Robert Louis Stevenson: a record, an estimate, and a memorial Part 12

O will he paint me the way I want, as bonnie as a girlie?

O will he paint me an ugly tyke?-and be d-d to Mr Nerli.

But still an' on whichever it be, he is a canty kerlie, The Lord protect the back an' neck o' honest Mr Nerli.

Mr Hammerton gives this account of the Nerli portrait:

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER x.x.xIII-LAPSES AND ERRORS IN CRITICISM

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

Mr Baildon's words are:

"This was the famous book of adventure, Treasure Island, appearing first as The Sea-Cook in a boy's paper, where it made no great stir. But, on its publication in volume form, with the vastly better t.i.tle, the book at once 'boomed,' as the phrase goes, to an extent then, in 1882, almost unprecedented. The secret of its immense success may almost be expressed in a phrase by saying that it is a book like Gulliver's Travels, The Pilgrim's Progress, and Robinson Crusoe itself for all ages-boys, men, and women."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER x.x.xIV-LETTERS AND POEMS IN TESTIMONY

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

"37 St Donatt's Road, Lewisham High Road, S.E., 1st March 1895.

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

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

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

F. J. c.o.x."

GREETING

(TO ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, IN SAMOA)

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

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

There, by the gracious sweep of ampler seas, That swell responsive to the odorous breeze.

You have the wine of Life, and we the lees!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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