Robert Louis Stevenson: a record, an estimate, and a memorial Part 5

Refrain-Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., etc.

V.

"Grieve, O my heart! I cannot bear to look on All the chiefs who are there now a.s.sembling: Alas, Tusitala! Thou art not here!

I look hither and thither in vain for thee.

Refrain-Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., etc."

And the little booklet closes with Mr Stevenson's own lines:

"REQUIEM.

Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie; Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me: 'Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea; And the hunter home from the hill.'"

Every touch tells here was a man, with heart and head, with soul and mind intent on the loftiest things; simple, great,

"Like one of the simple great ones gone For ever and ever by.

His character towered after all far above his books; great and beautiful though they were. Ready for friends.h.i.+p; from all meanness free. So, too, the Samoans felt. This, surely, was what Goethe meant when he wrote:

"The clear head and stout heart, However far they roam, Yet in every truth have part, Are everywhere at home."

His manliness, his width of sympathy, his practicality, his range of interests were in nothing more seen than in his contributions to the history of Samoa, as specially exhibited in A Footnote to History and his letters to the Times. He was, on this side, in no sense a dreamer, but a man of acute observation and quick eye for pa.s.sing events and the characters that were in them with sympathy equal to his discernments. His portraits of certain Germans and others in these writings, and his power of tracing effects to remote and underlying causes, show sufficiently what he might have done in the field of history, had not higher voices called him. His adaptation to the life in Samoa, and his a.s.sumption of the semi-patriarchal character in his own sphere there, were only tokens of the presence of the same traits as have just been dwelt on.

CHAPTER XI-MISS STUBBS' RECORD OF A PILGRIMAGE

Mrs Strong, in her chapter of Table Talk in Memories of Vailima, tells a story of the natives' love for Stevenson. "The other day the cook was away," she writes, "and Louis, who was busy writing, took his meals in his room. Knowing there was no one to cook his lunch, he told Sosimo to bring him some bread and cheese. To his surprise he was served with an excellent meal-an omelette, a good salad, and perfect coffee. 'Who cooked this?' asked Louis in Samoan. 'I did,' said Sosimo. 'Well,' said Louis, 'great is your wisdom.' Sosimo bowed and corrected him-'Great is my love!'"

Miss Stubbs, in her Stevenson's Shrine; the Record of a Pilgrimage, ill.u.s.trates the same devotion. On the top of Mount Vaea, she writes, is the ma.s.sive sarcophagus, "not an ideal structure by any means, not even beautiful, and yet in its ma.s.sive ruggedness it somehow suited the man and the place."

"The wind sighed softly in the branches of the 'Tavau' trees, from out the green recesses of the 'Toi' came the plaintive coo of the wood-pigeon. In and out of the branches of the magnificent 'Fau' tree, which overhangs the grave, a king-fisher, sea-blue, iridescent, flitted to and fro, whilst a scarlet hibiscus, in full flower, showed up royally against the gray lichened cement. All around was light and life and colour, and I said to myself, 'He is made one with nature'; he is now, body and soul and spirit, commingled with the loveliness around. He who longed in life to scale the height, he who attained his wish only in death, has become in himself a parable of fulfilment. No need now for that heart-sick cry:-

"'Sing me a song of a lad that is gone, Say, could that lad be I?'

No need now for the despairing finality of:

"'I have trod the upward and the downward slope, I have endured and done in the days of yore, I have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope, And I have lived, and loved, and closed the door.'

"Death has set his seal of peace on the unequal conflict of mind and matter; the All-Mother has gathered him to herself.

"In years to come, when his grave is perchance forgotten, a rugged ruin, home of the lizard and the bat, Tusitala-the story-teller-'the man with a heart of gold' (as I so often heard him designated in the Islands), will live, when it may be his tales have ceased to interest, in the tender remembrance of those whose lives he beautified, and whose hearts he warmed into grat.i.tude."

The chiefs have prohibited the use of firearms or other weapons on Mount Vaea, "in order that the birds may live there undisturbed and unafraid, and build their nests in the trees around Tusitala's grave."

Miss Stubbs has many records of the impression produced on those he came in contact with in Samoa-white men and women as well as natives. She met a certain Austrian Count, who adored Stevenson's memory. Over his camp bed was a framed photograph of R. L. Stevenson.

"So," he said, "I keep him there, for he was my saviour, and I wish 'good-night' and 'good-morning,' every day, both to himself and to his old home." The Count then told us that when he was stopping at Vailima he used to have his bath daily on the verandah below his room. One lovely morning he got up very early, got into the bath, and splashed and sang, feeling very well and very happy, and at last beginning to sing very loudly, he forgot Mr Stevenson altogether. All at once there was Stevenson himself, his hair all ruffled up, his eyes full of anger. "Man," he said, "you and your infernal row have cost me more than two hundred pounds in ideas," and with that he was gone, but he did not address the Count again the whole of that day. Next morning he had forgotten the Count's offence and was just as friendly as ever, but-the noise was never repeated!

Another of the Count's stories greatly amused the visitors:

"An English lord came all the way to Samoa in his yacht to see Mr Stevenson, and found him in his cool Kimino sitting with the ladies, and drinking tea on his verandah; the whole party had their feet bare. The English lord thought that he must have called at the wrong time, and offered to go away, but Mr Stevenson called out to him, and brought him back, and made him stay to dinner. They all went away to dress, and the guest was left sitting alone in the verandah. Soon they came back, Mr Osbourne and Mr Stevenson wearing the form of dress most usual in that hot climate a white mess jacket, and white trousers, but their feet were still bare. The guest put up his eyegla.s.s and stared for a bit, then he looked down upon his own beautifully shod feet, and sighed. They all talked and laughed until the ladies came in, the ladies in silk dresses, befrilled with lace, but still with bare feet, and the guest took a covert look through his eyegla.s.s and gasped, but when he noticed that there were gold bangles on Mrs Strong's ankles and rings upon her toes, he could bear no more and dropped his eyegla.s.s on the ground of the verandah breaking it all to bits."

Miss Stubbs met on the other side of the island a photographer who told her this:

"I had but recently come to Samoa," he said, "and was standing one day in my shop when Mr Stevenson came in and spoke. 'Man,' he said, 'I tak ye to be a Scotsman like mysel'.'

"I would I could have claimed a kins.h.i.+p," deplored the photographer, "but, alas! I am English to the backbone, with never a drop of Scotch blood in my veins, and I told him this, regretting the absence of the blood tie."

"'I could have sworn your back was the back of a Scotsman,' was his comment, 'but,' and he held out his hand, 'you look sick, and there is a fellows.h.i.+p in sickness not to be denied.' I said I was not strong, and had come to the Island on account of my health. 'Well, then,' replied Mr Stevenson, 'it shall be my business to help you to get well; come to Vailima whenever you like, and if I am out, ask for refreshment, and wait until I come in, you will always find a welcome there.'"

At this point my informant turned away, and there was a break in his voice as he exclaimed, "Ah, the years go on, and I don't miss him less, but more; next to my mother he was the best friend I ever had: a man with a heart of gold; his house was a second home to me."

Stevenson's experience shows how easy it is with a certain type of man, to restore the old feudal conditions of service and relations.h.i.+p. Stevenson did this in essentials in Samoa. He tells us how he managed to get good service out of the Samoans (who are accredited with great unwillingness to work); and this he did by firm, but generous, kindly, almost brotherly treatment, reviving, as it were, a kind of clan life-giving a livery of certain colours-symbol of all this. A little fellow of eight, he tells, had been taken into the household, made a pet of by Mrs Strong, his stepdaughter, and had had a dress given to him, like that of the men; and, when one day he had strolled down by himself as far as the hotel, and the master of it, seeing him, called out in Samoan, "Hi, youngster, who are you?" The eight-year-old replied, "Why, don't you see for yourself? I am one of the Vailima men!"

The story of the Road of the Loving Heart was but another fine attestation of it.

CHAPTER XII-HIS GENIUS AND METHODS

To have created a school of idolaters, who will out and out swear by everything, and as though by necessity, at the same time, a school of studious detractors, who will suspiciously question everything, or throw out suggestions of disparagement, is at all events, a proof of greatness, the countersign of undoubted genius, and an a.s.surance of lasting fame. R. L. Stevenson has certainly secured this. Time will tell what of virtue there is with either party. For me, who knew Stevenson, and loved him, as finding in the sweet-tempered, brave, and in some things, most generous man, what gave at once tone and elevation to the artist, I would fain indicate here my impressions of him and his genius-impressions that remain almost wholly uninfluenced by the vast ma.s.s of matter about him that the press now turns out. Books, not to speak of articles, pour forth about him-about his style, his art, his humour and his characters-aye, and even about his religion.

Miss Simpson follows Mr Bellyse Baildon with the Edinburgh Days, Miss Moyes Black comes on with her picture in the Famous Scots, and Professor Raleigh succeeds her; Mr Graham Balfour follows with his Life; Mr Kelman's volume about his Religion comes next, and that is reinforced by more familiar letters and Table Talk, by Lloyd Osbourne and Mrs Strong, his step-children; Mr J. Hammerton then comes on handily with Stevensoniana-fruit lovingly gathered from many and far fields, and garnered with not a little tact and taste, and catholicity; Miss Laura Stubbs then presents us with her touching Stevenson's Shrine: the Record of a Pilgrimage; and Mr Sidney Colvin is now busily at work on his Life of Stevenson, which must do not a little to enlighten and to settle many questions.

Curiosity and interest grow as time pa.s.ses; and the places connected with Stevenson, hitherto obscure many of them, are now touched with light if not with romance, and are known, by name at all events, to every reader of books. Yes; every place he lived in, or touched at, is worthy of full description if only on account of its a.s.sociations with him. If there is not a land of Stevenson, as there is a land of Scott, or of Burns, it is due to the fact that he was far-travelled, and in his works painted many scenes: but there are at home-Edinburgh, and Halkerside and Allermuir, Caerketton, Swanston, and Colinton, and Maw Moss and Rullion Green and Tummel, "the wale of Scotland," as he named it to me, and the Castletown of Braemar-Braemar in his view coming a good second to Tummel, for starting-points to any curious wors.h.i.+pper who would go the round in Scotland and miss nothing. Mr Geddie's work on The Home Country of Stevenson may be found very helpful here.

1. It is impossible to separate Stevenson from his work, because of the imperious personal element in it; and so I shall not now strive to gain the appearance of cleverness by affecting any distinction here. The first thing I would say is, that he was when I knew him-what pretty much to the end he remained-a youth. His outlook on life was boyishly genial and free, despite all his sufferings from ill-health-it was the pride of action, the joy of endurance, the revelry of high spirits, and the sense of victory that most fascinated him; and his theory of life was to take pleasure and give pleasure, without calculation or stint-a kind of boyish grace and bounty never to be overcome or disturbed by outer accident or change. If he was sometimes haunted with the thought of changes through changed conditions or circ.u.mstances, as my very old friend, Mr Charles Lowe, has told even of the College days that he was always supposing things to undergo some sea-change into something else, if not "into something rich and strange," this was but to add to his sense of enjoyment, and the power of conferring delight, and the luxuries of variety, as boys do when they let fancy loose. And this always had, with him, an individual reference or return. He was thus constantly, and latterly, half-consciously, trying to interpret himself somehow through all the things which engaged him, and which he so transmogrified-things that especially attracted him and took his fancy. Thus, if it must be confessed, that even in his highest moments, there lingers a touch-if no more than a touch-of self-consciousness which will not allow him to forget manner in matter, it is also true that he is cunningly conveying traits in himself; and the sense of this is often at the root of his sweet, gentle, nave humour. There is, therefore, some truth in the criticisms which a.s.sert that even "long John Silver," that fine pirate, with his one leg, was, after all, a shadow of Stevenson himself-the genial buccaneer who did his tremendous murdering with a smile on his face was but Stevenson thrown into new circ.u.mstances, or, as one has said, Stevenson-c.u.m-Henley, so thrown as was also Archer in Weir of Hermiston, and more than this, that his most successful women-folk-like Miss Grant and Catriona-are studies of himself, and that in all his heroes, and even heroines, was an unmistakable touch of R. L. Stevenson. Even Mr Baildon rather maladroitly admits that in Miss Grant, the Lord Advocate's daughter, there is a good deal of the author himself disguised in petticoats. I have thought of Stevenson in many suits, beside that which included the velvet jacket, but-petticoats!

Youth is autocratic, and can show a grand indifferency: it goes for what it likes, and ignores all else-it fondly magnifies its favourites, and, after all, to a great extent, it is but a.n.a.lysing, dealing with and presenting itself to us, if we only watch well. This is the secret of all prevailing romance: it is the secret of all stories of adventure and chivalry of the simpler and more primitive order; and in one aspect it is true that R. L. Stevenson loved and clung to the primitive and elemental, if it may not be said, as one distinguished writer has said, that he even loved savagery in itself. But hardly could it be seriously held, as Mr I. Zangwill held:

"That women did not cut any figure in his books springs from this same interest in the elemental. Women are not born, but made. They are a social product of infinite complexity and delicacy. For a like reason Stevenson was no interpreter of the modern... . A child to the end, always playing at 'make-believe,' dying young, as those whom the G.o.ds love, and, as he would have died had he achieved his centenary, he was the natural exponent in literature of the child."

But there were subtly qualifying elements beyond what Mr Zangwill here recognises and reinforces. That is just about as correct and true as this other deliverance:

"His Scotch romances have been as over-praised by the zealous Scotsmen who cry 'genius' at the sight of a kilt, and who lose their heads at a waft from the heather, as his other books have been under-praised. The best of all, The Master of Ballantrae, ends in a bog; and where the author aspires to exceptional subtlety of character-drawing he befogs us or himself altogether. We are so long weighing the brothers Ballantrae in the balance, watching it incline now this way, now that, scrupulously removing a particle of our sympathy from the one brother to the other, to restore it again in the next chapter, that we end with a conception of them as confusing as Mr Gilbert's conception of Hamlet, who was idiotically sane with lucid intervals of lunacy."

If Stevenson was, as Mr Zangwill holds, "the child to the end," and the child only, then if we may not say what Carlyle said of De Quincey: "Eccovi, that child has been in h.e.l.l," we may say, "Eccovi, that child has been in unchildlike haunts, and can't forget the memory of them." In a sense every romancer is a child-such was Ludwig Tieck, such was Scott, such was James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. But each is something more-he has been touched with the wand of a fairy, and knows, at least, some of Elfin Land as well as of childhood's home.

The sense of Stevenson's youthfulness seems to have struck every one who had intimacy with him. Mr Baildon writes (p. 21 of his book):

I would now give much to possess but one of Stevenson's gifts-namely, that extraordinary vividness of recollection by which he could so astonis.h.i.+ngly recall, not only the doings, but the very thoughts and emotions of his youth. For, often as we must have communed together, with all the shameless candour of boys, hardly any remark has stuck to me except the opinion already alluded to, which struck me-his elder by some fifteen months-as very amusing, that at sixteen 'we should be men.' He of all mortals, who was, in a sense, always still a boy!"

Mr Gosse tells us:

"He had retained a great deal of the temperament of a child, and it was his philosophy to encourage it. In his dreary pa.s.sages of bed, when his illness was more than commonly heavy on him, he used to contrive little amus.e.m.e.nts for himself. He played on the flute, or he modelled little groups and figures in clay."

2. One of the qualifying elements unnoted by Mr Zangwill is simply this, that R. L. Stevenson never lost the strange tint imparted to his youth by the religious influences to which he was subject, and which left their impress and colour on him and all that he did. Henley, in his striking sonnet, hit it when he wrote:

"A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck, Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all, And something of the Shorter Catechist."