I have almost always - though not quite always - found the higher the chief the better the man through all the islands; or, at least, that the best man came always from a highish rank. I hope Helen will continue to prove a bright exception.
With love to Fairchild and the Huge Schoolboy, I am, my dear Mrs. Fairchild, yours very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME
[VAILIMA, MARCH 1892.]
MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - Herewith Chapters IX. and X., and I am left face to face with the horrors and dilemmas of the present regimen: pray for those that go down to the sea in ships. I have promised Henley shall have a chance to publish the hurricane chapter if he like, so please let the slips be sent QUAM PRIMUM to C. Baxter, W.S., 11 S. Charlotte Street, Edinburgh. I got on mighty quick with that chapter - about five days of the toughest kind of work. God forbid I should ever have such another pirn to wind! When I invent a language, there shall be a direct and an indirect pronoun differently declined - then writing would be some fun.
DIRECT INDIRECT
He Tu Him Tum His Tus
Ex.: HE seized TUM by TUS throat; but TU at the same moment caught HIM by HIS hair. A fellow could write hurricanes with an inflection like that! Yet there would he difficulties too.
Do what you please about THE BEACH; and I give you CARTE BLANCHE to write in the matter to Baxter - or telegraph if the time press - to delay the English contingent. Herewith the two last slips of THE WRECKER. I cannot go beyond. By the way, pray compliment the printers on the proofs of the Samoa racket, but hint to them that it is most unbusiness-like and unscholarly to clip the edges of the galleys; these proofs should really have been sent me on large paper; and I and my friends here are all put to a great deal of trouble and confusion by the mistake. - For, as you must conceive, in a matter so contested and complicated, the number of corrections and the length of explanations is considerable.
Please add to my former orders -
LE CHEVALIER DES TOUCHES } by Barbey d'Aurevilly. LES DIABOLIQUES . . . } CORRESPONDANCE DE HENRI BEYLE (Stendahl).
Yours sincerely,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO T. W. DOVER
VAILIMA PLANTATION, UPOLU, SAMOA, JUNE 20TH, 1892.
SIR, - In reply to your very interesting letter, I cannot fairly say that I have ever been poor, or known what it was to want a meal. I have been reduced, however, to a very small sum of money, with no apparent prospect of increasing it; and at that time I reduced myself to practically one meal a day, with the most disgusting consequences to my health. At this time I lodged in the house of a working man, and associated much with others. At the same time, from my youth up, I have always been a good deal and rather intimately thrown among the working-classes, partly as a civil engineer in out-of-the-way places, partly from a strong and, I hope, not ill-favoured sentiment of curiosity. But the place where, perhaps, I was most struck with the fact upon which you comment was the house of a friend, who was exceedingly poor, in fact, I may say destitute, and who lived in the attic of a very tall house entirely inhabited by persons in varying stages of poverty. As he was also in ill-health, I made a habit of passing my afternoon with him, and when there it was my part to answer the door. The steady procession of people begging, and the expectant and confident manner in which they presented themselves, struck me more and more daily; and I could not but remember with surprise that though my father lived but a few streets away in a fine house, beggars scarce came to the door once a fortnight or a month. From that time forward I made it my business to inquire, and in the stories which I am very fond of hearing from all sorts and conditions of men, learned that in the time of their distress it was always from the poor they sought assistance, and almost always from the poor they got it.