to Charles Baxter

Union Club, Sydney, March 7th, 1890.

MY DEAR CHARLES,—I did not send off the enclosed before from laziness; having gone quite sick, and being a blooming prisoner here in the club, and indeed in my bedroom.  I was in receipt of your letters and your ornamental photo, and was delighted to see how well you looked, and how reasonably well I stood. . . . I am sure I shall never come back home except to die; I may do it, but shall always think of the move as suicidal, unless a great change comes over me, of which as yet I see no symptom.  This visit to Sydney has smashed me handsomely; and yet I made myself a prisoner here in the club upon my first arrival.  This is not encouraging for further ventures; Sydney winter—or, I might almost say, Sydney spring, for I came when the worst was over—is so small an affair, comparable to our June depression at home in Scotland. . . . The pipe is right again; it was the springs that had rusted, and ought to have been oiled.  Its voice is now that of an angel; but, Lord! here in the club I dare not wake it!  Conceive my impatience to be in my own backwoods and raise the sound of minstrelsy.  What pleasures are to be compared with those of the Unvirtuous Virtuoso.—Yours ever affectionately, the Unvirtuous Virtuoso,

Robert Louis Stevenson.