Please remember me kindly to your brother John and
Sir A. and Lady Grant and believe me with hearty sympathy--Yours most
sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

I was rejoiced to hear he never doubted of my love, but I must cure my
hate of correspondence. This has been a sharp lesson.

TO W. E. HENLEY

It will be remembered that "Whistles" or "Penny Whistles" was his own
name for the verses of the _Child's Garden_. The proposal referred to
at the end of this letter was one which had reached him from Messrs.
Lippincott, the American publishers, for a sailing trip to be taken
among the Greek islands and made the subject of a book.

_La Solitude, Hyeres [October 1883]._

My dear excellent, admired, volcanic angel of a lad, trusty as a dog,
eruptive as Vesuvius, in all things great, in all the soul of loyalty:
greeting.

That you are better spirits me up good. I have had no colour of a Mag.
of Art. From here, here in Highairs the Palm-trees, I have heard your
conversation. It came here in the form of a Mistral, and I said to
myself, Damme, there is some Henley at the foot of this!

I shall try to do the Whistle as suggested; but I can usually do
whistles only by giving my whole mind to it: to produce even such
limping verse demanding the whole forces of my untuneful soul. I have
other two anyway: better or worse. I am now deep, deep, ocean deep in
_Otto_: a letter is a curst distraction. About 100 pp. are near fit for
publication; I am either making a spoon or spoiling the horn of a
Caledonian bull, with that airy potentate. God help me, I bury a lot of
labour in that principality; and if I am not greatly a gainer, I am a
great loser and a great fool. However, _sursum corda_; faint heart never
writ romance.

Your Dumas I think exquisite; it might even have been stronglier said:
the brave old godly pagan, I adore his big footprints on the earth.

Have you read Meredith's _Love in the Valley_? It got me, I wept; I
remembered that poetry existed.

"When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror."

I propose if they (Lippincotts) will let me wait till next Autumn, and
go when it is safest, to accept L450 with L100 down; but it is now too
late to go this year. November and December are the months when it is
safest; and the back of the season is broken. I shall gain much
knowledge by the trip; this I look upon as one of the main inducements.

R. L. S.

TO SIDNEY