xt7qjq0stw34_1588 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qjq0stw34/data/mets.xml https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qjq0stw34/data/1997ms474.dao.xml unknown archival material 1997ms474 English University of Kentucky The physical rights to the materials in this collection are held by the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.  Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. W. Hugh Peal manuscript collection William Ernest Henley letter to [H. B. Marriott] Watson text 43.94 Cubic Feet 86 boxes, 4 oversize boxes, 22 items Poor-Good Peal accession no. 11453. William Ernest Henley letter to [H. B. Marriott] Watson 2017 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qjq0stw34/data/1997ms474/Box_15/Folder_33/Multipage5031.pdf 1892 July 2 1892 1892 July 2 
  Scope and Contents
  
Peal accession no. 11052b. Includes a transcript.
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 69 COLVIN (SIDNEY). About 135 A. L. 5. (one incomplete, and one in
pencil), 12 telegrams and 3 enclosures. Various dates from 1878 to 1894,
and various addresses, chiefly the British Museum. To Charles Baxter,
on Stevenson’s aifairs. Also 6 letters or copies of letters from R. McClure
and other publishers, on “David Balfour”, and A. L. s. from Charles
Baxter to Lord Guthrie, concerning the whole correspondence. Together
about 157 pieces containing about 520 pp., chiefly Izmo. A few of the
letters are signed with initials.

The general range of the correspondence has already been indicated, and it is impossible
to give more here than a few brief extracts. In the early letters, while Colvin was still
at Cambridge, there are full references to family affairs. On Dec. 7.9., 1879, he deprecates
the attitude of Stevenson's father to R. L. S’s marriage; is afraid that R. L. S. may settle
down to inferior work; wants him to come back where he can mix with his intellectual
equals; and is always willing to help financially as well as in other ways.

.‘ He is frank about Henley: “My own desire, after experience, has been certainly to give
him a wide berth, as a dangerous friend: but not to quarrel, or make others quarrel, with him.

, But he seems born to leave himself unfriended in the long run." He discusses R. L. S.‘s

' political position as “King of Samoa", but is afraid he has been too headstrong in stirring
up trouble with the German officials and community. Stevenson‘s different works and
what is happening to them are constantly referred to, the point of view all the way
through being solicitude for R. L. S. Incidentally R. L. S. shows himself a rather shrewd
business man: ”I have just raised my American publishers to If pc by the simple process
of announcing to them that it was so"——and he believes that “if Cassell‘s were taken gra-
ciously by the beard, they might be raised to 20 pc“. Colvin does not quite agree about
the shrewdness: there is a chance of litigation in Samoa which may not come to much,
“though it is a form of expenditure which I believe he would enjoy, as he enjoys most others".
But the general tone is quiet and kindly, though he can criticise at times, and decidedly
does not like “The EbbaTide“ and some other productions.
In October 1894, he tells Baxter that Stevenson is tired of “St. Ives" and would like to
lay it aside for a year, and perhaps “make something of it after all. Instead of that I have
to kick against the pricks, and break myself, 69’ spoil the book, if there was ever anything to
spoil, which I am far from saying . . ." And so he would like to lay it aside, and turn
to something else; and Colvin would like to let him, for just a year. In less than two
months R. L. S. laid all his work aside, permanently.

 

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The recipient of the letter is H. B. marriott Watson, a friend
and contributor to the Scots Observer. Henley was the editor of
that journal for some years.

The new book of verse was his "The Song of the Sword and Other
Verses" published by David NUtt in the Strand 1892. This letter
was bought with a coyy of the book in question in 1922

Pleadeell)