Lee Harper Oswald

Again, it’s Wednesday and I’ve got nothing in particular to blog about, but also a thousand things to get done.

So, starting August 18th — after I’ve finished publishing Dread Confluence — I will start publishing The Beast of Gévaudan, for which I used RLS’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cèvennes as a template. This morning I cam across this swell list of his reading during the time he spent in Bournemouth (Skerryvore, 1884-1887) — this is where he wrote and published Jekyll & Hyde, this is where Sargent painted his Stevenson (and Fanny) portraits, and this is where the above picture was taken (which is my favorite). This was among the books listed:

Joseph Pennell and Elizabeth Robins Pennell, A Canterbury Pilgrimage, Ridden, Written, and Ilustrated by J. and E. R. P. (1885)
a tandem tricycle journey from London to Canterbury; volume dedication to Stevenson: ‘To Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, We, who are unknown to him, dedicate this record of one of our short journeys on a Tricycle, in gratitude for the happy hours we have spent travelling with him and his Donkey’; RLS replied with thanks in July 1885: ‘when I received the Pilgrimage, I was in a state (not at all common with me) of depression, and the pleasant testimony that my work had not all been in vain did much to set me up again.’ (L5, p.121).

I just thought this dedication was cute, his response sweet, and I wondered what he’d think about his (clearly) non-fiction travelogue being turned into a murder mystery with werewolves. I like to think he’d be okay with it, and hopefully, he’d at least think the writing was passable.

The shame about this book is that, because it’s a “werewolf book,” folks who know anything about Stevenson might be less inclined to check it out, and thus very few people might eventually read it and really appreciate the source material. Such is life.

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For the record, this is also my favorite picture of Stevenson:

RLS on the bowsprit of the Equator.