiv. 68; suggested French version, xxiv. 398

“Black Canyon” (L. Osbourne), xxiii. 347, 348, 349

Blackie, Professor, xxiii. 28, 30, 306

Blacklock, Consul, xxv. 142

“Black Man,” xxiii. 308

Blackwood’s Magazine, xxiv. 370

Blair of Blairmyle (see “Young Chevalier”), xxv. 216

“Blanche Amory” (Thackeray), xxiv. 212

“Bloody Wedding,” projected, xxv. 66, 97

Board of Trade Offices, xxiv. 87

Boccaccio, xxv. 301

“Body Snatchers,” xxiii. 308, 316, 321; xxiv. 125, 130; xxv. 397

“Bondage of Brandon” (Hemming), xxiii. 333

“Bondman, The” (Hall Caine), xxiv. 396-7

Boodle, Miss Adelaide, xxiv. 375; letters to, xxiv. 231, 259, 267, 284, 297, 339, 401; xxv. 80, 147, 217, 243, 248, 410

“Book, A, of Stories,” projected contents, xxiii. 171

“Book of Verses” (Henley), xxv. 121

Book Reader, notice of “Prince Otto,” xxiv. 195

Books wanted, xxiii. 36, 332; xxiv. 78, 101, 130, 134, 270, 274, 338; xxv. 111, 112, 174, 215, 271, 287, 293, 346, 361, 392

Boswell, James, xxiii. 193, 203, 295

“Bottle Imp,” xxiv. 292; xxv. 272, 284, 340; Samoan translation, xxv. 64 & n. 1

Bough, Sam, painter, xxiii. 24, 26-30; xxiv. 60

Bourget, Paul, xxv. 130-2, 315, 323

Bourke, Captain, R.N., xxv. 263

Bournemouth, at, xxiv. 104 et seq.; xxv. 111

“Bouroche, Major” (Débâcle), xxv. 250

Braemar, at, xxiii. 282, 313, 320

Braille, books by R. L. S., to be issued in, xxv. 366, 413

Brandeis, xxv. 141

“Brashiana,” burlesque sonnets, xxiii. 283; xxiv. 14, 38, 39

Brash, the publican, xxiii. 336; xxiv. 14

Braxfield (Weir of Hermiston), xxv. 260 & n. 1, 264-5; portrait of, xxv. 453

Bridge of Allan, at, xxiii. 33, 174

British Museum, visits to, xxiv. 105, 107, 186-7, 202, 229, 365

Bronson, —, editor, xxiii. 240

Brooke, Rajah, xxv. 129

Brown, —, xxiv. 230

Brown, Dr. John, verses to, xxiii. 296, 297

Brown, Horatio F., xxiii. 303, 304; letters to, xxiii. 303, 304

Brown, Mrs., xxiii. 13

Brown, Rev. Dr., xxv. 312

Brown R. Glasgow (editor of London), xxiii. 184, 251; illness, xxiii. 214 & n. 1

Browne, Gordon, xxv. 301, 305; letter to, xxv. 252

Browning, Robert, xxiv. 107, 202; book on, by Gosse, xxv. 74

Bruce, Michael, xxiii. 71

Bruno, Father, xxiv. 312, 334

Brussels, at, xxiii. 36

Buckinghamshire, walking tour in, xxiii. 124, 155

Buckle, Mrs., xxiv. 176

“Bucolics” (Virgil), xxiii. 18

“Bummkopf” (typical pedant), xxiii. 225

Bunner, —, xxiv. 64, 154

Bunting, —, xxiv. 227

Bunyan, John, xxiv. 29; essay on, xxiii. 334; xxv. 398

Burford Bridge, visit to, xxiii. 183

Burial customs, Gilbert Islanders’, xxiv. 400-1

Burke, Edmund, xxiii. 71

Burlingame, E. L., editor of Scribner’s Magazine, xxiv. 233; xxv. 6, 138; letters to, xxiv. 253-4, 269, 273-4, 319, 338, 367, 376, 387, 394, xxv. 24, 32, 86, 110, 128, 145, 174, 210, 215, 257, 266

Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, xxiii. 224; xxiv. 101, 107, 202; xxv. 394

Burney, “Admiral,” R.N., xxv. 394

Burn, Miss, xxiv. 89

Burns Exhibition, Glasgow, xxv. 69, 87 et seq.

Burns, Robert, xxiii. intro. xxiii.; xxv. 69, 70, 88, 395-6; articles and writings on, xxiii. 111, 151, 179, 191, 192, 193, 202, 203, 224, 226, 237, 241, 245, 250, 263, 273, 358, xxiv. 63; house of, Dumfries, xxiii. 66; judgment on, xxiii. 224; poems of, xxiii. 4, xxiv. 256

Burt, xxiii. 298

Bussard, the ship, xxv. 425

Butaritari, Gilbert Islands, xxiv. 358

“But still our hearts are true” (Eglinton), xxv. 69, 70

“But yet the Lord that is on high” (Scotch Psalter), xxiii. 23

“By Proxy” (Payn), xxiv. 7

Byron, Lord, xxiii. 132; essay on (Henley), xxiii. 318; xxiv. 7

Caldecott, Randolph, xxiii. 248, 267

California, visit to, xxiii. 228

Calistoga, at, xxiii. 277

Calton Hill (Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh), xxiii. 216

Calvin, John, studies in, xxiii. 126

Cambridge, visits to, xxiii. 219; xxiv. 105

Cameron, Captain, xxiv. 349, 350

Campagne Defli, at, xxiv. 4, 8 et seq.

Campbell of Glenure, murder of, xxiii. 284, 331, 332

Campbell, Rev. Professor Lewis, xxiii. 278, 316; letter to, xxiv. 113

“Canadian Boat Song” (Earl of Eglinton), xxv. 69, 70

Candlish, Dr., xxiv. 63

“Cannon Mills,” projected, xxiv. 403

Canoe Journey in France (see Inland Voyage), xxiii. 204

“Canoe, The, Speaks” (Underwoods), xxiv. 89, 231

“Canterbury Pilgrimage” (Chaucer), illustrated, gift of, xxiv. 149

“Capitaine Fracasse, Le” (Théophile Gautier), xxiii. 75

Cap Martin, xxiii. intro. xxxiv., 93, 114

“Captain Singleton” (Defoe), xxiv. 101, 102

Carlyle, Thomas, xxiii. 302; xxiv. 135; appreciation of, xxiii. 301, 302; on Coleridge, xxiii. 220

“Carmosine” (Musset), xxiv. 97

Carrington, C. Howard, letter to, xxiv. 152

Carr, T. Comyns, xxiv. 68

Carruthers, —, xxv. 40

Carson, Mrs., xxiii. 252

“Carthew” (Wrecker), xxv. 112 & n. 1

“Casamassima” (H. James), xxiv. 263

Casco, schooner, cruise in, xxiv. 234, 287 et seq., 290-1, 300, 305, 310, 312-3, 316 et seq., 325 et seq.

“Case Bottle,” xxiii. 281

“Cashel Byron’s Profession” (Shaw), xxiv. 270-1

“Casparidea,” unpublished, xxiii. 283

“Cassandra” (Mrs. R. L. Stevenson), xxiv. 22

Cassell and Co., xxiv. 110, 127; xxv. 57, 110, 124, 272, 283

“Catriona” (at first called “David Balfour,” q.v.), xxiii. intro. xxiii., 331; xxiv. 190, 402; xxv. 108, 144, 155, 158 & n. 1, 160-1, 163, 166-7, 172, 187, 192, 201-2, 211, 215, 240, 250, 264, 274, 283, 290, 298, 301, 305, 310, 316, 344, 351 & n. 1, 352, 378; in Braille, xxv. 366; characters in, xxv. 216; draft of, xxv. 162; maps for, xxv. 177-8; “my high-water mark,” xxv. 393 (but see 379); projected illustrations, xxv. 349 n. 1; replies to remarks on, xxv. 294 et seq.; restraint of description in, xxv. 367

Cavalier (de Sonne), xxiii. 307

Cavalier, Jean, xxiii. 306, 307

“Cavalier,” The (G. P. R. James), xxiv. 274

Cedercrantz, Conrad, Chief Justice of Samoa, xxv. 7, 13, 48-9, 67, 95-6, 98-100, 102, 124-5, 175, 188, 239, 256, 275, 278, 281, 286, 305, 364, 376, 380-1

Celtic blood in Britain, xxv. 379

Century Magazine, xxiv. 26, 30, 55, 90, 171; article in, by H. James, on R. L. S., xxiv. 250-1; contributions to, xxiii. 338, xxiv. 55, 170, 171, 185; critical notice in, of R. L. S., xxiv. 63, 64

Cévennes, the tramp in (see “Travels with a Donkey”), xxiii. 183

Ceylon, projected visit, xxv. 98

Chair of History and Constitutional Law, Edinburgh University, candidature for, xxiii. 282, 309 et seq., 331, 335, 336

Chalmers, Rev. J., xxv. 30, 33, 39, 56-7

“Chapter of Artistic History,” suggested title for proposed book by Henley, xxiii. 318

“Chapter on Dreams” (Scribner’s), xxiv. 235; xxv. 97

“Character of Dogs” (English Illustrated), xxiv. 67; xxv. 41 n. 2

“Charity Bazaar,” xxv. 398

Charles of Orleans, paper on, xxiii. 182, 191, 192, 202, 203, 204

“Charlotte” (Sorrows of Werther), xxiii. 60, 61

Charteris, Rev. Dr., xxiv. 276; letters to, xxiv. 276, 279

Chastity, xxiii. 338, 360

Chateaubriand (Sainte-Beuve), xxiii. 78

Chatto, Andrew, letter to, xxiv. 110

Chatto and Windus, publishers, xxiii. 335; xxiv. 110; xxv. 395; letter to, xxiv. 231

Chepmell, Dr., xxiv. 242

Chester visited, xxiii. 145, 146

“Chevalier Des Touches” (d’Aurévilly), xxv. 174, 314, 380

Chicago Exhibition, xxv. 379

Children, feelings towards, xxiii. 99, 101, 147, 171

Children in the [Kilburn] Cellar (see also Boodle), letter to, xxv. 243

“Child’s Garden of Verse,” xxiii. 282; xxiv. 5, 17 et seq., 24, 54, 55, 70, 99 et seq., 106, 116, 154; xxv. 385; dedication, xxiv. 16, 19, 27, 92; illustrations, xxiv. 18 et seq., 32, 115; publication, xxiv. 138, 140; reviews, xxiv. 147

“Child’s Play,” xxiv. 70; xxv. 301

Chiltern Hills, visited, xxiii. 155

“Choice of Books” (F. Harrison), xxv. 113

Christianity and Asceticism, xxiii. 213

Christmas Books (Dickens), xxiii. 148

Christmas Day at Vailima, xxv. 40-1

“Christmas Sermon,” xxv. 123 n. 1

Christ’s Hospital, xxiv. 206, 207

Chrystal, Professor, xxiv. 118

“Cimourdain” (Quatre-vingt Treize, by Hugo), xxiii. 130 n. 1

“Clarissa Harlowe” (Richardson), xxiii. 210

Clarke, Mrs. W. E., xxv. 26

Clark, R. & R., printers, xxv. 124

Clark, Rev. W. E., missionary, xxiv. 371; xxv. 10, 11 & n. 1, 26, 30, 64 n. 1, 101; xxv. 203, 236, 329, 330, 422, 458, 460

Clark, Sir Andrew, xxiii. 55, 77, 84

Claxton, missionary, xxv. 64

Clinton, —, xxiii. 332, 333

Clouds, descriptions of, xxv. 178-9

Club, at Vailima, xxv. 168, 170, 176

Clytie, bust of, xxiii. 170

Cockfield Rectory, xxiii. 276; at, xxiii. 54, 56

“Coggie,” see Ferrier, Miss

Coleridge, S. T., xxiii. 220

Colinton, manse of, xxiii. 5

“Collected Essays” (Huxley), xxiv. 219

Collins, Wilkie, xxiii. 238

“Colonel Jack” (Defoe), xxiv. 101, 103

Colorado, xxiv. 110 et seq., 229 et seq., 234

Colvin, Lady (see also Sitwell, Mrs.), xxiii. 54

Colvin, Sir Sidney, xxiii. 88, 91, 93, 94 et seq., 116, 117, 152; xxiv. 13, 47, 133, 191, 210, 216, 278, 323, 343, 396; choice of, for literary executor, xxiii. intro. xviii.; introduction of Eeles to, xxv. 452; letters to (see especially xxv. 5), xxiii. 75, 76, 105, 106, 108, 124, 127, 129, 140, 141, 143, 157, 167, 169, 173, 178, 186, 191, 195, 196, 201, 202, 206, 211, 212, 225, 230, 232, 234, 235, 241, 244, 247, 251, 253, 258, 267, 269, 272, 273, 274, 276, 284, 291, 297, 300, 308, 310, 316, 320, 339, 349; xxiv. 15, 33, 55, 69, 81, 98, 99, 101, 134, 136, 137, 186, 189, 192, 210, 219, 227, 235-6, 238, 264, 265, 275, 283, 285, 293, 295, 298, 316, 329, 336, 353, 357, 362, 385; xxv. 9, 25, 34, 48, 54, 58, 66, 76, 83, 90, 94, 102, 112, 121, 132, 152, 156, 166, 178, 193, 211, 221, 230, 249, 258, 271, 282, 289, 291, 294, 299, 310, 324, 338, 347, 352, 367, 380, 382, 387, 396, 404, 414, 422, 430, 441 (the last), 448; letters to, from Mrs. R. L. Stevenson, xxiv. 308, 347; portraits of, xxv. 78-9, 80 & n. 1, 83-5, 94, 100; testimonial from, xxiii. 316

“Come back” (Clough), xxiii. 294

Comines, Philippe de, xxiii. 193

Commissioners of Northern Lights, yacht of, xxv. 98 & n. 1

“Comtesse d’Escarbaguas” (Molière), xxiv. 123

“Comtesse de Rudolstadt” (Sand), xxiii. 135

“Confessions” (St. Augustine), xxiv. 82-3

Congdon, L. C., xxv. 384

Conrad, Joseph, xxv. 76

“Consuelo” (Sand), xxiii. 87, 135

Consulship, xxv. 208 & n. 1