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diff --git a/33428-h/33428-h.htm b/33428-h/33428-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..25c71e1 --- /dev/null +++ b/33428-h/33428-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2195 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Stevensoniana, by Various Authors. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + + p {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: .75em;} + + body {margin-left: 12%; margin-right: 12%;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right; font-style: normal;} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center; clear: both;} + + hr {width: 33%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; clear: both;} + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + .blockquot {margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .poem {margin-left:15%; margin-right:15%;} + .note {margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%;} + + .right {text-align: right;} + .center {text-align: center;} + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .bbox {border: solid 2px; color: gray; margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + a:link {color:#0000ff; text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:#6633cc; text-decoration:none} + + .spacer {padding-left: 1em; padding-right: 1em;} + + ins.correction {text-decoration:none; border-bottom: thin solid gray;} + + .bracket {font-size: 200%} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Stevensoniana, by Various + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Stevensoniana + Being a Reprint of Various Literary and Pictorial Miscellany + Associated with Robert Louis Stevenson, the Man and His Work + +Author: Various + +Release Date: August 14, 2010 [EBook #33428] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STEVENSONIANA *** + + + + +Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.png" alt="" /></div> + +<p> <a name="front" id="front"></a></p><p> </p> +<div class="bbox" style="width: 389px; height: 500px;"><img src="images/frontis.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><a name="tpage" id="tpage"></a> </p><p> </p> + +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/tpage.png" alt="" /></div> +<p class="center"><a href="#tpagetext"><small>Text of Image</small></a></p> +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center">Copyright<br />1900<br />M. F. Mansfield</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> +<h2><i>Contents</i></h2> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="contents"> +<tr><td>Biographical</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Scotland</span></td></tr> +<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">London</span></td></tr> +<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">The Riviera</span></td></tr> +<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">The Golden Gate</span></td></tr> +<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">The South Seas</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr><tr><td>Apparition</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_16">16</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr><tr><td>Stevenson’s First Book</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr><tr><td>Books Which Have Influenced Me </td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr><tr><td>A Stevenson Letter</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr><tr><td>A Justification</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr><tr><td>The Davos Platz Books</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr><tr><td>Stevenson’s Later Letters</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr><tr><td>A Stevenson Shrine</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr><tr><td>Stevenson and Hazlitt</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_55">55</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr><tr><td>On Beranger</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr><tr><td>Stevenson of the Letters</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_61">61</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr><tr><td>Apropos Vailima Letters</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr><tr><td>A Visit to Stevenson’s Pacific Isle </td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr><tr><td>A Pen Portrait</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr><tr><td>Appreciation and Homage</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr><tr><td>R. L. S. and Music</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_81">81</a></td></tr></table> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> +<h2><i>Illustrations</i></h2> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="illustrations"> +<tr><td>Frontispiece Portrait.</td><td> </td><td align="right"><a href="#front">From Etching by Hollyer</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td>Facsimile Title Page</td></tr> +<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Travels With a Donkey</span></td><td rowspan="2"><span class="bracket">}</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#donkey">17</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">An Inland Voyage</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#voyage">17</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td>Facsimile Title Page</td></tr> +<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Not I</span></td><td rowspan="2"><span class="bracket">}</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#canyon">40</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Black Canyon</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#canyon">40</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td>Facsimile Title Page</td></tr> +<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">A Pentland Rising</span></td><td> </td><td align="right"><a href="#rising">49</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td>Facsimile Title Page</td></tr> +<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">A New Form of Intermittent Light</span></td><td> </td><td align="right"><a href="#light">64</a></td></tr></table> + + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<h1><i>Stevensoniana</i></h1> +<p> </p> +<h2><i>By Way of Introduction</i></h2> + +<p>The early days of the literary career of Robert Louis Stevenson can hardly +be said to have been entirely devoid of recognition, though it would +appear doubtful if the world at large was willing to recognize his +abilities had it not been for his wonderful personality; with a soul and +an imagination far above those of his early associates he gradually drew +around him the respect and admiration of that larger world of letters, the +London coterie. The following biographical notes are to be considered then +as a mere resumé of the various chronological periods and stages of his +career as is shown by the many facts which have already become the common +property of the latter day reader, but which by reason of the scattered +source of supply and the extreme unlikelyhood of their being included in +any <ins class="correction" title="original: authoratitive">authoritative</ins> life or biography, makes them at once interesting and +valuable.</p> + +<p>As sponsor for the abilities of Robert Louis Stevenson, stands first and +foremost, the name of William Ernest Henley a belief which was latterly +endorsed by most literary critics from Gladstone to LeGallienne.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p> + +<p>Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born in Howard Place, Edinburgh, on the +13th of November, 1850. From his eighteenth year he seldom, if ever, +signed himself aught but Robert Louis Stevenson, omitting the name Balfour +therefrom. From birth he was of a slight and excitable nature and suffered +keenly from chronic and frequent illness. His recognized literary labors +may be said to have commenced at the immature age of six when, it is +recalled, he wrote, presumably for his own amusement and that of his +immediate family, “A History of Moses,” and some years later an account of +his “Travels in Perth.”</p> + +<p>In these early years there also took shape and form in his imagination +what was afterwards given forth to the world in the pages of “Treasure +Island.”</p> + +<p>At eight, Stevenson was at school, and at eleven entered the Academy of +his native city. Here he began his first real literary labors, publishing, +editing and even writing and illustrating the contents of a small school +periodical.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>Stevenson was emphatically a bird of passage, for regardless of the ties +of kindred and sentiment he was ever on the wing, and when in after years +as a seeker after health he proved none the less a careful observer than +he had been in his schoolboy days, small wonder it is that he was able to +give to the reading world such charming and novel descriptions of things +seen.</p> + +<p>In his schooldays he journeyed far into the country round about, the +inevitable outcome of which was for him to ultimately to write out in his +own picturesque and imaginative words a record of his observations. From +“Random Memories” we learn of his pleasure at having taken a journey in +company with his father around among the lighthouses of the Scottish +coast, “<i>the first in the complete character of a man, without the help of +petticoats</i>.” And with these excursions into Fife began his wanderings so +charmingly and characteristically chronicled in his later letters and +reminiscences.</p> + +<p>In 1862 he went abroad to Germany and Holland, and in the next year and in +that following to Italy and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> the Riviera. In 1865 he wintered at Torquay, +an English winter resort on the south coast.</p> + +<p>At seventeen, at Edinburgh University, Stevenson became a pupil of +Fleeming Jenkin, Professor of Engineering, whose biography he wrote with +much pride and devotion some years later.</p> + +<p>Thus it is seen from early childhood that Stevenson was constantly putting +forth the product of his pen, in Verses, Essays, Plays, Parodies, and +Tales. In the “Stevenson Medley,” a privately issued volume published as a +sort of supplement to the “Edinburgh Edition” of his writings are to be +found reprints of various of his early efforts, including the famous +pamphlet “The Pentland Rising,” which, in its original form, is now +considered as being perhaps the rarest of all “Stevensoniana.”</p> + +<p>Quoting from a letter of Stevenson’s to a friend, he says: “<i>I owned that +I cared for nothing but literature; my father saying that that was no +profession but that I might be called to the Bar, if I chose * * * * <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>so +at the age of twenty-one I began to study law.</i>” Accordingly the next few +years were spent with ardous reading of Blackstone and his contemporaries, +and arriving at the age of twenty-five, in 1875, Stevenson passed the +examinations and was formally called a few days thereafter. During his +matriculation at the law schools Stevenson was all the while perfecting +himself in the profession of his heart’s choice.</p> + +<p>About this time he came to know Mr. Sidney Colvin and Mr. William Ernest +Henley, the beginning as the world knows, of a life long friendship with +both these gentlemen.</p> + +<p>Stevenson’s first introduction to the reading world at large was on the +occasion of an article which appeared in the <i>Portfolio</i> for December, +1873, with the signature L. S. Stoneven appended.</p> + +<p>Already Stevenson had begun to reap the benefit of acquaintanceship and +association with the little coterie of literary folk whom he had fallen in +with in London. For a time he sojourned in the artistic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> colony which had +taken up its abode in the Forest of Fontainebleau, and has recorded its +charms of life and association in the essay “Fontainebleau.” He also came +to know Bohemian Paris as well, and in certain circles which there exist, +or did at one time exist, the memory of M. Stevenson still fondly lingers. +Returning to Edinburgh Stevenson hung forth his placard at the now famous +17 Heriot Row, which read Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate. He did not, +however, hang for long between the balance of Law and Literature, and it +has been said, he never tried a case. Finally it was but apparent that he +was so firmly wedded to literature that, needs must, he should devote +himself to it and with the publication of “Virginibus Puerisque,” he is +truly said to have emerged from the threatening obscurity of his early +struggles.</p> + +<p>“An Inland Voyage” has recorded Stevenson’s travels in Belgium in 1876, +and “Travels with a Donkey in The Cevennes,” chronicles another wandering +in search of the picturesque, undertaken at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> about the same time. It is +doubtful if either volume proved financially profitable at first though +they proved, in connection with the volume of essays before mentioned, the +means of introducing the name and work of Robert Louis Stevenson to an +ever widening circle of fame.</p> + +<p>During this period Stevenson was a frequent contributor to the London +literary journals, and he had also rewritten an early production in the +form of a play; this in collaboration with Mr. W. E. Henley, and had also +contributed his notes on “Picturesque Edinburgh” to Hamerton’s +<i>Portfolio</i>.</p> + +<p>In 1879 Stevenson set sail for the new world taking ship as a mere +emigrant, crossing the ocean as a steerage passenger and afterwards by +emigrant train, across the American continent to the Golden Gate; a rude +but romantic method of travel for one who had been nurtured in comfort and +a chronic sufferer from ill health; a long journey though destined to be +but the beginnings of a wandering after peace and health which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> latterly +brought him to “Vailima” by the shore of that “ultimate island where now +rest the remains of the beloved “Tusitala.”</p> + +<p>The “Amateur Emigrant” did not at once meet with the success it deserved +in the American literary arena, though no one will deny but that praise +was afterward showered upon the author’s work to the full. Eight months +were spent in the immediate vicinity of the Golden Gate when he succumbed +to a severe illness which proved a serious draft on his powers.</p> + +<p>In 1880, Stevenson, then in his thirty-first year, was married to Mrs. +Osbourne, an American lady whom he had known in France, and with his +step-son Lloyd Osbourne and Mrs. Stevenson took up his abode in an +abandoned mining camp at Juan Silverado, situated in the mountains of the +Coast range. The life here can be no more pleasantly referred to than by +recalling the record which was given to the public in “Silverado +Squatters.” The family remained at Silverado through the summer from +whence they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> all journeyed to the old home in North Britain. For his +health’s sake, Stevenson, accompanied by his household, then betook +himself to the dry and invigorating atmosphere of Davos Platz in the high +Alps; and here amid the sunshine and the clear air the family settled for +a winter’s stay; and here it was that Stevenson, in conjunction with his +step-son, concocted those ingenious and unique booklets known to +collectors as the “Davos Platz Brochures.” They had set up a small press +and derived much pleasure in designing and printing these little books; +“Black Canyon,” “Not I,” and “Moral Emblems,” all of which are now of such +extreme rarity as to be almost unobtainable in their original state.</p> + +<p>In 1881 was begun the actual labor of writing “Treasure Island,” the germ +of which had been lying dormant in Stevenson’s brain since his early +schoolboy days. After another visit to Scotland, Stevenson set his +footsteps still further to the southward<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> and domiciled himself with his +family at the Chalet la Solitude, near Hyeres near Marseilles, on the +shores of the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, “Treasure Island” was running its +course serially in the <i>Young Folks Paper</i>, and when it appeared as a +volume pointed the definite way of Stevenson’s popularity, the book being +in every sense his first popular success.</p> + +<p>Realizing that his malady grew no better in the southland Stevenson +settled at Bournemouth, a mild winter resort on the south coast of +England. Here he occupied the house presented to him by his father, and +which he named “Skerryvore” after the lighthouse off the coast of +Scotland, designed and built by his uncle, Alan Stevenson. Stevenson +continued his literary labours at this place unremittingly, though never +at any one extended period was he really free from the dread grasp of his +malady. Up to now writing had brought him but scant profit, and until his +thirty-sixth year, says Mr. Colvin, his income had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> scarcely, if ever, +exceeded three hundred pounds per year. His second great success was that +weird tale of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and thenceforth he came to know +his value as a writer of ability, and felt definitely assured that his +labors would return to him a satisfying income.</p> + +<p>In 1887, after the death of his father, Stevenson again went to America, +sailing for New York in August of that year, and sojourning for short +periods among and with friends in the East.</p> + +<p>In the spring of 1888, when in his thirty-eighth year, Stevenson +accompanied by members of his family, accepted an offer to cruise among +the islands of the South Seas and write the story of his voyagings in a +series of letters to a syndicate of newspapers. Arrangements were made for +the charter of the schooner Casco, Captain Otis, in which he set sail from +San Francisco, early in the spring, bound ostensibly for the “Marquesas.” +The cruise covered six months. During the voyage northward the Stevensons<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> +stayed some months at Honolulu and while there a visit was paid to the +leper settlement on the island of Molokai, which ultimately called forth +the “open letter” to the Rev. Dr. Hyde of Honolulu, wherein that Reverend +gentleman received an unmitigated scathing from Stevenson’s incensed pen, +an incident which is only too readily recalled for one to linger over it +at this time.</p> + +<p>From Honolulu the cruise was continued southward for another six months on +a trading schooner called the Equator which arrived at Apia, in Samoa, +about Christmas time (1889). Here the company remained for some weeks, and +here Stevenson purchased an estate of some hundreds of acres, lying on the +mountainside overlooking the sea, which he called <i>Vailima</i>. The +Stevensons went to Sidney, N. S. W. soon after, but again in the month of +April steamed away in the trading steamer Janet Nicoll, visiting Auckland +and the Penrhyn Islands, thence to the Ellis, Gilbert, and Marshall +Islands and via New<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> Caledonia, Sydney, and Auckland to Apia where they +arrived again in the early autumn. They settled here upon their estate and +the following spring Mrs. Stevenson, the elder, joined the household, as +also Stevenson’s step-daughter, Mrs. Strong; thus began the four remaining +years of Stevenson’s life, amid the ties of kith and kin surrounding him +as he worked in his exile in a far away land.</p> + +<p>Amid these pleasant surroundings Stevenson pursued his constant and daily +work, and rode about his island home entertaining the population, both +native and European. He became actively interested in the political life +of the islands, and when international complications came upon them in +1891, he dignified the whole proceedings by his impartial letters to the +<i>London Times</i>, and later by the publication of the “Footnote to History,” +a monograph published in 1892.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile he was applying himself to his writing with ardous persistancy, +and quoting his own words<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> from a letter written in 1893, he was seriously +overworked, “<i>I am overworked bitterly, and my hand is a thing that was, +and in the meanwhile so are my brains</i>.”</p> + +<p>In January of the same year he suffered from an attack of influenza from +which he never fully recovered. While yet ill in bed he had begun to +dictate “St. Ives” and “Weir of Hermiston.”</p> + +<p>From the Dictionary of National Biography is taken the following +description of the sad end. “On the afternoon of the Fourth of December he +was talking gaily with his wife, when a sudden rupture of a blood-vessel +in the brain laid him at her feet and within two hours all was over.”</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span></p> + +<p>Out across the pearly Pacific on the lonely mountainside at Samoa, lies +all that once was mortal of “<i>Tusitala, the Teller of Tales</i>.”</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p> + +<h2><i>APPARITION.</i></h2> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td><i>“Thin-<ins class="correction" title="original: leggea">legged</ins>, thin-chested, slight unspeakably,<br /> +Neat-footed and weak-fingered: in his face—<br /> +Lean, large-boned, curved of beak, and touched with race.<br /> +Bold-lipped, rich-tinted, mutable as the sea,<br /> +The brown eyes radiant with vivacity—<br /> +There shines a brilliant and romantic grace,<br /> +A spirit intense and rare, with trace on trace<br /> +Of passion and impudence and energy.<br /> +<br /> +Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck,<br /> +Most vain, most generous, sternly critical,<br /> +Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist:<br /> +A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck,<br /> +Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all,<br /> +And something of the Shorter-Catechist.”</i><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 15em;">(<span class="smcap">W. E. Henley</span>)</span></td></tr></table> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><a name="donkey" id="donkey"></a> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/donkeytmb.jpg" alt="" /><br /> +<a href="images/donkey.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></div> +<p class="center"><small>FRONTISPIECE, BY WALTER CRANE, TO “TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY.” (FIRST EDITION.)</small></p> + +<p><a name="voyage" id="voyage"></a> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/voyagetmb.jpg" alt="" /><br /> +<a href="images/voyage.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></div> +<p class="center"><small>FRONTISPIECE, BY WALTER CRANE, TO AN “INLAND VOYAGE.” (FIRST EDITION.)</small></p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p> +<h2>STEVENSON’S FIRST BOOK</h2> + +<p>The publication of the Stevenson letters revived interest in his career, +both as man and writer. His first published book, as our readers will +remember, was “The Pentland Rising,” a pamphlet of twenty pages issued in +Edinburgh in the autumn of 1866, when the author was but sixteen. At the +time of Stevenson’s death copies of this little work were sold for upwards +of £20 a piece, but the price afterwards fell considerably. In 1868, he +wrote the “Charity Bazaar,” a boyish skit, filling four pages quarto, and +which was privately printed. His next appearance in print seems to have +been in the pages of a college paper, the <i>Edinburgh University Magazine</i>, +which he and three fellow-students edited, and which lived through four +numbers only. These numbers were issued from January to April, 1871. He +says:</p> + +<p>“A pair of little active brothers—Livingstone by name, great skippers on +the foot, great rubbers of the hands, who kept a bookshop over against the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>University building—had been debauched to play the part of publishers.”</p> + +<p>The first number was edited by all four associates, the second by +Stevenson and James Walter Ferrier, the third by Stevenson alone, and of +the last he says: “It has long been a solemn question who it was that +edited the fourth,” and then: “It would perhaps be still more difficult to +say who read it. Poor yellow sheet, that looked so hopefully in the +Livingstones’ window! Poor, harmless paper, that might have gone to print +a Shakespeare on, and was instead so clumsily defaced with nonsense! And, +shall I say, Poor editors? I cannot pity myself, to whom it was all pure +gain. It was no news to me, but only the wholesome confirmation of my +judgment, when the magazine struggled into half-birth, and instantly +sickened and subsided into night.”</p> + +<p>Stevenson contributed six articles to the four numbers, one of which, “An +Old Scotch Gardener,” he revised and reprinted in “Memories and +Portraits.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>It will be news to many people that Stevenson was awarded the silver of +the Royal Scottish Society of Arts for a paper entitled “A Notice of a New +Form of Intermittent Light for Lighthouses.” This paper was printed +separately from the Transactions of the Society in a thin pamphlet, +consisting of five pages of text only, beside the title-leaf. It has the +headlines, “Mr. R. L. Stevenson on a New Form of Intermittent Light for +Lighthouses,” and contains five illustrations in the text.—<i>Publishers’ +Circular.</i></p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> +<h2>BOOKS WHICH HAVE INFLUENCED ME</h2> +<p class="center"><i>By R. L. S.</i></p> + +<p>The Editor has somewhat insidiously laid a trap for his correspondents, +the question put appearing at first so innocent, truly cutting so deep. It +is not, indeed, until after some reconnaissance and review that the writer +awakes to find himself engaged upon something in the nature of +autobiography, or, perhaps worse,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> upon a chapter in the life of that +little, beautiful brother whom we once all had, and whom we have all lost +and mourned, the man we ought to have been, the man we hoped to be. But +when word has been passed (even to an editor), it should, if possible, be +kept; and if sometimes I am wise and say too little, and sometimes weak +and say too much, the blame must lie at the door of the person who +entrapped me.</p> + +<p>The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works +of fiction. They do not pin the reader to a dogma, which he must +afterwards discover to be inexact; they do not teach him a lesson, which +he must afterwards unlearn. They repeat, they rearrange, they clarify the +lesson of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the +acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, but with a +singular change—that monstrous, consuming <i>ego</i> of ours being, for the +nonce, struck out. To be so, they must be reasonably true to the human +comedy; and any work that is so serves the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> turn of instruction. But the +course of our education is answered best by those poems and romances where +we breathe a magnanimous atmosphere of thought and meet generous and pious +characters. Shakespeare has served me best. Few living friends have had +upon me an influence so strong for good as Hamlet or Rosalind. The last +character, already well beloved in the reading, I had the good fortune to +see, I must think, in an impressionable hour, played by Mrs. Scott +Siddons. Nothing has ever more moved, more delighted, more refreshed me; +nor has the influence quite passed away. The dying Lear had a great effect +upon my mind, and was the burthen of my reflections for long, so +profoundly, so touchingly generous did it appear in sense so overpowering +in expression. Perhaps my dearest and best friend outside of Shakespeare +is D’Artagnan—the elderly D’Artagnan of the “Vicomte de Bragelonne.” I +know not a more human soul, nor, in his way, a finer; I shall be very +sorry for the man who is so much of a pedant in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> morals that he cannot +learn from the Captain of Musketeers. Lastly, I must name the “Pilgrim’s +Progress,” a book that breathes of every beautiful and valuable emotion.</p> + +<p>But of works of art little can be said; their influence is profound and +silent, like the influence of nature; they mould by contact; we drink them +up like water, and are bettered, yet know how. It is in books more +specifically didactic that we can follow out the effect, and distinguish +and weigh and compare. A book which has been very influential upon me fell +early into my hands, and so may stand first, though I think its influence +was only sensible later on, and perhaps still keeps growing, for it is a +book not easily outlived; the “Essais” of Montaigne. That temperate and +general picture of life is a great gift to place in the hands of persons +of to-day; they will find in these smiling pages a magazine of heroism and +wisdom, all of an antique strain; they will have their “linen decencies” +and excited orthodoxies fluttered,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> and will (if they have any gift of +reading) perceive that these have not been fluttered without some excuse +and ground of reason; and (again if they have any gift of reading) they +will end by seeing that this old gentleman was in a dozen ways a finer +fellow, and held in a dozen ways a nobler view of life, than they or their +contemporaries.</p> + +<p>The next book, in order of time, to influence me, was the New Testament, +and in particular the Gospel according to St. Matthew. I believe it would +startle and move any one if they could make a certain effort of +imagination and read it freshly like a book, not droningly and dully like +a portion of the Bible. Any one would then be able to see in it those +truths which we are all courteously supposed to know and all modestly +refrain from applying. But upon this subject it is perhaps better to be +silent.</p> + +<p>I come next to Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” a book of singular service, a +book which tumbled the world upside down for me, blew into space a +thousand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> cobwebs of genteel and ethical illusion, and, having thus shaken +my tabernacle of lies, set me back again upon a strong foundation of all +the original and manly virtues. But it is, once more, only a book for +those who have the gift of reading. I will be very frank—I believe it is +so with all good books, except, perhaps, fiction. The average man lives, +and must live, so wholly in convention, that gunpowder charges of the +truth are more apt to discompose than to invigorate his creed. Either he +cries out upon blasphemy and indecency, and crouches the closer round that +little idol of part-truths and part-conveniences which is the contemporary +deity, or he is convinced by what is new, forgets what is old, and becomes +truly blasphemous and indecent himself. New truth is only useful to +supplement the old; rough truth is only wanted to expand, not to destroy, +our civil <ins class="correction" title="original: aud">and</ins> often elegant conventions. He who cannot judge had better +stick to fiction and the daily papers. There he will get little harm, and, +in the first at least, some good.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>Close upon the back of my discovery of Whitman, I came under the influence +of Herbert Spencer. No more persuasive rabbi exists, and few better. How +much of his vast structure will bear the touch of time, how much is clay +and how much brass, it were too curious to inquire. But his words, if dry, +are always manly and honest; there dwells in his pages a spirit of highly +abstract joy, plucked naked like an algebraic symbol, but still joyful; +and the reader will find there a <i>caput-mortuum</i> of piety, with little +indeed of its loveliness, but with most of its essentials; and these two +qualities make his a wholesome, as his intellectual vigour makes him a +bracing, writer. I should be much of a hound if I lost my gratitude to +Herbert Spencer.</p> + +<p>“Goethe’s Life,” by Lewes, had a great importance for me when it first +fell into my hands—a strange instance of the partiality of man’s good and +man’s evil. I know no one whom I less admire than Goethe; he seems a very +epitome of the sins of genius,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> breaking open the doors of private life, +and wantonly wounding friends, in that crowning offence of “Werther,” and +in his own character a mere pen-and-ink Napoleon, conscious of the rights +and duties of superior talents as a Spanish inquisitor was conscious of +the rights and duties of his office. And yet in his fine devotion to his +art, in his honest and serviceable friendship for Schiller, what lessons +are contained! Biography, usually so false to its office, does here for +once perform for us some of the work of fiction, reminding us, that is, of +the truly mingled tissue of man’s nature, and how huge faults and shining +virtues cohabit and persevere in the same character. History serves us +well to this effect, but in the originals, not in the pages of the popular +epitomiser, who is bound, by the very nature of his task, to make us feel +the difference of epochs instead of the essential identity of man, and +even in the originals only to those who can recognize their own human +virtues and defects in strange forms, often inverted and under<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> strange +names, often interchanged. Martial is a poet of no good repute, and it +gives a man new thoughts to read his works dispassionately, and find in +this unseemly jester’s serious passages the image of a kind, wise, and +self-respecting gentleman. It is customary, I suppose, in reading Martial, +to leave out these pleasant verses; I never heard of them, at least, until +I found them for myself; and this partiality is one among a thousand +things that help to build up our distorted and hysterical conception of +the great Roman empire.</p> + +<p>This brings us by a natural transition to a very noble book—the +“Meditations” of Marcus Aurelius. The dispassionate gravity, the noble +forgetfulness of self, the tenderness of others, that are there expressed +and were practised on so great a scale in the life of its writer, make +this book; a book quite by itself. No one can read it and not be moved. +Yet it scarcely or rarely appeals to the feeling—those very mobile, those +not very trusty parts of man. Its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> address lies farther back: its lesson +comes more deeply home; when you have read, you carry away with you a +memory of the man himself; it is as though you had touched a royal hand, +looked into brave eyes, and made a noble friend; there is another bond on +you thenceforth, binding you to life and to the love of virtue.</p> + +<p>Wordsworth should perhaps come next. Every one has been influenced by +Wordsworth, and it is hard to tell precisely how. A certain innocence, a +rugged austerity of joy, a sight of the stars, “the silence that there is +among the hills,” something of the cold thrill of dawn, cling to his work +and give it a particular address to what is best in us. I do not know that +you learn a lesson; you need not—Mill did not—agree with any one of his +beliefs; and yet the spell is cast. Such are the best teachers: a dogma +learned is only a new error—the old one was perhaps as good; but a spirit +communicated is a perpetual possession. These best teachers climb beyond +teaching<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> to the plane of art; it is themselves, and what is best in +themselves, that they communicate.</p> + +<p>I should never forgive myself if I forgot “The Egoist.” It is art, if you +like, but it belongs purely to didactic art, and from all the novels I +have read (and I have read thousands) stands in a place by itself. Here is +a Nathan for the modern David. * * * “The Egoist” is a satire; so much +must be allowed; but it is a satire of a singular quality, which tells you +nothing of that obvious mote which is engaged from first to last with that +invisible beam. It is yourself that is haunted down; these are your own +faults that are dragged into the day and numbered, with lingering relish, +with cruel cunning and precision. A young friend of Mr. Meredith’s (as I +have the story) came to him in an agony. “This is too bad of you,” he +cried. “Willoughby is me!” “No, my dear fellow,” said the author, “he is +all of us.” I have read “The Egoist” five or six times myself, and I mean +to read it again; for I am like the young<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> friend of the anecdote—I think +Willoughby an unmanly but a very serviceable exposure of myself.</p> + +<p>I suppose, when I am done, I shall find that I have forgotten much that +was most influential, as I see already I have forgotten Thoreau, and +Hazlitt, whose paper “On the Spirit of Obligations” was a turning point in +my life, and Penn, whose little book of aphorisms had a brief but strong +effect on me, and Mitford’s “Tales of Old Japan,” wherein I learned for +the first time the proper attitude of any rational man to his country’s +laws—a secret found, and kept, in the Asiatic Islands. That I should +commemorate all is more than I can hope, or the editor could ask. It will +be more to the point, after have said so much upon improving books, to say +a word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I have +called it, is not very common, nor very generally understood. It consists, +first of all, in a vast intellectual endowment—a free grace, I find I +must call it—by which a man rises to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> understand that he is not +punctually right, nor those from whom he differs absolutely wrong. He may +hold dogmas; he may hold them passionately; and he may know that others +hold them but coldly, or hold them differently, or hold them not at all. +Well, if he has the gift of reading, these others will be full of meat for +him. They will see the other side of propositions and the other side of +virtues. He need not change his dogma for that, but he may change his +reading of that dogma, and he must supplement and correct his deductions +from it. A human truth, which is always very much a lie, hides as much of +life as it displays. It is men who hold another truth, or, as it seems to +us, perhaps, a dangerous lie, who can extend our restricted field of +knowledge, and rouse our drowsy consciences. Something that seems quite +new, or that seems insolently false or very dangerous, is the test of a +reader. If he tries to see what it means, what truth excuses it, he has +the gift, and let him read. If he is merely hurt, or offended, or exclaims +upon his author’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> folly, he had better take to the daily papers; he will +never be a reader.</p> + +<p>And here, with the aptest illustrative force, after I have laid down my +part-truth, I must step in with its opposite. For, after all, we are +vessels of a very limited content. Not all men can read all books; it is +only in a chosen few that any man will find his appointed food; and the +fittest lessons are the most palatable, and make themselves welcome to the +mind. A writer learns this early, and it is his chief support; he goes on +unafraid, laying down the law; and he is sure at heart that most of what +he says is demonstrably false, and much of a mingled strain, and some +hurtful, and very little good for service; but he is sure besides that +when his words fall into the hands of any genuine reader, they will be +weighed and winnowed, and only that which suits will be assimilated; and +when they fall into the hands of one who cannot intelligently read, they +come there quite silent and inarticulate, falling upon deaf ears, and his +secret is kept as if he had not written.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p> +<h2>A STEVENSON LETTER</h2> + +<div class="note"> +<p><i>Dear Madam</i>:—It is impossible to be more gracefully penitent: I give you +leave to buy ——’s triple piracy in —— the library; and this permission +is withheld from all other living creatures, so that you alone will +possess that publication without sin.</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 12em;">I am, dear madam,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 15em;">Yours truly,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis Stevenson</span>.</span><br /> +March, 1887.</p></div> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> +<h2>A JUSTIFICATION</h2> + +<p>Boston, June 5, 1900.—When Mr. Stevenson was at Saranac in the +Adirondacks I sent him a short editorial on his Brownies that I had +written for the Boston <i>Daily Advertiser</i>, and also a letter, saying that +I owed him one dollar. I professed penitence for having bought a pirated +copy of “Dr. Jekyll” for 25 cents, and promised to make good the deficit +if I ever met him. He sent me the letter above.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>In May, eleven years later, Miss Louise Imogene Guiney invited me to meet +her friend, Mrs. Virgil Williams, to be told—for print—the true story of +the Stevenson marriage. I was unable to go to meet Mrs. Williams at the +time appointed, but a day or two later she came by Miss Guiney’s +introduction to an editorial desk where I had been for eight years in the +office of the Boston <i>Evening Transcript</i>, and gave me certain facts, from +which the article below was written. It appeared in <i>The Transcript</i>, May +18, 1898.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Minna Caroline Smith</span>.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">MRS. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON</p> + +<p>Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson, who has been ill in New York, has recovered +and has gone to England for an indefinite stay. It is, however, her +purpose to make her home again ultimately in San Francisco. Her presence +in England is necessary, as Mr. Sidney Colvin is now engaged in writing +the “Life of Stevenson,” and depends upon Mrs. Stevenson<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> for aid in +compilation, and in deciding what shall be said and what shall be left +out. A great deal has been said about the Stevensons which might much +better have been left unsaid, for the simple reason that it is not true. +Like the old story of Phillips Brooks and the boy with the “Episcopalian +Kittens,” some of the truthless tales are harmless. Others are less +innocuous than the imaginative yarns which are always likely to be current +about any bright personality, any “shining mark,” like Stevenson and his +accomplished wife.</p> + +<p>Now that he is dead, and Mrs. Stevenson has gone to his native Britain, it +is well to deny authoritatively the absurd story which has often been +revived during the past twenty years that Mrs. Stevenson’s first husband, +Mr. Osbourne, gave her away in marriage on the day of her wedding to +Robert Louis Stevenson, and that Stevenson afterwards fraternized with his +predecessor. As a matter of fact, Stevenson never in his life even saw the +father of Lloyd Osbourne, who was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> about fourteen years of age at the time +of his mother’s marriage to the famous Scot. The father of Stevenson, an +old-time Presbyterian gentlemen, made Lloyd Osbourne his heir, thus wholly +welcoming his beloved daughter-in-law in the family, where she and her +children have found happiness and where they gave so much. It is advisedly +said that the elder Stevenson made Lloyd Osbourne his heir, his property +to be that of his son’s step-child after the death of his son and that +son’s wife. It is well known that Stevenson’s mother was with his family +in Samoa, and this dignified and conservative lady also followed the +custom of the country which the family followed, in homely phrase, “going +bare-footed” at home. Pictures of Stevenson in his Samoa home, enjoying +the freedom of this native fashion, have been common enough. This Samoan +custom seemed simple and natural to any one who saw the Stevensons in +Samoa going without shoes and stockings, quite as summer girls on the +Massachusetts shore have gone about without gloves or hats<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> during recent +years, an unconventionality which would once have shocked thousands. The +matter would not be worth mentioning, but a curious myth about Mrs. +Stevenson has sprung from it. A paragraph has been floating through +contemporaries in several cities of late, to the effect that Mrs. +Stevenson went out to dine in London, when first introduced there by her +husband, without shoes and stockings! This little yarn really denies +itself on the face of it. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Stevenson’s conformity +to social customs has never been found insufficient wherever she has been. +She is a woman of original talents and great adaptability of talent who, +for many years, was the nurse, the “guide, philosopher and friend,” as +well as the beloved wife of the child of genius whose name she bears. She +was studying art in Paris, where she had gone with her three children, +when she first met Robert Louis Stevenson, who was among the artists and +literary folk at Barbizon. She returned to America with her daughter and +her son—one son had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> died while she was in France—and readily got a +divorce from Mr. Osbourne. No word concerning the father of her children +has ever been uttered for publication by Mrs. Stevenson, or ever will be. +He married a second time and, after a while, left his wife and +disappeared. He has since been seen in South Africa. It is here repeated +that Robert Louis Stevenson never saw him. Mrs. Stevenson wished to delay +her second marriage for a year, but Stevenson had travelled over land and +sea to California, and was ill and homesick. So, by the advice of a close +friend, the marriage was not long postponed. This friend was Mrs. Virgil +Williams, wife of the well-known teacher of painting in San Francisco, the +founder of that pioneer art school of the West, which, since Mr. +Williams’s death, was munificently endowed by Mr. Searles as the Hopkins +Institute. Mrs. Williams went with the pair to the house of Dr. Scott, a +Presbyterian minister of San Francisco, who married Mr. and Mrs. +Stevenson. Nobody else was present at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> private wedding, except Mrs. +Scott, the wife of the minister. This divine made Stevenson a present of a +religious book of his own writing to read on the journey to Scotland, and +the whimsical fear of Stevenson that he might not read it all while +crossing the continent and the Atlantic was characteristic. But if he felt +that this was not sufficiently light reading for a steamer journey he +appreciated the gift, and in return sent Dr. Scott a book on a like topic +written by his father in Scotland.</p> + +<p>“People are very much like folks”; the fairy tales which are told about +the famous are very likely to need large grains of salt in the taking. The +simple truth about the Stevensons was that theirs was a peculiarly +fortunate and happy marriage, and that if they lived in Bohemia it was “on +the airy uplands” of that land, where freedom of personal action never +meant wilful foolish eccentricity or lack of conformity to the canons of +true courtesy and kindness.</p> + + +<p> </p> +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE DAVOS PLATZ BOOKS</h2> + +<p>Mr. Joseph Pennell has contributed to <i>The Studio</i> an account of an +unpublished chapter, which is <ins class="correction" title="original: delighful">delightful</ins> reading and reveals Stevenson to +the world as an illustrator and wood engraver. With the people of Le +Monastier, the lace-makers, Stevenson became a popular figure and was +known for miles in the country. In the town every urchin seemed to know +his name, “although no living creature could pronounce it.” One group of +lace-makers brought out a chair whenever he went by, and insisted on +having a good gossip. They would have it that the English talked French, +or patois, and “of all patois they declared that mine was the most +preposterous and the most jocose in sound. At each new word there was a +new explosion of laughter, and some of the younger ones were glad to rise +from their chairs and stamp about the streets in ecstasy.” In a notice of +the article, a writer in <i>The London Chronicle</i> says:</p> + + +<p><a name="canyon" id="canyon"></a> </p><p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/canyon.jpg" alt="" /><br /> +<a href="#canyontext"><small>Text of Image</small></a></div> + +<p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>“There was a dear old lady of Monastier with whom he struck up an +attachment. She passed judgment on his sketches and his heresy with a wry +mouth and a twinkle of the eye that were eminently Scottish. ‘She was +never weary of sitting to me for her portrait, in her best cap and brigand +hat, and with all her wrinkles tidily composed, and though she never +failed to repudiate the result, she would always insist upon another +trial. * * * “No, no,” she would say, “that is not it. I am old, to be +sure, but I am better looking than that. We must try again.”</p> + +<p>“But the most characteristic work of Stevenson as illustrator is to be +found in the quaint little woodcuts which adorned the volumes turned out +by the press of Osbourne & Co. at Davos. With some very primitive type and +a boundless capacity for frivoling, this ‘company,’ consisting of Mr. and +Mrs. Stevenson and young Lloyd Osbourne, managed to while away the hours +of the Swiss Winter in delightful fashion. As Mr. Pennell states in <i>The +Studio</i> these Davos editions are exceedingly hard to secure. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> British +Museum itself has only two copies, and there is no hint of their existence +in any of the published works. One of these works was entitled ‘Moral +Emblems; a Collection of Cuts and Verses.’</p> + +<p>“There was also a second collection of ‘Moral Emblems, an edition de luxe, +in tall paper, extra fine, price tenpence, and a popular edition for the +million, small paper, cuts slightly worn, a great bargain, eightpence.’ +Another of these volumes was entitled ‘The Graver and the Pen,’ of which +the author asserted on the poster that it was ‘a most strikingly +illustrated little work, and the poetry so pleasing that when it is taken +up to be read is finished before it is set down.’ There were five +full-page illustrations, eleven pages of poetry finely printed on superb +paper, and the whole work offered a splendid chance for an energetic +publisher. One of the moral emblems runs as follows:</p> + +<p class="poem">“Industrious pirate! See him sweep<br /> +The lonely bosom of the deep,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>And daily the horizon scan<br /> +From Hatteras or Matapan.<br /> +Be sure, before that pirate’s old,<br /> +He will have made a pot of gold,<br /> +And will retire from all his labors<br /> +And be respected by his neighbors.<br /> +You also scan your life’s horizon<br /> +For all that you can clap your eyes on.</p> + +<p>“Sometimes an unintentional effect was introduced into the woodcuts, as in +the case of ‘The Foolhardy Geographer.’ We cannot tell the story, but the +effect is thus described in a postscript:</p> + +<p class="poem">“A blemish in the cut appears,<br /> +Alas! it cost both blood and tears.<br /> +The glancing graver swerved aside,<br /> +Fast flowed the artist’s vital tide!<br /> +And now the apologetic bard<br /> +Demands indulgence for his pard.”</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p> +<h2>STEVENSON’S LATER LETTERS</h2> +<p class="center"><i>London Bookman, Dec. 1899.</i></p> + +<p>Out of these noble volumes of Stevenson letters two things come to me of +new, of which the first is the more important. Before and above all else +these books (with their appendage, the Vailima Correspondence) are the +record of as noble a friendship as I know of in letters. And perhaps, as +following from this, we have here a Stevenson without shadows. Not even a +full statue, but rather a medallion in low relief—as it were the St. +Gaudens bust done into printer’s ink.</p> + +<p>It is difficult to say precisely what one feels, with Mr. Colvin (and long +may he be spared) still in the midst of us. And yet I cannot help putting +it on record that what impresses me most in these volumes, wherein are so +many things lovely and of good report, is the way in which, in order that +one friend may shine like a city set on a hill, the other friend +consistently retires himself into deepest shade. Yet all the same<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> Mr. +Colvin is ever on the spot. You can trace him on every page—emergent only +when an explanation must be made, never saying a word too much, obviously +in possession of all the facts, but desirous of no reward or fame or glory +to himself if only Tusitala continue to shine the first among his peers. +Truly there is a love not perhaps <i>sur</i>passing the love of women, but +certainly <i>passing</i> it, in that it is different in kind and degree.</p> + +<p>Obviously, however, Mr. Colvin often wounded with the faithful wounds of a +friend, and sometimes in return he was blessed, and sometimes he was +banned. But always the next letter made it all right.</p> + +<p>To those outside of his family and familiars Stevenson was always a +charming and sometimes a regular correspondent. To myself, with no claim +upon him save that of a certain instinctive mutual liking, he wrote with +the utmost punctuality every two months from 1888 to the week of his +death.</p> + +<p>It is the irony of fate that about thirty of these <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>letters lie buried +somewhere beneath, above, or behind an impenetrable barrier of 25,000 +books. In a certain great “flitting” conducted by village workmen these +manuscripts disappeared, and have so far eluded all research. But at the +next upturning of the Universe, I doubt not they will come to light and be +available for Mr. Colvin’s twentieth edition. It was a great grief to me +that I had no more to contribute besides those few but precious documents +which appear in their places in the second volume of “Letters to Family +and Friends.”</p> + +<p>Albeit, in spite of every such blank, here is such richness as has not +been in any man’s correspondence since Horace Walpole’s—yet never, like +his, acidly-based, never razor-edged, never, for all Stevenson’s Edinburgh +extraction, either west-endy or east-windy. Here in brief are two books, +solid, sane, packed with wit and kindliness and filled full of the very +height of living.</p> + +<p>Not all of Stevenson is here—it seems to me, not even the greater part of +Stevenson. Considered from one point of view, there is more of the depths +of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> real Stevenson in a single chapter of Miss Eve Simpson’s +“Edinburgh Days,” especially in the chapter entitled “Life at +Twenty-five,” than in any of these 750 fair pages. But with such a friend +as Mr. Colvin this was inevitable. He has carried out that finest of the +maxims of amity, “Censure your friend in private, praise him in public!” +And, indeed, if ever man deserved to be praised it was Stevenson. So +generous was he, so ready to be pleased with other men’s matters, so hard +to satisfy with his own, a child among children, a man among men, a king +among princes. Yet, all the same, anything of the nature of a play stirred +him to the shoe soles, down to that last tragic bowl of salad and bottle +of old Burgundy on the night before he died. He was a fairy prince and a +peasant boy in one, Aladdin with an old lamp under his arm always ready to +be rubbed, while outside his window Jack’s beanstalk went clambering +heavenward a foot every five minutes.</p> + +<p>All the same, it gives one a heartache—even those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> of us who knew him +least—to think that no more of these wide sheets close written and many +times folded will ever come to us through the post. And what the want must +be to those who knew him longer and better, to Mr. Colvin, Mr. Gosse, Mr. +Henley, only they know.</p> + +<p>For myself, I am grateful for every word set down here. It is all sweet, +and true, and gracious. The heaven seems kinder to the earth while we +read, and in the new portrait Tusitala’s large dark eyes gleam at us from +beneath the penthouse of his brows with a gipsy-like and transitory +suggestion.</p> + +<p>“The Sprite” some one called him. And it was a true word. For here he had +no continuing city. Doubtless, though, he lightens some Farther Lands with +his bright wit, and such ministering spirits as he may cross on his +journeying are finding him good company. <i>Talofa, Tusitala</i>; do not go +very far away! We too would follow you down the “Road of Loving Hearts.”</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">S. R. Crockett</span>.</p> + + +<p><a name="rising" id="rising"></a> </p><p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/risingtmb.jpg" alt="" /><br /> +<a href="images/rising.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></div> +<p class="center"><a href="#risingtext"><small>Text of Image</small></a></p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p> +<h2>A STEVENSON SHRINE</h2> +<p class="center"><i>By Emily Soldene</i></p> + +<p>In 1896 I strolled down Market Street, San Francisco, looking into the +curio- and other shops under the Palace Hotel, when my attention was +attracted by a crowd of people round one particular shop-window. Now, a +crowd in San Francisco (except on political occasions) is an uncommon +sight. Naturally, with the curiosity of my sex and the perseverance of the +Anglo-Saxon, I took my place in the surging mass and patiently waited till +the course of events, and the shoulders of my surroundings, brought me up +close to the point of vantage. What came they out for to see? It was a +bookseller’s window. In the window was a shrine. “The Works and Portraits +of Robert Louis Stevenson,” proclaimed a placard all illuminated and +embossed with red and purple and green and gold. In the centre of the +display was an odd-looking document. This, then, was the loadstone—a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> +letter of Stevenson’s, in Stevenson’s own handwriting. Many people stood +and read, then turned away, sad and sorrowful-looking. “Poor fellow!” said +one woman. “But he’s all right now. I guess he’s got more than he asked +for.” I stood, too, and read. Before I had finished, my eyes, unknowingly, +were full of tears. This is the document. When you have read, you will not +wonder at the tears.</p> + +<p>“I think now, this 5th or 6th of April, 1873, that I can see my future +life. I think it will run stiller and stiller year by year, a very quiet, +desultorily studious existence. If God only gives me tolerable health, I +think now I shall be very happy: work and science calm the mind, and stop +gnawing in the brain; and as I am glad to say that I do now recognise that +I shall never be a great man, I may set myself peacefully on a smaller +journey, not without hope of coming to the inn before nightfall.</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 9.5em;"><i>O dass mein leben</i></span><br /> +<i>Nach diesem ziel ein ewig wandeln sey!</i>”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>I walked on a block or so, and, after a few minutes, when I thought my +voice was steady and under control, turned back, went into the book-store, +and asked the young man in attendance, “Could I be allowed to take a copy +of the letter in the window?” He told me it was not, as I thought, an +original document, but the printed reproduction of a memorandum found +among the dead Stevenson’s papers. “Then,” said I, “can I not have +one—can I not buy one?” And the young man shook his head. “No; they are +not for sale.” “Oh, I am sorry!” said I. “I would have given anything for +one.” “Well,” said he, in a grave voice, and with a grave smile, “they are +not, indeed, for sale; but have been printed for a particular purpose, and +one will be given to all lovers of Stevenson.” He spoke in such a low, +reverent, sympathetic tone that I <i>knew his</i> eyes must be full, and so I +would not look.</p> + +<p>Next day I went to see <i>Mr. Doxey</i> himself, who is a Stevenson enthusiast, +and has one window (the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> window of the crowd) devoted entirely to +Stevenson. All his works, all his editions—including the Edinburgh +Edition—are there; and he, with the greatest kindness, showed me the +treasures he had collected. In the first place, the number of portraits +was astonishing. Years and conditions and circumstances, all various and +changing; but the face—the face always the same. The eyes, wonderful in +their keenness, their interrogative, questioning, eager gaze; the looking +out, always looking out, always asking, looking ahead, far away into some +distant land not given to <i>les autres</i> to perceive. That wonderful looking +out was the first thing that impressed me when I met Mr. Stevenson in +Sydney in ’93. Unfortunately for us, he only stayed there a short time, +would not visit, was very difficult of access, not at all well, and when +he went seemed to disappear, not go. Mr. Doxey had pictures of him in +every possible phase—in turn-down collar, in no collar at all; his hair +long, short, and middling; in oils, in water-colour, in photos, in a +smoking-cap and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>Imperial; with a moustache, without a moustache; young, +youthful, dashing, Byronic; not so youthful, middle-aged; looking in +<i>this</i> like a modern Manfred; in <i>that</i> like an epitome of the fashions, +wearing a debonair demeanour and a <i>degage</i> tie; as a boy, as a barrister; +on horseback, in a boat. There was a portrait taken by Mrs. Stevenson in +1885, and one lent by Virgil Williams; another, a water-colour, lent by +Miss O’Hara; and a wonderful study of his wonderful hands. Then he was +photographed in his home at Samoa, surrounded by his friends and his +faithful, devoted band of young men, his Samoan followers; in the royal +boat-house at Honolulu, seated side by side with his Majesty King +Kalakaua; on board the <i>Casco</i>. Here, evidently anxious for a really good +picture, he has taken off his hat, standing in the sun bareheaded. At a +native banquet, surrounded by all the delicacies of the season, bowls of +<i>kava</i>, <i>poi</i>, <i>palo-sami</i>, and much good company. Then the later ones at +Vailima; in the clearing close to his house, in the verandah. Later<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> +still, writing in his bed. Coming to the “inn” he talks about in +1873—coming so close, close, unexpectedly, but not unprepared—Robert +Louis Stevenson has passed the veil. Not dead, but gone before, he lives +in the hearts of all people. But not so palpably, so outwardly, so +proudly, as in the hearts of these people of the Sunny Land, who, standing +on the extreme verge of the Western world, shading their eyes from the +shining glory, watch the sunshine go out through the Golden Gate, out on +its way across the pearly Pacific to the lonely Mountain of Samoa where +lies the body of the man “Tusitala,” whose songs and lessons and stories +fill the earth, and the souls of the people thereof.</p> + +<p>On the fly-leaf of the copy of “The Silverado Squatters,” sent to “Virgil +Williams and Dora Norton Williams,” to whom it was dedicated, is the +following poem in the handwriting of the author, written at Hyeres, where, +as he says in his diary, he spent the happiest days of his life—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> +Here, from the forelands of the tideless sea,<br /> +Behold and take my offering unadorned.<br /> +In the Pacific air it sprang; it grew<br /> +Among the silence of the Alpine air;<br /> +In Scottish heather blossomed; and at last,<br /> +By that unshapen sapphire, in whose face<br /> +Spain, Italy, France, Algiers, and Tunis view<br /> +Their introverted mountains, came to fruit.<br /> +Back now, my booklet, on the diving ship,<br /> +And posting on the rails to home, return<br /> +Home, and the friends whose honouring name you bear.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 16em;">—<i>The Sketch, Feb. 26, 1896</i></span></p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> +<h2>STEVENSON AND HAZLITT</h2> + +<p>Of the many books which Robert Louis Stevenson planned and discussed with +his friends in his correspondence there is none, perhaps, which would have +been more valued than the biography of William Hazlitt. Whenever Stevenson +refers to Hazlitt, whether in his essay on “Walking Tours” or in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> +letters, he makes one wish he would say more. This is what he writes to +Mr. Hammerton:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>“I am in treaty with Bentley for a Life of Hazlitt; I hope it will +not fall through as I love the subject, and appear to have found a +publisher who loves it also. That, I think, makes things more +pleasant. You know I am a fervent Hazlittite; I mean regarding him as +the English writer who has had the scantiest justice. Besides which, +I am anxious to write biography; really, if I understand myself in +quest of profit, I think it must be good to live with another man +from birth to death. You have tried it, and know.”</i></p></div> + +<p>If the qualification of a biographer is to understand his subject, +Stevenson may be said to have been well qualified to write on Hazlitt. Mr. +Leslie Stephen has given us a fine critical estimate of Hazlitt the +writer, and the late Mr. Ireland’s prefatory memoir to his admirable +selection from the Essays, with its enforced limitations, is an excellent +piece of biographical <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>condensation, but the life of the essayist has yet +to be written. The subject has been tried by many others, but no one has +quite captured the spirit of Hazlitt. Had the details of Hazlitt’s life, +with his passionate hates and loves, been told by himself in the manner of +his beloved Rousseau, he might have produced a book which for interest +would have rivalled the <i>Confessions</i>, but failing such a work one must +deplore that Stevenson was not encouraged to write on the subject.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>I. R., in London Academy.</i></p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> +<h2>ON BERANGER</h2> +<p class="center"><i>From the article by Robert Louis Stevenson in the Encyclopædia Britannica.</i></p> + +<p>....He worked deliberately, never wrote more than fifteen songs a year and +often less, and was so fastidious that he has not preserved a quarter of +what he finished. “I am a good little bit of a poet,” he says himself, +“clever in the craft, and a conscientious worker, to whom old airs and a +modest choice of subjects (<i>le coin ou je me<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> suis confine</i>), have brought +some success.” Nevertheless, he makes a figure of importance in literary +history. When he first began to cultivate the <i>chanson</i>, this minor form +lay under some contempt, and was restricted to slight subjects and a +humorous guise of treatment. Gradually he filled these little chiseled +toys of verbal perfection with ever more and more sentiment. From a date +comparatively early he had determined to sing for the people. It was for +this reason that he fled, as far as possible, the houses of his +influential friends, and came back gladly to the garret and the street +corner. Thus it was, also, that he came to acknowledge obligations to +Emile Debraux, who had often stood between him and the masses as +interpreter, and given him the key-note of the popular humour. Now, he had +observed in the songs of sailors, and all who labour, a prevailing tone of +sadness; and so, as he grew more masterful in this sort of expression, he +sought more and more after what is deep, serious, and constant in the +thoughts of common men. The evolution<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> was slow; and we can see in his own +works examples of every stage, from that of witty indifference in fifty +pieces of the first collection, to that of grave and even tragic feeling +in <i>Les Souvenirs du Peuple</i> or <i>Le Vieux Vagabond</i>. And this innovation +involved another, which was as a sort of prelude to the great romantic +movement. For the <i>chanson</i>, as he says himself, opened up to him a path +in which his genius could develop itself at ease; he escaped, by this +literary postern, from strict academical requirements, and had at his +disposal the whole dictionary, four-fifths of which, according to La +Harpe, were forbidden to the use of more regular and pretentious poetry. +If he still kept some of the old vocabulary, some of the old imagery, he +was yet accustoming people to hear moving subjects treated in a manner +more free and simple than heretofore; so that his was a sort of +conservative reform, preceding the violent revolution of Victor Hugo and +his army of uncompromising romantics. He seems himself to have had +glimmerings of some such idea;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> but he withheld his full approval from the +new movement on two grounds:—first, because the romantic school misused +somewhat brutally the delicate organism of the French language; and +second, as he wrote to Sainte-Beuve in 1832, because they adopted the +motto of “Art for art,” and set no object of public usefulness before them +as they wrote. For himself (and this is the third point of importance) he +had a strong sense of political responsibility. Public interest took a far +higher place in his estimation than any private passion or favour. He had +little toleration for those erotic poets who sing their own loves and not +the common sorrows of mankind, “who forget,” to quote his own words, +“forget beside their mistress those who labour before the Lord.”...</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p> +<h2>STEVENSON OF THE LETTERS.</h2> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>Long, hatchet face, black hair, and haunting gaze,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That follows, as you move about the room,</span><br /> +Ah, this is he who trod the darkening ways,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And plucked the flowers upon the edge of doom.</span><br /> +<br /> +The bright, sweet-scented flowers that star the road<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To death’s dim dwelling, others heed them not,</span><br /> +With sad eyes fixed upon that drear abode,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Weeping, and wailing their unhappy lot.</span><br /> +<br /> +But he went laughing down the shadowed way,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The boy’s heart leaping still within his breast,</span><br /> +Weaving his garlands when his mood was gay,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mocking his sorrows with a solemn jest.</span><br /> +<br /> +The high Gods gave him wine to drink; a cup<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of strong desire, of knowledge, and of pain,</span><br /> +He set it to his lips and drank it up,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Then smiling, turned unto his flowers again.</span><br /> +<br /> +These are the flowers of that immortal strain,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Which, when the hand that plucked them drops and dies,</span><br /> +Still keep their radiant beauty free from stain,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And breathe their fragrance through the centuries.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 15em;"><span class="smcap">B. Paul Newman.</span></span></td></tr></table> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p> +<h2>APROPOS VAILIMA LETTERS.</h2> + +<p>The account of an interview with Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson, published in +a San Francisco paper, is somewhat distressing reading. It raises over +again the old question of the prudence of publishing a dead man’s letters, +when his widow is still alive, without her sanction. Mrs. Stevenson says +that her late husband’s friends—if such she still holds them to be—have +hastened to make money out of the scraps and scrawls he sent them. The +charge reads as an ugly one. But a moment’s reflection supplies its +modifications. Has Mr. Henley rushed into the market-place with his dead +friend’s letters? Has Mr. Charles Baxter? That was the old trio renowned +in song and famous in fable. Of the newer friends—friends such as those +he made in Bournemouth, Lady Shelley and the Misses Ashworth Taylor, the +most attached a man ever had—not one has brought out of his or her +treasury the delightful letters of “R. L. S.” We have the Vailima<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> +Letters, it is true, but surely these must be published by the consent of +Mrs. Stevenson and at her profit? We had also that letter which Mr. Gosse +sent to the <i>Times</i>. And, as for that, it was, obviously given and not +“sold”? In this particular letter, which was written in acknowledgment of +a dedication of Mr. Gosse’s poems to him, Stevenson congratulated his +correspondent on the prospect of an old age mitigated by the society of +his descendants. To heighten the picture, the man who had learned his +craft so well, and could hardly elude it in his least-considered letters, +introduced his own figure as a sort of foil—he was childless. That word, +uttered with regret, has, perhaps, a pang which the heart of a widow might +imagine she should be spared. Again, in one of the Vailima Letters, +Stevenson refers to his having been happy only once in his life, and that, +too, on the chance of its misinterpretation, may be ashes in Mrs. +Stevenson’s mouth. Yet who does not know “R. L. S.” as a man of moods? He +is that, and nothing else, in some of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> his letters. And no chance phrase +of his will ever be read to the discredit of Mrs. Stevenson—she may take +the English reader’s oath on that.</p> + +<p>In one of his Vailima Letters Stevenson speaks of the “incredible” pains +he has given to the first chapter of “Weir of Hermiston.” Yet, after that +even he remodelled it. It was worth the trouble, and the other seven and a +bit are worthy of it. The very title was a serious trouble to him. +“Braxfield” he would have liked it to be, but the judge of that name was +not treated with enough historical care to warrant the adoption of it. +Another name, “The Hanging Judge,” he abandoned; also “The Lord Justice +Clerk,” also “The Two Kirsties of Cauldstaneship,” and “The Four Black +Brothers.” No doubt in choosing “Weir of Hermiston”—with some of the +sound-romance of Dobell’s “Keiths of Revelston” about it—he chose finally +for the best.—<i>The Sketch.</i></p> + + +<p><a name="light" id="light"></a> </p><p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/lighttmb.jpg" alt="" /><br /> +<a href="images/light.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></div> +<p class="center"><a href="#lighttext"><small>Text of Image</small></a></p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p> +<h2>A VISIT TO STEVENSON’S PACIFIC ISLE</h2> + +<p>It is a curious fact that Stevenson, whom we all regarded at home as being +the personification of Samoa—indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say +that the average Englishman’s idea of Samoa was “some island or other in +the Pacific where Stevenson lives,”—has left very little behind him in +the way of tradition or story in the island he loved so well. He lived in +the midst of a society which, outside his immediate family surroundings, +must have been eminently uncongenial to a man of his refined nature, yet +he damaged his fame here, at least, by meddling in the petty squabbles +which agitate the beach at Apia, and his “Footnote to History” has made +him a host of enemies, notably among the German colony, who, by the mouth +of one of their many prophets, condemned him to me as a writer of “stupid +stinks!” And therefore he may have made a mistake in imagining himself a +factor in the insoluble equation of Samoan affairs. It is to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> natives +that he was more attached than to the vague ideals which form their +so-called political future. To them he was a great chief, “Tusitala +Talmita” by name, and many a native I have spoken to mentioned him with +real affection as a good friend and a man with a golden heart. Perhaps +this is the praise he himself would have chosen rather than that of the +white colony.</p> + +<p>It is not my purpose, however, to dilate on his life in Samoa, nor indeed +would it be possible to gather, from the mass of conflicting evidence, any +rational account of his doings in his island home. It is of a pilgrimage +which I made to visit his library that I would give some short account. +The room was walled from floor to ceiling with books, and I began to +inspect them. To the left of the door were some “yellow backs,” but few, +nor did I see in his library much trash of any description. Next came +books of travel in almost every country in the world, the bulk of them, +however, dealing with the Pacific. From Capt. Cook down, it would be hard +to name a Pacific travel book<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> that has not found itself on the shelves at +Vailima. Next, I am bound to say, came my first disappointment. I had +always thought that Stevenson must have been a good classical scholar, and +had an idea formed, I know not how or whence, that a great style—and +surely his may be justly called so—necessitated a close and intimate +acquaintance with those classical authors who—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Upon the stretched forefinger of all Time<br /> +Sparkle forever.”</p> + +<p>Yet I found classics, indeed, but, alas! in Mr. Bohn’s edition, while on +the shelf beneath lay the originals uncut. It came to me as a positive +blow to find the pages of the “Odyssey” uncared for and unread, save in +some translation. Of Horace he had many and good editions, and they seemed +read and used; but of the Greek tragedians I found only “Sophocles” in +Prof. Campbell’s translation, and no edition of his plays save a small +“Œdipus the King.” This was a great shock to me, for even supposing +that Stevenson<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> was only “a maker of phrases” (as many people will tell +you, above all here, “for a prophet is not without honor,” etc.), still +phrases must have some basis in education, and a man who is evidently +careless of his masters of ancient language is not likely to prove a +brilliant coiner of words.</p> + +<p>Turning with regret from this shelf, I came next upon a fine collection of +French works, beginning with a complete edition of Balzac, which had +evidently been read with care. Much French fiction was here—Daudet’s +“Tartarin,” “Fromont Jeune et Risler Aine,” “Les Rois en Exil,” Guy de +Maupassant, Prosper Merimee and a complete Victor Hugo, besides a swarm of +the more ephemeral novels. Here, too, was a fine and complete edition of +“Wellington’s Dispatches” and several military treatises. Next to these +came a good collection (be it always remembered that I speak of Samoa in +Samoa, and 14,000 miles from the home of English and French publishing and +printing) of historical works; Gibbon, of course, Milman,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> Von Ranke and +many of the old French chroniclers—Philippe de Comines especially—read +and marked, no doubt, when Stevenson was writing “The Black Arrow.” One +passage so marked struck me as curious. Surely Stevenson was a man whom, +from his writings, one would imagine to be practically without enemies; +yet, in the light of events at Apia, and from what I have heard here, the +quotation seems apposite; “Je scay bien que ma lange m’a porte grande +hommage, aussi m’a-t-elle fait quelques fois de plaisir beaucoup, +toutesfois c’est raison que je repare l’amende.” Now these are almost the +exact words which conclude the preface to the only deplorable book +Stevenson ever wrote—his “Footnote to History,” which has made him many +enemies, and, I think, no friends—in fact, nothing but the vigorous +description of the hurricane saves it from worthlessness. As history it is +not trustworthy, and as a footnote it was ridiculous. However, to return +to the books. There was a very complete collection of modern poets, hardly +any of note being<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> omitted. I even saw a copy of “J. K. S.’s” “Lapsus +Calami,” which surprised me, for Stevenson was neither a Cambridge nor a +public school man.</p> + +<p>Such, then, in brief, is a rough summary of the library of this remarkable +man; many of the editions de luxe were packed away, but I believe what I +saw was his working stock. We now opened a little glass door leading from +the room into Stevenson’s sanctum, where he dictated almost all his work. +It was quite a small room, lighted by two windows; and in one corner lay a +bed with a mat “Samoan fashion” spread thereon, while beside it was a +table with a bunch of withered flowers (the last he ever looked on), and +which Mr. Chatfield has very properly never permitted to be removed. Here, +in one corner, stood a small bookcase with editions of his own works; the +walls were hung with engravings of ancestors—the only sign of his Scotch +origin I noted in the house—while above the chimney-piece (the only +chimney-pieces and fire-places in Samoa are at Vailima), were a lovely +series of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> drawings of Gordon Browne, to illustrate one of his later +books, “The Island Nights’ Adventures.” These pictures, though only in +black and white, breathe the spirit of the islands in a marvellous manner, +especially remarkable being the illustration, “The Beach of Falesa.” In a +small bookcase over the head of the bed were some of his own books, a +Shakespeare, and, what was more curious, “A Record of Remarkable Crimes +and Criminals.” I heard that Stevenson was fond of “supping full of +horrors,” and that would, of course, account for the inevitable murder or +bloodshed which haunts his books; he was an avid reader of murders and +crimes of all sorts. His mind was of a curious cast. Mr. Chatfield told me +that on some days he was the most charming of companions—brilliant, witty +and fascinating; on others, dull and morose beyond description, hardly +uttering a word, and giving no sign of the wealth of tenderness and genial +kindness that lurked within. As a host, it is agreed on all hands he was +incomparable. His entertainment <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>catered for the tastes of all, and in the +sunshine of his delightful company all sorts and conditions of men were +happy.</p> + +<p>We left this room with a feeling of depression, and passing through the +other to the door, my eye fell on what I had not before noticed, the +original of the delightful map which is the frontispiece to Treasure +Island—a most beautiful piece of drawing, reminding me, in its quaint +accompaniments of spouting dolphins and horn-blowing Tritons, as much as +in its pretended accuracy, of those strange maps in the earlier editions +of Gulliver, where Brobdingnag, Laputa, etc., are all laid out with +geographical detail of latitude and longitude. The curious, sprawling +writing of Flint and Billy Bones were in contrast to the fine workmanship +of the rest of the map, which, save for some slight coarseness in the +shading of the steeper side of “Spyglass Hill,” might have been engraved. +The last thing I saw in the library was perhaps the most curious of all. +It was a navigating chart constructed by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> natives of the Wallis +Islands for their own use and guidance. I have since learned that such +charts are used by the traders also who navigate these latitudes. The form +of the charts is a parallelogram constructed on a framework of cane or +other light wood. Across this parallelogram run vertically convex pieces +of wood bent to show the general run or set of the wind and waves; cross +currents are marked with cross pieces of wood showing their direction, and +their force and variation are indicated on the slips of wood themselves +(which are not half an inch wide) by means of signs and curious marks. +Islands are denoted on this wonderful piece of native work by cowrie +shells fastened to the framework. I suppose Stevenson must have picked +this up on his travels among the islands, and I believe that although +these charts are universally used in the Wallis group and are found +perfectly correct, very few specimens of the kind have emerged as yet from +those islands. I puzzled a long time to guess what it was, Mrs. Chatfield +enjoying my mystification,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> which she herself had experienced when she +first saw this remarkable map. One more fact I must mention about the +library. In a corner I found a number of quarto volumes, well bound, +containing apparently a continuous day-book of some of Stevenson’s many +voyages. It is to be hoped that these journals may some day be given to +the world. Many and curious were the scenes he witnessed; various and +entertaining the personages he must have met on his travels. He seems to +have visited most of the many groups of islets with which the Pacific is +so plentifully sprinkled.</p> + +<p>I did not care to visit the rest of the house, though my hostess most +kindly offered to show me anything she could, but I stood outside and +looked at the lofty hill over the house where he sleeps his last sleep in +the land and among the people he loved so well. Samoans show much poetic +feeling in selecting beautiful sites for the graves of their chiefs. In my +journeys round the island, in the most remote districts, I was frequently +delighted by coming suddenly upon the usual inclosure<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> of rough stones +which mark the resting-place of a chief, always in a beautiful spot and +invariably commanding a wide and splendid view. This may also have been +Stevenson’s object in selecting the summit of the hill for his grave. The +labor required to carry him to his last resting-place was immense, as many +as sixty Samoans being employed, while only nineteen Europeans braved the +difficulties of the ascent to be present at the sad offices. But his last +home is beautiful; by day the trees innumerable round his lonely grave are +musical with the fanfare of the glorious tradewinds, while at times the +sound of</p> + +<p class="poem">“The league-long roller thundering on the reef”</p> + +<p>is borne across the waving forest. The view by day is superb; mountain, +valley, reef and palm, with the gleam of the sunlight on the breaking surf +around the distant reef, while overhead the solitary tropic bird wings its +silent flight through the dazzling azure of the skies. No more beautiful +spot for a grave can be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> imagined; the majestic voice of those southern +seas he loved so well makes melody in the very air around his grave. No +spot more typical of the Pacific could have been found; and I turned away +with a feeling of relief that one whose nature was so allied to that he +wrote of should in his death not have been divided from the scenes he made +familiar to so many thousands of admirers.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> +<h2>A PEN PORTRAIT</h2> + +<p>Robert Louis Stevenson, the author, really does look like the watermelon +portrait of him in one of the magazines. He sat in a Long Branch car on +Tuesday on his way from Manasquan to New York.</p> + +<p>He has a long, narrow face, and wears his long brown hair parted in the +middle and combed back. It is just such straight, coarse hair as General +Roger A. Pryor’s, but much lighter in color. Stevenson sat in a forward +corner of the car, with his hat off, and the cape of his coat up behind +his head like a monk’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> cowl. His black velvet coat and vest showed +plainly, and over his legs he wore a black and white checked shawl. His +Byronic collar was soft and untidy, and his shirt was unlaundered, but his +clothes were scrupulously clean. On the long, thin, white fingers of his +left hand he wore two rings, and he kept these fingers busy constantly +pulling his drooping moustache. His face is slightly freckled and a little +hollow at the cheek, but it has a good bit of Scotch color in it.</p> + +<p>Mr. Stevenson presented such an odd figure that all in the car stared at +him, particularly when a rumor of who he was ran among the people. But he +seemed unconscious of the interest he aroused. He was reading a book, and +every now and then he would fix a sentence in his mind, close the book on +one finger, look at the ceiling and muse. When a sentence pleased him, he +smiled at it, and then read it again. At the Jersey City depot he threw +off his shawl and stood up, and then the figure he cut was extraordinary, +for his coat proved to be merely a large cape, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> a small one above it, +and under both came his extra long legs, or, rather, his long lavender +trousers, for they appeared to have no legs within them.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Stevenson was with him, but sat apart studying the scenery. Her +husband looked at her frequently with a whimsical smile, and found great +fun in laughing at her behind his book when a dude of tremendous style +took the seat beside her.—<i>The Sun, 1887.</i></p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> +<h2>APPRECIATION AND HOMAGE.</h2> + +<p>“The precious memory of a single afternoon at the Saville Club.... We +chiefly talked of the craft and the art of story-telling and of its +technique.... Stevenson praised heartily Mark Twain’s ‘Huckleberry Finn,’ +and it was his belief that it was greater, riper, and richer than its +forerunner, ‘Tom Sawyer.’”</p> + +<p>....“He was a writer of travel sketches and was able to describe Edinburgh +with the same freedom from the commonplace that gave freshness to +‘Silverado Squatters’.... He was also a biographer and a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> literary critic +... but as a story-teller he won his widest triumphs.”</p> + +<p class="right"><i>Brander Matthews.</i></p> + +<p> </p> +<p>“No other writer of our time has come as near as Stevenson to the conquest +of a perfect English style. He is the one who stands first with the true +lovers of the art of words. To quote from himself he is the one who is +most unceasingly inspired by ‘<i>an unextinguishable zest in technical +successes</i>’ and has also most constantly remembered that ‘<i>The end of all +art is to please</i>.’”</p> + +<p class="right"><i>M. G. Van Rensselaer.</i></p> + +<p> </p> +<p>“In the years I knew him, if Stevenson expressed much interest in +children, it was mainly for the sake of their fathers and mothers: but +that after a while he began to take a very great delight in summoning back +to his clear recollection the panic fears and adventurous pleasure of his +own early youth, thus becoming, in his portraiture of himself, the +consummate painter of one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> species of child. But his relation to other +children was shy and gently defiant; it would have exhausted him to play +with them; but he looked forward to a time when they should be old enough +to talk to him.”</p> + +<p class="right"><i>Edmund Gosse.</i></p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p> +<h2>R. L. S. AND MUSIC.</h2> + +<p>Mr. Andrew Lang recently declared that most poets and literary men hate +music. They hate it because it thrusts itself upon them when they don’t +want it—the poet when his eye is in a fine frenzy rolling, and the +prosaic literary man when he is debating about the opening sentence of an +important article. You need not look at pictures or statues, Mr. Lang +contends; you need not even read poetry, if you “hate poetry and +painting,” like George II. But you must often listen to music whether you +will or not. There is no escape from it any more than from the influenza. +Mr. Lang no doubt speaks chiefly for himself. Nature, as he frankly +admits, has not made him musical; and though he can stand “Will ye no come +back again?” and “Bonnie Dundee,” Wagner and Chopin say absolutely nothing +to him. In any case, he is somewhat astray in declaring that literary men +dislike music. Even Johnson, who is generally quoted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> as among the +music-haters, and who, as we all know, called music “the least +disagreeable of noises,” even he was at the worst only insensible to the +charms of the art. He once bought a flageolet—that he never made out a +tune is no matter—and Burney, the musical historian, says that six months +before his death he asked to be taught “at least the alphabet of your +language.” Scott, too, though the incurable defects of his voice and ear +drove his music teacher to despair, was very partial to the national music +of his country, and, like Congreve’s Jeremy, had a “reasonable ear” for a +jig. Nay, Lamb himself, whose lack of musical ear has been boldly +proclaimed in one of the best of the Elia essays, used to go to Vincent +Novello’s house for no other purpose than to hear Novello play the organ +and listen to his daughter’s singing. These may, indeed, be taken as types +of the indifferent men, the men who do not care very much whether they +ever hear music or not. But look at the number of authors who have +explicitly declared their delight in music. De Quincey<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> was one; Browning +was another. Did not Goldsmith play the flute, and Milton amuse himself +with the organ? Rogers loved a barrel organ to distraction, and Ruskin +went into mild raptures over Halle’s playing of Thalberg’s “Home, sweet +home.” Burns and Hogg scraped on the fiddle, and Shelley strummed on a +guitar, now on the Bodleian at Oxford. Moore sang Irish songs, Tom +Campbell once tipped a German organist to play for half an hour to him; +and if Shakespeare wasn’t musical he ought to have been considering the +way in which he has spoken of the man who “hath no music in his soul.” In +short, in regard to music, our great writers have been just like other +people—some have been passionately fond of music, some have liked it in a +mild kind of way, and some have been absolutely indifferent to it.</p> + +<p>To which of the two first-mentioned classes our brave Stevenson belonged +it would be somewhat difficult to say. That he was musical at all will +probably be regarded as a revelation to most people; and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>indeed it is +only since the recent publication of his correspondence that even the +elect have realized the full extent of his musical tastes and +accomplishments. That he took at least a mild interest in music might have +been inferred from various allusions to the art in his tales and essays. +In “The Wrong Box,” for example, we have the humorous situation where the +young barrister pretends that he is engaged on the composition of an +imaginary comic opera. It is in the same story, again, that there occurs a +veritable “locus classicus” on the art of playing the penny whistle, and +the difference between the amateur and the professional performer. +Stevenson, as we shall see, was himself devoted to the penny whistle, and +in view of that devotion it is curious to remark the observation in this +story that one seldom, if ever, encounters a person learning to play that +instrument. “The young of the penny whistler,” as he puts it, “like those +of the salmon, are occult from observation.” He endows David, his forbear +at Pilrig, with a musical ear, for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> Laird received David Balfour “in +the midst of learned works and musical instruments, for he was not only a +deep philosopher, but much of a musician.”</p> + +<p>It is, however, needless to dwell upon these vague impersonal references +to music when so much that is directly explicit on the subject is to be +found both in the Vailima letters and in the latter correspondence. Miss +Blantyre Simpson, who knew Stevenson in his early days, says that he had +not much of a musical ear, and had only a “rudimentary acquaintance” with +“Auld Lang Syne” and “The Wearing of the Green.” It is clear that he +improved as the years went on, but his family seem always to have regarded +his musical accomplishments with something like scorn. In 1874, when he +was 24, he was at Chester with his father, and the verger was taking the +visitors round the cathedral.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“We got into a little side chapel, whence we could hear the choir +children at practice, and I stopped a moment listening to them with, +I dare-say, a very bright face, for the sound was delightful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> to me. +‘Ah,’ says he (the verger), ‘You’re very fond of music.’ I said I +was. ‘Yes, I could tell that by your head,’ he answered. Then my +father cut in brutally, said anyway I had no ear, and left the verger +so distressed and shaken in the foundation of his creed that, I hear, +he got my father aside afterwards and said he was sure there was +something in my face, and wanted to know what it was if not music.”</p></div> + +<p>The elder Stevenson very likely failed to distinguish between the love of +music and the possession of an ear for music. The two things are totally +different, as Coleridge once pointed out in regard to his own particular +case. “I have,” he said, “no ear whatever. I could not sing an air to save +my life, but I have the intensest delight in music, and can detect good +from bad.” Stevenson probably had no such gift of discrimination, but that +he had at least the faculty of musical appreciativeness seems perfectly +clear. He mentions it as one of his characteristic failings that he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> never +could remember the name of an air, no matter how familiar it was to him; +but he was able to say of some engrossing pursuit that it “fascinates me +like a tune.” Wealth, he remarked once, evidently in all seriousness, is +“useful for only two things—a yacht and a string quartette.” In his +younger days he seems to have been as much devoted to the opera as ever De +Quincey was. At Frankfort, in 1872, he reports that he goes to the theatre +every night, except when there is no opera. One night he was “terribly +excited” over Halévy’s “La Juive,” so much so indeed that he had to +“slope” in the middle of the fifth act. It was raining and cold outside, +so he went into a “bierhalle” and brooded for nearly an hour over his +glass. “An opera,” he mused, “is far more real than real life to me. It +seems as if stage illusion, and particularly this hardest to swallow and +most conventional illusion of them all—an opera—would never stale upon +me. I wish that life was an opera. I should like to live in one; but I +don’t know in what quarter of the globe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> I shall find a society so +constituted. Besides, it would soon pall—imagine asking for three-kreuzer +cigars in recitative, or giving the washerwoman the inventory of your +dirty clothes in a sustained and flourishores aria!” Here, as some one has +remarked, we see the wide-eyed innocence of the man—the tinsel and the +humbug so apparent, and yet the vague longing so real.</p> + +<p>That Stevenson should make attempts to play the piano was only natural, +but in that accomplishment he does not seem to have proceeded very far. +When he was at Bournemouth in 1886, he tells Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin that “I +write all the morning, come down, and never leave the piano till five; +write letters, dine, get down again about eight, and never leave the piano +until I go to bed.” At this time the whistle was Osborne’s instrument. +“You should hear Lloyd on the penny whistle and me on the piano!” +Stevenson exclaimed to his father, “Dear powers, what a concerto! I now +live entirely for the piano; he for the whistle;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> the neighbors in a +radius of a furlong and a half are packing up in quest of better climes.” +By his own confession, it was a case of picking out the melody with one +finger! In the matter of musical arrangements he proclaims himself a +purist, and yet, with charming inconsistency, announces that he is +arranging certain numbers of the “Magic Flute” for “two melodious +forefingers.” Clearly, it does not say much for Mr. Henley’s powers as a +virtuoso that Stevenson should have “counterfeited his playing on the +piano.”</p> + +<p>But Stevenson’s particular instrument was the flageolet, the same that +Johnson once bought. Miss Simpson says that his flageolet-playing was +merely one of his impulsive whims, an experiment undertaken to see if he +liked making music. However this may have been, there can be no doubt +about his assiduity in practice; indeed, the earlier Vailima letters are +full of references which show his devotion to the now somewhat despised +instrument. “Played on my pipe,” “took to tootling on the flageolet,” are +entries which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> constantly occur, the context always making it clear that +“pipe” is synonymous with flageolet. “If I take to my pipe,” he writes on +one occasion, “I know myself all is over for the morning.” Writing to Mr. +Colvin in June, 1891, he says:—“Tell Mrs. S. I have been playing ‘Le +Chant d’Amour’ lately, and have arranged it, after awful trouble, rather +prettily for two pipes; and it brought her before me with an effect scarce +short of hallucination. I could hear her voice in every note; yet I had +forgot the air entirely, and began to pipe it from notes as something new, +when I was brought up with a round turn by this reminiscence.” Generally +speaking, Stevenson “tootled” by himself; but now and again he took part +in concerted music with Osborne and Mrs. Strong. One day he makes music +“furiously” with these two. A day or two later he writes:—“Woke at the +usual time, very little work, for I was tired, and had a job for the +evening—to write parts for a new instrument, a violin. Lunch, chat, and +up to my place to practise; but there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> was no practising for me—my +flageolet was gone wrong, and I had to take it all to pieces, clean it, +and put it up again. As this is a most intricate job—the thing dissolves +into seventeen separate members; most of these have to be fitted on their +individual springs as fine as needles, and sometimes two at once with the +springs shoving different ways—it took me till two.” However, he got over +his difficulty, and was ready for the performance. “In the evening our +violinist arrived, no great virtuoso truly, but plucky, industrious, and a +good reader; and we played five pieces with huge amusement, and broke up +at nine.” It goes without saying that, notwithstanding all this practice, +Stevenson was exceedingly modest about his accomplishments. “Even my +clumsinesses are my joy,” he said—“my woodcuts, my stumbling on the +pipe.”</p> + +<p>But we must not forget the penny whistle. That instrument seems to have at +one time quite ousted the flageolet. “I am a great performer before the +Lord<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> on the penny whistle,” he writes to Miss Boodle from Saranac in +1888. “We now perform duets on two D tin whistles; it is no joke to make +the bass; I think I must really send you one, which I wish you would +correct. I may be said to live for these instrumental labors now; but I +have always some childishness on hand.” To play a bass of any kind on a +tin whistle must indeed have been “no joke.” But the instrument appears to +have had quite a fascination for Stevenson at this time. He even proposed +to associate it with the title of what he ultimately called “A Child’s +Garden of Verses.” When he sent the manuscript for publication he could +not decide about the title, but after some banter on the subject he +tentatively fixed on “The Penny Whistle: Nursery Verses, &c.” Then he +thought of a variation—“Penny Whistles for Small Whistlers,” and directed +that the title-page should be embellished with crossed penny whistles, or +“a sheaf of ’em.”</p> + +<p>But Stevenson was more than a player of music:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> he actually tried his hand +at composition! In one letter of the year 1886 he sets down in musical +notation from memory a part of a dance air of Lully’s. About the harmony, +which he has evidently made himself, he talks quite learnedly. “Where I +have put an A,” he says, “is that a dominant eleventh or what? or just a +seventh on the D? and if the latter, is that allowed? It sounds very +funny. Never mind all my questions; if I begin about music (which is my +leading ignorance and curiosity) I have always to babble questions; all my +friends know me now, and take no notice whatever.” A few months later and +he had composed his Opus 1. He called it a Threnody, and he sent it for +criticism to his cousin, Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson, who was better versed in +the art. Some plain talk on the part of the cousin apparently followed, +for we find the composer urging certain points in self-justification. +“There may be hidden fifths in it,” he says, “and if there are it shows +how damn spontaneous the thing was. I could tinker and tic-tac-toe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> on a +piece of paper, but scorned the act with a Threnody which was poured forth +like blood and water on the groaning organ.” There was the true composer, +putting down his inspiration as it came to him, and allowing it to stand +as it was in defiance of all rule! Nothing daunted, he made another +attempt. “Herewith another shy,” he said, “more melancholy than before, +but I think not so abjectly idiotic. The musical terms seem to be as good +as in Beethoven, and that, after all, is the great affair. Bar the damn +bareness of the base, it looks like a real piece of music from a distance. +I am proud to say it was not made one hand at a time. The base was of +synchronous birth with the treble; they are of the same age, and may God +have mercy on their souls.” That is too characteristically charming to be +spoiled by comment.</p> + +<p class="right">J. C. H.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p><a name="tpagetext" id="tpagetext"></a><a href="#tpage">Return</a></p> +<p class="center">Stevensoniana</p> +<p> </p> +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td align="center"><i>BEING</i> A REPRINT <i>OF<br />VARIOUS</i> LITERARY <i>AND</i><br /> +PICTORIAL MISCELLANY<br /><i>ASSOCIATED WITH</i><br />Robert Louis Stevenson<br />THE MAN AND HIS WORK</td></tr></table> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">The Bankside Press<br />M. F. MANSFIELD, 14 WEST 22ND STREET, NEW YORK</p> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><a name="canyontext" id="canyontext"></a><a href="#canyon">Return</a></p> +<p class="center">NOT I,<br />And Other POEMS,<br /><br /><i>BY</i><br /> +Robert Louis Stevenson,<br /><br />Author of<br /><i>The Blue Scalper, Travels<br /> +with a Donkey, etc.</i><br />PRICE 8d.<br /><br /> +<br /> +BLACK CANYON<br /><i>or</i><br />Wild Adventures in the<br />FAR WEST<br /> +A<br />Tale of Instruction and Amusement<br />for the Young.<br /><br /> +<i>BY<br />SAMUEL OSBOURNE</i><br /><br />ILLUSTRATED.<br /><br /> +<i>Printed by the Author.</i><br />Davos-Platz.</p> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><a name="risingtext" id="risingtext"></a><a href="#rising">Return</a></p> +<p class="center">THE PENTLAND RISING<br /><br />A PAGE OF HISTORY<br /><br /> +1666<br /><br />‘A cloud of witnesses ly here,<br />Who for Christ’s interest did appear.’<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;"><i>Inscription on Battle-field at Rullion Green.</i></span><br /> +<br />EDINBURGH<br />ANDREW ELLIOT, 17 PRINCES STREET<br />1866</p> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><a name="lighttext" id="lighttext"></a><a href="#light">Return</a></p> +<p class="center">NOTICE<br />OF A<br />NEW FORM OF INTERMITTENT LIGHT<br />FOR LIGHTHOUSES.<br /> +<br /><br />BY<br />ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON<br /><br /> +<i>From the Transactions of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts,<br />Vol. VIII.</i>, 1870-1871<br /> +<br /><br />EDINBURGH<br />PRINTED BY NEILL AND COMPANY<br />1871</p> + + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Stevensoniana, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STEVENSONIANA *** + +***** This file should be named 33428-h.htm or 33428-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/4/2/33428/ + +Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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