I wish you all sorts of good things.
When is our marriage day? - Your loving and ecstatic son,
TREESURE EILAAN,
It has been for me a Treasure Island verily.
Letter: TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, MAY 8, 1883.
MY DEAR PEOPLE, - I was disgusted to hear my father was not so well. I have a most troubled existence of work and business. But the work goes well, which is the great affair. I meant to have written a most delightful letter; too tired, however, and must stop. Perhaps I'll find time to add to it ere post.
I have returned refreshed from eating, but have little time, as Lloyd will go soon with the letters on his way to his tutor, Louis Robert (!!!!), with whom he learns Latin in French, and French, I suppose, in Latin, which seems to me a capital education. He, Lloyd, is a great bicycler already, and has been long distances; he is most new-fangled over his instrument, and does not willingly converse on other subjects.
Our lovely garden is a prey to snails; I have gathered about a bushel, which, not having the heart to slay, I steal forth withal and deposit near my neighbour's garden wall. As a case of casuistry, this presents many points of interest. I loathe the snails, but from loathing to actual butchery, trucidation of multitudes, there is still a step that I hesitate to take. What, then, to do with them? My neighbour's vineyard, pardy! It is a rich, villa, pleasure-garden of course; if it were a peasant's patch, the snails, I suppose, would have to perish.
The weather these last three days has been much better, though it is still windy and unkind. I keep splendidly well, and am cruelly busy, with mighty little time even for a walk. And to write at all, under such pressure, must be held to lean to virtue's side.
My financial prospects are shining. O if the health will hold, I should easily support myself. - Your ever affectionate son,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, [MAY 20, 1883].
MY DEAR GOSSE, - I enclose the receipt and the corrections. As for your letter and Gilder's, I must take an hour or so to think; the matter much importing - to me. The 40 pounds was a heavenly thing.
I send the MS. by Henley, because he acts for me in all matters, and had the thing, like all my other books, in his detention. He is my unpaid agent - an admirable arrangement for me, and one that has rather more than doubled my income on the spot.
If I have been long silent, think how long you were so and blush, sir, blush.
I was rendered unwell by the arrival of your cheque, and, like Pepys, 'my hand still shakes to write of it.' To this grateful emotion, and not to D.T., please attribute the raggedness of my hand.
This year I should be able to live and keep my family on my own earnings, and that in spite of eight months and more of perfect idleness at the end of last and beginning of this. It is a sweet thought.
This spot, our garden and our view, are sub-celestial. I sing daily with my Bunyan, that great bard,
'I dwell already the next door to Heaven!'
If you could see my roses, and my aloes, and my fig-marigolds, and my olives, and my view over a plain, and my view of certain mountains as graceful as Apollo, as severe as Zeus, you would not think the phrase exaggerated.
It is blowing to-day a HOT mistral, which is the devil or a near connection of his.
This to catch the post. - Yours affectionately,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, FRANCE, MAY 21, 1883.
MY DEAR GOSSE, - The night giveth advice, generally bad advice; but I have taken it. And I have written direct to Gilder to tell him to keep the book back and go on with it in November at his leisure. I do not know if this will come in time; if it doesn't, of course things will go on in the way proposed. The 40 pounds, or, as I prefer to put it, the 1000 francs, has been such a piercing sun-ray as my whole grey life is gilt withal.