Grant, to whose care I will
address this. When next I am in Edinburgh I will take flowers, alas! to
the West Kirk. Many a long hour we passed in graveyards, the man who has
gone and I--or rather not that man--but the beautiful, genial, witty
youth who so betrayed him.--Dear Miss Ferrier, I am yours most
sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO W. E. HENLEY

This refers to some dispute which had arisen with an editor (I forget
whom) concerning the refusal of an article on Salvini. The nickname
"Fastidious Brisk," from Ben Jonson's _Every Man out of his Humour_,
was applied by Mr. Henley to Stevenson--very inappropriately as I
always thought.

_La Solitude, Hyeres, Autumn_ 1883.

MY DEAR LAD,--You know your own business best; but I wish your honesty
were not so warfaring. These conflicts pain Lucretian sitters on the
shore; and one wonders--one wonders--wonders and whimpers. I do not say
my attitude is noble; but is yours conciliatory? I revere Salvini, but I
shall never see him--nor anybody--play again. That is all a matter of
history, heroic history, to me. Were I in London, I should be the liker
Tantalus--no more. But as for these quarrels: in not many years shall we
not all be clay-cold and safe below ground, you with your loud-mouthed
integrity, I with my fastidious briskness--and--with all their faults
and merits, swallowed in silence. It seems to me, in ignorance of cause,
that when the dustman has gone by, these quarrellings will prick the
conscience. Am I wrong? I am a great sinner; so, my brave friend, are
you; the others also. Let us a little imitate the divine patience and
the divine sense of humour, and smilingly tolerate those faults and
virtues that have so brief a period and so intertwined a being.

I fear I was born a parson; but I live very near upon the margin
(though, by your leave, I may outlive you all!), and too much rigour in
these daily things sounds to me like clatter on the kitchen dishes. If
it might be--could it not be smoothed? This very day my father writes me
he has gone to see, upon his deathbed, an old friend to whom for years
he has not spoken or written. On his deathbed; no picking up of the lost
stitches; merely to say: my little fury, my spotted uprightness, after
having split our lives, have not a word of quarrel to say more. And the
same post brings me the news of another--War! Things in this troubled
medium are not so clear, dear Henley; ther