MARSEILLES AND HYÈRES

here, caused the couple to believe for a while that they
had fairly lost each other. They came together, how-
ever, at Marseilles in the course of January. Next they
made a few weeks' stay together at Nice, where Ste-
venson's health quickly mended, and thence returned
as far as Hyères. Staying here through the greater part
of February, at the Hôtel des Îles d'Or, and finding the
place to their liking, they cast about once more for a
resting-place, and were this time successful.

The house chosen by the Stevensons at Hyères was
not near the sea, but inland, on the road above the old
town and beneath the ruins of the castle. The Chalet
La Solitude it was called; a cramped but habitable cot-
tage built in the Swiss manner, with a pleasant strip of
garden, and a view and situation hardly to be bettered.
Here he and his family lived for the next sixteen
months (March, 1883, to July, 1884). To the first part of
this period he often afterwards referred as the happiest
time of his life. His malady remained quiescent enough
to afford, at least to his own buoyant spirit, a strong
hope of ultimate recovery. He delighted in his sur-
roundings, and realised for the first time the joys of a
true home of his own.
The last shadow of a cloud
between himself and his parents had long passed away;
and towards his father, now in declining health, and
often suffering from moods of constitutional depression,
the son begins on his part to assume, how touchingly
and tenderly will be seen from the following letters, a
quasi-paternal attitude of encouragement and monition.
At the same time his work on the completion of
The Silverado Squatters, on Prince Otto, A Child's Garden
of Verses (for which his own name was Penny Whis-

LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

tles), on *The Black Arrow* (designated hereinafter, on account of its Old English dialect, as “tushery”), and other undertakings prospered well. In the autumn the publication of *Treasure Island* in book form brought with it the first breath of popular applause. The reader will see how modest a price Stevenson was content, nay, delighted, to receive for this classic. It was two or three years yet before he could earn enough to sup- port himself and his family by literature: a thing he had always been earnestly bent on doing, regarding it as the only justification for his chosen way of life. In the meantime, it must be understood, whatever help he needed from his father was from the hour of his mar- riage always amply and ungrudgingly given.

In September of the same year, 1883, Stevenson had felt deeply the death of his old friend James Walter Fer- rier (see the essay “Old Mortality” and the references in the following letters). But still his health held out fairly, until, in January, 1884, on a visit to Nice, he was unexpectedly prostrated anew by an acute congestion of the internal organs, which for the time being brought him to death’s door. Returning to his home, his re- covery had been only partial when, after four months (May, 1884), a recurrence of violent hæmorrhages from the lung once more prostrated him completely; soon after which he quitted Hyères, and the epidemic of cholera which broke out there the same summer pre- vented all thoughts of his return.

The time, both during the happy and hard-working months of March–December, 1883, and the semi-con- valescence of February–May, 1884,’was a prolific one in the way of correspondence; and there is perhaps no

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