CHAPTER XXVII—MR G. MOORE, MR MARRIOTT WATSON AND OTHERS

From our point of view it will therefore be seen that we could not have read Mr George Moore's wonderfully uncritical and misdirected diatribe against Stevenson in The Daily Chronicle of 24th April 1897, without amusement, if not without laughter—indeed, we confess we may here quote Shakespeare's words, we "laughed so consumedly" that, unless for Mr Moore's high position and his assured self-confidence, we should not trust ourselves to refer to it, not to speak of writing about it. It was a review of The Secret Rose by W. B. Yeats, but it passed after one single touch to belittling abuse of Stevenson—an abuse that was justified the more, in Mr Moore's idea, because Stevenson was dead. Had he been alive he might have had something to say to it, in the way, at least, of fable and moral. And when towards the close Mr Moore again quotes from Mr Yeats, it is still "harping on my daughter" to undo Stevenson, as though a rat was behind the arras, as in Hamlet. "Stevenson," says he, "is the leader of these countless writers who perceive nothing but the visible world," and these are antagonistic to the great literature, of which Mr Yeats's Secret Rose is a survival or a renaissance, a literature whose watchword should be Mr Yeats's significant phrase, "When one looks into the darkness there is always something there." No doubt Mr Yeats's product all along the line ranks with the great literature—unlike Homer, according to Mr Moore, he never nods, though in the light of great literature, poor Stevenson is always at his noddings, and more than that, in the words of Leland's Hans Breitmann, he has "nodings on." He is poor, naked, miserable—a mere pretender—and has no share in the makings of great literature. Mr Moore has stripped him to the skin, and leaves him to the mercy of rain and storm, like Lear, though Lear had a solid ground to go on in self-aid, which Stevenson had not; he had daughters, and one of them was Cordelia, after all. This comes of painting all boldly in black and white: Mr Yeats is white, R. L. Stevenson is black, and I am sure neither one nor other, because simply of their self-devotion to their art, could have subscribed heartily to Mr Moore's black art and white art theory. Mr Yeats is hardly the truest modern Celtic artist I take him for, if he can fully subscribe to all this.

Mr Marriott Watson has a little unadvisedly, in my view, too like ambition, fallen on 'tother side, and celebrated Stevenson as the master of the horrifying. {11} He even finds the Ebb-Tide, and Huish, the cockney, in it richly illustrative and grand. "There never was a more magnificent cad in literature, and never a more foul-hearted little ruffian. His picture glitters (!) with life, and when he curls up on the island beach with the bullet in his body, amid the flames of the vitriol he had intended for another, the reader's shudder conveys something also, even (!) of regret."

And well it may! Individual taste and opinion are but individual taste and opinion, but the Ebb-Tide and the cockney I should be inclined to cite as a specimen of Stevenson's all too facile make-believe, in which there is too definite a machinery set agoing for horrors for the horrors to be quite genuine. The process is often too forced with Stevenson, and the incidents too much of the manufactured order, for the triumph of that simplicity which is of inspiration and unassailable. Here Stevenson, alas! all too often, pace Mr Marriott Watson, treads on the skirts of E. A. Poe, and that in his least composed and elevated artistic moments. And though, it is true, that "genius will not follow rules laid down by desultory critics," yet when it is averred that "this piece of work fulfils Aristotle's definition of true tragedy, in accomplishing upon the reader a certain purification of the emotions by means of terror and pity," expectations will be raised in many of the new generation, doomed in the cases of the more sensitive and discerning, at all events, not to be gratified. There is a distinction, very bold and very essential, between melodrama, however carefully worked and staged, and that tragedy to which Aristotle was there referring. Stevenson's "horrifying," to my mind, too often touches the trying borders of melodrama, and nowhere more so than in the very forced and unequal Ebb-Tide, which, with its rather doubtful moral and forced incident when it is good, seems merely to borrow from what had gone before, if not a very little even from some of what came after. No service is done to an author like Stevenson by fatefully praising him for precisely the wrong thing.

"Romance attracted Stevenson, at least during the earlier part of his life, as a lodestone attracts the magnet. To romance he brought the highest gifts, and he has left us not only essays of delicate humour" (should this not be "essays full of" or "characterised by"?) "and sensitive imagination, but stories also which thrill with the realities of life, which are faithful pictures of the times and tempers he dealt with, and which, I firmly believe, will live so" (should it not be "as"?) "long as our noble English language."

Mr Marriott Watson sees very clearly in some things; but occasionally he misses the point. The problem is here raised how two honest, far-seeing critics could see so very differently on so simple a subject.

Mr Baildon says about the Ebb-Tide:

"I can compare his next book, the Ebb-Tide (in collaboration with Osbourne) to little better than a mud-bath, for we find ourselves, as it were, unrelieved by dredging among the scum and dregs of humanity, the 'white trash' of the Pacific. Here we have Stevenson's masterly but utterly revolting incarnation of the lowest, vilest, vulgarest villainy in the cockney, Huish. Stevenson's other villains shock us by their cruel and wicked conduct; but there is a kind of fallen satanic glory about them, some shining threads of possible virtue. They might have been good, even great in goodness, but for the malady of not wanting. But Huish is a creature hatched in slime, his soul has no true humanity: it is squat and toad-like, and can only spit venom. . . . He himself felt a sort of revulsive after-sickness for the story, and calls it in one passage of his Vailima Letters 'the ever-to-be-execrated Ebb-Tide' (pp. 178 and 184). . . . He repented of it like a debauch, and, as with some men after a debauch, felt cleared and strengthened instead of wrecked. So, after what in one sense was his lowest plunge, Stevenson rose to the greatest height. That is the tribute to his virtue and strength indeed, but it does not change the character of the Ebb-Tide as 'the ever-to-be-execrated.'"

Mr Baildon truly says (p. 49):

"The curious point is that Stevenson's own great fault, that tendency to what has been called the 'Twopence-coloured' style, is always at its worst in books over which he collaborated."

"Verax," in one of his "Occasional Papers" in the Daily News on "The Average Reader" has this passage:

"We should not object to a writer who could repeat Barrie in A Window in Thrums, nor to one who would paint a scene as Louis Stevenson paints Attwater alone on his South Sea island, the approach of the pirates to the harbour, and their subsequent reception and fate. All these are surely specimens of brilliant writing, and they are brilliant because, in the first place, they give truth. The events described must, in the supposed circumstances, and with the given characters, have happened in the way stated. Only in none of the specimens have we a mere photograph of the outside of what took place. We have great pictures by genius of the—to the prosaic eye—invisible realities, as well as of the outward form of the actions. We behold and are made to feel the solemnity, the wildness, the pathos, the earnestness, the agony, the pity, the moral squalor, the grotesque fun, the delicate and minute beauty, the natural loveliness and loneliness, the quiet desperate bravery, or whatever else any of these wonderful pictures disclose to our view. Had we been lookers-on, we, the average readers, could not have seen these qualities for ourselves. But they are there, and genius enables us to see them. Genius makes truth shine.

"Is it not, therefore, probable that the brilliancy which we average readers do not want, and only laugh at when we get it, is something altogether different? I think I know what it is. It is an attempt to describe with words without thoughts, an effort to make readers see something the writer has never seen himself in his mind's eye. He has no revelation, no vision, nothing to disclose, and to produce an impression uses words, words, words, makes daub, daub, daub, without any definite purpose, and certainly without any real, or artistic, or definite effect. To describe, one must first of all see, and if we see anything the description of it will, as far as it is in us, come as effortless and natural as the leaves on trees, or as 'the tender greening of April meadows.' I, therefore, more than suspect that the brilliancy which the average reader laughs at is not brilliancy. A pot of flaming red paint thrown at a canvas does not make a picture."

Now there is vision for outward picture or separate incident, which may exist quite apart from what may be called moral, spiritual, or even loftily imaginative conception, at once commanding unity and commanding it. There can be no doubt of Stevenson's power in the former line—the earliest as the latest of his works are witnesses to it. The Master of Ballantrae abounds in picture and incident and dramatic situations and touches; but it lacks true unity, and the reason simply is given by Stevenson himself—that the "ending shames, perhaps degrades, the beginning," as it is in the Ebb-Tide, with the cockney Huish, "execrable." "We have great pictures by genius of the—to the prosaic eye—invisible realities, as well as the outward form of the action." True, but the "invisible realities" form that from which true unity is derived, else their partial presence but makes the whole the more incomplete and lop-sided, if not indeed, top-heavy, from light weight beneath; and it is in the unity derived from this higher pervading, yet not too assertive "invisible reality," that Stevenson most often fails, and is, in his own words, "execrable"; the ending shaming, if not degrading, the beginning—"and without the true sense of pleasurableness; and therefore really imperfect in essence." Ah, it is to be feared that Stevenson, viewing it in retrospect, was a far truer critic of his own work, than many or most of his all too effusive and admiring critics—from Lord Rosebery to Mr Marriott Watson.

Amid the too extreme deliverances of detractors and especially of erewhile friends, become detractors or panegyrists, who disturb judgment by overzeal, which is often but half-blindness, it is pleasant to come on one who bears the balances in his hand, and will report faithfully as he has seen and felt, neither more nor less than what he holds is true. Mr Andrew Lang wrote an article in the Morning Post of 16th December 1901, under the title "Literary Quarrels," in which, as I think, he fulfilled his part in midst of the talk about Mr Henley's regrettable attack on Stevenson.

"Without defending the character of a friend whom even now I almost daily miss, as that character was displayed in circumstances unknown to me, I think that I ought to speak of him as I found him. Perhaps our sympathy was mainly intellectual. Constantly do those who knew him desire to turn to him, to communicate with him, to share with him the pleasure of some idea, some little discovery about men or things in which he would have taken pleasure, increasing our own by the gaiety of his enjoyment, the brilliance of his appreciation. We may say, as Scott said at the grave of John Ballantyne, that he has taken with him half the sunlight out of our lives. That he was sympathetic and interested in the work of others (which I understand has been denied) I have reason to know. His work and mine lay far apart: mine, I think, we never discussed, I did not expect it to interest him. But in a fragmentary manuscript of his after his death I found the unlooked for and touching evidence of his kindness. Again, he once wrote to me from Samoa about the work of a friend of mine whom he had never met. His remarks were ideally judicious, a model of serviceable criticism. I found him chivalrous as an honest boy; brave, with an indomitable gaiety of courage; on the point of honour, a Sydney or a Bayard (so he seemed to me); that he was open-handed I have reason to believe; he took life 'with a frolic welcome.' That he was self-conscious, and saw himself as it were, from without; that he was fond of attitude (like his own brave admirals) he himself knew well, and I doubt not that he would laugh at himself and his habit of 'playing at' things after the fashion of childhood. Genius is the survival into maturity of the inspiration of childhood, and Stevenson is not the only genius who has retained from childhood something more than its inspiration. Other examples readily occur to the memory—in one way Byron, in another Tennyson. None of us is perfect: I do not want to erect an immaculate clay-cold image of a man, in marble or in sugar-candy. But I will say that I do not remember ever to have heard Mr Stevenson utter a word against any mortal, friend or foe. Even in a case where he had, or believed himself to have, received some wrong, his comment was merely humorous. Especially when very young, his dislike of respectability and of the bourgeois (a literary tradition) led him to show a kind of contempt for virtues which, though certainly respectable, are no less certainly virtuous. He was then more or less seduced by the Bohemian legend, but he was intolerant of the fudge about the rights and privileges of genius. A man's first business, he thought, was 'keep his end up' by his work. If, what he reckoned his inspired work would not serve, then by something else. Of many virtues he was an ensample and an inspiring force. One foible I admit: the tendency to inopportune benevolence. Mr Graham Balfour says that if he fell into ill terms with a man he would try to do him good by stealth. Though he had seen much of the world and of men, this practice showed an invincible ignorance of mankind. It is improbable, on the doctrine of chances, that he was always in the wrong; and it is probable, as he was human, that he always thought himself in the right. But as the other party to the misunderstanding, being also human, would necessarily think himself in the right, such secret benefits would be, as Sophocles says, 'the gifts of foeman and unprofitable.' The secret would leak out, the benefits would be rejected, the misunderstanding would be embittered. This reminds me of an anecdote which is not given in Mr Graham Balfour's biography. As a little delicate, lonely boy in Edinburgh, Mr Stevenson read a book called Ministering Children. I have a faint recollection of this work concerning a small Lord and Lady Bountiful. Children, we know, like to 'play at' the events and characters they have read about, and the boy wanted to play at being a ministering child. He 'scanned his whole horizon' for somebody to play with, and thought he had found his playmate. From the window he observed street boys (in Scots 'keelies') enjoying themselves. But one child was out of the sports, a little lame fellow, the son of a baker. Here was a chance! After some misgivings Louis hardened his heart, put on his cap, walked out—a refined little figure—approached the object of his sympathy, and said, 'Will you let me play with you?' 'Go to hell!' said the democratic offspring of the baker. This lesson against doing good by stealth to persons of unknown or hostile disposition was, it seems, thrown away. Such endeavours are apt to be misconstrued."



CHAPTER XXVIII—UNEXPECTED COMBINATIONS

The complete artist should not be mystical-moralist any more than the man who "perceives only the visible world"—he should not engage himself with problems in the direct sense any more than he should blind himself to their effect upon others, whom he should study, and under certain conditions represent, though he should not commit himself to any form of zealot faith, yet should he not be, as Lord Tennyson puts it in the Palace of Art:

"As God holding no form of creed, But contemplating all,"

because his power lies in the broadness of his humanity touched to fine issues whenever there is the seal at once of truth, reality, and passion, and the tragedy bred of their contact and conflict.

All these things are to him real and clamant in the measure that they aid appeal to heart and emotion—in the measure that they may, in his hands, be made to tell for sympathy and general effect. He creates an atmosphere in which each and all may be seen the more effectively, but never seen alone or separate, but only in strict relation to each other that they may heighten the sense of some supreme controlling power in the destinies of men, which with the ancients was figured as Fate, and for which the moderns have hardly yet found an enduring and exhaustive name. Character revealed in reference to that, is the ideal and the aim of all high creative art. Stevenson's narrowness, allied to a quaint and occasionally just a wee pedantic finickiness, as we may call it—an over- elaborate, almost tricky play with mere words and phrases, was in so far alien to the very highest—he was too often like a man magnetised and moving at the dictates of some outside influence rather than according to his own freewill and as he would.

Action in creative literary art is a sine qua non; keeping all the characters and parts in unison, that a true denouement, determined by their own tendencies and temperaments, may appear; dialogue and all asides, if we may call them so, being supererogatory and weak really unless they aid this and are constantly contributory to it. Egotistical predeterminations, however artfully intruded, are, alien to the full result, the unity which is finally craved: Stevenson fails, when he does fail, distinctly from excess of egotistic regards; he is, as Henley has said, in the French sense, too personnel, and cannot escape from it. And though these personal regards are exceedingly interesting and indeed fascinating from the point of view of autobiographical study, they are, and cannot but be, a drawback on fiction or the disinterested revelation of life and reality. Instead, therefore, of "the visible world," as the only thing seen, Stevenson's defect is, that between it and him lies a cloud strictly self-projected, like breath on a mirror, which dims the lines of reality and confuses the character marks, in fact melting them into each other; and in his sympathetic regards, causing them all to become too much alike. Scott had more of the power of healthy self-withdrawal, creating more of a free atmosphere, in which his characters could freely move—though in this, it must be confessed, he failed far more with women than with men. The very defects poor Carlyle found in Scott, and for which he dealt so severely with him, as sounding no depth, are really the basis of his strength, precisely as the absence of them were the defects of Goethe, who invariably ran his characters finally into the mere moods of his own mind and the mould of his errant philosophy, so that they became merely erratic symbols without hold in the common sympathy. Whether Walverwandschaften, Wilhelm Meister, or Faust, it is still the same—the company before all is done are translated into misty shapes that he actually needs to label for our identification and for his own. Even Mr G. H. Lewes saw this and could not help declaring his own lack of interest in the latter parts of Goethe's greatest efforts. Stevenson, too, tends to run his characters into symbols—his moralist-fabulist determinations are too much for him—he would translate them into a kind of chessmen, moved or moving on a board. The essence of romance strictly is, that as the characters will not submit themselves to the check of reality, the romancer may consciously, if it suits him, touch them at any point with the magic wand of symbol, and if he finds a consistency in mere fanciful invention it is enough. Tieck's Phantasus and George MacDonald's Phantastes are ready instances illustrative of this. But it is very different with the story of real life, where there is a definite check in the common-sense and knowledge of the reader, and where the highest victory always lies in drawing from the reader the admission—"that is life—life exactly as I have seen and known it. Though I could never have put it so, still it only realises my own conception and observation. That is something lovingly remembered and re-presented, and this master makes me lovingly remember too, though 'twas his to represent and reproduce with such vigor, vividness and truth that he carried me with him, exactly as though I had been looking on real men and women playing their part or their game in the great world."

Mr Zangwill, in his own style, wrote:

"He seeks to combine the novel of character with the novel of adventure; to develop character through romantic action, and to bring out your hero at the end of the episode, not the fixed character he was at the beginning, as is the way of adventure books, but a modified creature. . . . It is his essays and his personality, rather than his novels, that will count with posterity. On the whole, a great provincial writer. Whether he has that inherent grip which makes a man's provinciality the very source of his strength . . . only the centuries can show.

The romanticist to the end pursued Stevenson—he could not, wholly or at once, shake off the bonds in which he had bound himself to his first love, and it was the romanticist crossed by the casuist, and the mystic—Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Markheim and Will of the Mill, insisted on his acknowledging them in his work up to the end. The modified creature at the end of Mr Zangwill was modified too directly by the egotistic element as well as through the romantic action, and this point missed the great defect was missed, and Mr Zangwill spoke only in generals.

M. Schwob, after having related how unreal a real sheep's heart looked when introduced on the end of Giovanni's dagger in a French performance of John Ford's Annabella and Giovanni, and how at the next performance the audience was duly thrilled when Annabella's bleeding heart, made of a bit of red flannel, was borne upon the stage, goes on to say significantly:

"Il me semble que les personnages de Stevenson ont justement cette espece de realisme irreal. La large figure luisante de Long John, la couleur bleme du crane de Thevenin Pensete s'attachent a la memoire de nos yeux en vertue de leur irrealite meme. Ce sont des fantomes de la verite, hallucinants comme de vrais fantomes. Notez en passant que les traits de John Silver hallucinent Jim Hawkins, et que Francois Villon est hante par l'aspect de Thevenin Pensete."

Perhaps the most notable fact arising here, and one that well deserves celebration, is this, that Stevenson's development towards a broader and more natural creation was coincident with a definite return on the religious views which had so powerfully prevailed with his father—a circumstance which it is to be feared did not, any more than some other changes in him, at all commend itself to Mr Henley, though he had deliberately dubbed him even in the times of nursing nigh to the Old Bristo Port in Edinburgh—something of "Shorter Catechist." Anyway Miss Simpson deliberately wrote:

"Mr Henley takes exception to Stevenson's later phase in life—what he calls his 'Shorter Catechism phase.' It should be remembered that Mr Henley is not a Scotsman, and in some things has little sympathy with Scotch characteristics. Stevenson, in his Samoan days, harked back to the teaching of his youth; the tenets of the Shorter Catechism, which his mother and nurse had dinned into his head, were not forgotten. Mr Henley knew him best, as Stevenson says in the preface to Virginibus Puerisque dedicated to Henley, 'when he lived his life at twenty-five.' In these days he had [in some degree] forgotten about the Shorter Catechism, but the 'solemn pause' between Saturday and Monday came back in full force to R. L. Stevenson in Samoa."

Now to me that is a most suggestive and significant fact. It will be the business of future critics to show in how far such falling back would of necessity modify what Mr Baildon has set down as his corner-stone of morality, and how far it was bound to modify the atmosphere—the purely egotistic, hedonistic, and artistic atmosphere, in which, in his earlier life as a novelist, at all events, he had been, on the whole, for long whiles content to work.



CHAPTER XXIX—LOVE OF VAGABONDS

What is very remarkable in Stevenson is that a man who was so much the dreamer of dreams—the mystic moralist, the constant questioner and speculator on human destiny and human perversity, and the riddles that arise on the search for the threads of motive and incentives to human action—moreover, a man, who constantly suffered from one of the most trying and weakening forms of ill-health—should have been so full-blooded, as it were, so keen for contact with all forms of human life and character, what is called the rougher and coarser being by no means excluded. Not only this: he was himself a rover—seeking daily adventure and contact with men and women of alien habit and taste and liking. His patience is supported by his humour. He was a bit of a vagabond in the good sense of the word, and always going round in search of "honest men," like Diogenes, and with no tub to retire into or the desire for it. He thus on this side touches the Chaucers and their kindred, as well as the Spensers and Dantes and their often illusive confreres. His voyage as a steerage passenger across the Atlantic is only one out of a whole chapter of such episodes, and is more significant and characteristic even than the Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes or the Inland Voyage. These might be ranked with the "Sentimental Journeys" that have sometimes been the fashion—that was truly of a prosaic and risky order. The appeal thus made to an element deep in the English nature will do much to keep his memory green in the hearts that could not rise to appreciation of his style and literary gifts at all. He loves the roadways and the by-ways, and those to be met with there—like him in this, though unlike him in most else. The love of the roadsides and the greenwood—and the queer miscellany of life there unfolded and ever changing—a kind of gipsy-like longing for the tent and familiar contact with nature and rude human-nature in the open dates from beyond Chaucer, and remains and will have gratification—the longing for novelty and all the accidents, as it were, of pilgrimage and rude social travel. You see it bubble up, like a true and new nature-spring, through all the surface coatings of culture and artificiality, in Stevenson. He anew, without pretence, enlivens it—makes it first a part of himself, and then a part of literature once more. Listen to him, as he sincerely sings this passion for the pilgrimage—or the modern phase of it—innocent vagabond roving:

"Give to me the life I love, Let the lave go by me; Give the jolly heaven above, And the by-way nigh me: Bed in the bush, with stars to see; Bread I dip in the river— Here's the life for a man like me, Here's the life for ever. . . .

"Let the blow fall soon or late; Let what will be o'er me; Give the face of earth around And the road before me. Health I ask not, hope nor love, Nor a friend to know me: All I ask the heaven above, And the road below me."

True; this is put in the mouth of another, but Stevenson could not have so voiced it, had he not been the born rover that he was, with longing for the roadside, the high hills, and forests and newcomers and varied miscellaneous company. Here he does more directly speak in his own person and quite to the same effect:

"I will make you brooches and toys for your delight Of bird song at morning, and star shine at night, I will make a palace fit for you and me, Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.

"I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room, Where white flows the river, and bright blows the broom, And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white, In rainfall at morning and dew-fall at night.

"And this shall be for music when no one else is near, The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear! That only I remember, that only you admire, Of the broad road that stretches, and the roadside fire."

Here Stevenson, though original in his vein and way, but follows a great and gracious company in which Fielding and Sterne and so many others stand as pleasant proctors. Scott and Dickens have each in their way essayed it, and made much of it beyond what mere sentiment would have reached. Pickwick itself—and we must always regard Dickens as having himself gone already over every bit of road, described every nook and corner, and tried every resource—is a vagrant fellow, in a group of erratic and most quaint wanderers or pilgrims. This is but a return phase of it; Vincent Crummles and Mrs Crummles and the "Infant Phenomenon," yet another. The whole interest lies in the roadways, and the little inns, and the odd and unexpected rencontres with oddly-assorted fellows there experienced: glimpses of grim or grimy, or forbidding, or happy, smiling smirking vagrants, and out-at-elbows fellow- passengers and guests, with jests and quips and cranks, and hanky-panky even. On high roads and in inns, and alehouses, with travelling players, rogues and tramps, Dickens was quite at home; and what is yet more, he made us all quite at home with them: and he did it as Chaucer did it by thorough good spirits and "hail-fellow-well-met." And, with all his faults, he has this merit as well as some others, that he went willingly on pilgrimage always, and took others, promoting always love of comrades, fun, and humorous by-play. The latest great romancer, too, took his side: like Dickens, he was here full brother of Dan Chaucer, and followed him. How characteristic it is when he tells Mr Trigg that he preferred Samoa to Honolulu because it was more savage, and therefore yielded more fun.



CHAPTER XXX—LORD ROSEBERY'S CASE

Immediately on reading Lord Rosebery's address as Chairman of the meeting in Edinburgh to promote the erection of a monument to R. L. Stevenson, I wrote to him politely asking him whether, since he quoted a passage from a somewhat early essay by Stevenson naming the authors who had chiefly influenced him in point of style, his Lordship should not, merely in justice and for the sake of balance, have referred to Thoreau. I also remarked that Stevenson's later style sometimes showed too much self-conscious conflict of his various models in his mind while he was in the act of writing, and that this now and then imparted too much an air of artifice to his later compositions, and that those who knew most would be most troubled by it. Of that letter, I much regret now that I did not keep any copy; but I think I did incidentally refer to the friendship with which Stevenson had for so many years honoured me. This is a copy of the letter received in reply:

"38 BERKELEY SQUARE, W., 17th December 1896.

"DEAR SIR,—I am much obliged for your letter, and can only state that the name of Thoreau was not mentioned by Stevenson himself, and therefore I could not cite it in my quotation.

"With regard to the style of Stevenson's later works, I am inclined to agree with you.-Believe me, yours very faithfully,

ROSEBERY.

"Dr ALEXANDER H. JAPP."

This I at once replied to as follows:

"NATIONAL LIBERAL CLUB, WHITEHALL PLACE, S.W., 19th December 1896.

"MY LORD,—It is true R. L. Stevenson did not refer to Thoreau in the passage to which you allude, for the good reason that he could not, since he did not know Thoreau till after it was written; but if you will oblige me and be so good as to turn to p. xix. of Preface, By Way of Criticism, to Familiar Studies of Men and Books you will read:

"'Upon me this pure, narrow, sunnily-ascetic Thoreau had exercised a wondrous charm. I have scarce written ten sentences since I was introduced to him, but his influence might be somewhere detected by a close observer.'

"It is very detectable in many passages of nature-description and of reflection. I write, my Lord, merely that, in case opportunity should arise, you might notice this fact. I am sure R. L. Stevenson would have liked it recognised.—I remain, my Lord, always yours faithfully, etc.,

ALEXANDER H. JAPP."

{Manuscript letter by R.L.S.: p262.jpg}

In reply to this Lord Rosebery sent me only the most formal acknowledgment, not in the least encouraging me in any way to further aid him in the matter with regard to suggestions of any kind; so that I was helpless to press on his lordship the need for some corrections on other points which I would most willingly have tendered to him had he shown himself inclined or ready to receive them.

I might also have referred Lord Rosebery to the article in The British Weekly (1887), "Books that have Influenced Me," where, after having spoken of Shakespeare, the Vicomte de Bragelonne, Bunyan, Montaigne, Goethe, Martial, Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, and Wordsworth, he proceeds:

"I suppose, when I am done, I shall find that I have forgotten much that is influential, as I see already I have forgotten Thoreau."

I need but to add to what has been said already that, had Lord Rosebery written and told me the result of his references and encouraged me to such an exercise, I should by-and-by have been very pleased to point out to him that he blundered, proving himself no master in Burns' literature, precisely as Mr Henley blundered about Burns' ancestry, when he gives confirmation to the idea that Burns came of a race of peasants on both sides, and was himself nothing but a peasant.

When the opportunity came to correct such blunders, corrections which I had even implored him to make, Lord Rosebery (who by several London papers had been spoken of as "knowing more than all the experts about all his themes"), that is, when his volume was being prepared for press, did not act on my good advice given him "free, gratis, for nothing"; no; he contented himself with simply slicing out columns from the Times, or allowing another man to do so for him, and reprinting them literatim et verbatim, all imperfect and misleading, as they stood. Scripta manet alas! only too truly exemplified to his disadvantage. But with that note of mine in his hand, protesting against an ominous and fatal omission as regards the confessed influences that had operated on Stevenson, he goes on, or allows Mr Geake to go on, quite as though he had verified matters and found that I was wrong as regards the facts on which I based my appeal to him for recognition of Thoreau as having influenced Stevenson in style. Had he attended to correcting his serious errors about Stevenson, and some at least of those about Burns, thus adding, say, a dozen or twenty pages to his book wholly fresh and new and accurate, then the Times could not have got, even if it had sought, an injunction against his publishers and him; and there would have been no necessity that he should pad out other and later speeches by just a little whining over what was entirely due to his own disregard of good advice, his own neglect—his own fault—a neglect and a fault showing determination not to revise where revision in justice to his subject's own free and frank acknowledgments made it most essential and necessary.

Mr Justice North gave his decision against Lord Rosebery and his publishers, while the Lords of Appeal went in his favour; but the House of Lords reaffirmed the decision of Mr Justice North and granted a perpetual injunction against this book. The copyright in his speech is Lord Rosebery's, but the copyright in the Times' report is the Times'. You see one of the ideas underlying the law is that no manner of speech is quite perfect as the man speaks it, or is beyond revision, improvement, or extension, and, if there is but one verbatim report, as was the case of some of these speeches and addresses, then it is incumbent on the author, if he wishes to preserve his copyright, to revise and correct his speeches and addresses, so as to make them at least in details so far differ from the reported form. This thing ought Lord Rosebery to have done, on ethical and literary grounds, not to speak of legal and self-interested grounds; and I, for one, who from the first held exactly the view the House of Lords has affirmed, do confess that I have no sympathy for Lord Rosebery, since he had before him the suggestion and the materials for as substantial alterations and additions from my own hands, with as much more for other portions of his book, had he informed me of his appreciation, as would have saved him and his book from such a sadly ironical fate as has overtaken him and it.

From the whole business—since "free, gratis, for nothing," I offered him as good advice as any lawyer in the three kingdoms could have done for large payment, and since he never deemed it worth while, even to tell me the results of his reference to Familiar Studies, I here and now say deliberately that his conduct to me was scarcely so courteous and grateful and graceful as it might have been. How different—very different—the way in which the late R. L. Stevenson rewarded me for a literary service no whit greater or more essentially valuable to him than this service rendered to Lord Rosebery might have been to him.

This chapter would most probably not have been printed, had not Mr Coates re-issued the inadequate and most misleading paragraph about Mr Stevenson and style in his Lord Rosebery's Life and Speeches exactly as it was before, thus perpetuating at once the error and the wrong, in spite of all my trouble, warnings, and protests. It is a tragicomedy, if not a farce altogether, considering who are the principal actors in it. And let those who have copies of the queer prohibited book cherish them and thank me; for that I do by this give a new interest and value to it as a curiosity, law-inhibited, if not as high and conscientious literature—which it is not.

I remember very well about the time Lord Rosebery spoke on Burns, and Stevenson, and London, that certain London papers spoke of his deliverances as indicating more knowledge—fuller and exacter knowledge—of all these subjects than the greatest professed experts possessed. That is their extravagant and most reckless way, especially if the person spoken about is a "great politician" or a man of rank. They think they are safe with such superlatives applied to a brilliant and clever peer (with large estates and many interests), and an ex-Prime Minister! But literature is a republic, and it must here be said, though all unwillingly, that Lord Rosebery is but an amateur—a superficial though a clever amateur after all, and their extravagances do not change the fact. I declare him an amateur in Burns' literature and study because of what I have said elsewhere, and there are many points to add to that if need were. I have proved above from his own words that he was crassly and unpardonably ignorant of some of the most important points in R. L. Stevenson's development when he delivered that address in Edinburgh on Stevenson—a thing very, very pardonable—seeing that he is run after to do "speakings" of this sort; but to go on, in face of such warning and protest, printing his most misleading errors is not pardonable, and the legal recorded result is my justification and his condemnation, the more surely that even that would not awaken him so far as to cause him to restrain Mr Coates from reproducing in his Life and Speeches, just as it was originally, that peccant passage. I am fully ready to prove also that, though Chairman of the London County Council for a period, and though he made a very clever address at one of Sir W. Besant's lectures, there is much yet—very much—he might learn from Sir W. Besant's writings on London. It isn't so easy to outshine all the experts—even for a clever peer who has been Prime Minister, though it is very, very easy to flatter Lord Rosebery, with a purpose or purposes, as did at least once also with rarest tact, at Glasgow, indicating so many other things and possibilities, a certain very courtly ex-Moderator of the Church of Scotland.



CHAPTER XXXI—MR GOSSE AND MS. OF TREASURE ISLAND

Mr Edmund Gosse has been so good as to set down, with rather an air of too much authority, that both R. L. Stevenson and I deceived ourselves completely in the matter of my little share in the Treasure Island business, and that too much credit was sought by me or given to me, for the little service I rendered to R. L. Stevenson, and to the world, say, in helping to secure for it an element of pleasure through many generations. I have not sought any recognition from the world in this matter, and even the mention of it became so intolerable to me that I eschewed all writing about it, in the face of the most stupid and misleading statements, till Mr Sidney Colvin wrote and asked me to set down my account of the matter in my own words. This I did, as it would have been really rude to refuse a request so graciously made, and the reader has it in the Academy of 10th March 1900. Nevertheless, Mr Gosse's statements were revived and quoted, and the thing seemed ever to revolve again in a round of controversy.

Now, with regard to the reliability in this matter of Mr Edmund Gosse, let me copy here a little note made at request some time ago, dealing with two points. The first is this:

1. Most assuredly I carried away from Braemar in my portmanteau, as R. L. Stevenson says in Idler's article and in chapter of My First Book reprinted in Edinburgh Edition, several chapters of Treasure Island. On that point R. L. Stevenson, myself, and Mr James Henderson, to whom I took these, could not all be wrong and co-operating to mislead the public. These chapters, at least vii. or viii., as Mr Henderson remembers, would include the first three, that is, finally revised versions for press. Mr Gosse could not then have heard R. L. Stevenson read from these final versions but from first draughts ONLY, and I am positively certain that with some of the later chapters R. L. Stevenson wrote them off-hand, and with great ease, and did not revise them to the extent of at all needing to re-write them, as I remember he was proud to tell me, being then fully in the vein, as he put it, and pleased to credit me with a share in this good result, and saying "my enthusiasm over it had set him up steep." There was then, in my idea, a necessity that Stevenson should fill up a gap by verbal summary to Mr Gosse (which Mr Gosse has forgotten), bringing the incident up to a further point than Mr Gosse now thinks. I am certain of my facts under this head; and as Mr Gosse clearly fancies he heard R. L. Stevenson read all from final versions and is mistaken—completely mistaken there—he may be just as wrong and the victim of error or bad memory elsewhere after the lapse of more than twenty years.

2. I gave the pencilled outline of incident and plot to Mr Henderson—a fact he distinctly remembers. This fact completely meets and disposes of Mr Robert Leighton's quite imaginative Billy Bo'sun notion, and is absolute as to R. L. Stevenson before he left Braemar on the 21st September 1881, or even before I left it on 26th August 1881, having clear in his mind the whole scheme of the work, though we know very well that the absolute re-writing out finally for press of the concluding part of the book was done at Davos. Mr Henderson has always made it the strictest rule in his editorship that the complete outline of the plot and incident of the latter part of a story must be supplied to him, if the whole story is not submitted to him in MS.; and the agreement, if I am not much mistaken, was entered into days before R. L. Stevenson left Braemar, and when he came up to London some short time after to go to Weybridge, the only arrangement then needed to be made was about the forwarding of proofs to him.

The publication of Treasure Island in Young Folks began on the 1st October 1881, No. 565 and ran on in the following order:

October 1, 1881. THE PROLOGUE

No. 565. I. The Old Sea Dog at the Admiral Benbow. II. Black Dog Appears and Disappears.

No. 566. Dated October 8, 1881. III. The Black Spot.

No. 567. Dated October 15, 1881. IV. The Sea Chart. V. The Last of the Blind Man. VI. The Captain's Papers.

No. 568. Dated October 22, 1881. THE STORY I. I go to Bristol. II. The Sea-Cook. Ill. Powder and Arms.

Now, as the numbers of Young Folks were printed about a fortnight in advance of the date they bear under the title, it is clear that not only must the contract have been executed days before the middle of September, but that a large proportion of the copy must have been in Mr Henderson's hands at that date too, as he must have been entirely satisfied that the story would go on and be finished in a definite time. On no other terms would he have begun the publication of it. He was not in the least likely to have accepted a story from a man who, though known as an essayist, had not yet published anything in the way of a long story, on the ground merely of three chapters of prologue. Mr Gosse left Braemar on 5th September, when he says nine chapters were written, and Mr Henderson had offered terms for the story before the last of these could have reached him. That is on seeing, say six chapters of prologue. But when Mr Gosse speaks about three chapters only written, does he mean three of the prologue or three of the story, in addition to prologue, or what does he mean? The facts are clear. I took away in my portmanteau a large portion of the MS., together with a very full outline of the rest of the story, so that Mr Stevenson was, despite Mr Gosse's cavillings, substantially right when he wrote in My First Book in the Idler, etc., that "when he (Dr Japp) left us he carried away the manuscript in his portmanteau." There was nothing of the nature of an abandonment of the story at any point, nor any difficulty whatever arose in this respect in regard to it.



CHAPTER XXXII—STEVENSON PORTRAITS

Of the portraits of Stevenson a word or two may be said. There is a very good early photograph of him, taken not very long before the date of my visit to him at Braemar in 1881, and is an admirable likeness—characteristic not only in expression, but in pose and attitude, for it fixes him in a favourite position of his; and is, at the same time, very easy and natural. The velvet jacket, as I have remarked, was then his habitual wear, and the thin fingers holding the constant cigarette an inseparable associate and accompaniment.

He acknowledged himself that he was a difficult subject to paint—not at all a good sitter—impatient and apt to rebel at posing and time spent in arrangement of details—a fact he has himself, as we shall see, set on record in his funny verses to Count Nerli, who painted as successful a portrait as any. The little miniature, full-length, by Mr J. S. Sarjent, A.R.A., which was painted at Bournemouth in 1885, is confessedly a mere sketch and much of a caricature: it is in America. Sir W. B. Richmond has an unfinished portrait, painted in 1885 or 1886—it has never passed out of the hands of the artist,—a photogravure from it is our frontispiece.

There is a medallion done by St Gauden's, representing Stevenson in bed propped up by pillows. It is thought to be a pretty good likeness, and it is now in Mr Sidney Colvin's possession. Others, drawings, etc., are not of much account.

And now we come to the Nerli portrait, of which so much has been written. Stevenson himself regarded it as the best portrait of him ever painted, and certainly it also is characteristic and effective, and though not what may be called a pleasant likeness, is probably a good representation of him in the later years of his life. Count Nerli actually undertook a voyage to Samoa in 1892, mainly with the idea of painting this portrait. He and Stevenson became great friends, as Stevenson naively tells in the verses we have already referred to, but even this did not quite overcome Stevenson's restlessness. He avenged himself by composing these verses as he sat:

Did ever mortal man hear tell o' sic a ticklin' ferlie As the comin' on to Apia here o' the painter Mr Nerli? He cam'; and, O, for o' human freen's o' a' he was the pearlie— The pearl o' a' the painter folk was surely Mr Nerli. He took a thraw to paint mysel'; he painted late and early; O wow! the many a yawn I've yawned i' the beard o' Mr Nerli. Whiles I wad sleep and whiles wad wake, an' whiles was mair than surly; I wondered sair as I sat there fornent the eyes o' Nerli. O will he paint me the way I want, as bonnie as a girlie? O will he paint me an ugly tyke?—and be d-d to Mr Nerli. But still an' on whichever it be, he is a canty kerlie, The Lord protect the back an' neck o' honest Mr Nerli.

Mr Hammerton gives this account of the Nerli portrait:

"The history of the Nerli portrait is peculiar. After being exhibited for some time in New Zealand it was bought, in the course of this year, by a lady who was travelling there, for a hundred guineas. She then offered it for that sum to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery; but the Trustees of the Board of Manufactures—that oddly named body to which is entrusted the fostering care of Art in Scotland, and, in consequence, the superintendence of the National Portrait Gallery—did not see their way to accept the offer. Some surprise has been expressed at the action of the Trustees in thus declining to avail themselves of the opportunity of obtaining the portrait of one of the most distinguished Scotsmen of recent times. It can hardly have been for want of money, for though the funds at their disposal for the purchase of ordinary works of art are but limited, no longer ago than last year they were the recipients of a very handsome legacy from the late Mr J. M. Gray, the accomplished and much lamented Curator of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery—a legacy left them for the express purpose of acquiring portraits of distinguished Scotsmen, and the income of which was amply sufficient to have enabled them to purchase this portrait. One is therefore almost shut up to the conclusion that the Trustees were influenced in their decision by one of the two following reasons:

"1. That they did not consider Stevenson worthy of a place in the gallery. This is a position so incomprehensible and so utterly opposed to public sentiment that one can hardly credit it having been the cause of this refusal. Whatever may be the place which Stevenson may ultimately take as an author, and however opinions may differ as to the merits of his work, no one can deny that he was one of the most popular writers of his day, and that as a mere master of style, if for nothing else, his works will be read so long as there are students of English Literature. Surely the portrait of one for whom such a claim may legitimately be made cannot be considered altogether unworthy of a place in the National Collection, as one of Scotland's most distinguished sons.

"2. The only other reason which can be suggested as having weighed with the Trustees in their decision is one which in some cases might be held to be worthy of consideration. It is conceivable that in the case of some men the Trustees might be of opinion that there was plenty of time to consider the matter, and that in the meantime there was always the chance of some generous donor presenting them with a portrait. But, as has been shown above, the portraits of Stevenson are practically confined to two: one of these is in America, and there is not the least chance of its ever coming here; and the other they have refused. And, as it is understood that the Trustees have a rule that they do not accept any portrait which has not been painted from the life, they preclude themselves from acquiring a copy of any existing picture or even a portrait done from memory.

"It is rumoured that the Nerli portrait may ultimately find a resting- place in the National Collection of Portraits in London. If this should prove to be the case, what a commentary on the old saying: 'A prophet is not without honour save in his own country.'"



CHAPTER XXXIII—LAPSES AND ERRORS IN CRITICISM

Nothing could perhaps be more wearisome than to travel o'er the wide sandy area of Stevenson criticism and commentary, and expose the many and sad and grotesque errors that meet one there. Mr Baildon's slip is innocent, compared with many when he says (p. 106) Treasure Island appeared in Young Folks as The Sea-Cook. It did nothing of the kind; it is on plain record in print, even in the pages of the Edinburgh Edition, that Mr James Henderson would not have the title The Sea-Cook, as he did not like it, and insisted on its being Treasure Island. To him, therefore, the vastly better title is due. Mr Henley was in doubt if Mr Henderson was still alive when he wrote the brilliant and elevated article on "Some Novels" in the North American, and as a certain dark bird killed Cock Robin, so he killed off Dr Japp, and not to be outdone, got in an ideal "Colonel" Jack; so Mr Baildon there follows Henley, unaware that Mr Henderson did not like The Sea-Cook, and was still alive, and that a certain Jack in the fatal North American has Japp's credit.

Mr Baildon's words are:

"This was the famous book of adventure, Treasure Island, appearing first as The Sea-Cook in a boy's paper, where it made no great stir. But, on its publication in volume form, with the vastly better title, the book at once 'boomed,' as the phrase goes, to an extent then, in 1882, almost unprecedented. The secret of its immense success may almost be expressed in a phrase by saying that it is a book like Gulliver's Travels, The Pilgrim's Progress, and Robinson Crusoe itself for all ages—boys, men, and women."

Which just shows how far lapse as to a fact may lead to critical misreadings also.

Mr Hammerton sometimes lets good folks say in his pages, without correction, what is certainly not correct. Thus at one place we are told that Stevenson was only known as Louis in print, whereas that was the only name by which he was known in his own family. Then Mr Gosse, at p. 34, is allowed to write:

"Professor Blackie was among them on the steamer from the Hebrides, a famous figure that calls for no description, and a voluble shaggy man, clad in homespun, with spectacles forward upon his nose, who it was whispered to us, was Mr Sam Bough, the Scottish Academician, a water- colour painter of some repute, who was to die in 1878."

Mr Sam Bough was "a water-colour painter of some repute," but a painter in oils of yet greater repute—a man of rare strength, resource, and facility—never, perhaps, wholly escaping from some traces of his early experiences in scene-painting, but a true genius in his art. Ah, well I remember him, though an older man, yet youthful in the band of young Scotch artists among whom as a youngster I was privileged to move in Edinburgh—Pettie, Chalmers, M'Whirter, Peter Graham, MacTaggart, MacDonald, John Burr, and Bough. Bough could be voluble on art; and many a talk I had with him as with the others named, especially with John Burr. Bough and he both could talk as well as paint, and talk right well. Bough had a slight cast in the eye; when he got a wee excited on his subject he would come close to you with head shaking, and spectacles displaced, and forelock wagging, and the cast would seem to die away. Was this a fact, or was it an illusion on my part? I have often asked myself that question, and now I ask it of others. Can any of my good friends in Edinburgh say; can Mr Caw help me here, either to confirm or to correct me? I venture to insert here an anecdote, with which my friend of old days, Mr Wm. MacTaggart, R.S.A., in a letter kindly favours me:

"Sam Bough was a very sociable man; and, when on a sketching tour, liked to have a young artist or two with him. Jack Nisbett played the violin, and Sam the 'cello, etc. Jack was fond of telling that Sam used to let them all choose the best views, and then he would take what was left; and Jack, with mild astonishment, would say, that 'it generally turned out to be the best—on the canvas!'"

In Mr Hammerton's copy of the verses in reply to Mr Crockett's dedication of The Stickit Minister to Stevenson, in which occurred the fine phrase "The grey Galloway lands, where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying, his heart remembers how":

"Blows the wind to-day and the sun and the rain are flying: Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now, Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying, My heart remembers how.

"Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places, Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor, Hills of sheep, and the homes of the silent vanished races, And winds austere and pure.

"Be it granted me to behold you again in dying, Hills of home! and to hear again the call— Hear about the graves of the martyrs the pee-weet crying, And hear no more at all."

Mr Hammerton prints howes instead of homes, which I have italicised above. And I may note, though it does not affect the poetry, if it does a little affect the natural history, that the pee-weets and the whaups are not the same—the one is the curlew, and the other is the lapwing—the one most frequenting wild, heathery or peaty moorland, and the other pasture or even ploughed land—so that it is a great pity for unity and simplicity alike that Stevenson did not repeat the "whaup," but wrote rather as though pee-weet or pee-weets were the same as whaups—the common call of the one is Ker-lee, ker-lee, and of the other pee- weet, pee-weet, hence its common name.

It is a pity, too, that Mr Hammerton has no records of some portions of the life at Davos Platz. Not only was Stevenson ill there in April 1892, but his wife collapsed, and the tender concern for her made havoc with some details of his literary work. It is good to know this. Such errata or omissions throw a finer light on his character than controlling perfection would do. Ah, I remember how my old friend W. B. Rands ("Matthew Browne" and "Henry Holbeach") was wont to declare that were men perfect they would be isolated, if not idiotic, that we are united to each other by our defects—that even physical beauty would be dead like later Greek statues, were these not departures from the perfect lines. The letter given by me at p. 28 transfigures in its light, some of his work at that time.

And then what an opportunity, we deeply regret to say, Mr Hammerton wholly missed, when he passed over without due explanation or commentary that most significant pamphlet—the Address to the Scottish Clergy. If Mr Hammerton had but duly and closely studied that and its bearings and suggestions in many directions, then he would have written such a chapter for true enlightenment and for interest as exactly his book—attractive though it is in much—yet specially lacks. It is to be hoped that Mr Sidney Colvin will not once more miss the chance which is thus still left open to him to perfect his Life of Stevenson, and make it more interpretive than anything yet published. If he does this, then, a dreadful lacuna in the Edinburgh Edition will also be supplied.

Carefully reading over again Mr Arthur Symons' Studies in Two Literatures—published some years ago—I have come across instances of apparent contradiction which, so far as I can see, he does not critically altogether reconcile, despite his ingenuity and great charm of style. One relates to Thoreau, who, while still "sturdy" as Emerson says, "and like an elm tree," as his sister Sophia says, showed exactly the same love of nature and power of interpreting her as he did after in his later comparatively short period of "invalidity," while Mr Symons says his view of Nature absolutely was that of the invalid, classing him unqualifiedly with Jefferies and Stevenson, as invalid. Thoreau's mark even in the short later period of "invalidity" was complete and robust independence and triumph over it—a thing which I have no doubt wholly captivated Stevenson, as scarce anything else would have done, as a victory in the exact role he himself was most ambitious to fill. For did not he too wrestle well with the "wolverine" he carried on his back—in this like Addington Symonds and Alexander Pope? Surely I cannot be wrong here to reinforce my statement by a passage from a letter written by Sophia Thoreau to her good friend Daniel Ricketson, after her brother's death, the more that R. L. Stevenson would have greatly exulted too in its cheery and invincible stoicism:

"Profound joy mingles with my grief. I feel as if something very beautiful had happened—not death; although Henry is with us no longer, yet the memory of his sweet and virtuous soul must ever cheer and comfort me. My heart is filled with praise to God for the gift of such a brother, and may I never distrust the love and wisdom of Him who made him and who has now called him to labour in more glorious fields than earth affords. You ask for some particulars relating to Henry's illness. I feel like saying that Henry was never affected, never reached by it. I never before saw such a manifestation of the power of spirit over matter. Very often I heard him tell his visitors that he enjoyed existence as well as ever. The thought of death, he said, did not trouble him. His thoughts had entertained him all his life and did still. . . . He considered occupation as necessary for the sick as for those in health, and accomplished a vast amount of labour in those last few months."

A rare "invalidity" this—a little confusing easy classifications. I think Stevenson would have felt and said that brother and sister were well worthy of each other; and that the sister was almost as grand and cheery a stoic, with no literary profession of it, as was the brother.

The other thing relates to Stevenson's human soul. I find Mr Symons says, at p. 243, that Stevenson "had something a trifle elfish and uncanny about him, as of a bewitched being who was not actually human—had not actually a human soul"—in which there may be a glimmer of truth viewed from his revelation of artistic curiosities in some aspects, but is hardly true of him otherwise; and this Mr Symons himself seems to have felt, when, at p. 246, he writes: "He is one of those writers who speak to us on easy terms, with whom we may exchange affections." How "affections" could be exchanged on easy terms between the normal human being and an elfish creature actually without a human soul (seeing that affections are, as Mr Matthew Arnold might have said, at least, three- fourths of soul) is more, I confess, than I can quite see at present; but in this rather maladroit contradiction Mr Symons does point at one phase of the problem of Stevenson—this, namely that to all the ordinary happy or pleasure-endings he opposes, as it were of set purpose, gloom, as though to certain things he was quite indifferent, and though, as we have seen, his actual life and practice were quite opposed to this.

I am sorry I cannot find the link in Mr Symons' essay, which would quite make these two statements consistently coincide critically. As an enthusiastic, though I hope still a discriminating, Stevensonian, I do wish Mr Symons would help us to it somehow hereafter. It would be well worth his doing, in my opinion.



CHAPTER XXXIV—LETTERS AND POEMS IN TESTIMONY

Among many letters received by me in acknowledgment of, or in commentary on, my little tributes to R. L. Stevenson, in various journals and magazines, I find the following, which I give here for reasons purely personal, and because my readers may with me, join in admiration of the fancy, grace and beauty of the poems. I must preface the first poem by a letter, which explains the genesis of the poem, and relates a striking and very touching incident:

"37 ST DONATT'S ROAD, LEWISHAM HIGH ROAD, S.E., 1st March 1895.

"DEAR SIR,—As you have written so much about your friend, the late Robert Louis Stevenson, and quoted many tributes to his genius from contemporary writers, I take the liberty of sending you herewith some verses of mine which appeared in The Weekly Sun of November last. I sent a copy of these verses to Samoa, but unfortunately the great novelist died before they reached it. I have, however, this week, received a little note from Mrs Strong, which runs as follows:

"'Your poem of "Greeting" came too late. I can only thank you by sending a little moss that I plucked from a tree overhanging his grave on Vaea Mountain.'

"I trust you will appreciate my motive in sending you the poem. I do not wish to obtrude my claims as a verse-writer upon your notice, but I thought the incident I have recited would be interesting to one who is so devoted a collector of Stevensoniana.—Respectfully yours,

F. J. COX."



GREETING

(TO ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, IN SAMOA)

We, pent in cities, prisoned in the mart, Can know you only as a man apart, But ever-present through your matchless art.

You have exchanged the old, familiar ways For isles, where, through the range of splendid days, Her treasure Nature lavishly displays.

There, by the gracious sweep of ampler seas, That swell responsive to the odorous breeze. You have the wine of Life, and we the lees!

You mark, perchance, within your island bowers, The slow departure of the languorous hours, And breathe the sweetness of the strange wild-flowers.

And everything your soul and sense delights— But in the solemn wonder of your nights, When Peace her message on the landscape writes;

When Ocean scarcely flecks her marge with foam— Your thoughts must sometimes from your island roam, To centre on the sober face of Home.

Though many a league of water rolls between The simple beauty of an English scene, From all these wilder charms your love may wean.

Some kindly sprite may bring you as a boon Sweets from the rose that crowns imperial June, Or reminiscence of the throstle's tune;

Yea, gladly grant you, with a generous hand, Far glimpses of the winding, wind-swept strand, The glens and mountains of your native land,

Until you hear the pipes upon the breeze— But wake unto the wild realities The tangled forests and the boundless seas!

For lo! the moonless night has passed away, A sudden dawn dispels the shadows grey, The glad sea moves and hails the quickening day.

New life within the arbours of your fief Awakes the blossom, quivers in the leaf, And splendour flames upon the coral reef.

If such a prospect stimulate your art, More than our meadows where the shadows dart, More than the life which throbs in London's heart,

Then stay, encircled by your Southern bowers, And weave, amid the incense of the flowers, The skein of fair romance—the gain is ours!

F. J. COX.

Weekly Sun, 11th November 1904.



R. L. S., IN MEMORIAM.

An elfin wight as e'er from faeryland Came to us straight with favour in his eyes, Of wondrous seed that led him to the prize Of fancy, with the magic rod in hand. Ah, there in faeryland we saw him stand, As for a while he walked with smiles and sighs, Amongst us, finding still the gem that buys Delight and joy at genius's command.

And now thy place is empty: fare thee well; Thou livest still in hearts that owe thee more Than gold can reckon; for thy richer store Is of the good that with us aye most dwell. Farewell; sleep sound on Vaea's windy shrine, While round the songsters join their song to thine.

A. C. R.



APPENDIX

The following appeared some time ago in one of the London evening papers, and I make bold, because of its truth and vigour, to insert it here:



THE LAND OF STEVENSON, ON AN AFTERNOON'S WALK

Will there be a "Land of Stevenson," as there is already a "Land of Burns," or a "Land of Scott," known to the tourist, bescribbled by the guide-book maker? This the future must tell. Yet will it be easy to mark out the bounds of "Robert Louis Stevenson's Country"; and, taking his native and well-loved city for a starting-point, a stout walker may visit all its principal sites in an afternoon. The house where he was born is within a bowshot of the Water of Leith; some five miles to the south are Caerketton and Allermuir, and other crests of the Pentlands, and below them Swanston Farm, where year after year, in his father's time, he spent the summer days basking on the hill slopes; two or three miles to the westward of Swanston is Colinton, where his mother's father, Dr Balfour, was minister; and here again you are back to the Water of Leith, which you can follow down to the New Town. In this triangular space Stevenson's memories and affections were firmly rooted; the fibres could not be withdrawn from the soil, and "the voice of the blood" and the longing for this little piece of earth make themselves plaintively heard in his last notes. By Lothian Road, after which Stevenson quaintly thought of naming the new edition of his works, and past Boroughmuirhead and the "Bore Stane," where James FitzJames set up his standard before Flodden, wends your southward way to the hills. The builder of suburban villas has pushed his handiwork far into the fields since Stevenson was wont to tramp between the city and the Pentlands; and you may look in vain for the flat stone whereon, as the marvelling child was told, there once rose a "crow-haunted gibbet." Three-quarters of an hour of easy walking, after you have cleared the last of the houses will bring you to Swanston; and half an hour more will take the stiff climber, a little breathless, to

THE TOP OF CAERKETTON CRAGS.

You may follow the high road—indeed there is a choice of two, drawn at different levels—athwart the western skirts of the Braid Hills, now tenanted, crown and sides of them, by golf; then to the crossroads of Fairmilehead, whence the road dips down, to rise again and circumvent the most easterly wing of the Pentlands. You would like to pursue this route, were it only to look down on Bow Bridge and recall how the last- century gauger used to put together his flute and play "Over the hills and far away" as a signal to his friend in the distillery below, now converted into a dairy farm, to stow away his barrels. Better it is, however, to climb the stile just past the poor-house gate, and follow the footpath along the smoothly scooped banks of the Braid Burn to "Cockmylane" and to Comiston. The wind has been busy all the morning spreading the snow over a glittering world. The drifts are piled shoulder-high in the lane as it approaches Comiston, and each old tree grouped around the historic mansion is outlined in snow so virgin pure that were the Ghost—"a lady in white, with the most beautiful clear shoes on her feet"—to step out through the back gate, she would be invisible, unless, indeed, she were between you and the ivy-draped dovecot wall. Near by, at the corner of the Dreghorn Woods, is the Hunters' Tryst, on the roof of which, when it was still a wayside inn, the Devil was wont to dance on windy nights. In the field through which you trudge knee-deep in drift rises the "Kay Stane," looking to-day like a tall monolith of whitest marble. Stevenson was mistaken when he said that it was from its top a neighbouring laird, on pain of losing his lands, had to "wind a blast of bugle horn" each time the King

VISITED HIS FOREST OF PENTLAND.

That honour belongs to another on the adjacent farm of Buckstane. The ancient monument carries you further back, and there are Celtic authorities that translate its name the "Stone of Victory." The "Pechtland Hills"—their elder name—were once a refuge for the Picts; and Caerketton—probably Caer-etin, the giant's strong-hold—is one of them. Darkly its cliffs frown down upon you, while all else is flashing white in the winter sunlight. For once, in this last buttress thrown out into the plain of Lothian towards the royal city, the outer folds of the Pentlands loses its boldly-rounded curves, and drops an almost sheer descent of black rock to the little glen below. In a wrinkle of the foothills Swanston farm and hamlet are snugly tucked away. The spirit that breathes about it in summer time is gently pastoral. It is sheltered from the rougher blasts; it is set about with trees and green hills. It was with this aspect of the place that Stevenson, coming hither on holiday, was best acquainted. The village green, whereon the windows of the neat white cottages turn a kindly gaze under low brows of thatch, is then a perfect place in which to rest, and, watching the smoke rising and listening to "the leaves ruffling in the breeze," to muse on men and things; especially on Sabbath mornings, when the ploughman or shepherd, "perplext wi' leisure," it is time to set forth on the three- mile walk along the hill-skirts to Colinton kirk. But Swanston in winter time must also

HAVE BEEN FAMILIAR TO STEVENSON.

Snow-wreathed Pentlands, the ribbed and furrowed front of Caerketton, the low sun striking athwart the sloping fields of white, the shadows creeping out from the hills, and the frosty yellow fog drawing in from the Firth—must often have flashed back on the thoughts of the exile of Samoa. Against this wintry background the white farmhouse, old and crow- stepped, looks dingy enough; the garden is heaped with the fantastic treasures of the snow; and when you toil heavily up the waterside to the clump of pines and beeches you find yourself in a fairy forest. One need not search to-day for the pool where the lynx-eyed John Todd, "the oldest herd on the Pentlands," watched from behind the low scrag of wood the stranger collie come furtively to wash away the tell-tale stains of lamb's blood. The effacing hand of the snow has smothered it over. Higher you mount, mid leg-deep in drift, up the steep and slippery hill- face, to the summit. Edinburgh has been creeping nearer since Stevenson's musing fancy began to draw on the memories of the climbs up "steep Caerketton." But this light gives it a mystic distance; and it is all glitter and shadow. Arthur Seat is like some great sea monster stranded near a city of dreams; from the fog-swathed Firth gleams the white walls of Inchkeith lighthouse, a mark never missed by Stevenson's father's son; above Fife rise the twin breasts of the Lomonds. Or turn round and look across the Esk valley to the Moorfoots; or more westerly, where the back range of the Pentlands—Caernethy, the Scald, and the knife-edged Kips—draw a sharp silhouette of Arctic peaks against the sky. In the cloven hollow between is Glencarse Loch, an ancient chapel and burying ground hidden under its waters; on the slope above it, not a couple miles away, is Rullion Green, where, as Stevenson told in The Pentland Rising (his first printed work)

THE WESTLAND WHIGS WERE SCATTERED

as chaff on the hills. Were "topmost Allermuir," that rises close beside you, removed from his place, we might see the gap in the range through which Tom Dalyell and his troopers spurred from Currie to the fray. The air on these heights is invigorating as wine; but it is also keen as a razor. Without delaying long yon plunge down to the "Windy Door Nick"; follow the "nameless trickle that springs from the green bosom of Allermuir," past the rock and pool, where, on summer evenings, the poet "loved to sit and make bad verses"; and cross Halkerside and the Shearers' Knowe, those "adjacent cantons on a single shoulder of a hill," sometimes floundering to the neck in the loose snow of a drain, sometimes scaring the sheep huddling in the wreaths, or putting up a covey of moorfowl that circle back without a cry to cover in the ling. In an hour you are at Colinton, whose dell has on one side the manse garden, where a bright-eyed boy, who was to become famous, spent so much of his time when he came thither on visits to his stern Presbyterian grandfather; on the other the old churchyard. The snow has drawn its cloak of ermine over the sleepers, it has run its fingers over the worn lettering; and records almost effaced start out from the stone. In vain these "voices of generations dead" summon their wandering child, though you might deem that his spirit would rest more quietly where the cold breeze from Pentland shakes the ghostly trees in Colinton Dell than "under the flailing fans and shadows of the palm."



Footnotes:

{1} Professor Charles Warren Stoddard, Professor of English Literature at the Catholic University of Washington, in Kate Field's Washington.

{2} In his portrait-sketch of his father, Stevenson speaks of him as a "man of somewhat antique strain, and with a blended sternness and softness that was wholly Scottish, and at first sight somewhat bewildering," as melancholy, and with a keen sense of his unworthiness, yet humorous in company; shrewd and childish; a capital adviser.

{3} Inferno, Canto XV.

{4} Alas, I never was told that remark—when I saw my friend afterwards there was always too much to talk of else, and I forgot to ask.

{5} Quoted by Hammerton, pp. 2 and 3.

{6} Tusitala, as the reader must know, is the Samoan for Teller of Tales.

{7} Wisdom of Goethe, p. 38.

{8} The Foreigner at Home, in Memories and Portraits.

{9} A great deal has been made of the "John Bull element" in De Quincey since his Memoir was written by me (see Masson's Condensation, p. 95); so now perhaps a little more may be made of the rather conceited Calvinistic Scot element in R. L. Stevenson!

{10} It was Mr George Moore who said this.

{11} Fortnightly Review, October, 1903.

THE END