to Sir Herbert Maxwell

Vailima, Samoa, December 1, 1894.

DEAR SIR HERBERT,—Thank you very much for your long and kind letter.  I shall certainly take your advice and call my cousin, the Lyon King, into council.  It is certainly a very interesting subject, though I don’t suppose it can possibly lead to anything, this connection between the Stevensons and M’Gregors.  Alas! your invitation is to me a mere derision.  My chances of visiting Heaven are about as valid as my chances of visiting Monreith.  Though I should like well to see you, shrunken into a cottage, a literary Lord of Ravenscraig.  I suppose it is the inevitable doom of all those who dabble in Scotch soil; but really your fate is the more blessed.  I cannot conceive anything more grateful to me, or more amusing or more picturesque, than to live in a cottage outside your own park-walls.—With renewed thanks, believe me, dear Sir Herbert, yours very truly,

Robert Louis Stevenson.