£2,750
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs | 605
Auction: 17 June 2020 at 11:00 BST
[to Sidney Colvin], beginning "When next I lend a clothes brush, it shall be to one of stricter honesty", Stevenson sends news about life and friends at Mention ("... I had such a charming evening with the kids - O beautiful kids..."), difficulties with his writing ("... I ceased to be able to work promptly, isn't that odd. Yesterday, I duly wormed my hour. The net result was three and a half sentences; which, after I had reread them with preparation and prayer, I did unhesitatingly delete. I shall not repeat this farce...), and his health ("... I am all right, I think. I have found out for myself that that game is not kidneys, but some muscle in my back that seems weak and rather out of it. I am going to see Bennet today; my finger is d...d sore, so I think it should be ready for dissection..."); he also reports that Boyd called the day before "while yet the threshold was hot from the passage of your feet (... I described your movements in magnificent perspective; I think he supposes you in Cappraria. He was extremely cheery, he came into the room (figuratively) leaping and singing and praising God that he was not as other men; he seems so unaffectedly happy to be Boyd; there is something very pretty about it. He also told me an i-d-c-t anecdote..."), and mentions the Andrewes' offence at Colvin's departure ("Confound 'em, they might have been very glad for what they had...) and that he was written to Mrs [Frances] Sitwell ("... somehow I had a horrid notion something would go wrong with it..."), 4 pages, oblong 16mo (104 x 132mm.), two small red shields at head, Menton, Saturday [10 January 1874]
Note: Sidney Colvin, Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum and Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, was, after Charles Baxter, Stevenson's closes friend, but proved to be an indifferent editor of his works. Colin had fallen in love with Frances Sitwell in the late 1860's, but was only able to marry her some thirty years later. Stevenson met both of them in Suffolk in 1873 and himself fell in love with Frances Sitwell; she became the recipient of a remarkable series of journal-letters from him.
References: Printed in The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, 1854-1874, Vol. 1, pp.430-1.