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diff --git a/old/53165-8.txt b/old/53165-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index ce36028..0000000 --- a/old/53165-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1146 +0,0 @@ -Project Gutenberg's A Day with Robert Louis Stevenson, by Maurice Clare - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: A Day with Robert Louis Stevenson - -Author: Maurice Clare - -Release Date: September 28, 2016 [EBook #53165] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DAY WITH ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON *** - - - - -Produced by Al Haines - - - - - - - - - -[Illustration: Cover art] - - - - -[Illustration: Robert Louis Stevenson] - - - - -_Painting by W. Hatherell._ - - "Took down the folds of her hair--shook it - round her face and the pool repeated her - thus veiled." - -_Prince Otto._ - -[Illustration: _Prince Otto_] - - - - - A DAY WITH - ROBERT LOUIS - STEVENSON - - - BY MAURICE CLARE - - - - LONDON - HODDER & STOUGHTON - 1910 - - - - - _In the same Series. - Dickens. - Thackeray._ - - - - -A DAY WITH STEVENSON. - - -Supposing that in the month of April, 1886, you had arrived, a guest -foreseen, at the pleasant ivy-muffled dwelling in Bournemouth, which -had recently adopted the name of Skerryvore, and that you had been -permitted to enter its doors--you might account yourself a somewhat -favoured person. For the master of the house, "that rickety and -cloistered spectre," as he termed himself, the "pallid brute who lived -in Skerryvore like a weevil in a biscuit," might be invisible for the -nonce--shut upstairs, forbidden even to speak for fear of inducing -hemorrhage. Or again, you might yourself be afflicted with an obvious -cold: in which case you would not be admitted into his presence, lest -you left contagion of that cold. - -But if fate befriended you, you would chance upon the most remarkable -personality, it might be, that you had yet encountered. A lean, long -flat-chested man, gracefully emphatic of gesture--pacing up and down -the room as he talked--burning with hectic energy--a man of rich brown -tints in hair and eyes and skin: mutable, mirthful, brilliant--above -all "vital," as he had described himself, "wholly vital with a buoyance -of life" which had upborne him hitherto over the crest of most -tumultuous distresses. - -Robert Louis Stevenson was now thirty-six years old: and ever since his -sixth year, when, as his mother recorded in her diary, he dreamed that -he "heard the noise of pens writing," his aim had been set unswervingly -toward the one goal. Born of a strong and strenuous family, the great -lighthouse builders of the north, he was not, like them, intent upon -the subjugation of obstinate stone, the ordering and ordaining of rocks -and seas. Dhu Heartach and the Bell Rock and Skerryvore he could -admire at a distance: but the material which cried aloud to him for -mastery, was much more plastic,--yet, to him, no less stubborn. "I -imagine," he declared, "nobody ever had such pains to learn a trade as -I had; but I slogged at it day in and day out." His fastidious soul -refused to be contented with a facile and slipshod utterance. A -passionate quest: after _le mot propre_, which had led him, in his own -phrase, to "play the sedulus ape" to all the great prose writers of the -past--and a sense of style such as no man had ever so anxiously and -assiduously developed in himself--these had achieved their own reward. -"'Thanks to my dire industry," said Stevenson, "I have done more with -smaller gifts than almost any man of letters in the world." - -And this was a just pride: for there was no branch of literature in -which he could not admirably acquit himself. So many years a struggler -in obscurity, with small hopes, few successes, little -encouragement--battling with continuous and crippling maladies,--this -indomitable artist, by sheer dint of "dire industry," now suddenly -stood forth in full blaze of public recognition. The author of -_Virginibus Puerisque_, _Treasure Island_, _Prince Otto_, _The Child's -Garden of Verse_, and _Dr. Jekyll_, was very much a man to be reckoned -with. - -Probably few modern books have met with such instantaneous and -triumphant success as _Treasure Island_ and _Dr. Jekyll_. The first, -after running its course, unannounced and comparatively unrecognized, -the serial of an obscure author, in _Young Folks' Paper_, was published -in book form,--and Stevenson, like Byron, "awoke to find himself -famous." The honours which he had failed to obtain with all the dainty -humour, all the valiant fatalism, of _Virginibus Puerisque_, had been -accorded without stint to _Treasure Island_. It was a tense and -stimulating piece of pure adventure. The authentic air of the -eighteenth century breathed through every sentence of it: and its fine -flavour of dare-devil romance kindled even sober statesmen, such as Mr. -Gladstone, to a very furore of avidity in devouring its breathless -pages. - -As for _Dr. Jekyll_, that gruesome work--literally the product of a -nightmare--had been quoted in pulpits, discussed in newspapers, read by -everybody,--it had taken the world by storm. Yet Stevenson's head was -not turned by his tardily-won success: with his customary _sang froid_, -he took things as they came, failures and triumphs, and met each alike -with smiling gallantry. - -The motives which had led him into authorship--or rather forced him, -despite all stress and hindrance of froward circumstances,--were as -curiously varied as his own nature; and it was these motives which -still drove him hard and incessantly. To fame he was perhaps not -wholly indifferent. No author sits so austerely aloft as to disdain -popular applause altogether. Yet a born stylist and a conscious -artist, like Stevenson, knew that his most finished work was above and -beyond the appreciation of the general public. For money,--though it -was a necessity of life to him, and although, with all his recent -triumphs, he was not at present earning more than £400 a year,--for -money he did not care, except as a means to an end. "Wealth is only -useful for two things," he said, "a yacht and a string quartet. Except -for these, I hold that £700 a year is as much as a man can possibly -want." Still, in declaring, "I do not write for the public," he added -with engaging candour, "I do write for money, a nobler deity," and -this, to a certain extent was true. It was for money only, no doubt, -that he was now undertaking, against the grain, that "romance of -tushery," _The Black Arrow_, a tale with a mediæval setting in which he -felt himself ill at ease. But "most of all," he allowed, "I write for -myself; not perhaps any more noble, but both more intelligent and -nearer home." - -And that a man in such difficulties of health and finance, and so -precarious a position, should have the courage of his own determined -artistry, was in itself sufficiently remarkable: but the result more -than justified his choice. - -All the morning, Stevenson had been upstairs writing: probably after a -bad night; very likely in what any other man would term a totally unfit -condition. Under any and all circumstances, he continued to write -unflinchingly; racked by coughing, reeling with weakness, with his -right arm in a sling, and his left hand holding the pen,--sitting up in -bed with a clinical thermometer in his mouth; and yet, as he declared, -"I like my life all the same ... I should bear false witness if I did -not declare life happy." ... He was, in his own words, "made for a -contest, and the powers have so willed that my battlefield should be -this dingy, inglorious one of the bed and the physic bottle." - -"To declare life happy," became, in fact, his literary mission,--the -condensed philosophy of his gay, inveterate courage. "I believe that -literature should give joy," was his maxim, "one dank, dispirited word -is harmful,--a crime of _lèse-humanité_." This brave and cheerful -outlook is evident in all his essays,--it is, so to speak, a glorified -and artistic Mark-Tapleyism, all-pervading, unimpugnable, ready to -survive the most malevolent accidents of life, the crowning tragedy of -death itself. And so you find the "chronic sickist," as he termed -himself, still ready, in all but body, for great risks and inspiriting -adventures, and--through a mist of pain--leading forlorn hopes with a -waving sword of flame. You hear him proclaiming that: - -"All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good -work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. -Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful -impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. -And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in -mid-career, laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous -foundations, flushed with hope, and their mouths full of boastful -language, they should be at once tripped up and silenced; is there not -something brave and spirited in such a termination? and does not life -go down with a better grace, foaming in full body over a precipice, -than miserable struggling to an end in sandy deltas?" (_Virginibus -Puerisque_.) - -And to him, above all, applied his own triumphant lines, those which he -addressed to W. E. Henley, another writer, a man of like courageous -outlook, who, like himself, "in the fell grip of circumstances, had not -winced nor cried aloud: - - "... Small the pipe; but oh! do thou, - Peak-faced and suffering piper, blow therein - The dirge of heroes dead; and to these sick, - These dying, sound the triumph over death. - Behold! each greatly breathes; each tastes a joy - Unknown before in dying; for each knows - A hero dies with him--though unfulfilled, - Yet conquering truly--and not dies in vain." - - -At present he was engaged upon _Kidnapped_, that admirable piece of -fiction which he had begun, "partly as a lark and partly as a -pot-boiler." It was a relief, after the concentrated horror of _Dr. -Jekyll_, to escape into the Scottish heather-scent and to feel the salt -sea-wind whistling through the cordage of _Kidnapped_. - - -_Painting by W. Hatherell._ - - "She stood on the bulwarks and held on by a - stay, the wind blowing in her petticoats. - -_Catriona._ - -[Illustration: _Catriona_] - - -Stevenson was desirous to "get free of this prison-yard of the -abominably ugly, where I take my daily exercise with my -contemporaries." Possibly he recognised that the amazing popularity of -_Jekyll_ had been due to the morbid attractiveness of its subject, -rather than to its merits of craftsmanship; for, as he had averred, "I -know that good work sometimes hits; but, with my hand on my heart, I -think it is an accident." But now he was at liberty to give play to -his infinite variety upon a true boys' book,--a story to satisfy the -inveterate boyishness of his own heart. "Of the romance of boyhood and -adolescence, it has been said, he is an unsurpassed master ... the -philosophy of life developed in both his essays and romances is that -rather of a gifted boy than a mature man." (J. W. Mackail.) And even -the girls of Stevenson's imagination have been accused of being "boys -in petticoats." The phrase has reason. "I have never admired a girl," -he wrote, and again, "I have never pleased myself with any women of -mine." The other sex remained for him, throughout, a mystery which he -hardly cared to solve,--a sealed book which he was not desirous to -open. "Of the two eternal factors in the destiny of man, warfare and -love," although he allowed that "to love is the great amulet which -makes the world a garden," he preferred to deal almost exclusively with -the warfare. - -And yet one women had played a very important part in Stevenson's life: -and it was practically with his marriage that the tide of his fortunes -had changed. His wife,--"trusty, dusky, vivid, true," was his very -_alter ego_: with "a character" (to quote Mr. Sidney Colvin) "as -strong, interesting, and romantic almost as his own: an inseparable -sharer of all his thoughts, the most shrewd and stimulating of critics: -and in sickness, despite her own precarious health, the most devoted -and most efficient of nurses." To while away the weary hours of -illness, Mrs. Stevenson made up stories to amuse him,--and subsequently -the husband and wife would write them out together. She, with her -"eyes of gold and bramble-dew," was literally all-in-all to him as -companion, helpmate, friend;--and far--how infinitely far!--above the -ideal wife whom he had described so adroitly,--in his bachelor -days,--that woman who should have "a fine touch for the affections," -and who should at least be sufficiently talented to avoid boring her -life-long comrade. The character of the ideal wife, as there -indicated,--apt at gracious compromises, possessor of a cheerful fluent -tongue,--was very obviously set forth by a man who had never yet been -stirred by the sharp throbs of an imperative emotion. And now that -Stevenson realised what love in its depth and breadth might mean, it -held a certain sanctity for him,--he was loth to speak of it, as to -write of it. It was a marvel that had befallen him personally: but for -other people, it might still perhaps, be no more than that gentle -domesticated affection which he had portrayed with such amiable humour. -But there was one point in which he, consciously or unconsciously -insisted, in his _desiderata_ of the female character. - -"It always warms a man," he had declared, "to see a woman brave," and -he saw it daily in his wife. Therefore it came about, that, unversed -in women--as Stevenson unquestionably was, he was able to endow his -heroines with a touch of gallant boyishness, a hint of the heroic--and -if they failed in flesh-and-blood-_vraisemblance_, they had that -"steel-true, blade-straight" quality which he adored in the women he -had chosen. - -You will notice this courageous virtue in all of them, rich and poor; -from _Catriona_, that "tall, pretty, tender figure of a maiden, when, -having assured her father's escape from prison by a bold stratagem, she -arrives a fugitive and an exile at Helvoetsluys, and lands from the -staggering side of the _Rose_ into the little boat below;--when, in -David Balfour's words: - -"I began to think I had made a fool's bargain, that it was merely -impossible Catriona should be got on board to me, and that I stood to -be set ashore in Helvoet all by myself ... But this was to reckon -without the lass's courage ... Up she stood on the bulwarks and held by -a stay, the wind blowing in her petticoats, which made the enterprise -more dangerous, and gave us rather more a view of her stockings than -would be thought genteel in cities"--(_Catriona._) - -to Seraphina in _Prince Otto_, still inherently valorous in that -desperate flight through the forest: where: - -"At length when she was well weary, she came upon a wide and shallow -pool. Stones stood in it, like islands; bulrushes fringed the coast; -the floor was paved with pine needles; and the pines themselves, whose -roots made promontories, looked down silently on their green images. -She crept to the margin and beheld herself with wonder, a hollow and -bright-eyed phantom, in the ruins of her palace robe ... She addressed -herself to make a toilette by that forest mirror, washed herself pure -from all the stains of her adventure, took off her jewels and wrapped -them in her handkerchief, re-arranged the tatters of her dress, and -took down the folds of her hair. She shook it round her face, and the -pool repeated her thus veiled." (_Prince Otto._) - -Clara Huddlestone, in the _Pavilion on the Links_, repeats the same -undauntable note: Olalla is inexorable in moral courage of -renunciation, even the weeping Blanche, in the _Sieur de Malétroit's -Door_, has the mettle of some small creature at bay. - -The charm of Stevenson's heroines is, in short, a cold charm; nor does -he often accord them the assistance of a personal description. But -they are finely tempered, of the best Toledo steel, and owing to their -boyish character, there is no very obvious gap in those novels where -they are conspicuously absent, such as _The Ebb Tide_, _The Wreckers_, -and _The Master of Ballantrae_. In the latter, indeed, there is a -slight "female interest," but a stronger personality in the heroine -must inevitably have changed or coloured the whole course of the book: -and one cannot but detect a certain vacuum, where at least some emotion -might have lifted a haggard head, in the character of Mrs. Henry,--even -in that scene, surcharged with hidden explosive possibilities, when the -author describes how: - -"The Master played upon that little ballad, and upon those who heard -him, like an instrument, and seemed now upon the point of failing, and -now to conquer his distress, so that the words and music seemed to pour -out of his own heart and his own past, and to be aimed directly at Mrs. -Henry.... When it came to an end we all sat silent for a time: he had -chosen the dusk of the afternoon, so that none could see his -neighbour's face: but it seemed as if we held our breathing: only my -old lord cleared his throat. The first to move was the singer, who got -to his feet suddenly and softly, and went and walked softly to and fro -in the low end of the hall." (_The Master of Ballantrae._) - - -But Mrs. Henry plays a very minor part in the marring or making, here, -of two men's lives: it is a rôle of _vis inertiæ_ at best. And, -indeed, when all is said, what shall a petticoat be if not irrelevant, -among the clash of steel and smoke of pistols, in an atmosphere -permeated by Spanish doubloons or illicit piratical treasure? -Stevenson's infallible artistic instinct led him to keep the -adventure-story pendant upon the deeds of men, and the eager mistakes -of boys; and a certain curious penchant for the squalid, the submerged, -the picturesque, brought him by choice into such company as no heroine -should enter--that of Villon, for instance, and John Silver, and -Herrick the cockney vagabond. "The spice of life is battle," he said; -and his life, and his books, were brimful of battles with foes or with -fortune. - - -_Painting by W. Hatherell._ - - "'The words and music seemed to pour out of - his own heart and his own past and to be - aimed directly at Mrs. Henry." - -_Master of Ballantrae._ - -[Illustration: _Master of Ballantrae_] - - -The open-air life which he had perforce abandoned, the joy of physical -strength and hair-breadth 'scape, could still be his by proxy. He -revelled in delineating his ideal man: - -"Being a true lover of living, a fellow with something pushing and -spontaneous in his inside, he must, like any other soldier, in any -other stirring, deadly warfare, push on at his best pace until he touch -the goal. 'A peerage or Westminster Abbey!' cried Nelson in his -bright, boyish, heroic manner. These are great incentives; not for any -of these, but for the plain satisfaction of living, of being about -their business in some sort or other, do the brave, serviceable men of -every nation tread down the nettle danger, and pass flyingly over all -the stumbling-blocks of prudence." (_Virginibus Puerisque._) - - -The tramp of horse-hoofs, the clank of the capstan, the door ajar--a -thousand sights and sounds were but symbolisms to him of some -mysterious by-way of adventure to be followed up, quick with latent -possibilities of romance; and from one word, one name, he could evolve -a whole intricate plot. With the simplest of sentences, he could -electrify the startled reader, as when in _The Wrecker_, where the -desperate castaways sit gambling on the desert island, and one suddenly -cries aloud, "Sail ho!" - -"All turned at the cry,--and there, in the wild light of the morning, -heading straight for Midway Reef, was the brig _Flying Scud_ of Hull." -(_The Wrecker._) - - -On that moment the whole tale hangs as on a pivot. All its involution -and evolution, all its intricate and tangled clues, lead--backwards or -forwards--to this one swift breathless sight. - -His morning's work accomplished, the tall gaunt man came downstairs, -literally to play awhile. After weeks, it might be, of enforced -seclusion in his room, his eye rested pleasurably upon the various -attractive objects which almost seemed like new to him. -Stevenson,--the avowed evader of personal property, the rolling-stone -that had so long refused to gather moss,--was now, under a woman's -tender surveillance, surrounded with charm and comfort. "Our drawing -room," he maintained, "is a place so beautiful that it's like eating to -sit down in it. No other room is so lovely in the world ... I blush -for the figure I cut in such a bower." The garden, Mrs. Stevenson's -special pleasure, but one in which her husband did not share, was very -lovely, with a lawn, and heather-bank, and a half-acre of land, where a -little stream ran down a "chine" full of rhododendrons. A large -dovecot figured in the garden; and there also "Boguey," the Stevensons' -dog, was buried, to whom no other dog had ever been deemed a worthy -successor. - -Stevenson, his clothes hanging loosely on his emaciated figure, and his -hands--"wonderful hands--long and fragile, like those in the early -portraits of Velasquez," lingered lovingly over the keys. For a while -he amused himself by picking out, note by note, the old-world dance -measures of Lully and Rameau; those gavottes, rigadoons and minuets, -which conveyed to him the indefinable _pot-pourri_-like, flavour of his -favourite eighteenth century, embued with a certain stately dignity, -"the periwig feeling," he called it, as of lords and ladies treading -courtly measures. Stevenson was passionately fond of classical music, -but he had never attained to any facility of execution. And when he -grew tired with his efforts as an interpreter of Lully, he turned to -"pickling," as he called it--composing, that is to say, after a -fashion, with "the manly and melodious forefinger." The fact that he -had invariably failed to master the rudiments of theory, in no wise -deterred him; on the contrary, difficulties rather enhanced his -delight. "Books are of no use," he avowed, "they tell you how to write -in four parts, and that cannot be done by man." So he continued to -"pickle" with a light heart, and to enjoy consecutive fifths and other -theoretical delinquencies with an enthusiasm worthy of the most modern -composer. - -Nothing but the lunch hour brought his musical experiments to a close. -Stevenson, who had, in his own words, "been obliged to strip himself, -one after another, of all the pleasures that he had chosen, except -smoking" (and indeed, he was smoking cigarettes all day long) by no -means disdained the pleasures of the table. Not, perhaps, in the role -of a gourmet--but as an artist in the more recondite delicacies of -taste and smell. "To detect the flavour of an olive is no less a piece -of human perfection than to find beauty in the colours of a sunset," he -observed; he coupled the flavour of wine with the beauty of the dawn, -and declared that we do not recognise at its full value the great part -in life that is played by eating and drinking. "There is a romance -about the matter after all," he observed. "Probably the table has more -devotees than love; and I am sure food is more generally entertaining -than scenery." It was the "romance of the matter" that appealed to -him; especially the colour, and savour, and poetical tradition of wine. -"Books, and tobacco jars, and some old Burgundy as red as a November -sunset, and as fragrant as a violet in April"--these, he thought, -should suffice the most luxurious. - -After lunch, if he anticipated an exhausting evening, he went to -sleep--at a moment's notice--and after a short, sound repose, was as -eager as ever to resume his pianoforte amusements; which he continued -until friends arrived. - -At the age of four-and-twenty, Stevenson had noted down his three chief -wishes. "First, good health: secondly, a small competence: thirdly, _O -Du lieber Gott!_ friends." The first: wish was irrevocably denied: the -second was only just beginning to be granted, the guerdon of unresting -toil: the third petition had been abundantly answered. Never was a man -more happy in his friends; or one who made them so instantaneously and -without effort. "He had only to speak," said one friend, "in order to -be recognised in the first minute for a witty and charming gentleman, -and in the second, for a man of genius." Some, indeed, like Mr. Edmund -Gosse, came home dazzled and astounded, saying, as Constance does of -Arthur, "Was ever such a gracious creature born?" His expression, of -mingled tenderness and mirth, his "scholarly and eclectic -presence"--together with his picturesque, velvet-coated appearance, and -his flashing flow of words, combined to make a man so attractive and so -unique as could command all love at will. And the friends were very -many and very notable, who haunted Skerryvore. First and foremost was -"Bob," Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson, the poet's first cousin, the brilliant -art critic: "the man likest and most unlike to me," as R.L.S. described -him. "Bob's" sister, Mrs. de Mattos, and her child were frequent -visitors; then there were celebrities from London: such as Sargent the -painter, William Archer, Sidney Colvin, W. E. Henley, Henry James; and -again friends residing in the neighbourhood of Bournemouth; the poet -Sir Henry Taylor, and his family; Sir Percy Shelley and his wife. -These latter, indeed, regarded Stevenson almost in the light of a son. -He struck them as bearing an extraordinary resemblance to Percy Bysshe -Shelley; less, perhaps, in lineaments than in figure and in mind; and -in consequence of this similarity, they held him very dear. - -But to all he was the same bewildering charming host, the man who -variously displayed, to quote W. E. Henley: - - "A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck, - Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all,--" - -And combined with these curiously versatile fruits, "something of the -Shorter Catechist." - -Generous in criticism, kind in praise, grave and humorous in rapid -transition, the amazing scope and variety of Stevenson's writings were -excelled by the scope and variety of his talk. "There was no part of -the writer that was not visibly present in the man." (Graham Balfour.) -He had laid down his opinion that "there can be no fairer ambition than -to excel in talk; to be affable, gay, ready, clear and welcome." But -none save those who were privileged to hear him, as with quick, -impetuous gestures, like a Southern foreigner, he emphasised his -phrases, could realise the power, the versatility, the inexpressible, -irrepressible charm with which the author could fulfil his "fair -ambition." - -When the visitors had severally taken their departure, the strong -resonant voice, with its Scottish accent and rich, full tones still -ringing in their ears,--Stevenson had suffered no abatement in the -stream of his exuberant mental vitality. The excitement of -conversation had, if anything, keyed him up; and presently, for the -writing of a few unavoidable letters, he betook himself to his study; -"the study where a smiling God beholds each day my stage of labour -trod," and sate himself down there with reluctance. - - -_Painting by W. Hatherell._ - - "All turned at the cry, and there in the wild - light of the morning heaving straight for - midway reef was the brig _Flying Scud_ of - Hull." - -_The Wrecker._ - -[Illustration: _The Wrecker_] - - -Correspondence, as a rule, he found but an irksome affair; unless -conducted upon his own whimsical lines. "I deny that letters should -contain news--I mean mine--those of other people should," was his -theory; and he boasted himself of a "willingness to pour forth -unmitigated rot, which constitutes in me the true spirit of -correspondence." For all that, his letters, grave or gay, remain among -the most delightful reading in existence; flavoured with his quaintest -conceits, endowed with his most delicate turns of phrase, and often -tempered with that "something of the Shorter Catechist" to which Henley -had alluded. - -For, undoubtedly, as time went on, although Stevenson continued to -"combine the face of a boy with the distinguished bearing of a man of -the world," he was gradually exchanging the "streak of Puck" and the -capricious unconventions of the born Bohemian, for something graver and -more mature,--a tendency almost towards the didactic. "'Tis a strange -world indeed," he had commented, "but there is a manifest God for those -who care to look for Him." And now, "with the passing of years," he -observed, "there grows more and more upon me that belief in the -kindness of this scheme of things, and the goodness of our veiled God, -which is an excellent and pacifying compensation." He was suffering, -and in all probability would perpetually suffer, from "that sharp -ferule of calamity under which we are all God's scholars till we die": -but his patience was impregnable, and his desire to leave a brave -example bore him constant company. "To suffer," said he, "sets a keen -edge on what remains of the agreeable," and he prepared to enjoy with -equal zest all pleasures which were still permitted to him. - -As he put away his writing materials, and descended once more to his -beloved piano, his father and mother came in. They were living in -Bournemouth to be near their only son. The old lighthouse engineer, -whose father had built the Bell Rock, who had served under his brother -Alan in the building of Skerryvore, "the noblest of all extant -sea-lights," who had himself erected Dhu Heartach, was now palpably -failing. The spectacle of a stern and honest man slowly evacuating all -that he had held of personal strength, was, to his son Louis, a -poignantly pathetic one. Their disagreements had been very many and -deep-rooted, dating from even before that "dreadful evening walk" in -Stevenson's youth, when, "on being tightly cross-questioned," the lad -who had been trained for a civil engineer, and had "worked in a -carpenter's shop and had a brass foundry, and hung about wood-yards and -the like," confessed that he cared for nothing but literature,--"no -profession!" as his father contemptuously replied. They had differed -on almost every conceivable topic open to their discussion,--yet here, -in the fulness of time, they were at peace together,--the austere old -man in his second childhood, and the chronic invalid who "must live as -though he were walking on eggs." Innumerable ineffaceable traits of -similarity bound one to the other; at bottom of all the bygone angers -lay a permanent bedrock of mutual love. And perhaps the nearing vision -of death which terminated all vistas for both of them, exercised its -usual effect, of calm, and _laisser-faire_, and the equalisation of -things: for it is probable that no man has a just sense of -proportionate values until he stands in the presence of death. - -Stevenson had often alluded, as a matter of personal knowledge, to his -constant prescience of mortality, and how it affected a man's thoughts -of life. Very seldom has the view of the confirmed invalid, the doomed -consumptive, been put forth to the world with the frankness with which -Stevenson invested it. He has been sometimes charged with a certain -lack of reticence: but in this matter, unquestionably, his candour was -to the benefitting of mankind: to whom these close views of the -inevitable end are rarely possible under such deliberate and -clear-headed conditions. - -There is nothing maudlin, nothing hypochondriacal, about Stevenson's -treatment of this subject: the same cheerful philosophy bears him up, -the same vitality of joy. It is hardly to be wondered at, that some -critics handled him seriously, on account of his lightheartedness in -the august shadow of the last enemy,--and his inveterate optimism in -the face of all calamities. "He jests at scars who never felt a -wound," they practically told him,--and could hardly be persuaded to -credit the paradox that the man who preached in season and out of -season, the gospel of that "cheery old Pagan, Hope," was not a denizen -of the open-air,--healthy, athletic, vigorous, incapable of realising -the maladies incident to man,--instead of an emaciated, bed-ridden -creature, whose smallest pleasures must be measured, so to speak, in a -medicine-glass. But, "It is something after all," he has said, "to -leave a brave example": and in that he triumphantly succeeded. For the -opportunities of meteoric heroisms are few and far between; but every -hour beholds the need of those obscurer braveries which may be born of -pain and suffering.... - -In _Ordered South_ and other well-known essays, he shows the gradual -relaxation of the ties which bind a man to terrestrial things,--and the -curiously significant alteration in his regard for the facts of -life,--from the sower in the dank spring furrows, to the sight of -little children with their long possibilities before them. - -Stevenson had no children of his own. His stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, -then at school in Bournemouth, was destined to become his friend and -collaborator: but it is doubtful that he cared for children as such. -The average small folk, "dragged about in a pleasing stupor by nurses," -were very far remote from that superabundant vitality nursed in an -attenuated physique, which had sat up with a shawl over its shoulders, -so many tedious months in childhood, when its principal _habitat_ was -"The Land of Counterpane" and other regions mapped out in the great and -glorious world of Make-Believe. - - -_Painting by W. Hatherell._ - -ST. IVES DESCENDS FROM EDINBURGH CASTLE. - - "The whole forces of my mind were so consumed - with losing hold and getting it again, that I - could scarce have told whether I was going up - or coming down." - -_St. Ives._ - -[Illustration: _St. Ives_] - - -For this reason, the _Child's Garden of Verses_ is not, in any real -sense of the word, a child's book at all. It contains the exquisite -imaginations of childhood as the grown-up man remembers them: to him -they have the charm of the vanished past, they are the utterances of -one who has also lived in Arcadia. But to the child, they are the very -commonplaces of existence. To sway to and fro in a swing, "the -pleasantest thing a child can do,"--to bring home treasures from field -and wood, nuts and wooden whistles, and some all-precious -unidentifiable stone, "though father denies it, I'm sure it is -gold,"--these are everyday affairs to the country-child,--just as -watching the lamplighter is to the town child. To read verses about -them is but a waste of time, when one might be actively engaged in -similar avocations. But to the grown-man who can never play with -wooden soldiers in the garden, never be a pirate any more,--these -reminiscences of Stevenson's are a delight unfailing. No one else has -ever worded them quite so accurately, quite so simply: and, taken all -for all, they are in themselves a summing-up of that most excellent -philosophy of this author, "The world is so full of a number of things, -I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings!" The world was indeed -full of a number of things to R.L.S. and,--passed through the crucible -of his own astonishing personality,--they were all, bad or good, -transmogrified into things that make for joy. - -After eight o'clock dinner was over, the old folks bade -good-night,--the father, with touching affection, kissing Louis as -though he were a child, and murmuring, "You'll see me in the morning, -dearie," as if still addressing that little feeble creature who had -been kept alive with such difficulty in the old days at Edinburgh. - -The younger man returned to the piano-forte; it drew him like a magnet. -For a short time he indulged in his desultory music-making, relishing -to the uttermost every success of sound which he achieved: and the -happiness, which was his theory of life, radiated in warm abundance -from his richly-tinted face and glowing eyes. "It's a fine life," he -exclaimed. - -At last the day's supply of energy succumbed before the imperious -demands of this "fiery threadpaper of a man," and in deference to his -wife's suggestion he betook himself to bed. Not necessarily to rest; -for even in his dreams his busy brain was working, and his "Brownies," -as he termed them, bringing him fresh material for plots. _Dr. Jekyll_ -had been thus evolved from three scenes dreamed successively in detail, -from which the dreamer waked with cries of horror. - -But he did not flinch before the coming night, and anything that it -might bring of sickness or unrest. He thought alone upon the past -delightful day, fraught with strenuous work and simple pleasures; and -he petitioned, in his own words: - - "If I have faltered more or less - In my great task of happiness; - If I have moved along my race - And shown no glorious morning face; - If beams from happy human eyes - Have moved me not; if morning skies, - Books, and my food, and summer rain - Knocked on my sullen heart in vain:-- - Lord, Thy most pointed pleasure take - And stab my spirit broad awake!" - (_Underwoods._) - - -His wife hovered around him with gentle ministrations, as suddenly -out-wearied, Robert Louis Stevenson extended his long, lean form to a -possible repose. There was not, perhaps, a cheerfuller man that night -in England. - -The sea hummed at the foot of the chine, with that soft and dove-like -purring of the South-coast sea; the doves made answer with a vibrant -cooing in the middle distance of the twilight garden. Spring buds of -pear-trees and cherry-trees globed themselves stealthily into blossom; -a delicate latent energy was consciously present in the air--the rising -of sap and revivification of seed, all the mysterious hidden progresses -of April. And the man whose ways were set in a perpetual convergence -towards the doors of death, waved, so to speak, a blithe recognition to -the myriad hosts of life. - -"O toiling hands of mortals! O unwearied feet, travelling ye know not -whither! Soon, soon, it seems to you, you must come forth on some -conspicuous hilltop, and but a little way further, against the setting -sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye know your own -blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, -and the true success is labour." (_Virginibus Puerisque._) - - - -The author desires to acknowledge the kindness of Messrs. Cassell & -Co., in allowing short extracts to be made from _The Master of -Ballantrae_, _The Wrecker_, and _Catriona_; also to thank Mr. William -Heinemann for a similar courtesy with regard to _St. Ives_, and Messrs. -Chatto & Windus for their permission to include various quotations from -_Virginibus Puerisque_, _Underwoods_, and _Prince Otto_. - - - - Printed by The Bushey Colour Press (André & Sleigh, Ltd.), - Bushey, Herts., England. - - - - -[Illustration: Rear cover] - - - - - - - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's A Day with Robert Louis Stevenson, by Maurice Clare - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DAY WITH ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON *** - -***** This file should be named 53165-8.txt or 53165-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/3/1/6/53165/ - -Produced by Al Haines -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law 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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