DEATH OF R. L. STEVENSON.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIII, Issue 10593, 28 February 1895, Page 3

DEATH OF R. L. STEVENSON.

[CORRESPONDENT “ CANTERBURY TIMES.”J London, Dec. 22. The Pall Mall Gazette of Monday evening, which contained the cable announcing the death of Robert Louis Stevenson, also published for the first time the following verses by him: — ). Home no more home to me, whither must I wander? Hunger my driver, I go where I must. Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather; Thick drives the ruin, and my roof is in'the-; dust. Loved of wise men was the shade oi my roo.-treo. The true word of welcome was spoken in the door — Dear days of old, with the faces in the firelight, Kind folks of old, you come again no more. 11. Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces. Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child. Fire and the windows bright glittered on the moorland; Song, tuneful song, built a palace in the wild. Now, when day dawns on the brow of the moorland. Lone stands the house, and the chimney-stone is cold. Lone let it stand, now the friends are all departed. The kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place of old. m. Spring shall come, come again, calling up themoorfowl, ’ . Spring shall bring the sun and ram, bring the bees and flowers ; Bed shall the heather bloom over hill and valley, • Soft flow the stream through the even-flowing hours; Fair the day shine as it shone on my childhood— Fair shine the day on the house.with open door; Birds come and cry there and twitter in the chimney — But I go for ever and come again no more. Tantira. Robert Louis Stevenson. , When a person has been sitting on the edge of the grave for many years, and everybody as in Robert Louis Stevenson’s case—has known it, his death ought (theoretically) to cause little surprise. Practically, however, the shock proves just as great as it would have done in the instance of an unexpected collapse like poor Eugene Gudin’s. Most of us looked on Stevenson as likely to live to a ripe old age providing only he stayed quietly in Samoa. STEVENSON, THE MAN. Mr Henry Norman, in a long and sympathetic obituary notice in the Daily Chronicle, writes of some of the personal aspects of the man thus The physical characteristics of Robert Louis Stevenson are well known from the many portraits of him that have been published; but his great friend, Mr W. E. Henley, who, with a genius not incomparable with Stevenson nor wholly dissimilar, has made an even more heroic fight against physical disability—a fight which he has depicted in almost blood-curdling poetry in his “ la Hospital: Rhymes and Rhythms”—has given under the same heading the following picture of an “apparition” which appeared to him as he lay in his bed, and it is as good a word-portrait as we are likely to have Thin-legged, thin-chested, slight unspeakably. Neat-footed and weak-fingcred: in his face— Lean, large-honed, curved of beak, and touched with race. Bold-lipped, rich-tinted, mutable as the sea, The brown eyes radiant with vivacity— There shines a brilliant and romantic grace, A spirit intense and rare, with trace on trace Of passion, impudence, and energy. Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck, Most vain, most generous, sternly critical. Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist: A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck, Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all, And something of the Shorter-Catechist. Stevenson’s portrait of himself is far too unkind *.— I am a kind of farthing dip, Unfriendly to the nose and eyes; A blue-hehinded ape, I skip Upon the trees of Paradise. At mankind’s feast, I take my place In solemn, sanctimonious state. And have the air of saying grace While I defile the dinner plate. I am “ the smiler with the knife,” The hatteuer upon garbage, I Dear Heaven, with such a rancid life w ere it not better far to die! Yet still, about the human pale, I love to scamper, love to race. To swing by my irreverent tail All over the most holy place; And when at length, some golden day The unfailing sportsman, aiming at Shall bag me—all the world shall say: Thank God, and there’s an end of that! “he sleeps afar.” Stevenson travelled far in search of a climate where he would not be liable to take cold at any moment, with the consequence of a haemorrhage and the terror of hia friends watching him struggle painfully between life and death. In Southern seas he came at last to Samoa, and there he found his earthly paradise, and determined to lay his bones. He bought a tract of virgin forest, cleared it, built his house, and settled down as “ Tusitala ” the toller of tales among the picturesque and affectionate natives, whose cause he warmly espoused and has advocated in a volume called “ A Footnote to History,” published last year. “ I love Samoa and her people,” he said recently to a gathering of the chiefs. “ I love the land; I have chosen it to he my home while I live, and my grave after,! am dead; and I love the people and have chosen them to be my people to live and die with,'’ Yet there has been a longing in his heart for the grey skies and the, wild landscapes and the grim and sad memories of his. native laud. Ha was not, like his own wild bees, “weariet with the heather” when he sought, as Mr Watson in our own columns has described it, a refuge where far isles the languid ocean fleck, Fleeing the cold kiss of our northern wind. Otherwise he would hardly have written the versos we quoted a few days ago Be it granted me to Behold you again in dying, ’ Hills of home ! and to hear again the call— Hear about tbe graves of tbe martyrs the peowees crying, , And hear no more at all. But “far from the hills of heather,” like the Cameron of Ticonderoga in his own ballr.o', he sleeps, “ aa it was doomed to be.” And the world is poorer by a

master ; in literature, a very brave heart, a very* cunning brain, a writer without rival among the living, and & man whose friends will hardly allow his equal in worthiness tor friendship among the dead. He is buried on the hill-top looking over countless miles of that southern sea which preserved him to us so long. His burialplace was an inspiration—probably he chose it himself. There exist some immortal words of Browning which seem to have been written to bid him farewell there:Well, here’s the platform, here’s the proper ptace: Hail to your purlieus, All ye highfliers of the feathered race. Swallows and curlews! Here,' s the top-pealc; the multitude below Live, for they can, there ; ThisJman decided not to Live hut Know— Bury this man there ? Hera—here’s his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, Lightnings are loosened. Star’s come and go! Let joy break with the storm, Peace let the dew send! Lofty designs must close in like effects: Loftily lying, Leave him—still loftier than the world suspects. Living and dying. Of all the diseases flesh is heir to apoplexy appeared least likely to carry him off. The grief and dismay at the Savile Club and amongst his personal friends on Monda.y afternoon was unmistakable, and amongst the public I should think few novelists since Dickens have been mourned more sincerely. In works like " Kidnapped ” and “ Treasure Island ” men of the highest culture, and men of no culture at all, Professor Buskin and ’Aery and ’Arriet, learned pundits, and little children found common ground. Whether SJtevenson will live like Scott remains to be seen, but that he appealed to a much wider audience than the Wizard of the North was able to roach ia, I think, certain. ANDREW Lang’s VERDICT, The king of literary critics (Mr Andrew Lang) says of Stevenson: — No author had established- a claim so .•friendly on so large a circle of readers. None took us so far away from the perplexities of modern life; none was a source so unfailing of intellectual happiness to his many friends. In this country and in America Mr Stevenson’s death causes a grief, a hitter disappointment, for which there is no consolation. Prom boyhood his health had been frail, while his high courage put him on adventures from which many strong men would have shrunk. Probably his keen love of a-.life in the open air far from cities really prolonged an existence so precious to the world; but on land and sea he was constantly hazarding himself, braving in open boats the dangers of the sun, and on shore risking the chance of fever. In a letter received only last week he displayed (for the first time in his correspondent’s long friendship with him) a certain anxiety about himself. He said that he was haunted by a dread of paralysis, of a lingering mental malady, of living on no longer himself, like - Swift, If this fear was caused by any physical symptoms, we may indeed be gratetul that the blow was quick and sure. He has gone in the full vigour of his mind—with heart and imagination unblunted and unweakened. We have lost the years full of pleasure from his genius to which we had looked. Bub our friend and benefactor has died as he would have chosen to die—-passing with undiminiahed force and with undaunted faith into the presence of that Love and Justice which all his works acknowledge, and fondly, if awfully, admire and adore. His was a heart full of charity and affection, kind, honest, much suffering, valiant. A good man as well as a writer of unequalled charm; a patriot, a hero in his quiet way, an example of those virtues which he moat esteemed, has gone out of our sight and hearing. But his. works endure, and will endure with his cheery message, that for the brave all things are well. It is not easy for those who knew and loved him, who were proud of his friendship, who took delight in his living humour and sunned themselves, as it were, in his delightful genius, to speak now of Mr Stevenson as a writer. The shock is too sudden, and ths loas too recent. Still less is this ths moment for anecdote and trivial reminiscence. The facts in his career may be briefly stated, but, indeed, they are commonly known to readers whom he took much into his confidence. Mr Stevenson, on his mother’s side a Balfour, descended from the famous engineers and builders of lighthouses, the Stevensons. Par back in his family history, which was of much interest to him, he found retainers of the house of Kennedy, man who may .have taken their part' in that mystery of iniquity, the tragedy of Auchendeane. A preacher celebrated by Burns, Smith of “The Cauld Harangues,” was also of his ancestry. He bad many ministers in his pedigree, and his friends used to banter him on the leaven of the Covenant, the didactic or preaching element in hia works. Hia youth was passed chiefly in Edinburgh, in Peeblesshire, and on the slopes of the Pentlands, where the Dairy rising of Whigs was stamped out at Bullion Green, He has written about the shepherds and gardeners, in whose society he took delight, about the diversions of hia imaginative childhood, the theatrical pictures, plain or coloured, and tho mysterious feast of lanterns. As a boy, at the Edinburgh Academy, he evaded scholastic distinction and never was heard of on the cricket field. Already ha was a dreamer, a rhymer, a wanderer. He has himself told the world how he neglected lectures at the College of Edinburgh and diligently taught himself to ■ write. Of Latin he had enough for .his needs, of Greek no more than Scott and St Augustine. In French ho was deeply read, and in Scotch history and legend. His first published work, the work of a boy of fifteen, was a pamphlet on the Pentland. rising. At college he edited a short-lived academic periodical, and spoke in the debating society of which Scott had-been a member. Having no genius though a high respect for engineering, he qualified as an-advo-cate, and his name might be seen on a brass plate on a door in Heriot Bow. He was fond of* acting, which brought him acquainted with the late ingenious Professor Pleeming Jenkin, whose biography he wrote. His health was always bad! Ho baa told about the feverish, fanciful dreams of his childhood, succeeded by those dramatic visions from which he derived ideas and situations. It was after an injudicious supper of bread and jam that ha saw Hyde change into Jekyll, and, calling for paper, he began bis extraordinary romance. For his health’s sake he was "ordered south ” to Mentone, in tho company of his life-long friend Mr Sydney Colvin. At that time he was a man of twenty-two, his smooth face, the more girlish by reason of his long hair, was hectic. Clad in a wide blue coat, he looked nothing less than English, except Scotch, He now wrote his first; paper for a popular magazine, “Ordered South,” an essay as remarkable for originality and finish of style as anything from hie pen. Mac millan’s was the magazine. He next wrote hia “Edinburgh” in the Portfolio, and many delightful studies in the Cornhill. When Mr Healey was in Edinburgh as a very young man, and was composing hia “ Hospital bonnets,” Mr Stevenson made his acquaintance, appreciated his genius, and later in London, under Mr Henley’s editorship, published his fantastic “Arabian Nights.” A tour with Sir Walter Simpson gave the materials for his first book, ” The Inland Voyage,” but while praise came from the few, pudding tarried. Happily, a mere chance, a game of map-drawing with a child, suggested “ Treasure Island.” Mr Stevenson was a hoy to the last, fascinating chances on the Spanish Main for ever allured him, claymores and caterans appealed to him not in vain, and while he gave us old romance he gave us

character, too, thought, and a style without fault except the occasional sin of too selfconscious elaboration. After Scott, Dumas and Thackeray he is the first of historical novelists. Slowly the world awoke to the presence of a master, and his later years were years of success. All hia admirers ’

were enthusiastic worshippers ; from the schoolboy to Mr Matthew Arnold ho won every vote. But hia health drove him hither and thither about the world. He tried Bournemouth, Davos, California (crossing as a steerage passenger to see mote of life). Finally, he settled ia Samoa with hia'wife and stepson collaborator, Mr Osbourne. Of bis dealings in Samoan polities his kindness, for "The King over the water thia is not tha place to speak.* Probably his last great pleasure was the success of his Edinburgh edition, in which he took a boyish and exuberant delight. He was busy with many schemes, amongst other a romance on the unknown, mysterious years of Prince Charles Edward,- for 1 which only a month ago manuscript materials were sent out to him. But tho busy hand and brain, which weakness and the presence of death could not daunt or enfeeble, have ceased to work and write. We all owe him thanks for which words are too weak, thanks for dreams in prose and in rhyme more beautiful than realities, thanka for a triumphant example of a spirit out of weakness made strong, while to some of us the memory of his humorous and glowing conversation is a memory imperishable.