CHAPTER XIII

'San Francisco(no date).Balfour, 17 Walker Street, Edinburgh.Louisdied suddenly third. Tell friends.Stevenson.'

'San Francisco(no date).

Balfour, 17 Walker Street, Edinburgh.

Louisdied suddenly third. Tell friends.

Stevenson.'

The telegram was from his mother in answer to one from his uncle asking for true particulars as to the earlier report, and on its receipt and publication relatives and friends knew that hope was dead, and there remained only a sad waiting for further particulars. These by-and-bye came in letters from his mother to her relatives andfriends in Scotland, in letters to his literary friends and in that 'Letter' to theTimesfrom his friend and stepson Mr Lloyd Osbourne to the vast mass of acquaintances and readers who all claimed him as a loved personal friend.

From all these sources the manner of his death, and the touching final tragedy of his pathetic funeral became known to the world of English-speaking people everywhere, who each and all mourned individually for the loved and lost author as one near and dear in their personal regard.

He had always expressed a wish to be buried on the Vaea mountain which rises immediately behind Vailima, and the summit of which commands a wide prospect of land and sea and sky. In the spring of 1894, he had suggested the making of a road, and the planting of the spot which he had chosen for his resting-place, but, as the idea was painful to his family, nothing was done in the matter. As soon as he had passed away, those whom he loved hastened to give effect to his wishes, and Mr Lloyd Osbourne planned and courageously carried out in an incredibly short time the forming of a road which made it possible to carry him to the summit of Vaea, and lay him on the spot that he had chosen. Forty Samoans with knives and axes cut a path up the mountain side, and Mr Lloyd Osbourne, with a few specially chosen dependents, dug the grave in which he was to lie.

Meantime, his body covered with the Union Jack rested in the Samoan home that he had loved so well, surrounded by the furniture of the old Scotch homearound which his childish feet had played, and on which his father, and possibly his father's fathers, had daily looked, for his mother had taken with her to Vailima all that had most of memory and of family tradition from the house in Heriot Row.

His family lingered in the dear presence, the heartbroken Samoans knelt and kissed his hands, and at the request of his favourite servant, Sosima, who was a Romanist, the solemn and touching prayers of the Church of Rome were, with a certain fitness, repeated over the man who had been the champion of Father Damien, and among whose friends were numbered the earnest and faithful Roman Catholic missionary priests of the South Sea Islands.

On his coffin was laid the 'Red Ensign' that had floated from his mast on many a cruise, and he was carried up the steep path by those who loved him. Europeans as well as Samoans toiled up that difficult ascent to place him with reverent hands in that grave which was so fitting a resting-place for the man who had loved, above all things, the freedom of the open air, the glory of the sea and the sky, the sighing of God's winds among the trees, and the silent companionship of the stars.

Life for those who remained in the Samoan home became an impossible thing without him, and so Mrs Stevenson, with her son and daughter, by-and-bye left Vailima, and the home of so much happiness is now falling into ruin, the cleared ground lapsing back to the bush. And perhaps it is best so; without him Vailima islike a body without a soul; and he who so dearly loved nature would hardly have regretted that the place he loved should return to the mother heart of the earth and become once more a solitude—a green place of birds and trees.

'Art's life, and when we live we suffer and toil.'—Mrs Barrett Browning.

'Art's life, and when we live we suffer and toil.'

—Mrs Barrett Browning.

'A healthful hunger for the great idea,The beauty and the blessedness of life.'—Jean Ingelow.

'A healthful hunger for the great idea,The beauty and the blessedness of life.'

'A healthful hunger for the great idea,

The beauty and the blessedness of life.'

—Jean Ingelow.

It is perhaps impossible for those who knew Mr Stevenson and came under the influence of the rare attraction of his charming personality, to assign to him and to his work a suitable place in the world of letters. Probably it is still too early for anyone to say what rank will in the future be held by the man who in his life-time assuredly stood among the masters of his craft. Fame, while he lived, was his, and, better than fame, such love as is seldom given by the public to the writer whose books delight it.

Deservedly popular as the books are, the man was still more popular; and the personality that to his friends was so unique and so delightful, made friends of his readers also. He was so frank, so human, in his relations with his public.

His dedications not only gave pleasure to the members of his family, or to the many friends to whom he wrote them, they, as it were, took his readers into his confidence also, and let them share in the warmth of hisheart. His prefaces are delightfully autobiographical, and are valuable in proportion to the glimpses they give of one of the most amiable and most widely sympathetic natures imaginable.

His methods of work were singularly conscientious; even in the days when, as a truant lad, he carried in his pocket one book to read, and another to write in, he was slowly perfecting that style which was to give to his literary work a distinction all its own. He spared himself no trouble in ensuring the accuracy of all that he wrote.

It may be interesting to recall in this connection the letters written by two of his readers to theScotsmanexpressing some doubt as to there having been shops in Princes Street at the date of his storySt Ives—Mr Stevenson mentions shops inSt Ives. In reply to the letters of enquiry, his uncle, Dr G. W. Balfour, wrote to theScotsmanon 26th November 1897:—

'Sir,—It may interest your correspondents "J. W. G." and "J. C. P." to know that Louis Stevenson always took care to verify his statements before making them, and that his correspondent, to whom he applied for information as to the existence of shops in Princes Street at the early date referred to, took the only legitimate means open to him of ascertaining this by consulting the directories of the date.'

And, as a matter of fact, it was conclusively proved that Mr Stevenson was correct, by the name and number of at least one well-known shop, of that date, being given by another correspondent in the paper very shortly afterwards.

No minute observation was too trying for Mr Stevenson, no careful research too tedious for him; no historical fact apparently too insignificant or obscure for him to verify. He was never weary of reading books dealing with the periods in which the action of his stories takes place.

Costume, dialect, scenery, were all thoroughly studied, and when himself distant from the scenes of his tales, he is to be found constantly writing from Vailima to friends in London or in Edinburgh for the books and the information he required. In the period between 1745 and 1816, in which the plots ofKidnapped,Catriona,The Master of Ballantrae,Weir of Hermiston, andSt Ivesare laid, he is especially at home, and old record rolls, books on manners and on costume, are all laboriously studied to give to his stories that accuracy and truth to life which he considered to be absolutely necessary. To such good effect did he study volumes of old Parliament House trials, that the dress of Alan Breck, inKidnapped, is literally transcribed from that of a prisoner of Alan's period, whose trial he had perused.

Nor did his conscientiousness stop here; he wrote and re-wrote everything, sometimes as often as five times, and no page ever left his hands which had not been elaborately pruned and polished. No wonder, therefore, that his work was welcome to his publishers, and that he was never among the complaining authors who think themselves underpaid and unappreciated by the firms with whom they deal.

He gave of his best, good honest hard work, and he received in return not only money but regard and consideration; and his own verdict was that it was difficultto choose among his publishers which should have a new book, for all of them were so good to him. A pleasant state of matters that goes far to prove that, where work is conscientious and author and publisher honourable and sensible, there need be little or no friction between them. In this, as in the care which he bestowed on his work, the long and earnest apprenticeship he served to the profession of letters, he sets an example to his fellow-authors quite as impressive as that which he showed to his fellow-men in the patience with which he bore his heavy burden of bad health, and the courage with which he rose above his sufferings and looked the world in the face smiling.

In an age when a realism so strong as to be unpleasant has tinged too much of latter-day fiction Mr Stevenson stood altogether apart from the school of the realists. His nature, fresh and boyish to the end, troubled itself not at all with social questions, so he dipped his pen into the wells of old romance and painted for us characters so alive with strength and with humour that they live with us as friends and comrades when the creations of the problem novelists have died out of our memories with the problems they propound and worry over.

His books are bright, breezy, cheerful, rich in idealism, full of chivalry, and they have in them a glamour of genius, a power of imagination, and a spirit of purity, which makes them peculiarly valuable in an age when these things are too often conspicuous by their absence from the novel of the day.

His essays are full of a quaint, delightful humour, his verses have a dainty charm, and in his tales he has givenus a little picture gallery of characters and landscapes which have a fascination all their own. Like Sir Walter Scott he had to contend with the disadvantages of a delicate childhood which interfered with settled work; and yet, in both cases, one is tempted to think that that enforced early leisure was of far more ultimate benefit to the life-work than years of dutiful attendance at school and college. Like Sir Walter Scott, also, he has drawn much of his inspiration from 'Caledonia, stern and wild'; and none of her literary sons, save Burns and 'The Wizard of the North' himself, has Caledonia loved so well or mourned so deeply.

Cosmopolite in culture, in breadth of view, in openness of mind, Mr Stevenson was yet before all things a Scotsman, and one to whom Scotland and his native Edinburgh were peculiarly dear. Condemned by his delicate and uncertain health to make his dwelling-place far from the grey skies and the biting east winds of his boyhood's home, these grey Scotch skies, these bitter winds, still haunt him and appear in his books with the strange charm they have for the sons and daughters of the north who, even while they revile them, love them, and in far lands long for them with a heart-hunger that no cloudless sky, no gentle zephyr, no unshadowed sunshine of the alien shore can appease.[6]

In all his wanderings his heart turned fondly to the old home, to the noble profession of his fathers, and on smiling seas and amid sunny islands he never forgot the bleak coasts of Scotland, that his ancestors' hands had lighted from headland to headland, and his heart

'In dreams (beheld) the Hebrides.'

A Scot of whom Edinburgh and Scotland are justly proud, he was a man whose life and faith did credit to the stern religion and the old traditions of his covenanting forefathers, and although, like so many men and women of earnest minds and broad culture in the present day, he early left behind him much of the narrowness of churches and of creeds, he held closely to 'the one thing needful,' a humble and a trusting belief in God that filled all his soul with strength and patience, and gave to him that marvellous sympathy with humanity which made him a power among men, whether they were the learned and the cultured, or simple children of nature like the Samoans, who so truly understood and loved him.

The books undoubtedly are great, but the man is greater; and it is not only as a writer of no small renown that he will be revered and remembered but as a man among men whose patience and courage gave to his too short life a pathos and a value. Among his friends he was beloved in a manner quite unique, he had a peculiar place of his own in their regard. By the younger school of writers, whose work he so fully and so generously appreciated, he was regarded as a master; and one of the pleasures to be enjoyed on the publication of thatLife, which Mr Sydney Colvin presently has in preparation, will be to learn more about his agreeable relations with his literary juniors.

Of his sacred home life no outsider can speak; but it is the truest test of perfect manhood when the man who is not unknown in the great world shows himself at his best in the smaller world of home, and has a brighter and a sweeter side of his nature to display to wife and mother and close fireside circle than he has to his admiring public. Mr Stevenson never despised the trivial things of life, and the everyday courtesies, the little unselfishnesses—which are often so much more difficult to practise than the great virtues—were never forgotten all through the years in which so much of pain and of weariness might have made occasional repining, occasional forgetfulness of others, almost pardonable.

Eager in his own work, untiring in his literary activity, he was equally eager to toil in the great vineyard, to do something for God and for man, to make his faith active and not passive. This was his attitude through life; he would always have 'tholed his paiks' that the poor might 'enjoy their play,' the imprisoned go free; and the position which he took up in regard to Samoan troubles was a practical proof that he was, as he called himself, 'a ready soldier,' willing to spend and be spent for others. Of one whose position was that of 'the ready soldier,' no more fitting concluding words can be said than those in his mother's note-book, and written to her by the wife of the Rev. Mr Clark, his Samoan friend, in November 1895:—

... 'So few knew your dear son's best side—hisChristian character. Of course, men don't write often on that subject, and to many he was the author, and they only knew him as such. To me his lovely character was one of the wonderful things, so full of love and the desire to do good. I love to think of him.' ...

That the man and his work are appreciated is amply proved by the monument already erected to his memory in San Francisco by the zeal of the American Committee, and by the enthusiastic meeting in his own Edinburgh, presided over by Lord Rosebery, in the autumn of 1896, at which Mr J. M. Barrie made an interesting and an appreciative speech; and by the equally enthusiastic gathering in Dundee in the spring of 1897.

At these meetings it was proposed to receive subscriptions, and to erect a Stevenson memorial in some form to be afterwards decided on. The suggestion was largely responded to, but it is probable the response would have been even more cordial had it been determined that the memorial should take a practical rather than an ornamental form. Monuments are cold things whereby to perpetuate love and admiration; an 'arbour of Corinthian columns,' which one paper recently suggested, would have appealed to Mr Stevenson himself only as an atrocity in stone. His sole sympathy with stone was when it served the noble purpose to which his father had put it, and, as lighthouse or harbour, contributed to the service of man. If the memorial might have been too costly in the form of a small shore-light, a lifeboat seemed a thing that would have been dear to his own heart. And as, in years to come, men read of rescues by theRobert Louis Stevenson, on some wreck-strewn, rock-bound corner of our coasts, thememory of the man who loved the sea, and of the race who toiled to save life in its storms, would have been handed down to future generations in a fitting fashion.

The memorial is to take the form of a mural monument with a medallion portrait of his head in high relief. It is to be placed in the Moray Aisle of St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh, which it is thought might be a suitable 'Poets' Corner' for Scotland. If there is sufficient money, and if the necessary permission is obtained, a stone seat may also be erected on the Calton Hill at the point from which Mr Stevenson so greatly admired the view. The medallion is to be entrusted to Mr A. Saint Gaudens, an American sculptor of repute, who studied in France, and who had the great advantage of personally knowing Mr Stevenson in America in 1887 and 1888, and at that time getting him to sit for a medallion, which is considered by his widow and family to be the best likeness of him that they have seen. It is satisfactory that at last someone has been found who can do justice to the quaint, mobile face, and give to the memorial some of the living charm of the man. It is also pleasant to know that Mrs Stevenson and her family have expressed themselves perfectly satisfied with the choice of a sculptor.

The San Francisco monument is in the form of a sixteenth century ship, of thirty guns, careening to the west, with golden sails full spread, and with a figure of Pallas, looking towards the setting sun, in its prow. The ship is about five feet high, and behind it, on a simple granite plinth, is engraved the famous passage from his Christmas sermon:—'To be honest, to be kind; to earna little, to spend a little less; to keep a few friends, and these without capitulations.'

On one surface of the plinth is a spigot and a cup, and underneath a drip-stone, where thirsty dogs can drink. The drinking place is assuredly a part of the monument that would have commended itself to the man who loved his canine friends and all other animals so truly.

Even if a monument has about it something of the commonplace, it is well that the memory of the man and of his work should be perpetuated; but of all memorials of him, the Samoan 'Road of Gratitude' is likely to be for ever remembered as the most suitable and the most perfect.

FOOTNOTE:[6]It is on record that Mr Stevenson, who always talked to a compatriot when he could, was,à proposof his home in Samoa, told by a sailor with whom he was having a chat, that he 'would rather gang hame an' be hanged in auld Scotland than come an' live in this —— hole.' No doubt, Mr Stevenson appreciated the sturdy mariner's patriotism, although it was expressed in language more forcible than polite!

[6]It is on record that Mr Stevenson, who always talked to a compatriot when he could, was,à proposof his home in Samoa, told by a sailor with whom he was having a chat, that he 'would rather gang hame an' be hanged in auld Scotland than come an' live in this —— hole.' No doubt, Mr Stevenson appreciated the sturdy mariner's patriotism, although it was expressed in language more forcible than polite!

endplate

Back to Index Next