{1} It is worth noting that long after the writing of this paper, and
the ascription of a Stevenson-like character to the quoted phrase, a
letter of Stevenson's was published, and proved that he had read Lucy
Hutchinson's writings, and that he did not love her. "I have possessed
myself of Mrs. Hutchinson, whom, of course, I admire, etc. . . I
sometimes wish the old Colonel had got drunk and beaten her, in the
bitterness of my spirit. . . The way in which she talks of herself makes
one's blood run cold." He was young at that time of writing, and perhaps
hardly aware of the lesson in English he had taken from her. We know
that he never wasted the opportunity for such a lesson; and the fact that
he did allow her to administer one to him in right seventeenth-century
diction is established--it is not too bold to say so--by my recognition
of his style in her own. I had surely caught the retrospective reflex
note, heard first in his voice, recognized in hers.
{2} I found it afterwards: it was Rebecca.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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