It is not, I hope, from ill-health?
But if you are retiring, may I ask if you have promised your support to any successor? I have a great mind to try. The summer session would suit me; the chair would suit me - if only I would suit it; I certainly should work it hard: that I can promise. I only wish it were a few years from now, when I hope to have something more substantial to show for myself. Up to the present time, all that I have published, even bordering on history, has been in an occasional form, and I fear this is much against me.
Please let me hear a word in answer, and believe me, yours very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO PROFESSOR AENEAS MACKAY
KINNAIRD COTTAGE, PITLOCHRY, PERTHSHIRE [JUNE 1881].
MY DEAR MACKAY, - Thank you very much for your kind letter, and still more for your good opinion. You are not the only one who has regretted my absence from your lectures; but you were to me, then, only a part of a mangle through which I was being slowly and unwillingly dragged - part of a course which I had not chosen - part, in a word, of an organised boredom.
I am glad to have your reasons for giving up the chair; they are partly pleasant, and partly honourable to you. And I think one may say that every man who publicly declines a plurality of offices, makes it perceptibly more difficult for the next man to accept them.
Every one tells me that I come too late upon the field, every one being pledged, which, seeing it is yet too early for any one to come upon the field, I must regard as a polite evasion. Yet all advise me to stand, as it might serve me against the next vacancy. So stand I shall, unless things are changed. As it is, with my health this summer class is a great attraction; it is perhaps the only hope I may have of a permanent income. I had supposed the needs of the chair might be met by choosing every year some period of history in which questions of Constitutional Law were involved; but this is to look too far forward.
I understand (1ST) that no overt steps can be taken till your resignation is accepted; and (2ND) that in the meantime I may, without offence, mention my design to stand.
If I am mistaken about these, please correct me, as I do not wish to appear where I should not.
Again thanking you very heartily for your coals of fire I remain yours very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
KINNAIRD COTTAGE, PITLOCHRY, JUNE 24, 1881.
MY DEAR GOSSE, - I wonder if I misdirected my last to you. I begin to fear it. I hope, however, this will go right. I am in act to do a mad thing - to stand for the Edinburgh Chair of History; it is elected for by the advocates, QUORUM PARS; I am told that I am too late this year; but advised on all hands to go on, as it is likely soon to be once more vacant; and I shall have done myself good for the next time. Now, if I got the thing (which I cannot, it appears), I believe, in spite of all my imperfections, I could be decently effectual. If you can think so also, do put it in a testimonial.
Heavens! JE ME SAUVE, I have something else to say to you, but after that (which is not a joke) I shall keep it for another shoot. - Yours testimonially,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
I surely need not add, dear lad, that if you don't feel like it, you will only have to pacify me by a long letter on general subjects, when I shall hasten to respond in recompense for my assault upon the postal highway.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
KINNAIRD COTTAGE, PITLOCHRY [JULY 1881].
MY DEAR WEG, - Many thanks for the testimonial; many thanks for your blind, wondering letter; many wishes, lastly, for your swift recovery. Insomnia is the opposite pole from my complaint; which brings with it a nervous lethargy, an unkind, unwholesome, and ungentle somnolence, fruitful in heavy heads and heavy eyes at morning. You cannot sleep; well, I can best explain my state thus: I cannot wake. Sleep, like the lees of a posset, lingers all day, lead-heavy, in my knees and ankles.