CHAPTER V—TRAVELS

His interest in engineering soon went—his mind full of stories and fancies and human nature. As he had told his mother: he did not care about finding what was “the strain on a bridge,” he wanted to know something of human beings.

No doubt, much to the disappointment and grief of his father, who wished him as an only son to carry on the traditions of the family, though he had written two engineering essays of utmost promise, the engineering was given up, and he consented to study law. He had already contributed to College Magazines, and had had even a short spell of editing one; of one of these he has given a racy account. Very soon after his call to the Bar articles and essays from his pen began to appear inMacmillan’s, and later, more regularly in theCornhill. Careful readers soon began to note here the presence of a new force. He had gone on theInland Voyageand an account of it was in hand; and had done that tour in the Cevennes which he has described under the titleTravels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, with Modestine, sometimes doubting which was the donkey, but on that tour a chill caught either developed a germ of lung disease already present, or produced it; and the results unfortunately remained.

He never practised at the Bar, though he tells facetiously of his one brief. He had chosen his own vocation, which was literature, and the years which followed were, despite the delicacy which showed itself, very busy years. He produced volume on volume. He had written many stories which had never seen the light, but, as he says, passed through the ordeal of the fire by more or less circuitous ways.

By this time some trouble and cause for anxiety had arisen about the lungs, and trials of various places had been made.Ordered Southsuggests the Mediterranean, sunny Italy, the Riviera. Then a sea-trip to America was recommended and undertaken. Unfortunately, he got worse there, his original cause of trouble was complicated with others, and the medical treatment given was stupid, and exaggerated some of the symptoms instead of removing them, All along—up, at all events, to the time of his settlement in Samoa—Stevenson was more or less of an invalid.

Indeed, were I ever to write an essay on the art of wisely “laying-to,” as the sailors say, I would point it by a reference to R. L. Stevenson. For there is a wise way of “laying-to” that does not imply inaction, but discreet, well-directed effort, against contrary winds and rough seas, that is, amid obstacles and drawbacks, and even ill-health, where passive and active may balance and give effect to each other. Stevenson was by native instinct and temperament a rover—a lover of adventure, of strange by-ways, errant tracts (as seen in hisInland VoyageandTravels with a Donkey through the Cevennes—seen yet more, perhaps, in a certain account of a voyage to America as a steerage passenger), lofty mountain-tops, with stronger air, and strange and novel surroundings. He would fain, like Ulysses, be at home in foreign lands, making acquaintance with outlying races, with

“Cities of men,And manners, climates, councils, governments:Myself not least, but honoured of them all,Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.”

If he could not move about as he would, he would invent, make fancy serve him instead of experience. We thus owe something to the staying and restraining forces in him, and a wise “laying-to”—for his works, which are, in large part, finely-healthy, objective, and in almost everything unlike the work of an invalid, yet, in some degree, were but the devices to beguile the burdens of an invalid’s days. Instead of remaining in our climate, it might be, to lie listless and helpless half the day, with no companion but his own thoughts and fancies (not always so pleasant either, if, like Frankenstein’s monster, or, better still like the imp in the bottle in theArabian Nights, you cannot, once for all liberate them, and set them adrift on their own charges to visit other people), he made a home in the sweeter air and more steady climate of the South Pacific, where, under the Southern Cross, he could safely and beneficially be as active as he would be involuntarily idle at home, or work only under pressure of hampering conditions. That was surely an illustration of the true “laying-to” with an unaffectedly brave, bright resolution in it.

Carlyle was wont to say that, next to a faithful portrait, familiar letters were the best medium to reveal a man. The letters must have been written with no idea of being used for this end, however—free, artless, the unstudied self-revealings of mind and heart. Now, these letters of R. L. Stevenson, written to his friends in England, have a vast value in this way—they reveal the man—reveal him in his strength and his weakness—his ready gift in pleasing and adapting himself to those with whom he corresponded, and his great power at once of adapting himself to his circumstances and of humorously rising superior to them. When he was ill and almost penniless in San Francisco, he could give Mr Colvin this account of his daily routine:

“Any time between eight and half-past nine in the morning a slender gentleman in an ulster, with a volume buttoned into the breast of it, maybe observed leaving No. 608 Bush and descending Powell with an active step. The gentleman is R. L. Stevenson; the volume relates to Benjamin Franklin, on whom he meditates one of his charming essays. He descends Powell, crosses Market, and descends in Sixth on a branch of the original Pine Street Coffee-House, no less. . . . He seats himself at a table covered with waxcloth, and a pampered menial of High-Dutch extraction, and, indeed, as yet only partially extracted, lays before him a cup of coffee, a roll, and a pat of butter, all, to quote the deity, very good. A while ago, and R. L. Stevenson used to find the supply of butter insufficient; but he has now learned the art to exactitude, and butter and roll expire at the same moment. For this rejection he pays ten cents, or fivepence sterling (£0 0s. 5d.).“Half an hour later, the inhabitants of Bush Street observed the same slender gentleman armed, like George Washington, with his little hatchet, splitting kindling, and breaking coal for his fire. He does this quasi-publicly upon the window-sill; but this is not to be attributed to any love of notoriety, though he is indeed vain of his prowess with the hatchet (which he persists in calling an axe), and daily surprised at the perpetuation of his fingers. The reason is this: That the sill is a strong supporting beam, and that blows of the same emphasis in other parts of his room might knock the entire shanty into hell. Thenceforth, for from three hours, he is engaged darkly with an ink-bottle. Yet he is not blacking his boots, for the only pair that he possesses are innocent of lustre, and wear the natural hue of the material turned up with caked and venerable slush. The youngest child of his landlady remarks several times a day, as this strange occupant enters or quits the house, ‘Dere’s de author.’ Can it be that this bright-haired innocent has found the true clue to the mystery? The being in question is, at least, poor enough to belong to that honourable craft.”

“Half an hour later, the inhabitants of Bush Street observed the same slender gentleman armed, like George Washington, with his little hatchet, splitting kindling, and breaking coal for his fire. He does this quasi-publicly upon the window-sill; but this is not to be attributed to any love of notoriety, though he is indeed vain of his prowess with the hatchet (which he persists in calling an axe), and daily surprised at the perpetuation of his fingers. The reason is this: That the sill is a strong supporting beam, and that blows of the same emphasis in other parts of his room might knock the entire shanty into hell. Thenceforth, for from three hours, he is engaged darkly with an ink-bottle. Yet he is not blacking his boots, for the only pair that he possesses are innocent of lustre, and wear the natural hue of the material turned up with caked and venerable slush. The youngest child of his landlady remarks several times a day, as this strange occupant enters or quits the house, ‘Dere’s de author.’ Can it be that this bright-haired innocent has found the true clue to the mystery? The being in question is, at least, poor enough to belong to that honourable craft.”

Here are a few letters belonging to the winter of 1887-88, nearly all written from Saranac Lake, in the Adirondacks, celebrated by Emerson, and now a most popular holiday resort in the United States, and were originally published inScribner’s Magazine. . . “It should be said that, after his long spell of weakness at Bournemouth, Stevenson had gone West in search of health among the bleak hill summits—‘on the Canadian border of New York State, very unsettled and primitive and cold.’ He had made the voyage in an ocean tramp, theLudgate Hill, the sort of craft which any person not a born child of the sea would shun in horror. Stevenson, however, had ‘the finest time conceivable on board the “strange floating menagerie.”’” Thus he describes it in a letter to Mr Henry James:

“Stallions and monkeys and matches made our cargo; and the vast continent of these incongruities rolled the while like a haystack; and the stallions stood hypnotised by the motion, looking through the port at our dinner-table, and winked when the crockery was broken; and the little monkeys stared at each other in their cages, and were thrown overboard like little bluish babies; and the big monkey, Jacko, scoured about the ship and rested willingly in my arms, to the ruin of my clothing; and the man of the stallions made a bower of the black tarpaulin, and sat therein at the feet of a raddled divinity, like a picture on a box of chocolates; and the other passengers, when they were not sick, looked on and laughed. Take all this picture, and make it roll till the bell shall sound unexpected notes and the fittings shall break loose in our stateroom, and you have the voyage of theLudgate Hill. She arrived in the port of New York without beer, porter, soda-water, curaçoa, fresh meat, or fresh water; and yet we lived, and we regret her.”

He discovered this that there is no joy in the Universe comparable to life on a villainous ocean tramp, rolling through a horrible sea in company with a cargo of cattle.

“I have got one good thing of my sea voyage; it is proved the sea agrees heartily with me, and my mother likes it; so if I get any better, or no worse, my mother will likely hire a yacht for a month or so in the summer. Good Lord! what fun! Wealth is only useful for two things: a yacht and a string quartette. For these two I will sell my soul. Except for these I hold that £700 a year is as much as anybody can possibly want; and I have had more, so I know, for the extra coins were of no use, excepting for illness, which damns everything. I was so happy on board that ship, I could not have believed it possible; we had the beastliest weather, and many discomforts; but the mere fact of its being a tramp ship gave us many comforts. We could cut about with the men and officers, stay in the wheel-house, discuss all manner of things, and really be a little at sea. And truly there is nothing else. I had literally forgotten what happiness was, and the full mind—full of external and physical things, not full of cares and labours, and rot about a fellow’s behaviour. My heart literally sang; I truly care for nothing so much as for that.“To go ashore for your letters and hang about the pier among the holiday yachtsmen—that’s fame, that’s glory—and nobody can take it away.”

“To go ashore for your letters and hang about the pier among the holiday yachtsmen—that’s fame, that’s glory—and nobody can take it away.”

At Saranac Lake the Stevensons lived in a “wind-beleaguered hill-top hat-box of a house,” which suited the invalid, but, on the other hand, invalided his wife. Soon after getting there he plunged intoThe Master of Ballantrae.

“No thought have I now apart from it, and I have got along up to page ninety-two of the draught with great interest. It is to me a most seizing tale: there are some fantastic elements, the most is a dead genuine human problem—human tragedy, I should say rather. It will be about as long, I imagine, asKidnapped. . . . I have done most of the big work, the quarrel, duel between the brothers, and the announcement of the death to Clementina and my Lord—Clementina, Henry, and Mackellar (nicknamed Squaretoes) are really very fine fellows; the Master is all I know of the devil; I have known hints of him, in the world, but always cowards: he is as bold as a lion, but with the same deadly, causeless duplicity I have watched with so much surprise in my two cowards. ’Tis true, I saw a hint of the same nature in another man who was not a coward; but he had other things to attend to; the Master has nothing else but his devilry.”

His wife grows seriously ill, and Stevenson has to turn to household work.

“Lloyd and I get breakfast; I have now, 10.15, just got the dishes washed and the kitchen all clean, and sit down to give you as much news as I have spirit for, after such an engagement. Glass is a thing that really breaks my spirit; and I do not like to fail, and with glass I cannot reach the work of my high calling—the artist’s.”

In the midst of such domestic tasks and entanglements he writesThe Master, and very characteristically gets dissatisfied with the last parts, “which shame, perhaps degrade, the beginning.”

Of Mr Kipling this is his judgment—in the year 1890:

“Kipling is by far the most promising young man who has appeared since—ahem—I appeared. He amazes me by his precocity and various endowments. But he alarms me by his copiousness and haste. He should shield his fire with both hands, ‘and draw up all his strength and sweetness in one ball.’ (‘Draw all his strength and all his sweetness up into one ball’? I cannot remember Marvell’s words.) So the critics have been saying to me; but I was never capable of—and surely never guilty of—such a debauch of production. At this rate his works will soon fill the habitable globe, and surely he was armed for better conflicts than these succinct sketches and flying leaves of verse? I look on, I admire, I rejoice for myself; but in a kind of ambition we all have for our tongue and literature I am wounded. If I had this man’s fertility and courage, it seems to me I could heave a pyramid.“Well, we begin to be the old fogies now, and it was high timesomethingrose to take our places. Certainly Kipling has the gifts; the fairy godmothers were all tipsy at his christening. What will he do with them?”

“Well, we begin to be the old fogies now, and it was high timesomethingrose to take our places. Certainly Kipling has the gifts; the fairy godmothers were all tipsy at his christening. What will he do with them?”

Of the rest of Stevenson’s career we cannot speak at length, nor is it needful. How in steady succession came his triumphs: came, too, his trials from ill-health—how he spent winters at Davos Platz, Bournemouth, and tried other places in America; and how, at last, good fortune led him to the South Pacific. After many voyagings and wanderings among the islands, he settled near Apia, in Samoa, early in 1890, cleared some four hundred acres, and built a house; where, while he wrote what delighted the English-speaking race, he took on himself the defence of the natives against foreign interlopers, writing under the titleA Footnote to History, the most powerfulexposéof the mischief they had done and were doing there. He was the beloved of the natives, as he made himself the friend of all with whom he came in contact. There, as at home, he worked—worked with the same determination and in the enjoyment of better health. The obtaining idea with him, up to the end, as it had been from early life, was a brave, resolute, cheerful endeavour to make the best of it.

“I chose Samoa instead of Honolulu,” he told Mr W. H. Trigg, who reports the talk inCassells’ Magazine, “for the simple and eminently satisfactory reason that it is less civilised. Can you not conceive that it is awful fun?” His house was called “Vailima,” which means Five Waters in the Samoan, and indicates the number of streams that flow by the spot.

The Vailima Letters, written to Mr Sidney Colvin and other friends, are in their way delightful if not inimitable: and this, in spite of the idea having occurred to him, that some use might hereafter be made of these letters for publication purposes. There is, indeed, as little trace of any change in the style through this as well could be—the utterly familiar, easy, almost child-like flow remains, unmarred by self-consciousness or tendency “to put it on.”

In June, 1892, Stevenson says:

“It came over me the other day suddenly that this diary of mine to you would make good pickings after I am dead, and a man could make some kind of a book out of it, without much trouble. So for God’s sake don’t lose them, and they will prove a piece of provision for ‘my floor old family,’ as Simelé calls it.”

But their great charm remains: they are as free and gracious and serious and playful and informal as before. Stevenson’s traits of character are all here: his largeness of heart, his delicacy, his sympathy, his fun, his pathos, his boylike frolicsomeness, his fine courage, his love of the sea (for he was by nature a sailor), his passion for action and adventure despite his ill-health, his great patience with others and fine adaptability to their temper (he says that he never gets out of temper with those he has to do with), his unbounded, big-hearted hopefulness, and fine perseverance in face of difficulties. What could be better than the way in which he tells that in January, 1892, when he had a bout of influenza and was dictatingSt Ivesto his stepdaughter, Mrs Strong, he was “reduced to dictating to her in the deaf-and-dumb alphabet”?—and goes on:

“The amanuensis has her head quite turned, and believes herself to be the author of this novel [and is to some extent.—A.M.] and as the creature (!) has not been wholly useless in the matter [I told you so!—A.M.] I propose to foster her vanity by a little commemoration gift! . . . I shall tell you on some other occasion, and when the A.M. is out of hearing, howverymuch I propose to invest in this testimonial; but I may as well inform you at once that I intend it to be cheap, sir—damned cheap! My idea of running amanuenses is by praise, not pudding, flattery, and not coins.”

Truly, a rare and rich nature which could thus draw sunshine out of its trials!—which, by aid of the true philosopher’s stone of cheerfulness and courage, could transmute the heavy dust and clay to gold.

His interests are so wide that he is sometimes pulled in different and conflicting directions, as in the contest between his desire to aid Mataafa and the other chiefs, and his literary work—between letters to theTimesabout Samoan politics, and, say,David Balfour. Here is a characteristic bit in that strain:

“I have a good dose of the devil in my pipestem atomy; I have had my little holiday outing in my kick atThe Young Chevalier, and I guess I can settle toDavid Balfour, to-morrow or Friday like a little man. I wonder if any one had ever more energy upon so little strength? I know there is a frost; . . . but I mean to break that frost inside two years, and pull off a big success, and Vanity whispers in my ear that I have the strength. If I haven’t, whistle owre the lave o’t! I can do without glory, and perhaps the time is not far off when I can do without corn. It is a time coming soon enough, anyway; and I have endured some two and forty years without public shame, and had a good time as I did it. If only I could secure a violent death, what a fine success! I wish to die in my boots; no more Land of Counterpane for me. To be drowned, to be shot, to be thrown from a horse—ay, to be hanged, rather than pass again through that slow dissolution.”

He would not consent to act the invalid unless the spring ran down altogether; was keen for exercise and for mixing among men—his native servants if no others were near by. Here is a bit of confession and casuistry quiteà laStevenson:

“To come down covered with mud and drenched with sweat and rain after some hours in the bush, change, rub down, and take a chair in the verandah, is to taste a quiet conscience. And the strange thing that I mark is this: If I go out and make sixpence, bossing my labourers and plying the cutlass or the spade, idiot conscience applauds me; if I sit in the house and make twenty pounds, idiot conscience wails over my neglect and the day wasted.”

His relish for companionship is indeed strong. At one place he says:

“God knows I don’t care who I chum with perhaps I like sailors best, but to go round and sue and sneak to keep a crowd together—never!”

If Stevenson’s natural bent was to be an explorer, a mountain-climber, or a sailor—to sail wide seas, or to range on mountain-tops to gain free and extensive views—yet he inclines well to farmer work, and indeed, has to confess it has a rare attraction for him.

“I went crazy over outdoor work,” he says at one place, “and had at last to confine myself to the house, or literature must have gone by the board.Nothingis so interesting as weeding, clearing, and path-making: the oversight of labourers becomes a disease. It is quite an effort not to drop into the farmer; and it does make you feel so well.”

The odd ways of these Samoans, their pride of position, their vices, their virtues, their vanities, their small thefts, their tricks, their delightfulinsouciancesometimes, all amused him. He found in them a fine field of study and observation—a source of fun and fund of humanity—as this bit about the theft of some piglings will sufficiently prove:

“Last night three piglings were stolen from one of our pig-pens. The great Lafaele appeared to my wife uneasy, so she engaged him in conversation on the subject, and played upon him the following engaging trick: You advance your two forefingers towards the sitter’s eyes; he closes them, whereupon you substitute (on his eyelids) the fore and middle fingers of the left hand, and with your right (which he supposes engaged) you tap him on the head and back. When you let him open his eyes, he sees you withdrawing the two forefingers. ‘What that?’ asked Lafaele. ‘My devil,’ says Fanny. ‘I wake um, my devil. All right now. He go catch the man that catch my pig.’ About an hour afterwards Lafaele came for further particulars. ‘Oh, all right,’ my wife says. ‘By-and-by that man be sleep, devil go sleep same place. By-and-by that man plenty sick. I no care. What for he take my pig?’ Lafaele cares plenty; I don’t think he is the man, though he may be; but he knows him, and most likely will eat some of that pig to-night. He will not eat with relish.’”

Yet in spite of this R. L. Stevenson declares that:

“They are a perfectly honest people: nothing of value has ever been taken from our house, where doors and windows are always wide open; and upon one occasion when white ants attacked the silver chest, the whole of my family treasure lay spread upon the floor of the hall for two days unguarded.”

Here is a bit on a work of peace, a reflection on a day’s weeding at Vailima—in its way almost as touching as any:

“I wonder if any one had ever the same attitude to Nature as I hold, and have held for so long? This business fascinates me like a tune or a passion; yet all the while I thrill with a strong distaste. The horror of the thing, objective and subjective, is always present to my mind; the horror of creeping things, a superstitious horror of the void and the powers about me, the horror of my own devastation and continual murders. The life of the plants comes through my finger-tips, their struggles go to my heart like supplications. I feel myself blood-boltered; then I look back on my cleared grass, and count myself an ally in a fair quarrel, and make stout my heart.”

Here, again, is the way in which he celebrates an act of friendly kindness on the part of Mr Gosse:

“My dear Gosse,—Your letter was to me such a bright spot that I answer it right away to the prejudice of other correspondents or—dants (don’t know how to spell it) who have prior claims. . . . It is the history of our kindnesses that alone makes this world tolerable. If it were not for that, for the effect of kind words, kind looks, kind letters, multiplying, spreading, making one happy through another and bringing forth benefits, some thirty, some fifty, some a thousandfold, I should be tempted to think our life a practical jest in the worst possible spirit. So your four pages have confirmed my philosophy as well as consoled my heart in these ill hours.”

Mr Hammerton, in hisStevensoniana(pp. 323-4), has given the humorous inscriptions on the volumes of his works which Stevenson presented to Dr Trudeau, who attended him when he was in Saranac in 1887-88—very characteristic in every way, and showing fully Stevenson’s fine appreciation of any attention or service. On theDr Jekyll and Mr Hydevolume he wrote:

“Trudeau was all the winter at my side:I never saw the nose of Mr Hyde.”

And onKidnappedis this:

“Here is the one sound page of all my writing,The one I’m proud of and that I delight in.”

Stevenson was exquisite in this class of efforts, and were they all collected they would form indeed, a fine supplement and illustration of the leading lesson of his essays—the true art of pleasing others, and of truly pleasing one’s self at the same time. To my thinking the finest of all in this line is the legal (?) deed by which he conveyed his birthday to little Miss Annie Ide, the daughter of Mr H. C. Ide, a well-known American, who was for several years a resident of Upolo, in Samoa, first as Land Commissioner, and later as Chief Justice under the joint appointment of England, Germany, and the United States. While living at Apia, Mr Ide and his family were very intimate with the family of R. L. Stevenson. Little Annie was a special pet and protégé of Stevenson and his wife. After the return of the Ides to their American home, Stevenson “deeded” to Annie his birthday in the following unique document:

I,Robert Louis Stevenson, advocate of the Scots Bar, author ofThe Master of BallantraeandMoral Emblems, civil engineer, sole owner and patentee of the palace and plantation known as Vailima, in the island of Upolo, Samoa, a British subject, being in sound mind, and pretty well, I thank you, in mind and body;In consideration that Miss Annie H. Ide, daughter of H. C. Ide, in the town of Saint Johnsbury, in the County of Caledonia, in the State of Vermont, United States of America, was born, out of all reason, upon Christmas Day, and is, therefore, out of all justice, denied the consolation and profit of a proper birthday;And considering that I, the said Robert Louis Stevenson, have attained the age when we never mention it, and that I have now no further use for a birthday of any description;And in consideration that I have met H. C. Ide, the father of the said Annie H. Ide, and found him as white a land commissioner as I require, I have transferred, and do hereby transfer, to the said Annie H. Ide, all and whole of my rights and privileges in the 13th day of November, formerly my birthday, now, hereby and henceforth, the birthday of the said Annie H. Ide, to have, hold, exercise, and enjoy the same in the customary manner, by the sporting of fine raiment, eating of rich meats, and receipt of gifts, compliments, and copies of verse, according to the manner of our ancestors;And I direct the said Annie H. Ide to add to the said name of Annie H. Ide the name of Louisa—at least in private—and I charge her to use my said birthday with moderation and humanity,et tamquam bona filia familias, the said birthday not being so young as it once was and having carried me in a very satisfactory manner since I can remember;And in case the said Annie H. Ide shall neglect or contravene either of the above conditions, I hereby revoke the donation and transfer my rights in the said birthday to the President of the United States of America for the time being.In witness whereof I have hereto set my hand and seal this 19th day of June, in the year of grace eighteen hundred and ninety-one.Robert Louis Stevenson. [Seal.]Witness,Lloyd Osbourne.Witness,Harold Watts.

In consideration that Miss Annie H. Ide, daughter of H. C. Ide, in the town of Saint Johnsbury, in the County of Caledonia, in the State of Vermont, United States of America, was born, out of all reason, upon Christmas Day, and is, therefore, out of all justice, denied the consolation and profit of a proper birthday;

And considering that I, the said Robert Louis Stevenson, have attained the age when we never mention it, and that I have now no further use for a birthday of any description;

And in consideration that I have met H. C. Ide, the father of the said Annie H. Ide, and found him as white a land commissioner as I require, I have transferred, and do hereby transfer, to the said Annie H. Ide, all and whole of my rights and privileges in the 13th day of November, formerly my birthday, now, hereby and henceforth, the birthday of the said Annie H. Ide, to have, hold, exercise, and enjoy the same in the customary manner, by the sporting of fine raiment, eating of rich meats, and receipt of gifts, compliments, and copies of verse, according to the manner of our ancestors;

And I direct the said Annie H. Ide to add to the said name of Annie H. Ide the name of Louisa—at least in private—and I charge her to use my said birthday with moderation and humanity,et tamquam bona filia familias, the said birthday not being so young as it once was and having carried me in a very satisfactory manner since I can remember;

And in case the said Annie H. Ide shall neglect or contravene either of the above conditions, I hereby revoke the donation and transfer my rights in the said birthday to the President of the United States of America for the time being.

In witness whereof I have hereto set my hand and seal this 19th day of June, in the year of grace eighteen hundred and ninety-one.

Robert Louis Stevenson. [Seal.]

Witness,Lloyd Osbourne.

Witness,Harold Watts.

He died in Samoa in December 1894—not from phthisis or anything directly connected with it, but from the bursting of a blood-vessel and suffusion of blood on the brain. He had up to the moment almost of his sudden and unexpected death been busy onWeir of HermistonandSt Ives, which he left unfinished—the latter having been brought to a conclusion by Mr Quiller-Couch.

In Stevenson we lost one of the most powerful writers of our day, as well as the most varied in theme and style. When I use the word “powerful,” I do not mean merely the producing of the most striking or sensational results, nor the facility of weaving a fascinating or blood-curdling plot; I mean the writer who seemed always to have most in reserve—a secret fund of power and fascination which always pointed beyond the printed page, and set before the attentive and careful reader a strange but fascinatingpersonality. Other authors have done that in measure. There was Hawthorne, behind whose writings there is always the wistful, cold, far-withdrawn spectator of human nature—eerie, inquisitive, and, I had almost said, inquisitorial—a little bloodless, eerie, weird, and cobwebby. There was Dr Wendell Holmes, with his problems of heredity, of race-mixture and weird inoculation, as inElsie VennerandThe Guardian Angel, and there were Poe and Charles Whitehead. Stevenson, in a few of his writings—in one of theMerry Menchapters and inDr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and, to some extent, inThe Master of Ballantrae—showed that he could enter on the obscure and, in a sense, weird and metaphysical elements in human life; though always there was, too, a touch at least of gloomy suggestion, from which, as it seemed, he could not there wholly escape. But always, too, there was a touch that suggests the universal.

Even in the stories that would be classed as those of incident and adventure merely,Treasure Island,Kidnapped, and the rest, there is a sense as of some unaffected but fine symbolism that somehow touches something of possibility in yourself as you read. The simplest narrative from his hand proclaimed itself a deep study in human nature—its motives tendencies, and possibilities. In these stories there is promise at once of the most realistic imagination, the most fantastic romance, keen insights into some sides of human nature, and weird fancies, as well as the most delicate and dainty pictures of character. And this is precisely what we have—always with a vein of the finest autobiography—a kind of select and indirect self-revelation—often with a touch of quaintness, a subdued humour, and sweet-blooded vagary, if we may be allowed the word, which make you feel towards the writer as towards a friend. He was too much an artist to overdo this, and his strength lies there, that generally he suggests and turns away at the right point, with a smile, as you ask formore. Look how he sets, half slyly, these words into the mouth of David Balfour on his first meeting with Catriona in one of the steep wynds or closes off the High Street of Edinburgh:

“There is no greater wonder than the way the face of a young woman fits in a man’s mind, and stays there, and he never could tell you why: it just seems it was the thing he wanted.”

Take this alongside of his remark made to his mother while still a youth—“that he did not care to understand the strain on a bridge” (when he tried to study engineering); what he wanted was something with human nature in it. His style, in his essays, etc., where he writes in his own person, is most polished, full of phrases finely drawn; when he speaks through others, as inKidnappedandDavid Balfour, it is still fine and effective, and generally it is fairly true to the character, with cunning glimpses, nevertheless, of his own temper and feeling too. He makes us feel his confidants and friends, as has been said. One could almost construct a biography from his essays and his novels—the one would give us the facts of his life suffused with fancy and ideal colour, humour and fine observation not wanting; the other would give us the history of his mental and moral being and development, and of the traits and determinations which he drew from along a lengthened line of progenitors. How characteristic it is of him—a man who for so many years suffered as an invalid—that he should lay it down that the two great virtues, including all others, were cheerfulness and delight in labour.

One writer has very well said on this feature in Stevenson:

“Other authors have struggled bravely against physical weakness, but their work has not usually been of a creative order, dependent for its success on high animal spirits. They have written histories, essays, contemplative or didactic poems, works which may more or less be regarded as ‘dull narcotics numbing pain.’ But who, in so fragile a frame as Robert Louis Stevenson’s, has retained such indomitable elasticity, such fertility of invention, such unflagging energy, not merely to collect and arrange, but to project and body forth? Has any true ‘maker’ been such an incessant sufferer? From his childhood, as he himself said apropos of theChild’s Garden, he could ‘speak with less authority of gardens than of that other “land of counterpane.”’ There were, indeed, a few years of adolescence during which his health was tolerable, but they were years of apprenticeship to life and art (‘pioching,’ as he called it), not of serious production. Though he was a precocious child, his genius ripened slowly, and it was just reaching maturity when the ‘wolverine,’ as he called his disease, fixed its fangs in his flesh. From that time forward not only did he live with death at his elbow in an almost literal sense (he used to carry his left arm in a sling lest a too sudden movement should bring on a hæmorrhage), but he had ever-recurring intervals of weeks and months during which he was totally unfit for work; while even at the best of times he had to husband his strength most jealously. Add to all this that he was a slow and laborious writer, who would take more pains with a phrase than Scott with a chapter—then look at the stately shelf of his works, brimful of impulse, initiative, and the joy of life, and say whether it be an exaggeration to call his tenacity and fortitude unique!”

Samoa, with its fine climate, prolonged his life—we had fain hoped that in that air he found so favourable he might have lived for many years, to add to the precious stock of innocent delight he has given to the world—to do yet more and greater. It was not to be. They buried him, with full native honours as to a chief, on the top of Vaea mountain, 1300 feet high—a road for the coffin to pass being cut through the woods on the slopes of the hill. There he has a resting-place not all unfit—for he sought the pure and clearer air on the heights from whence there are widest prospects; yet not in the spot he would have chosen—for his heart was at home, and not very long before his death he sang, surely with pathetic reference now:

“Spring shall come, come again, calling up the moorfowl,Spring shall bring the sun and rain, bring the bees and flowers,Red shall the heather bloom over hill and valley,Soft flow the stream thro’ the even-flowing hours;Fair the day shine, as it shone upon my childhood—Fair shine the day on the house with open door;Birds come and cry there, and twitter in the chimney—But I go for ever and come again no more.”

A few weeks after his death, the mail from Samoa, brought to Stevenson’s friends, myself among the number, a precious, if pathetic, memorial of the master. It is in the form of “A Letter to Mr Stevenson’s Friends,” by his stepson, Mr Lloyd Osbourne, and bears the motto from Walt Whitman, “I have been waiting for you these many years. Give me your hand and welcome.” Mr Osbourne gives a full account of the last hours.

“He wrote hard all that morning of the last day; his half-finished book,Hermiston, he judged the best he had ever written, and the sense of successful effort made him buoyant and happy as nothing else could. In the afternoon the mail fell to be answered—not business correspondence, for this was left till later—but replies to the long, kindly letters of distant friends received but two days since, and still bright in memory. At sunset he came downstairs; rallied his wife about the forebodings she could not shake off; talked of a lecturing tour to America that he was eager to make, ‘as he was now so well’; and played a game of cards with her to drive away her melancholy. He said he was hungry; begged her assistance to help him make a salad for the evening meal; and, to enhance the little feast he brought up a bottle of old Burgundy from the cellar. He was helping his wife on the verandah, and gaily talking, when suddenly he put both hands to his head and cried out, ‘What’s that?’ Then he asked quickly, ‘Do I look strange?’ Even as he did so he fell on his knees beside her. He was helped into the great hall, between his wife and his body-servant, Sosimo, losing consciousness instantly as he lay back in the armchair that had once been his grandfather’s. Little time was lost in bringing the doctors—Anderson of the man-of-war, and his friend, Dr Funk. They looked at him and shook their heads; they laboured strenuously, and left nothing undone. But he had passed the bounds of human skill. He had grown so well and strong, that his wasted lungs were unable to bear the stress of returning health.”

Then ’tis told how the Rev. Mr Clarke came and prayed by him; and how, soon after, the chiefs were summoned, and came, bringing their fine mats, which, laid on the body, almost hid the Union jack in which it had been wrapped. One of the old Mataafa chiefs, who had been in prison, and who had been one of those who worked on the making of the “Road of the Loving Heart” (the road of gratitude which the chiefs had made up to Mr Stevenson’s house as a mark of their appreciation of his efforts on their behalf), came and crouched beside the body and said:

“I am only a poor Samoan, and ignorant. Others are rich, and can give Tusitala[6]the parting presents of rich, fine mats; I am poor, and can give nothing this last day he receives his friends. Yet I am not afraid to come and look the last time in my friend’s face, never to see him more till we meet with God. Behold! Tusitala is dead; Mataafa is also dead. These two great friends have been taken by God. When Mataafa was taken, who was our support but Tusitala? We were in prison, and he cared for us. We were sick, and he made us well. We were hungry, and he fed us. The day was no longer than his kindness. You are great people, and full of love. Yet who among you is so great as Tusitala? What is your love to his love? Our clan was Mataafa’s clan, for whom I speak this day; therein was Tusitala also. We mourn them both.”

A select company of Samoans would not be deterred, and watched by the body all night, chanting songs, with bits of Catholic prayers; and in the morning the work began of clearing a path through the wood on the hill to the spot on the crown where Mr Stevenson had expressed a wish to be buried. The following prayer, which Mr Stevenson had written and read aloud to his family only the night before, was read by Mr Clarke in the service:

“We beseech thee, Lord, to behold us with favour, folk of many families and nations, gathered together in the peace of this roof; weak men and women, subsisting under the covert of Thy patience. Be patient still; suffer us yet a while longer—with our broken purposes of good, with our idle endeavours against evil—suffer us a while longer to endure, and (if it may be) help us to do better. Bless to us our extraordinary mercies; if the day come when these must be taken, have us play the man under affliction. Be with our friends; be with ourselves. Go with each of us to rest: if any awake, temper to them the dark hours of watching; and when the day returns to us, our Sun and Comforter, call us up with morning faces and with morning hearts—eager to labour—eager to be happy, if happiness shall be our portion; and if the day be marked for sorrow, strong to endure it.“We thank Thee and praise Thee, and in the words of Him to whom this day is sacred, close our oblations.”

“We thank Thee and praise Thee, and in the words of Him to whom this day is sacred, close our oblations.”

Mr Bazzet M. Haggard, H.B.M., Land-Commissioner, tells, by way of reminiscence, the story of “The Road of Good Heart,” how it came to be built, and of the great feast Mr Stevenson gave at the close of the work, at which, in the course of his speech, he said:

“You are all aware in some degree of what has happened. You know those chiefs to have been prisoners; you perhaps know that during the term of their confinement I had it in my power to do them certain favours. One thing some of you cannot know, that they were immediately repaid by answering attentions. They were liberated by the new Administration. . . . As soon as they were free men—owing no man anything—instead of going home to their own places and families, they came to me. They offered to do this work (to make this road) for me as a free gift, without hire, without supplies, and I was tempted at first to refuse their offer. I knew the country to be poor; I knew famine threatening; I knew their families long disorganised for want of supervision. Yet I accepted, because I thought the lesson of that road might be more useful to Samoa than a thousand bread-fruit trees, and because to myself it was an exquisite pleasure to receive that which was so handsomely offered. It is now done; you have trod it to-day in coming hither. It has been made for me by chiefs; some of them old, some sick, all newly delivered from a harassing confinement, and in spite of weather unusually hot and insalubrious. I have seen these chiefs labour valiantly with their own hands upon the work, and I have set up over it, now that it is finished the name of ‘The Road of Gratitude’ (the road of loving hearts), and the names of those that built it. ‘In perpetuam memoriam,’ we say, and speak idly. At least, as long as my own life shall be spared it shall be here perpetuated; partly for my pleasure and in my gratitude; partly for others continually to publish the lesson of this road.”

And turning to the chiefs, Mr Stevenson said:

“I will tell you, chiefs, that when I saw you working on that road, my heart grew warm; not with gratitude only, but with hope. It seemed to me that I read the promise of something good for Samoa; it seemed to me as I looked at you that you were a company of warriors in a battle, fighting for the defence of our common country against all aggression. For there is a time to fight and a time to dig. You Samoans may fight, you may conquer twenty times, and thirty times, and all will be in vain. There is but one way to defend Samoa. Hear it, before it is too late. It is to make roads and gardens, and care for your trees, and sell their produce wisely; and, in one word, to occupy and use your country. If you do not, others will. . . .“I love Samoa and her people. I love the land. I have chosen it to be my home while I live, and my grave after I am dead, and I love the people, and have chosen them to be my people, to live and die with. And I see that the day is come now of the great battle; of the great and the last opportunity by which it shall be decided whether you are to pass away like those other races of which I have been speaking, or to stand fast and have your children living on and honouring your memory in the land you received of your fathers.”

“I love Samoa and her people. I love the land. I have chosen it to be my home while I live, and my grave after I am dead, and I love the people, and have chosen them to be my people, to live and die with. And I see that the day is come now of the great battle; of the great and the last opportunity by which it shall be decided whether you are to pass away like those other races of which I have been speaking, or to stand fast and have your children living on and honouring your memory in the land you received of your fathers.”

Mr James H. Mulligan, U.S. Consul, told of the feast of Thanksgiving Day on the 29th November prior to Mr Stevenson’s death, and how at great pains he had procured for it the necessary turkey, and how Mrs Stevenson had found a fair substitute for the pudding. In the course of his speech in reply to an unexpected proposal of “The Host,” Mr Stevenson said:

“There on my right sits she who has but lately from our own loved native land come back to me—she to whom, with no lessening of affection to those others to whom I cling, I love better than all the world besides—my mother. From the opposite end of the table, my wife, who has been all in all to me, when the days were very dark, looks to-night into my eyes—while we have both grown a bit older—with undiminished and undiminishing affection.“Childless, yet on either side of me sits that good woman, my daughter, and the stalwart man, my son, and both have been and are more than son and daughter to me, and have brought into my life mirth and beauty. Nor is this all. There sits the bright boy dear to my heart, full of the flow and the spirits of boyhood, so that I can even know that for a time at least we have still the voice of a child in the house.”

“Childless, yet on either side of me sits that good woman, my daughter, and the stalwart man, my son, and both have been and are more than son and daughter to me, and have brought into my life mirth and beauty. Nor is this all. There sits the bright boy dear to my heart, full of the flow and the spirits of boyhood, so that I can even know that for a time at least we have still the voice of a child in the house.”

Mr A. W. Mackay gives an account of the funeral and a description of the burial-place, ending:

“Tofa Tusitala! Sleep peacefully! on thy mountain-top, alone in Nature’s sanctity, where the wooddove’s note, the moaning of the waves as they break unceasingly on the distant reef, and the sighing of the winds in the distant tavai trees chant their requiem.”

The Rev. Mr Clarke tells of the constant and active interest Mr Stevenson took in the missionaries and their work, often aiding them by his advice and fine insight into the character of the natives; and a translation follows of a dirge by one of the chiefs, so fine that we must give it:

I.“Listen, O this world, as I tell of the disasterThat befell in the late afternoon;That broke like a wave of the seaSuddenly and swiftly, blinding our eyes.Alas for Loia who speaks tears in his voice!Refrain—Groan and weep, O my heart, in its sorrow.Alas for Tusitala, who rests in the forest!Aimlessly we wait, and sorrowing. Will he again return?Lament, O Vailima, waiting and ever waiting!Let us search and inquire of the captain of ships,‘Be not angry, but has not Tusitala come?’II.“Teuila, sorrowing one, come thou hither!Prepare me a letter, and I will carry it.Let her Majesty Victoria be toldThat Tusitala, the loving one, has been taken hence.Refrain—Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., etc.III.“Alas! my heart weeps with anxious griefAs I think of the days before us:Of the white men gathering for the Christmas assembly!Alas for Aolele! left in her loneliness,And the men of Vailima, who weep togetherTheir leader—their leader being taken.Refrain—Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., etc.IV.“Alas! O my heart! it weeps unceasinglyWhen I think of his illnessComing upon him with fatal swiftness.Would that it waited a glance or a word from him,Or some token, some token from us of our love.Refrain—Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., etc.V.“Grieve, O my heart! I cannot bear to look onAll the chiefs who are there now assembling:Alas, Tusitala! Thou art not here!I look hither and thither in vain for thee.Refrain—Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., etc.”

“Listen, O this world, as I tell of the disasterThat befell in the late afternoon;That broke like a wave of the seaSuddenly and swiftly, blinding our eyes.Alas for Loia who speaks tears in his voice!

Refrain—Groan and weep, O my heart, in its sorrow.Alas for Tusitala, who rests in the forest!Aimlessly we wait, and sorrowing. Will he again return?Lament, O Vailima, waiting and ever waiting!Let us search and inquire of the captain of ships,‘Be not angry, but has not Tusitala come?’

II.

“Teuila, sorrowing one, come thou hither!Prepare me a letter, and I will carry it.Let her Majesty Victoria be toldThat Tusitala, the loving one, has been taken hence.

Refrain—Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., etc.

III.

“Alas! my heart weeps with anxious griefAs I think of the days before us:Of the white men gathering for the Christmas assembly!Alas for Aolele! left in her loneliness,And the men of Vailima, who weep togetherTheir leader—their leader being taken.

Refrain—Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., etc.

IV.

“Alas! O my heart! it weeps unceasinglyWhen I think of his illnessComing upon him with fatal swiftness.Would that it waited a glance or a word from him,Or some token, some token from us of our love.

Refrain—Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., etc.

“Grieve, O my heart! I cannot bear to look onAll the chiefs who are there now assembling:Alas, Tusitala! Thou art not here!I look hither and thither in vain for thee.

Refrain—Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., etc.”

And the little booklet closes with Mr Stevenson’s own lines:

“REQUIEM.Under the wide and starry sky,Dig the grave and let me lie;Glad did I live and gladly die,And I laid me down with a will.This be the verse you grave for me:‘Here he lies where he longed to be;Home is the sailor, home from sea;And the hunter home from the hill.’”

“REQUIEM.

Under the wide and starry sky,Dig the grave and let me lie;Glad did I live and gladly die,And I laid me down with a will.This be the verse you grave for me:‘Here he lies where he longed to be;Home is the sailor, home from sea;And the hunter home from the hill.’”

Every touch tells here was a man, with heart and head, with soul and mind intent on the loftiest things; simple, great,

“Like one of the simple great ones goneFor ever and ever by.

His character towered after all far above his books; great and beautiful though they were. Ready for friendship; from all meanness free. So, too, the Samoans felt. This, surely, was what Goethe meant when he wrote:

“The clear head and stout heart,However far they roam,Yet in every truth have part,Are everywhere at home.”

His manliness, his width of sympathy, his practicality, his range of interests were in nothing more seen than in his contributions to the history of Samoa, as specially exhibited inA Footnote to Historyand his letters to theTimes. He was, on this side, in no sense a dreamer, but a man of acute observation and quick eye for passing events and the characters that were in them with sympathy equal to his discernments. His portraits of certain Germans and others in these writings, and his power of tracing effects to remote and underlying causes, show sufficiently what he might have done in the field of history, had not higher voices called him. His adaptation to the life in Samoa, and his assumption of the semi-patriarchal character in his own sphere there, were only tokens of the presence of the same traits as have just been dwelt on.

Mrs Strong, in her chapter ofTable Talk in Memories of Vailima, tells a story of the natives’ love for Stevenson. “The other day the cook was away,” she writes, “and Louis, who was busy writing, took his meals in his room. Knowing there was no one to cook his lunch, he told Sosimo to bring him some bread and cheese. To his surprise he was served with an excellent meal—an omelette, a good salad, and perfect coffee. ‘Who cooked this?’ asked Louis in Samoan. ‘I did,’ said Sosimo. ‘Well,’ said Louis, ‘great is your wisdom.’ Sosimo bowed and corrected him—‘Great is my love!’”

Miss Stubbs, in herStevenson’s Shrine;the Record of a Pilgrimage, illustrates the same devotion. On the top of Mount Vaea, she writes, is the massive sarcophagus, “not an ideal structure by any means, not even beautiful, and yet in its massive ruggedness it somehow suited the man and the place.”

“The wind sighed softly in the branches of the ‘Tavau’ trees, from out the green recesses of the ‘Toi’ came the plaintive coo of the wood-pigeon. In and out of the branches of the magnificent ‘Fau’ tree, which overhangs the grave, a king-fisher, sea-blue, iridescent, flitted to and fro, whilst a scarlet hibiscus, in full flower, showed up royally against the gray lichened cement. All around was light and life and colour, and I said to myself, ‘He is made one with nature’; he is now, body and soul and spirit, commingled with the loveliness around. He who longed in life to scale the height, he who attained his wish only in death, has become in himself a parable of fulfilment. No need now for that heart-sick cry:—

“‘Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,Say, could that lad be I?’

No need now for the despairing finality of:

“‘I have trod the upward and the downward slope,I have endured and done in the days of yore,I have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope,And I have lived, and loved, and closed the door.’“Death has set his seal of peace on the unequal conflict of mind and matter; the All-Mother has gathered him to herself.“In years to come, when his grave is perchance forgotten, a rugged ruin, home of the lizard and the bat, Tusitala—the story-teller—‘the man with a heart of gold’ (as I so often heard him designated in the Islands), will live, when it may be his tales have ceased to interest, in the tender remembrance of those whose lives he beautified, and whose hearts he warmed into gratitude.”

“‘I have trod the upward and the downward slope,I have endured and done in the days of yore,I have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope,And I have lived, and loved, and closed the door.’

“Death has set his seal of peace on the unequal conflict of mind and matter; the All-Mother has gathered him to herself.

“In years to come, when his grave is perchance forgotten, a rugged ruin, home of the lizard and the bat, Tusitala—the story-teller—‘the man with a heart of gold’ (as I so often heard him designated in the Islands), will live, when it may be his tales have ceased to interest, in the tender remembrance of those whose lives he beautified, and whose hearts he warmed into gratitude.”

The chiefs have prohibited the use of firearms or other weapons on Mount Vaea, “in order that the birds may live there undisturbed and unafraid, and build their nests in the trees around Tusitala’s grave.”

Miss Stubbs has many records of the impression produced on those he came in contact with in Samoa—white men and women as well as natives. She met a certain Austrian Count, who adored Stevenson’s memory. Over his camp bed was a framed photograph of R. L. Stevenson.

“So,” he said, “I keep him there, for he was my saviour, and I wish ‘good-night’ and ‘good-morning,’ every day, both to himself and to his old home.” The Count then told us that when he was stopping at Vailima he used to have his bath daily on the verandah below his room. One lovely morning he got up very early, got into the bath, and splashed and sang, feeling very well and very happy, and at last beginning to sing very loudly, he forgot Mr Stevenson altogether. All at once there was Stevenson himself, his hair all ruffled up, his eyes full of anger. “Man,” he said, “you and your infernal row have cost me more than two hundred pounds in ideas,” and with that he was gone, but he did not address the Count again the whole of that day. Next morning he had forgotten the Count’s offence and was just as friendly as ever, but—the noise was never repeated!

Another of the Count’s stories greatly amused the visitors:

“An English lord came all the way to Samoa in his yacht to see Mr Stevenson, and found him in his cool Kimino sitting with the ladies, and drinking tea on his verandah; the whole party had their feet bare. The English lord thought that he must have called at the wrong time, and offered to go away, but Mr Stevenson called out to him, and brought him back, and made him stay to dinner. They all went away to dress, and the guest was left sitting alone in the verandah. Soon they came back, Mr Osbourne and Mr Stevenson wearing the form of dress most usual in that hot climate a white mess jacket, and white trousers, but their feet were still bare. The guest put up his eyeglass and stared for a bit, then he looked down upon his own beautifully shod feet, and sighed. They all talked and laughed until the ladies came in, the ladies in silk dresses, befrilled with lace, but still with bare feet, and the guest took a covert look through his eyeglass and gasped, but when he noticed that there were gold bangles on Mrs Strong’s ankles and rings upon her toes, he could bear no more and dropped his eyeglass on the ground of the verandah breaking it all to bits.”

Miss Stubbs met on the other side of the island a photographer who told her this:

“I had but recently come to Samoa,” he said, “and was standing one day in my shop when Mr Stevenson came in and spoke. ‘Man,’ he said, ‘I tak ye to be a Scotsman like mysel’.’“I would I could have claimed a kinship,” deplored the photographer, “but, alas! I am English to the backbone, with never a drop of Scotch blood in my veins, and I told him this, regretting the absence of the blood tie.”“‘I could have sworn your back was the back of a Scotsman,’ was his comment, ‘but,’ and he held out his hand, ‘you look sick, and there is a fellowship in sickness not to be denied.’ I said I was not strong, and had come to the Island on account of my health. ‘Well, then,’ replied Mr Stevenson, ‘it shall be my business to help you to get well; come to Vailima whenever you like, and if I am out, ask for refreshment, and wait until I come in, you will always find a welcome there.’”At this point my informant turned away, and there was a break in his voice as he exclaimed, “Ah, the years go on, and I don’t miss him less, but more; next to my mother he was the best friend I ever had: a man with a heart of gold; his house was a second home to me.”

“I had but recently come to Samoa,” he said, “and was standing one day in my shop when Mr Stevenson came in and spoke. ‘Man,’ he said, ‘I tak ye to be a Scotsman like mysel’.’

“I would I could have claimed a kinship,” deplored the photographer, “but, alas! I am English to the backbone, with never a drop of Scotch blood in my veins, and I told him this, regretting the absence of the blood tie.”

“‘I could have sworn your back was the back of a Scotsman,’ was his comment, ‘but,’ and he held out his hand, ‘you look sick, and there is a fellowship in sickness not to be denied.’ I said I was not strong, and had come to the Island on account of my health. ‘Well, then,’ replied Mr Stevenson, ‘it shall be my business to help you to get well; come to Vailima whenever you like, and if I am out, ask for refreshment, and wait until I come in, you will always find a welcome there.’”

At this point my informant turned away, and there was a break in his voice as he exclaimed, “Ah, the years go on, and I don’t miss him less, but more; next to my mother he was the best friend I ever had: a man with a heart of gold; his house was a second home to me.”

Stevenson’s experience shows how easy it is with a certain type of man, to restore the old feudal conditions of service and relationship. Stevenson did this in essentials in Samoa. He tells us how he managed to get good service out of the Samoans (who are accredited with great unwillingness to work); and this hedidby firm, but generous, kindly, almost brotherly treatment, reviving, as it were, a kind of clan life—giving a livery of certain colours—symbol of all this. A little fellow of eight, he tells, had been taken into the household, made a pet of by Mrs Strong, his stepdaughter, and had had a dress given to him, like that of the men; and, when one day he had strolled down by himself as far as the hotel, and the master of it, seeing him, called out in Samoan, “Hi, youngster, who are you?” The eight-year-old replied, “Why, don’t you see for yourself? I am one of the Vailima men!”

The story of theRoad of the Loving Heartwas but another fine attestation of it.

To have created a school of idolaters, who will out and out swear by everything, and as though by necessity, at the same time, a school of studious detractors, who will suspiciously question everything, or throw out suggestions of disparagement, is at all events, a proof of greatness, the countersign of undoubted genius, and an assurance of lasting fame. R. L. Stevenson has certainly secured this. Time will tell what of virtue there is with either party. For me, who knew Stevenson, and loved him, as finding in the sweet-tempered, brave, and in some things, most generous man, what gave at once tone and elevation to the artist, I would fain indicate here my impressions of him and his genius—impressions that remain almost wholly uninfluenced by the vast mass of matter about him that the press now turns out. Books, not to speak of articles, pour forth about him—about his style, his art, his humour and his characters—aye, and even about his religion.

Miss Simpson follows Mr Bellyse Baildon with theEdinburgh Days, Miss Moyes Black comes on with her picture in theFamous Scots, and Professor Raleigh succeeds her; Mr Graham Balfour follows with hisLife; Mr Kelman’s volume about his Religion comes next, and that is reinforced by more familiar letters andTable Talk, by Lloyd Osbourne and Mrs Strong, his step-children; Mr J. Hammerton then comes on handily withStevensoniana—fruit lovingly gathered from many and far fields, and garnered with not a little tact and taste, and catholicity; Miss Laura Stubbs then presents us with her touchingStevenson’s Shrine:the Record of a Pilgrimage; and Mr Sidney Colvin is now busily at work on hisLife of Stevenson, which must do not a little to enlighten and to settle many questions.

Curiosity and interest grow as time passes; and the places connected with Stevenson, hitherto obscure many of them, are now touched with light if not with romance, and are known, by name at all events, to every reader of books. Yes; every place he lived in, or touched at, is worthy of full description if only on account of its associations with him. If there is not a land of Stevenson, as there is a land of Scott, or of Burns, it is due to the fact that he was far-travelled, and in his works painted many scenes: but there are at home—Edinburgh, and Halkerside and Allermuir, Caerketton, Swanston, and Colinton, and Maw Moss and Rullion Green and Tummel, “thewaleof Scotland,” as he named it to me, and the Castletown of Braemar—Braemar in his view coming a good second to Tummel, for starting-points to any curious worshipper who would go the round in Scotland and miss nothing. Mr Geddie’s work onThe Home Country of Stevensonmay be found very helpful here.

1. It is impossible to separate Stevenson from his work, because of the imperious personal element in it; and so I shall not now strive to gain the appearance of cleverness by affecting any distinction here. The first thing I would say is, that he was when I knew him—what pretty much to the end he remained—a youth. His outlook on life was boyishly genial and free, despite all his sufferings from ill-health—it was the pride of action, the joy of endurance, the revelry of high spirits, and the sense of victory that most fascinated him; and his theory of life was to take pleasure and give pleasure, without calculation or stint—a kind of boyish grace and bounty never to be overcome or disturbed by outer accident or change. If he was sometimes haunted with the thought of changes through changed conditions or circumstances, as my very old friend, Mr Charles Lowe, has told even of the College days that he was always supposing things to undergo some sea-change into something else, if not “into something rich and strange,” this was but to add to his sense of enjoyment, and the power of conferring delight, and the luxuries of variety, as boys do when they let fancy loose. And this always had, with him, an individual reference or return. He was thus constantly, and latterly, half-consciously, trying to interpret himself somehow through all the things which engaged him, and which he so transmogrified—things that especially attracted him and took his fancy. Thus, if it must be confessed, that even in his highest moments, there lingers a touch—if no more than a touch—of self-consciousness which will not allow him to forget manner in matter, it is also true that he is cunningly conveying traits in himself; and the sense of this is often at the root of his sweet, gentle, naïve humour. There is, therefore, some truth in the criticisms which assert that even “long John Silver,” that fine pirate, with his one leg, was, after all, a shadow of Stevenson himself—the genial buccaneer who did his tremendous murdering with a smile on his face was but Stevenson thrown into new circumstances, or, as one has said, Stevenson-cum-Henley, so thrown as was also Archer inWeir of Hermiston, and more than this, that his most successful women-folk—like Miss Grant and Catriona—are studies of himself, and that in all his heroes, and even heroines, was an unmistakable touch of R. L. Stevenson. Even Mr Baildon rather maladroitly admits that in Miss Grant, the Lord Advocate’s daughter,there is a good deal of the author himself disguised in petticoats. I have thought of Stevenson in many suits, beside that which included the velvet jacket, but—petticoats!

Youth is autocratic, and can show a grand indifferency: it goes for what it likes, and ignores all else—it fondly magnifies its favourites, and, after all, to a great extent, it is but analysing, dealing with and presenting itself to us, if we only watch well. This is the secret of all prevailing romance: it is the secret of all stories of adventure and chivalry of the simpler and more primitive order; and in one aspect it is true that R. L. Stevenson loved and clung to the primitive and elemental, if it may not be said, as one distinguished writer has said, that he even loved savagery in itself. But hardly could it be seriously held, as Mr I. Zangwill held:

“That women did not cut any figure in his books springs from this same interest in the elemental. Women are not born, but made. They are a social product of infinite complexity and delicacy. For a like reason Stevenson was no interpreter of the modern. . . . A child to the end, always playing at ‘make-believe,’ dying young, as those whom the gods love, and, as he would have died had he achieved his centenary, he was the natural exponent in literature of the child.”

But there were subtly qualifying elements beyond what Mr Zangwill here recognises and reinforces. That is just about as correct and true as this other deliverance:

“His Scotch romances have been as over-praised by the zealous Scotsmen who cry ‘genius’ at the sight of a kilt, and who lose their heads at a waft from the heather, as his other books have been under-praised. The best of all,The Master of Ballantrae, ends in a bog; and where the author aspires to exceptional subtlety of character-drawing he befogs us or himself altogether. We are so long weighing the brothers Ballantrae in the balance, watching it incline now this way, now that, scrupulously removing a particle of our sympathy from the one brother to the other, to restore it again in the next chapter, that we end with a conception of them as confusing as Mr Gilbert’s conception of Hamlet, who was idiotically sane with lucid intervals of lunacy.”

If Stevenson was, as Mr Zangwill holds, “the child to the end,” and the child only, then if we may not say what Carlyle said of De Quincey: “Eccovi, that child has been in hell,” we may say, “Eccovi, that child has been in unchildlike haunts, and can’t forget the memory of them.” In a sense every romancer is a child—such was Ludwig Tieck, such was Scott, such was James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. But each is something more—he has been touched with the wand of a fairy, and knows, at least, some of Elfin Land as well as of childhood’s home.

The sense of Stevenson’s youthfulness seems to have struck every one who had intimacy with him. Mr Baildon writes (p. 21 of his book):

I would now give much to possess but one of Stevenson’s gifts—namely, that extraordinary vividness of recollection by which he could so astonishingly recall, not only the doings, but the very thoughts and emotions of his youth. For, often as we must have communed together, with all the shameless candour of boys, hardly any remark has stuck to me except the opinion already alluded to, which struck me—his elder by some fifteen months—as very amusing, that at sixteen ‘we should be men.’He of all mortals,who was,in a sense,always still a boy!”

Mr Gosse tells us:

“He had retained a great deal of the temperament of a child, and it was his philosophy to encourage it. In his dreary passages of bed, when his illness was more than commonly heavy on him, he used to contrive little amusements for himself. He played on the flute, or he modelled little groups and figures in clay.”

2. One of the qualifying elements unnoted by Mr Zangwill is simply this, that R. L. Stevenson never lost the strange tint imparted to his youth by the religious influences to which he was subject, and which left their impress and colour on him and all that he did. Henley, in his striking sonnet, hit it when he wrote:

“A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck,Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all,And something of the Shorter Catechist.”

Something! he was a great deal of Shorter Catechist! Scotch Calvinism, its metaphysic, and all the strange whims, perversities, and questionings of “Fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,” which it inevitably awakens, was much with him—the sense of reprobation and the gloom born of it, as well as the abounding joy in the sense of the elect—the Covenanters and their wild resolutions, the moss-troopers and their dare-devilries—Pentland Risings and fights of Rullion Green; he not only never forgot them, but they mixed themselves as in his very breath of life, and made him a great questioner. How would I have borne myself in this or in that? Supposing I had been there, how would it have been—the same, or different from what it was with those that were there? His work is throughout at bottom a series of problems that almost all trace to this root, directly or indirectly. “There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford,” said the famous Puritan on seeing a felon led to execution; so with Stevenson. Hence his fondness for tramps, for scamps (he even bestowed special attention and pains on Villon, the poet-scamp); he was rather impatient with poor Thoreau, because he was a purist solitary, and had too little of vice, and, as Stevenson held, narrow in sympathy, and too self-satisfied, and bent only on self-improvement. He held a brief for the honest villain, and leaned to him brotherly. Even the anecdotes he most prizes have a fine look this way—a hunger for completion in achievement, even in the violation of fine humane feeling or morality, and all the time a sense of submission to God’s will. “Doctor,” said the dying gravedigger inOld Mortality, “I hae laid three hunner an’ fower score in that kirkyaird, an’ had it been His wull,” indicating Heaven, “I wad hae likeit weel to hae made oot the fower hunner.” That took Stevenson. Listen to what Mr Edmond Gosse tells of his talk, when he found him in a private hotel in Finsbury Circus, London, ready to be put on board a steamer for America, on 21st August, 1887:

“It was church time, and there was some talk of my witnessing his will, which I could not do because there could be found no other reputable witness, the whole crew of the hotel being at church. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is the way in which our valuable city hotels—packed no doubt with gems and jewellery—are deserted on a Sunday morning. Some bold piratical fellow, defying the spirit of Sabbatarianism, might make a handsome revenue by sacking the derelict hotels between the hours of ten and twelve. One hotel a week would enable such a man to retire in course of a year. A mask might perhaps be worn for the mere fancy of the thing, and to terrify kitchen-maids, but no real disguise would be needful.’”

I would rather agree with Mr Chesterton than with Mr Zangwill here:

“Stevenson’s enormous capacity for joy flowed directly out of his profoundly religious temperament. He conceived himself as an unimportant guest at one eternal and uproarious banquet, and instead of grumbling at the soup, he accepted it with careless gratitude. . . . His gaiety was neither the gaiety of the pagan, nor the gaiety of thebon vivant. It was the greater gaiety of the mystic. He could enjoy trifles because there was to him no such thing as a trifle. He was a child who respected his dolls because they were the images of the image of God, portraits at only two removes.”

Here, then, we have the child crossed by the dreamer and the mystic, bred of Calvinism and speculation on human fate and chance, and on the mystery of temperament and inheritance, and all that flows from these—reprobation, with its dire shadows, assured Election with its joys, etc., etc.

3. If such a combination is in favour of the story-teller up to a certain point, it is not favourable to the highest flights, and it is alien to dramatic presentation pure and simple. This implies detachment from moods and characters, high as well as low, that complete justice in presentation may be done to all alike, and the one balance that obtains in life grasped and repeated with emphasis. But towards his leading characters Stevenson is unconsciously biassed, because they are more or less shadowy projections of himself, or images through which he would reveal one or other side or aspect of his own personality. Attwater is a confessed failure, because it, more than any other, testifies this: he is but a mouth-piece for one side or tendency in Stevenson. If the same thing is not more decisively felt in some other cases, it is because Stevenson there showed the better art o’ hidin’, and not because he was any more truly detached or dramatic. “Of Hamlet most of all,” wrote Henley in his sonnet. The Hamlet in Stevenson—the self-questioning, egotistic, moralising Hamlet—was, and to the end remained, a something alien to bold, dramatic, creative freedom. He is great as an artist, as a man bent on giving to all that he did the best and most distinguished form possible, but not great as a free creator of dramatic power. “Mother,” he said as a mere child, “I’ve drawed a man. Now, will I draw his soul?” He was to the end all too fond to essay a picture of the soul, separate and peculiar. All the Jekyll and Hyde and even Ballantrae conceptions came out of that—and what is more, he always mixed his own soul with the other soul, and could not help doing so.

4. When; therefore, I find Mr Pinero, in lecturing at Edinburgh, deciding in favour of Stevenson as possessed of rare dramatic power, and wondering why he did not more effectively employ it, I can’t agree with him; and this because of the presence of a certain atmosphere in the novels, alien to free play of the individualities presented. Like Hawthorne’s, like the works of our great symbolists, they are restricted by a sense of some obtaining conception, some weird metaphysicalweirdor preconception. This is the ground “Ian MacLaren” has for saying that “his kinship is not with Boccaccio and Rabelais, but with Dante and Spenser”—the ground for many remarks by critics to the effect that they still crave from him “less symbol and more individuality”—the ground for the Rev. W. J. Dawson’s remark that “he has a powerful and persistent sense of the spiritual forces which move behind the painted shows of life; that he writes not only as a realist but as a prophet, his meanest stage being set with eternity as a background.”

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