NEW STEVENSON LETTER

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 53, 4 March 1922, Page 9

NEW STEVENSON LETTER

THE FORGOTTEN DEBT.

(MOK OBR OWN COnMIIPOJWIXT.)

LONDON, 29th December. Sir Sydney Colvin has lent to the press a hitherto unpublished letter of R. L. Stevenson's. When Stevenson, with his wife and small stepson, was at Davos in the winter -months of 1881-82, a very characteristic photograph of him, wearing one of the black flannel shirts he at various times affeoted, was taken by the local photographer. During the same season a. cordial friendship sprang up between the Stevensons and Mrs. MacMorland, who', with her mother, Mrs. Bradshaw Smith, and a young daughter, had made for the' time being their home there. The Stevensons came away in .April, and not long afterwards R.S.L. wrote to Mrs. MacMorland asking her to order on his behalf, to pay for a batch of the aforesaid photographs which he desired to distribute among his friends. During his • complicated illness and changes of abode in the next twelve months, Stevenson had forgotten tho small debt thus incurred, but after his settlement at Hyeres in April, 18E3, it suddenly thrust itself first upon his wife's conscience and then upon his own.

Stevenann supplemented a letter written by his wifo in which she returned the sum of forty francs.

"My dear Mrs. MacMorland," he wrote, "And so it was—the painful truth was thus and not otherwise and I am a. red-handed, naked savage, adorned with scalps. I do nothing now but scalp, except neglect to meet my .liabilities; my position as a fraudulent bankrupt is tho only thing undeniably civilised about me. I have been ill; I have done no work for eighteen months; I have about ruined my father; and as.l have never answered a letter nor paid a debt, I am, in self-defence, obliged to glory in my abasement and wrap myself in the Pirate Flag. Even my wife, I cheat' and neglect—to keep my hand in.

"In a, better world I may again find and attire myself in what once I used to call my virtues. Or. perhaps, when I recollect the various trunks, boxes, and cases with which I have bestrewed tho fair-face race of Europe md a considerable portion of the States of North America —I may find, in one of them, the aged and leathery remnants of my conscience. But in the meanwhile take me for what J am, a devil incarnate, an unrepentant bilk and bandit, a man who inoks but the opportunity to ruin empires. "Don't, try to excuse me; I am inexcusable. But write and give us news: and remember mo in your prayers. "R. L. D. STEVENSON. "Chalet Ie Solitude, • "Hyercu, Va r, Franco. "I h»vo, added, as you will perceive, a new initial to niy signature, a D.,-fatal oapitat! Its She mind shudders to oonceivo."