enson 354
To R. A. M. Stevenson 356
To Trevor Haddon 357
To Edmund Gosse 359
To Trevor Haddon 360
To Edmund Gosse 360
To W. E. Henley 361

INTRODUCTION

The circumstances which have made me responsible for selecting and
editing the correspondence of Robert Louis Stevenson are the following.
He was for many years my closest friend. We first met in 1873, when he
was in his twenty-third year and I in my twenty-ninth, at the place and
in the manner mentioned at page 54 of this volume. It was my good
fortune then to be of use to him, partly by such technical hints as even
the most brilliant beginner may take from an older hand, partly by
recommending him to editors--first, if I remember right, to Mr. Hamerton
and Mr. Richmond Seeley, of the Portfolio, then in succession to Mr.
George Grove (Macmillan's Magazine), Mr. Leslie Stephen (Cornhill), and
Dr. Appleton (the Academy); and somewhat, lastly, by helping to raise
him in the estimation of parents who loved but for the moment failed to
understand him. It belonged to the richness of his nature to repay in
all things much for little, [Greek: hekatomboi enneaboion], and from
these early relations sprang the affection and confidence, to me
inestimable, of which the following correspondence bears evidence.

One day in the autumn of 1888, in the island of Tahiti, during an
illness which he supposed might be his last, Stevenson put into the
hands of his stepson, Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, a sealed paper with a request
that it might be opened after his death. He recovered, and had strength
enough to enjoy six years more of active life and work in the Pacific
Islands. When the end came, the paper was opened and found to contain,
among other things, the expression of his wish that I should prepare for
publication "a selection of his letters and a sketch of his life." I had
already, in 1892, when he was anxious--needlessly, as it turned out--as
to the provision he might be able to leave for his family, received from
him a suggestion that "some kind of a book" might be made out of the
monthly journal-letters which he had been in the habit of writing me
from Samoa: letters begun at first with no thought of publication and
simply in order to maintain our intimacy, so far as might be,
undiminished by separation. This part of his wishes I was able to car