RLS to Henry James, October 1887

"Our house - emphatically 'Baker's' - is on a hill and has sight of a stream turning a corner in the valley - bless the face of running water! - and sees some hills too, and the paganly prosaic roofs of Saranac itself: the lake it does not see, nor do I regret that: I like water (fresh water, I mean) either running swiftly among stones, or else largely qualified with whiskey..."

Pencil sketch of the cottage by J. N. Vandergrift, published in McClure's magazine.

Alfred L. Donaldson In "A History of the Adirondacks" stated:

His arrival in America at this time - his second coming - was coincident with his literary conquest of the country. He came as a victor to new-won fields. "Treasure Island" and "Kidnapped" had dug the trenches of his popularity, and "The Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" had carried the day. But still more lasting bids for fame were to come from his Adirondack sojourn. Soon after landing he came into intimate relations with Mr. Charles Scribner and Mr. E. L. Burlingame, the owner and the editor of "Scribner's Magazine." This gentleman made him an offer of $3,500 for a series of twelve papers to be printed monthly in his periodical. The offer was accepted, with frank surprise at its largeness, and he set to work on the essays at once, completing them all before leaving Saranac Lake.

RLS to William Archer:

"I am now a salaried party; I am a bourgeois now; I am to write a monthly paper for Scribner's, at a scale of payment which makes my teeth ache for shame and diffidence...

I am like to be a millionaire if this goes on, and be publicly hanged at the social revolution: well, I would prefer that to dying in my bed: and it would be a godsend for my biographer, if ever I have one."

Confessions of a Unionist

This paper— "A Talk on Things Current"—was intended for one of the Scribner series. It got as far as the proof-sheets, but no farther. It was never published at all, and the proof was ultimately sold in Mrs. Strong's sale. All we know about the article is the following reference in a letter of February, 1888, to E. L. Buriingame: "Of course, then don't use it. Dear Man, I write these to please you, not myself, and you know a main sight better than I do what is good. In that case, however, I enclose another paper, and return the corrected proof of Pulvis et Umbra,' so that we may be afloat." The substitute was probably "Gentlemen."

Preface to Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin

A poem—the only one he appears to have written in Saranac Lake. It was published in "Court

and Society Review," Christmas Number, December 14, 1887. Reprinted in "Songs of Travel,"1896.

The Wrong Box

This was written in collaboration with Lloyd Osbourne, who began drafting the story in October, 1887. It was published as a joint book in June, 1889.

The Master of Ballantrae

Stevenson was offered another $8,000.00 from Scribner's for the American rights to a serialized adventure novel. "The Master of Ballantrae" was begun in December, 1887, and about two thirds of it completed under high steam. It was then Said aside, and not finished till 1888, in Honolulu: "the hardest job I ever had to do," the author wrote. It ran as a serial in "Scribner's" from November, 1888, to October, 1889, and appeared in book form in September, 1889.

RLS --The Genesis of Ballantrae:

"I was walking one night in the verandah of a small house in which I lived, outside the hamlet of Saranac. It was winter; the night was very dark; the air extraordinary clear and cold, and sweet with the purity of forests. From a good way below, the river was to be heard contending with ice and boulders: a few lights appeared, scattered unevenly among the darkness, but so far away as not to lessen the sense of isolation. For the making of a story here were fine conditions....

"There cropped up in my memory of a singular case of a buried and resuscitated fakir, which I had often been told by an uncle of mine, then lately dead, Inspector-General John Balfour. On such a fine frosty night, with no wind and the thermometer below zero, the brain works with much vivacity; and the next moment I had seen the circumstance transplanted from India and the tropics to the Adirondack wilderness and the stringent cold of the Canadian border....

"And while I was groping for the fable and the character required, behold I found them lying ready and nine years old in my memory.

"....Here, thinking of quite other things, I had stumbled on the solution, or perhaps I should rather say (in stagewright phrase) the Curtain or final Tableau of a story conceived Song before on the moors between Pitlochry and Strathairdle, conceived in Highland rain, in the blend of the smell of heather and bog-plants, and with a mind full of the Athole correspondence and the Memoirs of the Chevalier de Johnstone. So long ago, so far away it was, that I had first evoked the faces and the mutual tragic situation of the men of Durrisdeer."

"My Dear Colvin --

This goes to say that we are all fit and the place is very bleak and wintry, and up to now has shown no such charms of climate as Davos, but is a place where men eat and where the cattarh. catarrh (cattarrh, or caftarrhh) appears to be unknown. I walk in my verandy in the snaw, sir, looking down over one of those dabbled wintry landscapes that are (to be frank) so chilly to the human bosom, and up at a grey, English - nay, mehercle, Scottish - heaven; and I think it pretty bleak; and the wind swoops at me round the corner, like a lion, and fluffs the snow in my face; and I could aspire to be elsewhere; but yet I do not catch cold, and yet, when I come in, I eat. So that hithertoo Saranac, if not deliriously delectable, has not been a failure; nay, from the mere point of view of the wicked body, it has proved a success."....

According to A.L. Donaldson, Stevenson came to Saranac Lake in the depression of ill health and exile. It was to him a rather cheerless prison. Then, suddenly, through the frosted window of his cell there shone a radiant light. The New York publishers began scrambling for his wares and offering undreamed-of prices for his literary output. They told him in the pleasantest way that he had arrived; that the struggling stage of authorship was passed; that they had tipped his pen forever with transmuting-gold.

The realization of all this staggered him at first, and then settled into a fine exhilaration of mind and body. It helps to account for the work he did at "Baker's," for his gain in health, and for his self-absorption. When he was not writing he was planning the come-true of some persistent old day-dreams. We know their romantic, somewhat fantastic, trend. They were of yachts and aimless cruisings, of southern seas and sun-kissed shores where lotus-eaters dwell, of roving life among primeval folk, and rich adventure in a vagabond's contentment. And Saranac Lake became the gateway to all this. It shaped itself into the shadowed portal through which he issued from his winter prison into the dazzling sunshine of eternal summer.

As guest speaker at the 1922 Annual Meeting of the Stevenson Society, Sam McClure (McClure's Magazine) recalled some memories with R. L. S. before the fireplace at Baker's: Then I began to think about getting a new novel from Stevenson and I came up here to talk to him again. He told me that he had two novels in mind, one of them a sequel to "Kidnapped." He was unlike almost any other author I ever met, singularly lovable as an author, and as a man. He wouldn't be tempted to take as much money as that for a novel, he said, but for a plan that he had in mind. Then he explained to me that he was always better at sea than anywhere else, and he wanted to fit up a yacht and take long cruises and make his home at sea for a while. "Well," I said, "that's easy. If you get a yacht and take long sea voyages and write about them, stories of adventure and so forth, I will pay all the expenses of the yacht!". I was young and bold, as I said. I wonder if I could have been that youth he wrote about?

I think the South Seas must have been mentioned that evening for I remember that after I returned to New York I sent him a number of books about the South Seas, including a South Pacific directory. The next time I came to Saranac, we actually planned out the South Pacific cruise, talking until late into the night. That was one of the most extraordinary evenings of my life. Mr. Stevenson walked up and down that room with the fireplace, or stopped occasionally to lean his elbow on the mantle piece and we made the most splendid plans and arrangements. We planned that when he came back he was to make a lecture tour and talk on the South Seas; that he was to take a phonograph along and make records of the sounds of the sea and the winds, the songs and speech of the natives. We planned the yacht and the provisioning of the yacht - and a good deal that man could never accomplish, but it was all real that night. And out of that talk came of the South Seas cruise.

On April 16, 1888, Stevenson and his party left Saranac Lake. After spending a fortnight in New York, where, as always in cities, his health quickly flagged again, he went for the month of May into seaside quarters at Union House, Manasqaun, on the New Jersey coast, for the sake of fresh air and boating.

Here he enjoyed the occasional society of some of his New York friends, including Mr. St. Gaudens and Mr. W.H. Low, and was initiated in the congenial craft of cat-boat sailing. In the meantime, Mrs. Stevenson had gone to San Francisco to visit her relatives and to see whether a yacht could be hired for the projected cruise. One day in Manasquan Stevenson and Low were at lunch when a telegram came from his wife. Stevenson asked Low to read it.

"Can get the Casco for the South Sea cruise."

"What will you do?" Low asked.

"Why go, of course!"

The Casco, aboard which RLS sailed to the South Seas.

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For more information about Stevenson or to arrange a visit to the Memorial Cottage & Museum contact:

Mike Delahant, Curator 518-891-1462.