The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 24

But what is far more monstrous--what argues total ignorance of the man in question--is the idea that James Payn could ever have transgressed the limits of professional propriety. I may tell his thousands of readers on your side of the Atlantic that there breathes no man of letters more inspired by kindness and generosity to his brethren of the profession, and, to put an end to any possibility of error, I may be allowed to add that I often have recourse, and that I had recourse once more but a few weeks ago, to the valuable practical help which he makes it his pleasure to extend to younger men.

I send a duplicate of this letter to a London weekly; for the mistake, first set forth in your columns, has already reached England, and my wanderings have made me perhaps last of the persons interested to hear a word of it.--I am, etc.,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO R. A. M. STEVENSON

Terminus Hotel, Marseille, Saturday [October 1882].