to J. Horne Stevenson

Vailima, Samoa, November 5th, 1893.

MY DEAR STEVENSON,—A thousand thanks for your voluminous and delightful collections.  Baxter—so soon as it is ready—will let you see a proof of my introduction, which is only sent out as a sprat to catch whales.  And you will find I have a good deal of what you have, only mine in a perfectly desultory manner, as is necessary to an exile.  My uncle’s pedigree is wrong; there was never a Stevenson of Caldwell, of course, but they were tenants of the Muirs; the farm held by them is in my introduction; and I have already written to Charles Baxter to have a search made in the Register House.  I hope he will have had the inspiration to put it under your surveillance.  Your information as to your own family is intensely interesting, and I should not wonder but what you and we and old John Stevenson, ‘land labourer in the parish of Dailly,’ came all of the same stock.  Ayrshire—and probably Cunningham—seems to be the home of the race—our part of it.  From the distribution of the name—which your collections have so much extended without essentially changing my knowledge of—we seem rather pointed to a British origin.  What you say of the Engineers is fresh to me, and must be well thrashed out.  This introduction of it will take a long while to walk about!—as perhaps I may be tempted to let it become long; after all, I am writing this for my own pleasure solely.  Greetings to you and other Speculatives of our date, long bygone, alas!—Yours very sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

P.S.—I have a different version of my grandfather’s arms—or my father had if I could find it.

R. L. S.