R. L. STEVENSON

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11685, 24 November 1923, Page 9

R. L. STEVENSON

AND HIS FATHER’S WILL. “UNLESS I AM A CHRISTIAN.” A further selection from letters written by Robert Louis Stevenson to Mrs Sitwell (Lady Colvin), supplied and annotated by Sir Sidney Colvin, is recorded. Amongst them is the following letter, dated December, 1874, alluding to Stevenson’s conflict with his father: Another, though a much smaller disappointment to me, is that I have finally hade adieu to inheriting any . money. I must learn to live by my own pen or something. I promised my father (as I think it was entirely his right, and, mind you, it was on no prompting from him, nor has he any notion how serious the words were for me) that 1 shall never use a farthing of his money unless I am a Christian. He was talking of the duty of leaving money to children; and then he said, “Of course, there were certain conditions that superseded the call of blood; for instance, did he think he had a eon who thought as Tyndall thought, he could not leave his money tar him; he was not possessor of it to so great an extent; he only held it in trust for the views in which he believed.” So I said to him that I should reckon any person a thief who would use another’s money in such circumstance. And he said fervently, “And a damned thief, too.” He was quite quiet and sensible; indeed it is the sense of his whole life; and for me it will, of course, supersede the.terms of any will written in ignorance, doubt, or misapprehension—l should have said, “In ignorance, misapprehension, or even doubt.” In a further letter, written on tho following day, Stevenson said: “My moral inheritance has quickened me ior work again.”