The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson — Volume 2Stevenson, Robert Louis
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The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson — Volume 2
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Authors, Scottish -- 19th century -- Correspondence; Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894 -- Correspondence
A bit of a sketch map appears to me necessary for my _History_; perhaps
two. If I do not have any, ’tis impossible any one should follow; and I,
even when not at all interested, demand that I shall be able to follow;
even a tourist book without a map is a cross to me; and there must be
others of my way of thinking. I inclose the very artless one that I
think needful. Vailima, in case you are curious, is about as far again
behind Tanugamanono as that is from the sea.
M‘Clure is publishing a short story of mine, some 50,000 words, I think,
_The Beach of Falesà_; when he’s done with it, I want you and Cassell to
bring it out in a little volume; I shall send you a dedication for it; I
believe it good; indeed, to be honest, very good. Good gear that pleases
the merchant.
The other map that I half threaten is a chart for the hurricane. Get me
Kimberley’s report of the hurricane: not to be found here. It is of most
importance; I _must_ have it with my proofs of that part, if I cannot
have it earlier, which now seems impossible.—Yours in hot haste,
R. L. STEVENSON.
TO J. M. BARRIE
_Vailima_, _Samoa_, _February_ 1892.
DEAR MR. BARRIE,—This is at least the third letter I have written you,
but my correspondence has a bad habit of not getting so far as the post.
That which I possess of manhood turns pale before the business of the
address and envelope. But I hope to be more fortunate with this: for,
besides the usual and often recurrent desire to thank you for your
work-you are one of four that have come to the front since I was watching
and had a corner of my own to watch, and there is no reason, unless it be
in these mysterious tides that ebb and flow, and make and mar and murder
the works of poor scribblers, why you should not do work of the best
order. The tides have borne away my sentence, of which I was weary at
any rate, and between authors I may allow myself so much freedom as to
leave it pending. We are both Scots besides, and I suspect both rather
Scotty Scots; my own Scotchness tends to intermittency, but is at times
erisypelitous—if that be rightly spelt. Lastly, I have gathered we had
both made our stages in the metropolis of the winds: our Virgil’s ‘grey
metropolis,’ and I count that a lasting bond. No place so brands a man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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