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Robert Louis Stevenson, A Record, An Estimate, A Memorial

A >> A. H. Japp >> Robert Louis Stevenson, A Record, An Estimate, A Memorial





"He wrote hard all that morning of the last day; his half-finished
book, HERMISTON, he judged the best he had ever written, and the
sense of successful effort made him buoyant and happy as nothing
else could. In the afternoon the mail fell to be answered - not
business correspondence, for this was left till later - but replies
to the long, kindly letters of distant friends received but two
days since, and still bright in memory. At sunset he came
downstairs; rallied his wife about the forebodings she could not
shake off; talked of a lecturing tour to America that he was eager
to make, 'as he was now so well'; and played a game of cards with
her to drive away her melancholy. He said he was hungry; begged
her assistance to help him make a salad for the evening meal; and,
to enhance the little feast he brought up a bottle of old Burgundy
from the cellar. He was helping his wife on the verandah, and
gaily talking, when suddenly he put both hands to his head and
cried out, 'What's that?' Then he asked quickly, 'Do I look
strange?' Even as he did so he fell on his knees beside her. He
was helped into the great hall, between his wife and his body-
servant, Sosimo, losing consciousness instantly as he lay back in
the armchair that had once been his grandfather's. Little time was
lost in bringing the doctors - Anderson of the man-of-war, and his
friend, Dr Funk. They looked at him and shook their heads; they
laboured strenuously, and left nothing undone. But he had passed
the bounds of human skill. He had grown so well and strong, that
his wasted lungs were unable to bear the stress of returning
health."


Then 'tis told how the Rev. Mr Clarke came and prayed by him; and
how, soon after, the chiefs were summoned, and came, bringing their
fine mats, which, laid on the body, almost hid the Union jack in
which it had been wrapped. One of the old Mataafa chiefs, who had
been in prison, and who had been one of those who worked on the
making of the "Road of the Loving Heart" (the road of gratitude
which the chiefs had made up to Mr Stevenson's house as a mark of
their appreciation of his efforts on their behalf), came and
crouched beside the body and said:


"I am only a poor Samoan, and ignorant. Others are rich, and can
give Tusitala (6) the parting presents of rich, fine mats; I am
poor, and can give nothing this last day he receives his friends.
Yet I am not afraid to come and look the last time in my friend's
face, never to see him more till we meet with God. Behold!
Tusitala is dead; Mataafa is also dead. These two great friends
have been taken by God. When Mataafa was taken, who was our
support but Tusitala? We were in prison, and he cared for us. We
were sick, and he made us well. We were hungry, and he fed us.
The day was no longer than his kindness. You are great people, and
full of love. Yet who among you is so great as Tusitala? What is
your love to his love? Our clan was Mataafa's clan, for whom I
speak this day; therein was Tusitala also. We mourn them both."

A select company of Samoans would not be deterred, and watched by
the body all night, chanting songs, with bits of Catholic prayers;
and in the morning the work began of clearing a path through the
wood on the hill to the spot on the crown where Mr Stevenson had
expressed a wish to be buried. The following prayer, which Mr
Stevenson had written and read aloud to his family only the night
before, was read by Mr Clarke in the service:


"We beseech thee, Lord, to behold us with favour, folk of many
families and nations, gathered together in the peace of this roof;
weak men and women, subsisting under the covert of Thy patience.
Be patient still; suffer us yet a while longer - with our broken
purposes of good, with our idle endeavours against evil - suffer us
a while longer to endure, and (if it may be) help us to do better.
Bless to us our extraordinary mercies; if the day come when these
must be taken, have us play the man under affliction. Be with our
friends; be with ourselves. Go with each of us to rest: if any
awake, temper to them the dark hours of watching; and when the day
returns to us, our Sun and Comforter, call us up with morning faces
and with morning hearts - eager to labour - eager to be happy, if
happiness shall be our portion; and if the day be marked for
sorrow, strong to endure it.

"We thank Thee and praise Thee, and in the words of Him to whom
this day is sacred, close our oblations."


Mr Bazzet M. Haggard, H.B.M., Land-Commissioner, tells, by way of
reminiscence, the story of "The Road of Good Heart," how it came to
be built, and of the great feast Mr Stevenson gave at the close of
the work, at which, in the course of his speech, he said:


"You are all aware in some degree of what has happened. You know
those chiefs to have been prisoners; you perhaps know that during
the term of their confinement I had it in my power to do them
certain favours. One thing some of you cannot know, that they were
immediately repaid by answering attentions. They were liberated by
the new Administration. . . . As soon as they were free men -
owing no man anything - instead of going home to their own places
and families, they came to me. They offered to do this work (to
make this road) for me as a free gift, without hire, without
supplies, and I was tempted at first to refuse their offer. I knew
the country to be poor; I knew famine threatening; I knew their
families long disorganised for want of supervision. Yet I
accepted, because I thought the lesson of that road might be more
useful to Samoa than a thousand bread-fruit trees, and because to
myself it was an exquisite pleasure to receive that which was so
handsomely offered. It is now done; you have trod it to-day in
coming hither. It has been made for me by chiefs; some of them
old, some sick, all newly delivered from a harassing confinement,
and in spite of weather unusually hot and insalubrious. I have
seen these chiefs labour valiantly with their own hands upon the
work, and I have set up over it, now that it is finished the name
of 'The Road of Gratitude' (the road of loving hearts), and the
names of those that built it. 'In perpetuam memoriam,' we say, and
speak idly. At least, as long as my own life shall be spared it
shall be here perpetuated; partly for my pleasure and in my
gratitude; partly for others continually to publish the lesson of
this road."


And turning to the chiefs, Mr Stevenson said:


"I will tell you, chiefs, that when I saw you working on that road,
my heart grew warm; not with gratitude only, but with hope. It
seemed to me that I read the promise of something good for Samoa;
it seemed to me as I looked at you that you were a company of
warriors in a battle, fighting for the defence of our common
country against all aggression. For there is a time to fight and a
time to dig. You Samoans may fight, you may conquer twenty times,
and thirty times, and all will be in vain. There is but one way to
defend Samoa. Hear it, before it is too late. It is to make roads
and gardens, and care for your trees, and sell their produce
wisely; and, in one word, to occupy and use your country. If you
do not, others will. . . .

"I love Samoa and her people. I love the land. I have chosen it
to be my home while I live, and my grave after I am dead, and I
love the people, and have chosen them to be my people, to live and
die with. And I see that the day is come now of the great battle;
of the great and the last opportunity by which it shall be decided
whether you are to pass away like those other races of which I have
been speaking, or to stand fast and have your children living on
and honouring your memory in the land you received of your
fathers."


Mr James H. Mulligan, U.S. Consul, told of the feast of
Thanksgiving Day on the 29th November prior to Mr Stevenson's
death, and how at great pains he had procured for it the necessary
turkey, and how Mrs Stevenson had found a fair substitute for the
pudding. In the course of his speech in reply to an unexpected
proposal of "The Host," Mr Stevenson said:


"There on my right sits she who has but lately from our own loved
native land come back to me - she to whom, with no lessening of
affection to those others to whom I cling, I love better than all
the world besides - my mother. From the opposite end of the table,
my wife, who has been all in all to me, when the days were very
dark, looks to-night into my eyes - while we have both grown a bit
older - with undiminished and undiminishing affection.

"Childless, yet on either side of me sits that good woman, my
daughter, and the stalwart man, my son, and both have been and are
more than son and daughter to me, and have brought into my life
mirth and beauty. Nor is this all. There sits the bright boy dear
to my heart, full of the flow and the spirits of boyhood, so that I
can even know that for a time at least we have still the voice of a
child in the house."


Mr A. W. Mackay gives an account of the funeral and a description
of the burial-place, ending:


"Tofa Tusitala! Sleep peacefully! on thy mountain-top, alone in
Nature's sanctity, where the wooddove's note, the moaning of the
waves as they break unceasingly on the distant reef, and the
sighing of the winds in the distant tavai trees chant their
requiem."


The Rev. Mr Clarke tells of the constant and active interest Mr
Stevenson took in the missionaries and their work, often aiding
them by his advice and fine insight into the character of the
natives; and a translation follows of a dirge by one of the chiefs,
so fine that we must give it:


I.

"Listen, O this world, as I tell of the disaster
That befell in the late afternoon;
That broke like a wave of the sea
Suddenly and swiftly, blinding our eyes.
Alas for Loia who speaks tears in his voice!

REFRAIN - Groan and weep, O my heart, in its sorrow.
Alas for Tusitala, who rests in the forest!
Aimlessly we wait, and sorrowing. Will he again return?
Lament, O Vailima, waiting and ever waiting!
Let us search and inquire of the captain of ships,
'Be not angry, but has not Tusitala come?'

II.

"Teuila, sorrowing one, come thou hither!
Prepare me a letter, and I will carry it.
Let her Majesty Victoria be told
That Tusitala, the loving one, has been taken hence.

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

III.

"Alas! my heart weeps with anxious grief
As I think of the days before us:
Of the white men gathering for the Christmas assembly!
Alas for Aolele! left in her loneliness,
And the men of Vailima, who weep together
Their leader - their leader being taken.

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

IV.

"Alas! O my heart! it weeps unceasingly
When I think of his illness
Coming upon him with fatal swiftness.
Would that it waited a glance or a word from him,
Or some token, some token from us of our love.

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 assembling:
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 friendship; 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
passing 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 assumption 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,
illustrates the same devotion. On the top of Mount Vaea, she
writes, is the massive sarcophagus, "not an ideal structure by any
means, not even beautiful, and yet in its massive 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 gratitude."

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 eyeglass 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 eyeglass 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 eyeglass
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 kinship," 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 fellowship 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
relationship. 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 assurance 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 mass 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 passes; 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 associations 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 worshipper 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 circumstances, 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, naive humour. There is,
therefore, some truth in the criticisms which assert 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 circumstances, or, as one has said, Stevenson-cum-
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!

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