STEVENSON'S HOUSE AT MONTEREY.
[TO THE EDITOR OP TUE "SPECTATOR."] Sin,—America has so few landmarks of literary distinction that it is to be hoped she will not let the resting place of so rare a bird of passage as Stevenson run to decay. I visited it yesterday, and it is now a dilapidated warehouse with a sign across the front, "Stevenson's House," and apparently no means of inspecting it open to visitors. The place was closed, and inhospitable dogs received one in its dreary yard at the. back. Something surely could be done to retain and develop its interest. Monterey itself is a charming place. Once past
the rough sand close to town, littered with a truly American lumber of broken-down fishermen's shacks, works, and railway lines, the coast is beautiful. The Pacific, a sparkling jewel in this fine bay, good sands, a boarded promenade, and sand hills covered with pines ; rolling country swells to the high woods that so often brood under sea fog that must have been trying for Stevenson's delicate lungs, though it keeps the air cool on hot summer days. The woods, fragrant with pines, the exquisite sea, the delicious air, exert a .peculiar charm, and one could idle an existence away here, content merely to exist. Americans are not, to my mind, keen on preserving literary memorials. When I first visited Concord, Mass., I had to make many inquiries before I could find Walden Pond, which few people in that district knew much about; the Emerson house was closed to visitors, but Miss Emerson lived there. I could not find the essayist's grave in Sleepy Hollow, but after repeated inquiries a lady remembered. " Oh, yes ; Emerson's lot is—," and she directed me. At Salem the mythical house of the seven gables is shown for a considera- tion, but there is no museum there, as at Concord, of the interesting literary community who made it famous outside America.
I hope something will be done to preserve and develop the interest of Stevenson's old house here; it would add to the many attractions of Monterey. On a radiant morning a year ago I was at Keats's house in Rome ; how I wish that, like his Cortez, he could have looked on the Pacific—but from some high peak in California.—I am, Sir, &c..
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