w, when fiction shall begin to feel a little
_solid_ to me again, that I shall love it, because it's James. Do you
know, when I am in this mood, I would rather try to read a bad book?
It's not so disappointing, anyway. And _Fountainhall_ is prime, two big
folio volumes, and all dreary, and all true, and all as terse as an
obituary; and about one interesting fact on an average in twenty pages,
and ten of them unintelligible for technicalities. There's literature,
if you like! It feeds; it falls about you genuine like rain. Rain:
nobody has done justice to rain in literature yet: surely a subject for
a Scot. But then you can't do rain in that ledger-book style that I am
trying for--or between a ledger-book and an old ballad. How to get over,
how to escape from, the besotting _particularity_ of fiction. "Roland
approached the house; it had green doors and window blinds; and there
was a scraper on the upper step." To hell with Roland and the
scraper!--Yours ever,

R. L. S.

TO A. CONAN DOYLE

_Vailima, July 12, 1893._

MY DEAR DR. CONAN DOYLE,--The _White Company_ has not yet turned up; but
when it does--which I suppose will be next mail--you shall hear news of
me. I have a great talent for compliment, accompanied by a hateful,
even a diabolic frankness.

Delighted to hear I have a chance of seeing you and Mrs. Doyle; Mrs.
Stevenson bids me say (what is too true) that our rations are often
spare. Are you Great Eaters? Please reply.

As to ways and means, here is what you will have to do. Leave San
Francisco by the down mail, get off at Samoa, and twelve days or a
fortnight later, you can continue your journey to Auckland per Upolu,
which will give you a look at Tonga and possibly Fiji by the way. Make
this a _first part of your plans_. A fortnight, even of Vailima diet,
could kill nobody.

We are in the midst of war here; rather a nasty business, with the
head-taking; and there seems signs of other trouble. But I believe you
need make no change in your design to visit us. All should be well over;
and if it were not, why! you need not leave the steamer.--Yours very
truly,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO CHARLES BAXTER

_19th July '93._

... We are in the thick of war--see Illustrated London News--we have
only two outside boys left to us. Nothing is doing, and _per contra_
little paying.... My life here is dear; but I can live within my income
for a time at least--so long as my