seeing that he is run after to do "speakings" of this sort; but to

go on, in face of such warning and protest, printing his most
misleading errors is not pardonable, and the legal recorded result

is my justification and his condemnation, the more surely that even
that would not awaken him so far as to cause him to restrain Mr

Coates from reproducing in his LIFE AND SPEECHES, just as it was
originally, that peccant passage. I am fully ready to prove also

that, though Chairman of the London County Council for a period,
and though he made a very clever address at one of Sir W. Besant's

lectures, there is much yet - very much - he might learn from Sir
W. Besant's writings on London. It isn't so easy to outshine all

the experts - even for a clever peer who has been Prime Minister,
though it is very, very easy to flatter Lord Rosebery, with a

purpose or purposes, as did at least once also with rarest tact, at
Glasgow, indicating so many other things and possibilities, a

certain very courtly ex-Moderator of the Church of Scotland.
CHAPTER XXXI - MR GOSSE AND MS. OF TREASURE ISLAND

MR EDMUND GOSSE has been so good as to set down, with rather an air
of too much authority, that both R. L. Stevenson and I deceived

ourselves completely in the matter of my little share in the
TREASURE ISLAND business, and that too much credit was sought by me

or given to me, for the little service I rendered to R. L.
Stevenson, and to the world, say, in helping to secure for it an

element of pleasure through many generations. I have not SOUGHT
any recognition from the world in this matter, and even the mention

of it became so intolerable to me that I eschewed all writing about
it, in the face of the most stupid and misleading statements, till

Mr Sidney Colvin wrote and asked me to set down my account of the
matter in my own words. This I did, as it would have been really

rude to refuse a request so graciously made, and the reader has it
in the ACADEMY of 10th March 1900. Nevertheless, Mr Gosse's

statements were revived and quoted, and the thing seemed ever to
revolve again in a round of controversy.

Now, with regard to the reliability in this matter of Mr Edmund
Gosse, let me copy here a little note made at request some time

ago, dealing with two points. The first is this:
1. MOST ASSUREDLY I carried away from Braemar in my portmanteau, as

R. L. Stevenson says in IDLER'S article and in chapter of MY FIRST
BOOK reprinted in EDINBURGH EDITION, several chapters of TREASURE

ISLAND. On that point R. L. Stevenson, myself, and Mr James
Henderson, to whom I took these, could not all be wrong and co-

operating to mislead the public. These chapters, at least vii. or
viii., as Mr Henderson remembers, would include the FIRST THREE,

that is, FINALLY REVISED VERSIONS FOR PRESS. Mr Gosse could not
then HAVE HEARD R. L. STEVENSON READ FROM THESE FINAL VERSIONS BUT

FROM FIRST DRAUGHTS ONLY, and I am positively certain that with
some of the later chapters R. L. Stevenson wrote them off-hand, and

with great ease, and did not revise them to the extent of at all
needing to re-write them, as I remember he was proud to tell me,

being then fully in the vein, as he put it, and pleased to credit
me with a share in this good result, and saying "my enthusiasm over

it had set him up steep." There was then, in my idea, a necessity
that Stevenson should fill up a gap by verbalsummary to Mr Gosse

(which Mr Gosse has forgotten), bringing the incident up to a
further point than Mr Gosse now thinks. I am certain of my facts

under this head; and as Mr Gosse clearly fancies he heard R. L.
Stevenson read all from final versions and is mistaken - COMPLETELY

mistaken there - he may be just as wrong and the victim of error or
bad memory elsewhere after the lapse of more than twenty years.

2. I gave the pencilled outline of incident and plot to Mr
Henderson - a fact he distinctly remembers. This fact completely

meets and disposes of Mr Robert Leighton's quite imaginative BILLY
BO'SUN notion, and is absolute as to R. L. Stevenson before he left

Braemar on the 21st September 1881, or even before I left it on
26th August 1881, having clear in his mind the whole scheme of the

work, though we know very well that the absolute re-writing out
finally for press of the concluding part of the book was done at

Davos. Mr Henderson has always made it the strictest rule in his
editorship that the complete outline of the plot and incident of

the latter part of a story must be supplied to him, if the whole
story is not submitted to him in MS.; and the agreement, if I am

not much mistaken, was entered into days before R. L. Stevenson
left Braemar, and when he came up to London some short time after

to go to Weybridge, the only arrangement then needed to be made was
about the forwarding of proofs to him.

The publication of TREASURE ISLAND in YOUNG FOLKS began on the 1st
October 1881, No. 565 and ran on in the following order:

OCTOBER 1, 1881.
THE PROLOGUE

No. 565.
I. The Old Sea Dog at the Admiral Benbow.

II. Black Dog Appears and Disappears.
No. 566.

Dated OCTOBER 8, 1881.
III. The Black Spot.

No. 567.
Dated OCTOBER 15, 1881.

IV. The Sea Chart.
V. The Last of the Blind Man.

VI. The Captain's Papers.
No. 568.

Dated OCTOBER 22, 1881.
THE STORY

I. I go to Bristol.
II. The Sea-Cook.

Ill. Powder and Arms.
Now, as the numbers of YOUNG FOLKS were printed about a fortnight

in advance of the date they bear under the title, it is clear that
not only must the contract have been executed days before the

middle of September, but that a large portion" target="_blank" title="n.比率 vt.使成比例">proportion of the COPY must
have been in Mr Henderson's hands at that date too, as he must have

been entirely satisfied that the story would go on and be finished
in a definite time. On no other terms would he have begun the

publication of it. He was not in the least likely to have accepted
a story from a man who, though known as an essayist, had not yet

published anything in the way of a long story, on the ground merely
of three chapters of prologue. Mr Gosse left Braemar on 5th

September, when he says nine chapters were written, and Mr
Henderson had offered terms for the story before the last of these

could have reached him. That is on seeing, say six chapters of
prologue. But when Mr Gosse speaks about three chapters only

written, does he mean three of the prologue or three of the story,
in addition to prologue, or what does he mean? The facts are

clear. I took away in my portmanteau a large portion of the MS.,
together with a very full outline of the rest of the story, so that

Mr Stevenson was, despite Mr Gosse's cavillings, SUBSTANTIALLY
right when he wrote in MY FIRST BOOK in the IDLER, etc., that "when

he (Dr Japp) left us he carried away the manuscript in his
portmanteau." There was nothing of the nature of an abandonment of

the story at any point, nor any difficulty whatever arose in this
respect in regard to it.

CHAPTER XXXII - STEVENSON PORTRAITS
OF the portraits of Stevenson a word or two may be said. There is

a very good early photograph of him, taken not very long before the
date of my visit to him at Braemar in 1881, and is an admirable

likeness - characteristic not only in expression, but in pose and
attitude, for it fixes him in a favourite position of his; and is,

at the same time, very easy and natural. The velvetjacket, as I
have remarked, was then his habitual wear, and the thin fingers