to Frederick Locker-Lampson

[Skerryvore], Bournemouth, September 1886.

DEAR LOCKER,—You take my verses too kindly, but you will admit, for such a bluebottle of a versifier to enter the house of Gertrude, where her necklace hangs, was not a little brave.  Your kind invitation, I fear, must remain unaccented; and yet—if I am very well—perhaps next spring—(for I mean to be very well)—my wife might. . . .  But all that is in the clouds with my better health.  And now look here: you are a rich man and know many people, therefore perhaps some of the Governors of Christ’s Hospital.  If you do, I know a most deserving case, in which I would (if I could) do anything.  To approach you, in this way, is not decent; and you may therefore judge by my doing it, how near this matter lies to my heart.  I enclose you a list of the Governors, which I beg you to return, whether or not you shall be able to do anything to help me.

The boy’s name is —; he and his mother are very poor.  It may interest you in her cause if I tell you this: that when I was dangerously ill at Hyères, this brave lady, who had then a sick husband of her own (since dead) and a house to keep and a family of four to cook for, all with her own hands, for they could afford no servant, yet took watch-about with my wife, and contributed not only to my comfort, but to my recovery in a degree that I am not able to limit.  You can conceive how much I suffer from my impotence to help her, and indeed I have already shown myself a thankless friend.  Let not my cry go up before you in vain!—Yours in hope,

Robert Louis Stevenson.