R. B. Cunninghame Graham

30:2, Reviews silence about the disposition of his works "made the circumvention of his purposes relatively simple." Was Colvin to blame for that? One certainly sympathizes with any author who watches silently while editors and proofreaders mangle his text. But the demands of publication, demands Stevenson certainly felt, have a tendency to force even self-assured, highly competitive authors into positions of subservience for fear of jeopardizing the outcome— being in print and getting paid for it. And more to the point, Stevenson badly needed money, as Colvin well knew, during the Samoan years. As late as October 1894, only two months before Stevenson's death, Colvin was still worrying about Stevenson's financial dilemma, one that existed when Falesá was being edited for publication and one that never seems to have been resolved. On 13 October 1894, Colvin wrote the following to Charles Baxter, who managed Stevenson's business affairs: "I know he makes you anxious for overdrawing." The concern at that time was over the upcoming publication of the controversial Edinburgh edition, the one Colvin rather heavy-handedly edited. The immediate objective of both Colvin and Baxter was to get it in print as soon as possible before Stevenson went broke. Colvin asked Baxter in the letter if he could not possibly arrange an advance on the edition in order for Stevenson "to meet his wants." Colvin was as concerned, perhaps more so, about Stevenson's business affairs as he was about his literary ones. The choice was clear (as clear as it was in the case of Falesá): any delay in the publication would also delay payment of money that Stevenson needed to remain solvent. Stevenson's literary immortality and how faithful his publications were to the original manuscripts were of less importance to Colvin than how well his sick friend was, living in some far distant, godforsaken island, the thought of which admittedly did violence to Colvin's elitist, Anglo sensitivities. The dilemma put him in a position where he was willing to sacrifice the integrity of the published works for the sake of the expediency with which they got into print and with which Stevenson received his badly needed income. In the final accounting, he is culpable, but we have no reason to believe that his friendship for his exiled charge was anything but genuine. Franklin E. Court _______________________________________Northern Illinois University_______ R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM The North American Sketches of R. B. Cunninghame Graham. Selected and edited with Introduction, Notes, Glossary, and Bibliography by John Walker. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1986. Cloth £12.50 Paper £7.50 Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham is one of those writers again and again placed before readers by eager champions. But readers who in fact know their Graham soon find the interest of his writing outweighed by that of his adventurous life and intriguing personality. Those adventures occurred on the wild South 221 30:2, Reviews American pampas of the 1870s, in frequently lawless and savage terrain in Texas and Mexico, in a perilous attempt to enter the forbidden Moroccan city of Tarudant, and amidst bitter debates in the House of Commons, demonstrations in Trafalgar Square, and miners' and dockers' strikes. Though a Scot who inherited land in and loved Scotland, he maintained an equal or greater love for the Spanish culture, whether in the old or new world, that caused him to be known to friends as "Don Roberto." An impressive number of his very diverse friends and acquaintances are well known as artists, writers, or social and political reformers. He knew Parnell, Engels, Nordau, James, Wilde, Whistler, Morris, Beerbohm, Prince Kropotkin, Keir Hardie, Yeats, T. E. Lawrence, and Buffalo Bill Cody. Conrad presumably drew on him in writing Nostromo, and he was the inspiration for more than one of the characters in Shaw's plays. He knew Jacob Epstein, who modelled his head, William Rothenstein, who painted him as "The Fencer," and James Lavery, who depicted him on horseback. William Strang, who had already done a fine etching of him, used Graham as his model for Quixote in the 1902 series of thirty illustrations of Don Quixote. And indeed, though much less absurdly idealistic than the knight...