The account of an interview with Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson, published in
a San Francisco paper, is somewhat distressing reading. It raises over
again the old question of the prudence of publishing a dead man's letters,
when his widow is still alive, without her sanction. Mrs. Stevenson says
that her late husband's friends--if such she still holds them to be--have
hastened to make money out of the scraps and scrawls he sent them. The
charge reads as an ugly one. But a moment's reflection supplies its
modifications. Has Mr. Henley rushed into the market-place with his dead
friend's letters? Has Mr. Charles Baxter? That was the old trio renowned
in song and famous in fable. Of the newer friends--friends such as those
he made in Bournemouth, Lady Shelley and the Misses Ashworth Taylor, the
most attached a man ever had--not one has brought out of his or her
treasury the delightful letters of "R. L. S." We have the Vailima
Letters, it is true, but surely these must be published by the consent of
Mrs. Stevenson and at her profit? We had also that letter which Mr. Gosse
sent to the _Times_. And, as for that, it was, obviously given and not
"sold"? In this particular letter, which was written in acknowledgment of
a dedication of Mr. Gosse's poems to him, Stevenson congratulated his
correspondent on the prospect of an old age mitigated by the society of
his descendants. To heighten the picture, the man who had learned his
craft so well, and could hardly elude it in his least-considered letters,
introduced his own figure as a sort of foil--he was childless. That word,
uttered with regret, has, perhaps, a pang which the heart of a widow might
imagine she should be spared. Again, in one of the Vailima Letters,
Stevenson refers to his having been happy only once in his life, and that,
too, on the chance of its misinterpretation, may be ashes in Mrs.
Stevenson's mouth. Yet who does not know "R. L. S." as a man of moods? He
is that, and nothing else, in some of his letters. And no chance phrase
of his will ever be read to the discredit of Mrs. Stevenson--she may take
the English reader's oath on that.
In one of his Vailima Letters Stevenson speaks of the "incredible" pains
he has given to the first chapter of "Weir of Hermiston." Yet, after that
even he remodelled it. It was worth the trouble, and the other seven and a
bit are worthy of it. The very title was a serious trouble to him.
"Braxfield" he would have liked it to be, but the judge of that name was
not treated with enough historical care to warrant the adoption of it.
Another name, "The Hanging Judge," he abandoned; also "The Lord Justice
Clerk," also "The Two Kirsties of Cauldstaneship," and "The Four Black
Brothers." No doubt in choosing "Weir of Hermiston"--with some of the
sound-romance of Dobell's "Keiths of Revelston" about it--he chose finally
for the best.--_The Sketch._
[Illustration:
NOTICE
OF A
NEW FORM OF INTERMITTENT LIGHT
FOR LIGHTHOUSES.
BY
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
_From the Transactions of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts,
Vol. VIII._, 1870-1871
EDINBURGH
PRINTED BY NEILL AND COMPANY
1871]