Bok noticed this, particularly, in the case of Robert Louis
Stevenson, whose work had attracted him, but, although he used the most
subtle means to inveigle the author into the office to read the press
notices, he never succeeded. Stevenson never seemed to have the
slightest interest in what the press said of his books.
One day Mr. Burlingame asked Bok to take some proofs to Stevenson at his
home; thinking it might be a propitious moment to interest the author in
the popular acclaim that followed the publication of Doctor Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde, Bok put a bunch of press notices in his pocket. He found the
author in bed, smoking his inevitable cigarette.
As the proofs were to be brought back, Bok waited, and thus had an
opportunity for nearly two hours to see the author at work. No man ever
went over his proofs more carefully than did Stevenson; his corrections
were numerous; and sometimes for ten minutes at a time he would sit
smoking and thinking over a single sentence, which, when he had
satisfactorily shaped it in his mind, he would recast on the proof.
Stevenson was not a prepossessing figure at these times. With his sallow
skin and his black dishevelled hair, with finger-nails which had been
allowed to grow very long, with fingers discolored by tobacco--in short,
with a general untidiness that was all his own, Stevenson, so Bok felt,
was an author whom it was better to read than to see. And yet his
kindliness and gentleness more than offset the unattractiveness of his
physical appearance.
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