Details
STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS. Autograph letter signed (in full) to the artist and writer Philip Gilbert Hamerton, "La Solitude," Hyères, n.d. [probably March or April 1884]. 4 pages,12mo, on Stevenson's imprinted letterhead; in crisp condition.
"I GO TO PARIS TO SIT TO RODIN FOR A BUST"
"...Yes, I have had a bad turn and I cannot pretend to be quite back upon my pedestal, though mending. I have been obliged to lean my hand the other way, which makes it unrecognisable; the hand is the hand of Esau..Above all if, as is proposed, I go to Paris to sit to Rodin for a bust, I shall be very apt to descend on the Tête Noir...or whatever its name be. Hyères is a place I like very much; it is quiet, placable, pacifying I mean -- very beautiful...My first anchorage St. Marcel, banlieue de Marseille, was a bad shot; I nearly left my bones there. It was as damp as a sponge, and poisonous with marshes, glass works and neglected age. Yet I had such a house and garden there -- it breaks my heart to recall them. Now I inhabit a box, with six drawers, I dare not call them rooms..."
From the reference to Rodin and other internal evidence, the letter can be dated March or April 1884. It may be the reply to a letter from Hamerton of 5 March, one of several letters from Hamerton to Stevenson in the Beinecke Collection at Yale (Beinecke Catalogue, vol. 4, no. 4512).
Provenance: Anonymous owner (sale, Sotheby's New York, 6 April 1983, part of lot 234A).
"I GO TO PARIS TO SIT TO RODIN FOR A BUST"
"...Yes, I have had a bad turn and I cannot pretend to be quite back upon my pedestal, though mending. I have been obliged to lean my hand the other way, which makes it unrecognisable; the hand is the hand of Esau..Above all if, as is proposed, I go to Paris to sit to Rodin for a bust, I shall be very apt to descend on the Tête Noir...or whatever its name be. Hyères is a place I like very much; it is quiet, placable, pacifying I mean -- very beautiful...My first anchorage St. Marcel, banlieue de Marseille, was a bad shot; I nearly left my bones there. It was as damp as a sponge, and poisonous with marshes, glass works and neglected age. Yet I had such a house and garden there -- it breaks my heart to recall them. Now I inhabit a box, with six drawers, I dare not call them rooms..."
From the reference to Rodin and other internal evidence, the letter can be dated March or April 1884. It may be the reply to a letter from Hamerton of 5 March, one of several letters from Hamerton to Stevenson in the Beinecke Collection at Yale (Beinecke Catalogue, vol. 4, no. 4512).
Provenance: Anonymous owner (sale, Sotheby's New York, 6 April 1983, part of lot 234A).