This is addressed to a very remote cousin in quest of information
about the origins of the family.

_Vailima, Samoa, June 19th, 1893._

DEAR MR. STEVENSON,--I am reminded by coming across some record of
relations between my grandfather, Robert Stevenson, C.E., Edinburgh,
and Robert Stevenson, Esq., Secretary to the Royal Exchange, Glasgow,
and I presume a son of Hugh Stevenson who died in Tobago 16th April
1774, that I have not yet consulted my cousins in Glasgow.

I am engaged in writing a Life of my grandfather, my uncle Alan, and my
father, Thomas, and I find almost inconceivable difficulty in placing
and understanding their (and my) descent.

Might I ask if you have any material to go upon? The smallest notes
would be like found gold to me; and an old letter invaluable.

I have not got beyond James Stevenson and Jean Keir his spouse, to whom
Robert the First (?) was born in 1675. Could you get me further back?
Have you any old notes of the trouble in the West Indian business which
took Hugh and Alan to their deaths? How had they acquired so
considerable a business at an age so early? You see how the queries pour
from me; but I will ask nothing more in words. Suffice it to say that
any information, however insignificant, as to our common forbears, will
be very gratefully received. In case you should have any original
documents, it would be better to have copies sent to me in this
outlandish place, for the expense of which I will account to you as soon
as you let me know the amount, and it will be wise to register your
letter.--Believe me, in the old, honoured Scottish phrase, your
affectionate cousin,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO HENRY JAMES

_Apia, July 1893._

MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,--Yes. _Les Trophees_ is, on the whole, a book.[65]
It is excellent; but is it a life's work? I always suspect _you_ of a
volume of sonnets up your sleeve; when is it coming down? I am in one of
my moods of wholesale impatience with all fiction and all verging on it,
reading instead, with rapture, _Fountainhall's Decisions_. You never
read it: well, it hasn't much form, and is inexpressibly dreary, I
should suppose, to others--and even to me for pages. It's like walking
in a mine underground, and with a damned bad lantern, and picking out
pieces of ore. This, and war, will be my excuse for not having read your
(doubtless) charming work of fiction. The revolving year will bring me
round to it; and I kno