Cirrus@Austlit

'A reception clerk at Sydney's prestigious Victoria Hotel in King Street would long remember Robert Louis Stevenson's arrival in Australia. Not recognising the skeletal, badly dressed man in front of him as the famous author, the clerk allotted the man and his wife a small room on the fourth floor of the hotel, instead of the requested suite of rooms on the first floor. Stevenson had had problems with hotel staff before and wasn't going to put up with this indignity. He took one look at the dingy, carpetless room up too many sets of stairs, and rushed back to reception, where he treated the unfortunate clerk to one of his famous 'purples', and explosion of words and fury that rapidly attracted a crowd of staff and guests.