think I have put things
handsomely for him.

Just got a servant!!!--Ever affectionate son,

R. L. STEVENSON.

Our servant is a Muckle Hash of a Weedy!

TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON

The next two months' letters had perforce to consist of little save
bulletins of back-going health, and consequent disappointment and
incapacity for work.

_Campagne Defli, St. Marcel,
Banlieue de Marseille, November 13, 1882._

MY DEAR MOTHER,--Your delightful letters duly arrived this morning. They
were the only good feature of the day, which was not a success. Fanny
was in bed--she begged I would not split upon her, she felt so guilty;
but as I believe she is better this evening, and has a good chance to
be right again in a day or two, I will disregard her orders. I do not go
back, but do not go forward--or not much. It is, in one way,
miserable--for I can do no work; a very little wood-cutting, the
newspapers, and a note about every two days to write, completely
exhausts my surplus energy; even Patience I have to cultivate with
parsimony. I see, if I could only get to work, that we could live here
with comfort, almost with luxury. Even as it is, we should be able to
get through a considerable time of idleness. I like the place immensely,
though I have seen so little of it--I have only been once outside the
gate since I was here! It puts me in mind of a summer at Prestonpans and
a sickly child you once told me of.

Thirty-two years now finished! My twenty-ninth was in San Francisco, I
remember--rather a bleak birthday. The twenty-eighth was not much
better; but the rest have been usually pleasant days in pleasant
circumstances.

Love to you and to my father and to Cummy.

From me and Fanny and Wogg.

R. L. S.

TO TREVOR HADDON

_Campagne Defli, St. Marcel, Dec. 29th, 1882._

DEAR SIR,--I am glad you sent me your note, I had indeed lost your
address, and was half thinking to try the Ringstown one; but far from
being busy, I have been steadily ill. I was but three or four days in
London, waiting till one of my friends was able to accompany me, and had
neither time nor health to see anybody but some publisher people. Since
then I have been worse and better, better and worse, but never able to
do any work and for a large part of the time forbidden to write and even
to play Patience, that last of civilised amusements. In brief, I have
been "the sheer hulk" to a degree almost