to Mrs. Sitwell

[Swanston Cottage, Lothianburn, July 1876.]

. . . I have the strangest repugnance for writing; indeed, I have nearly got myself persuaded into the notion that letters don’t arrive, in order to salve my conscience for never sending them off.  I’m reading a great deal of fifteenth century: Trial of Joan of Arc, Paston Letters, Basin, etc., also Boswell daily by way of a Bible; I mean to read Boswell now until the day I die.  And now and again a bit of Pilgrim’s Progress.  Is that all?  Yes, I think that’s all.  I have a thing in proof for the Cornhill called Virginibus Puerisque.  ‘Charles of Orleans’ is again laid aside, but in a good state of furtherance this time.  A paper called ‘A Defence of Idlers’ (which is really a defence of R. L. S.) is in a good way.  So, you see, I am busy in a tumultuous, knotless sort of fashion; and as I say, I take lots of exercise, and I’m as brown a berry.

This is the first letter I’ve written for—O I don’t know how long.

July 30th.—This is, I suppose, three weeks after I began.  Do, please, forgive me.

To the Highlands, first, to the Jenkins’, then to Antwerp; thence, by canoe with Simpson, to Paris and Grez (on the Loing, and an old acquaintance of mine on the skirts of Fontainebleau) to complete our cruise next spring (if we’re all alive and jolly) by Loing and Loire, Saone and Rhone to the Mediterranean.  It should make a jolly book of gossip, I imagine.

God bless you.

Robert Louis Stevenson.

P.S.—Virginibus Puerisque is in August Cornhill.  ‘Charles of Orleans’ is finished, and sent to Stephen; ‘Idlers’ ditto, and sent to Grove; but I’ve no word of either.  So I’ve not been idle.

R. L. S.