From the Humanym archive

Robert Louis Stevenson to Sidney Colvin, 1891

Living in Samoa, Stevenson tells his friend Sidney Colvin that a question about homesickness sent him a month deep into his grandfather's diaries, drafting a family history of Scottish lighthouse engineers, and admits that thinking of the Scottish coast is almost enough to make him weep.

Sunday, Sept. 5 (?), 1891.

My dear Colvin,--Yours from Lochinver has just come. You ask me if I am ever homesick for the Highlands and the Isles. Conceive that for the last month I have been living there between 1786 and 1850, in my grandfather's diaries and letters.

I had to take a rest; no use talking; so I put in a month over my Lives of the Stevensons with great pleasure and profit and some advance; one chapter and a part drafted. The whole promises well Chapter I. Domestic Annals. Chapter II. The Northern Lights. Chapter III. The Bell Rock. Chapter IV. A Family of Boys. Chap. V. The Grandfather. VI. Alan Stevenson. VII. Thomas Stevenson.

My materials for my great-grandfather are almost null; for my grandfather copious and excellent. Name, a puzzle. A Scottish Family, A Family of Engineers, Northern Lights, The Engineers of the Northern Lights: A Family History. Advise; but it will take long.

Now, imagine if I have been homesick for Barrahead and Island Glass, and Kirkwall, and Cape Wrath, and the Wells of the Pentland Firth; I could have wept.

Why this letter

Robert Louis Stevenson had settled at Vailima, his estate in Samoa, in 1890, seeking a climate that suited his poor health, and remained there until his death in 1894. Sidney Colvin was his closest literary friend and, later, the editor of his letters. Asked whether he ever missed Scotland, Stevenson answers with an account of the month he had just spent absorbed in his grandfather's papers, planning a history of his family's lighthouse-building engineers, before admitting how much the Scottish coastline still moves him. This excerpt is his direct answer to Colvin's question; the rest of the letter goes on to Samoan politics.

Provenance

Author: Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
To: Sidney Colvin
Written: 5 September 1891 (?)
Source: Vailima Letters: Being Correspondence Addressed by Robert Louis Stevenson to Sidney Colvin, 1890-1894, ed. Sidney Colvin (1895), via Project Gutenberg
Rights: Public domain — Robert Louis Stevenson died in 1894; the text follows the 1895 edition of his Vailima letters to Sidney Colvin.

From Vailima Letters, Stevenson's correspondence with Sidney Colvin, edited by Colvin (1895); this text follows that edition as reproduced by Project Gutenberg. This is an excerpt of a longer letter: the dateline and Stevenson's direct answer to Colvin's question about homesickness; the letter continues afterward with Samoan politics.