The following is the first which has been preserved of many letters
to the admirable nurse whose care, during his ailing childhood, had
done so much both to preserve Stevenson's life and awaken his love of
tales and poetry, and of whom until his death he thought with the
utmost constancy of affection. The letter bears no sign of date or
place, but by the handwriting would seem to belong to this year:--
1871?
MY DEAR CUMMY,--I was greatly pleased by your letter in many ways. Of
course, I was glad to hear from you; you know, you and I have so many
old stories between us, that even if there was nothing else, even if
there was not a very sincere respect and affection, we should always be
glad to pass a nod. I say, "even if there was not." But you know right
well there is. Do not suppose that I shall ever forget those long,
bitter nights, when I coughed and coughed and was so unhappy, and you
were so patient and loving with a poor, sick child. Indeed, Cummy, I
wish I might become a man worth talking of, if it were only that you
should not have thrown away your pains.
Happily, it is not the result of our acts that makes them brave and
noble, but the acts themselves and the unselfish love that moved us to
do them. "Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these."
My dear old nurse, and you know there is nothing a man can say nearer
his heart except his mother or his wife--my dear old nurse, God will
make good to you all the good that you have done, and mercifully forgive
you all the evil. And next time when the spring comes round, and
everything is beginning once again, if you should happen to think that
you might have had a child of your own, and that it was hard you should
have spent so many years taking care of some one else's prodigal, just
you think this--you have been for a great deal in my life; you have made
much that there is in me, just as surely as if you had conceived me; and
there are sons who are more ungrateful to their own mothers than I am to
you. For I am not ungrateful, my dear Cummy, and it is with a very
sincere emotion that I write myself your little boy,