to Charles Baxter

[Vailima], Tuesday, 19th May ’91.

MY DEAR CHARLES,—I don’t know what you think of me, not having written to you at all during your illness.  I find two sheets begun with your name, but that is no excuse. . . . I am keeping bravely; getting about better, every day, and hope soon to be in my usual fettle.  My books begin to come; and I fell once more on the Old Bailey session papers.  I have 1778, 1784, and 1786.  Should you be able to lay hands on any other volumes, above all a little later, I should be very glad you should buy them for me.  I particularly want one or two during the course of the Peninsular War.  Come to think, I ought rather to have communicated this want to Bain.  Would it bore you to communicate to that effect with the great man?  The sooner I have them, the better for me.  ’Tis for Henry Shovel.  But Henry Shovel has now turned into a work called ‘The Shovels of Newton French: Including Memoirs of Henry Shovel, a Private in the Peninsular War,’ which work is to begin in 1664 with the marriage of Skipper, afterwards Alderman Shovel of Bristol, Henry’s great-great-grandfather, and end about 1832 with his own second marriage to the daughter of his runaway aunt.  Will the public ever stand such an opus?  Gude kens, but it tickles me.  Two or three historical personages will just appear: Judge Jeffreys, Wellington, Colquhoun, Grant, and I think Townsend the runner.  I know the public won’t like it; let ’em lump it then; I mean to make it good; it will be more like a saga.—Adieu, yours ever affectionately,

R. L. Stevenson.