to Marcel Schwob

Union Club, Sydney, August 19th, 1890.

MY DEAR MR. SCHWOB,—Mais, alors, vous avez tous les bonheurs, vous!  More about Villon; it seems incredible: when it is put in order, pray send it me.

You wish to translate the Black Arrow: dear sir, you are hereby authorised; but I warn you, I do not like the work.  Ah, if you, who know so well both tongues, and have taste and instruction—if you would but take a fancy to translate a book of mine that I myself admired—for we sometimes admire our own—or I do—with what satisfaction would the authority be granted!  But these things are too much to expect.  Vous ne détestez pas alors mes bonnes femmes? moi, je les déteste.  I have never pleased myself with any women of mine save two character parts, one of only a few lines—the Countess of Rosen, and Madame Desprez in the Treasure of Franchard.

I had indeed one moment of pride about my poor Black Arrow: Dickon Crookback I did, and I do, think is a spirited and possible figure.  Shakespeare’s—O, if we can call that cocoon Shakespeare!—Shakespeare’s is spirited—one likes to see the untaught athlete butting against the adamantine ramparts of human nature, head down, breach up; it reminds us how trivial we are to-day, and what safety resides in our triviality.  For spirited it may be, but O, sure not possible!  I love Dumas and I love Shakespeare: you will not mistake me when I say that the Richard of the one reminds me of the Porthos of the other; and if by any sacrifice of my own literary baggage I could clear the Vicomte de Bragelonne of Porthos, Jekyll might go, and the Master, and the Black Arrow, you may be sure, and I should think my life not lost for mankind if half a dozen more of my volumes must be thrown in.

The tone of your pleasant letters makes me egotistical; you make me take myself too gravely.  Comprehend how I have lived much of my time in France, and loved your country, and many of its people, and all the time was learning that which your country has to teach—breathing in rather that atmosphere of art which can only there be breathed; and all the time knew—and raged to know—that I might write with the pen of angels or of heroes, and no Frenchman be the least the wiser!  And now steps in M. Marcel Schwob, writes me the most kind encouragement, and reads and understands, and is kind enough to like my work.

I am just now overloaded with work.  I have two huge novels on hand—The Wrecker and the Pearl Fisher, [198] in collaboration with my stepson: the latter, the Pearl Fisher, I think highly of, for a black, ugly, trampling, violent story, full of strange scenes and striking characters.  And then I am about waist-deep in my big book on the South Seas: the big book on the South Seas it ought to be, and shall.  And besides, I have some verses in the press, which, however, I hesitate to publish.  For I am no judge of my own verse; self-deception is there so facile.  All this and the cares of an impending settlement in Samoa keep me very busy, and a cold (as usual) keeps me in bed.

Alas, I shall not have the pleasure to see you yet awhile, if ever.  You must be content to take me as a wandering voice, and in the form of occasional letters from recondite islands; and address me, if you will be good enough to write, to Apia, Samoa.  My stepson, Mr. Osbourne, goes home meanwhile to arrange some affairs; it is not unlikely he may go to Paris to arrange about the illustrations to my South Seas; in which case I shall ask him to call upon you, and give you some word of our outlandish destinies.  You will find him intelligent, I think; and I am sure, if (par hasard) you should take any interest in the islands, he will have much to tell you.—Herewith I conclude, and am your obliged and interested correspondent,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

P.S.—The story you refer to has got lost in the post.