_Vailima_, _May_ 18_th_, 1894.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—Your proposals for the Edinburgh edition are entirely to
my mind. About the _Amateur Emigrant_, it shall go to you by this mail
well slashed. If you like to slash some more on your own account, I give
you permission. ’Tis not a great work; but since it goes to make up the
two first volumes as proposed, I presume it has not been written in
vain.—_Miscellanies_. I see with some alarm the proposal to print
_Juvenilia_; does it not seem to you taking myself a little too much as
Grandfather William? I am certainly not so young as I once was—a lady
took occasion to remind me of the fact no later agone than last night.
‘Why don’t you leave that to the young men, Mr. Stevenson?’ said she—but
when I remember that I felt indignant at even John Ruskin when he did
something of the kind I really feel myself blush from head to heel. If
you want to make up the first volume, there are a good many works which I
took the trouble to prepare for publication and which have never been
republished. In addition to _Roads_ and _Dancing Children_, referred to
by you, there is an Autumn effect in the _Portfolio_, and a paper on
_Fontainebleau—Forest Notes_ is the name of it—in _Cornhill_. I have no
objection to any of these being edited, say with a scythe, and
reproduced. But I heartily abominate and reject the idea of reprinting
the _Pentland Rising_. For God’s sake let me get buried first.
_Tales and Fantasies_. Vols. I. and II. have my hearty approval. But I
think III. and IV. had better be crammed into one as you suggest. I will
reprint none of the stories mentioned. They are below the mark. Well, I
dare say the beastly _Body-Snatcher_ has merit, and I am unjust to it
from my recollections of the _Pall Mall_. But the other two won’t do.
For vols. V. and VI., now changed into IV. and V., I propose the common
title of _South Sea Yarns_. There! These are all my differences of
opinion. I agree with every detail of your arrangement, and, as you see,
my objections have turned principally on the question of hawking unripe
fruit. I daresay it is all pretty green, but that is no reason for us to
fill the barrow with trash. Think of having a new set of type cast,
paper especially made, etc., in order to set up rubbish that is not fit
for the _Saturday Scotsman_. It would be the climax of shame.
I am sending you a lot of verses, which had best, I think, be called
_Underwoods_ Book III., but in what order are they to go? Also, I am
going on every day a little, till I get sick of it, with the attempt to
get the _Emigrant_ compressed into life; I know I can—or you can after
me—do it. It is only a question of time and prayer and ink, and should
leave something, no, not good, but not all bad—a very genuine
appreciation of these folks. You are to remember besides there is that
paper of mine on Bunyan in _The Magazine of Art_. O, and then there’s
another thing in _Seeley_ called some spewsome name, I cannot recall it.
Well—come, here goes for _Juvenilia_. _Dancing Infants_, _Roads_, _An
Autumn Effect_, _Forest Notes_ (but this should come at the end of them,
as it’s really rather riper), the t’other thing from _Seeley_, and I’ll
tell you, you may put in my letter to the Church of Scotland—it’s not
written amiss, and I daresay the _Philosophy of Umbrellas_ might go in,
but there I stick—and remember _that_ was a collaboration with James
Walter Ferrier. O, and there was a little skit called the _Charity
Bazaar_, which you might see; I don’t think it would do. Now, I do not
think there are two other words that should be printed.—By the way, there
is an article of mine called _The Day after To-morrow_ in the
_Contemporary_ which you might find room for somewhere; it is no’ bad.
Very busy with all these affairs and some native ones also.