I might suspect you of irony!
We are all fairly well, though I have been off work and off - as you know very well - letter-writing. Yet I have sometimes more than twenty letters, and sometimes more than thirty, going out each mail. And Fanny has had a most distressing bronchitis for some time, which she is only now beginning to get over. I have just been to see her; she is lying - though she had breakfast an hour ago, about seven - in her big cool, mosquito-proof room, ingloriously asleep. As for me, you see that a doom has come upon me: I cannot make marks with a pen - witness 'ingloriously' above; and my amanuensis not appearing so early in the day, for she is then immersed in household affairs, and I can hear her 'steering the boys' up and down the verandahs - you must decipher this unhappy letter for yourself and, I fully admit, with everything against you. A letter should be always well written; how much more a letter of apology! Legibility is the politeness of men of letters, as punctuality of kings and beggars. By the punctuality of my replies, and the beauty of my hand-writing, judge what a fine conscience I must have!
Now, my dear gamekeeper, I must really draw to a close. For I have much else to write before the mail goes out three days hence. Fanny being asleep, it would not be conscientious to invent a message from her, so you must just imagine her sentiments. I find I have not the heart to speak of your recent loss. You remember perhaps, when my father died, you told me those ugly images of sickness, decline, and impaired reason, which then haunted me day and night, would pass away and be succeeded by things more happily characteristic. I have found it so. He now haunts me, strangely enough, in two guises; as a man of fifty, lying on a hillside and carving mottoes on a stick, strong and well; and as a younger man, running down the sands into the sea near North Berwick, myself - AETAT. II - somewhat horrified at finding him so beautiful when stripped! I hand on your own advice to you in case you have forgotten it, as I know one is apt to do in seasons of bereavement. - Ever yours, with much love and sympathy,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. BAKER
VAILIMA, SAMOA, JULY 16, 1894.
DEAR MRS. BAKER, - I am very much obliged to you for your letter and the enclosure from Mr. Skinner. Mr. Skinner says he 'thinks Mr. Stevenson must be a very kind man'; he little knows me. But I am very sure of one thing, that you are a very kind woman. I envy you - my amanuensis being called away, I continue in my own hand, or what is left of it - unusually legible, I am thankful to see - I envy you your beautiful choice of an employment. There must be no regrets at least for a day so spent; and when the night falls you need ask no blessing on your work.
'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these.' - Yours truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO J. M. BARRIE
VAILIMA, JULY 13, 1894.
MY DEAR BARRIE, - This is the last effort of an ulcerated conscience. I have been so long owing you a letter, I have heard so much of you, fresh from the press, from my mother and Graham Balfour, that I have to write a letter no later than to-day, or perish in my shame. But the deuce of it is, my dear fellow, that you write such a very good letter that I am ashamed to exhibit myself before my junior (which you are, after all) in the light of the dreary idiot I feel. Understand that there will be nothing funny in the following pages. If I can manage to be rationally coherent, I shall be more than satisfied.
In the first place, I have had the extreme satisfaction to be shown that photograph of your mother. It bears evident traces of the hand of an amateur. How is it that amateurs invariably take better photographs than professionals? I must qualify invariably. My own negatives have always represented a province of chaos and old night in which you might dimly perceive fleecy spots of twilight, representing nothing; so that, if I am right in supposing the portrait of your mother to be yours, I must salute you as my superior.