Stevenson wasn’t a great socialiser. When James first came to visit, he was turned away, taken for a tradesman. However they became close lifelong friends; Stevenson gave him a copy of ‘Kidnapped’, and they exchanged letters world-wide. Sargent and Stevenson became friends as young men in Paris, where Sargent had gone to study; he painted three portraits of Stevenson, one destroyed (probably by Mrs Stevenson). Stevenson wrote to Twain that he’d read ‘Huck Finn’ four times; Twain visited him in his Greenwich Village hotel, sat with him in the sun, and wrote about his thin frame and beautiful eyes.