ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11825, 30 November 1901, Page 5 (Supplement)

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

THE STORY OF HIS LIFE.

The " Life of 'Robert Louis Stevenson,'' by Mr. Graham Balfour (Messrs. Methuen and Go), published on October 18, will be read with delight not only by the " thick-and-tbin" admirers of the great Scotch novelist, but by all to whom a study of buoyant humanity under depressing conditions appeals.

A character so complex and a career so chequered as that of Stevenson must at least have the defects of their virtues, and the memory of his genius will be no less devotedly cherished because seme of his work evidently fell far short of his own ideal.

Born at Edinburgh on November 13. 1850, his boyhood was passed under rigidly Scotch iniluences, and the terror of hell implanted in his mind by a faithful, if somewhat forbidding, nurse was as actual a reality as tinsuccession of bronchitis, pneumonia, gastric fever, besides the ordinary maladies of childhood — which strained " Sinoutie's" weakly frame. From his infancy his father railed him " Smout" or "Smoutie" (i.e., sniolt, young salmon, smt.ll fry), and this continued to be his pet name through childhood.

" THE SCHOOLBOYS MAGAZINE. It was chiefly owing to his feeble physique that lit tie or nothing was done in the way of education until the end. of 1859, when three schools in Edinburgh, besides one at Isleworth, were responsible for him until the. time came, in 1867, for his entrance into the University. Throughout his boyhood he was continually writing. "At his last school and in his "home circle ,be was always starting magazines. These were all in manuscript, generally illustrated with profusion of'colour, arid were sometimes circulated at a charge of one penny for reading. The Schoolboys' Magazine, of 1863, of which one number survives, contains four stories, and its readers must have been hard to satisfy it they did not have their fill of horrors. In the first tale, "The Adventures of Jan van Steen," the hero is left hidden in a boiler, under which a fire is tit. The second is " A Ghost Story" of robbers in a deserted castle in " one of those barren places called plains in the north of Norway." A traveller finds a mas "half-killed, with several wounds'' hidden under the floor, who dresses up as a ghost. The third story is called, by a curious anticipation, The Wreckers." . One of the troubles of his youth, which aroused "my great indignation at the time, but which since then has had my complete approval," was his allowance lot pocketmoney. "Twelve pounds a year was my allowance up to twenty-three (which was indeed far too little), and although I amplified it by a very consistent embezzlement from my'mother,* I never had enough to be lavish. " My monthly |wud was usually spent before the evening of the day upon which I received it; as often as not it was forestalled, and for the vest of the time 1 was in rare fortune if I had five shillings in my possession. Hence my acquaintance was of wnat would be called a very low order. Looking back upon it lam surprised at the courage with which I first ventured alone into societies in which I moved. I was the companion -of seamen, chimneysweeps, and thieves; my circle was being continually changed by the action of the police magistrate. I see now the little sanded kitchen where Velvet Coat (for such was the name I went by) has spent days together,, generally in silence and ma'irtg sonnets in a penny version book ; and rovih as the materials may appear. I do not > lieve these days were among the least hap].. I have spent.' I was distinctly petted and respected ; the women were most gentle and kind to me. I might have left all my money for a month and they would have returned every farthing of it. " Such, indeed, was my celebrity that when the proprietor and the mistress came to inspect their establishment I was invited to tea with them, and it is still a grisly thought to me that I have since seen that mistress, then gorgeous in velvet and gold chains, an old, toothless, raagtd woman, with hardly a voice enough to welcome me by my old name of Velvet Coat."

AT THK bar. His appearance at the Bar did not add to his income. " Once only was he conspicuously before the Court, "and this publicity was' due neither to the weightiness of the. matter nor the brilliancy of the advocate One day he met in. the street a certain judge of the Court of Sessions, whom he saluted in the customary manner. Stevenson had just emerged from a public-house, and was dress"d at the time in an old suit of clothes which may have been dear to his heart, but was certainly not of the style habitual to members of the Bar. The judge looked surprised, but acknowledged the salute and passed on. "When Stevenson reached home he found a brief awaiting him with instructions to revive' a certain case before this wry judge. At the hour appointed he appeared in his robes, wigged, and properly habited, and expected the empty Court usual to such formal business. But he reckoned without numbers of his friends, who, having got wind of the brief, came in to see how he would acquit himself, and the Court was crowded. The judge scented a joke; recognised his young friend of the day before; asked who he was, and proceeded to require a great dead of entirely unnecessary information about the details of the case. The brief contained no allusion to these facts. Counsel wfcis completely ignorant jsf the history. The solicitor took care to keep well out of the way, and enjoyed the joke from the back of the Court, until Stevenson's eye fell upon him, and the judge was referred to him for all further facts. So counsel escaped, but he had his quarter of an hour." The year 1873 is mentioned as a decisive time in Stevenson's career, for in it not only did the religious question of his life come to a crisis but it brougut many new friends with both interest and influence in the literary career for which he was longing. He spent much time between France, London, and Edinburgh, writing and studying always, but it was not till 1877 that the first of his stories ever printed—" A Lodging for the Night"—was accepted for publication.

MR. GLADSTONE AND " TREASURE ISLAND.'' After his marriage in 1880, perhaps the most conspicuous landmark in his life was the publication of " Treasure Island" in book form, when he obtained his first popular success. Its reception reads like a fairy tale. "The story goes that Mr. Gladstone got a' glimpse of the book at a colleague's house, and spent the day hunting over London for a second-hand copy. But serious illness speedily followed success, his ill-health lasting, with but little intermission, until he ieft Europe finally. Those round him expected his death, and he himself expected it, but the belief failed to conquer his natural buoyancy and courage. In May, 1884, Stevenson was attacked with the most violent and dangerous haemorrhage he ever experienced. It occurred late at night, but in a moment his wife was by his side. Being choked with the flow of blood and unable to speak he made signs to her for a pencil and paper, and wrote in a neat, firm hand, 'Don't be frightened if this is death, it is an easv one.' " Mrs. Stevenson had always a small bottle of ergotine and a minim glass in readiness. .these she brought in order to administer the prescribed quantity. Seeing her alarm, he' took bottle and glass away from her, measured the dose correctly with a perfectly steady hand, and gave the thing back to her with "a leassiuing smile."

"a tike doge talk.'' The second volume of the " Life" is even more interesting than its predecessor. It opens with tin account of the sojourn at Bournemouth, perhaps chiefly remarkable for the production of that volume of thrilling interest and subtle philosophy. "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," uudei the following adverse circumstances : — . n "In the small hours ot one morning, says Mrs. Stevenson, "J was awakened by cries of honor from Louis. Thinking he had nightmare I awakened him- He said angrily, 'Why did von wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale.' I had awakened him at the first transformation scene.' Mr. Osbourne writes-.—"l don't believe that there was ever such a literary teat before as the writing of Dr. Jekyll. I remember the first reading as though it were vesterdav, Louis came downstairs in a fever, read nearly half the book aloud, and then, while we were still' gasping, he was

away again, and busy writing. I doubt if the first draft took so long as three days. He bad lately had a hemorrhage, and was strictly forbidden all discussion or excitement. No doubt reading aloud was contrary to the doctor's orders ; at any rate. Mrs. Stevenson, according to the custom then in iorce, wrote her detailed criticism of the story as it then stood, pointing out her chief objection—that it was really an allegory, whereas he bad treated it purely a? if it wen: a story. In the first draft Jekyll's nature, whs "bad all through, and the Hyde change was worked only for the sake of a disguise. She gave the paper to her husband ami left the room. After a while bis be!, rang. On her return she found him sitting up in clinical thermometer in his mouth), pointing with a long denunciatory finger to a pile of ashes. Hi.- had burned I lit entire draft. Having realised that be had taken the wrong point of view, and the tale was an allegory, and not another ' Markheim.' he at once destroyed the manuscript, acting not out of pique, but from a fear that he might be tempted to make too much use of it. and not rewrite the whole from a new standpoint. "It was written again in three days ('1 drive on with Jekyll ; bankruptcy at my heels'), but the fear of losing the story altogether prevented much further criticism." This was in 1585. hi 1837, Stevenson

paid a second visit to the United States, where occurred an incident typical of the kindliness of his heart. "I lay iii." writes an Australian journalist, "in San Francisco, an obscure journalist, quite friendless. Stevenson, who knew me slightly, came to my bsdsido and said. '1 suppose you are like all of us, you don't keep your money? Now, if a little* loan, as between one man of letters and another —eh'.'" "This to a lad writing rubbish for a vulgar sheet in California.' It was during this visit that Stevenson chartered the Casco for a trip to the South Seas, and " So with his household he sailed away beyond the sunset, and America, like Europe, was to see him no more." For nearly throe years he wandered up and down the face of these \raters: "This climate ; these voyagings ; these landfalls at dawn; new islands peaking from the morning bank ; new forested harbours ; new passing alarms of squalls and surf; new interests of gentle nativesthe whole of my life is better to me than any poem," he writes. There is not a dry page in this part of the volume. A memorable incident, was his visit with some nurses to the scene of Father Damien's labours among the lepers : " Our lepers were sent (from the steamer) in the first boat, about a dozen, one poor child very horrid, one white man leaving a large grown family behind him in Honolulu; and then into the second stepped the sisters and myself. Ido not know how it would have been with me had the sisters nob been there. Mly horror of the horrible is about my weakest point ; but the moral loveliness at my elbow blotted all else out; and when I found that one of them was crying, poor soul, quietlv under her veil, I cried a little myself. Then 1 "felt as right as a trivet, only a little crushed to be there so uselessly.

WITH THE LEPERS. " I thought it was a sin and a shame she should feel" unhappy ; I turned round to her and said something like this : ' Ladies, God Himself is here to give you Welcome. I'm sure it is good for me to be beside you ; 1 hope it will be blessed to me ; I thank you for myself and the good you do me-' It seemed to cheer her up ; but, indeed, I had scarce said it when we were at the landing stairs, and there was a, great crowd, hundreds of (God save us!) pantomime masks in poor human flesh, waiting to receive the sisters and the new patients." A gem of narration is contained in his account of a visit to the Bay of Oa : —"We sailed a little before high-water, and came skirting for some while along a coast of classical landscapes, cliffy promontories, long, sanuy coves, divided by semi-indepen-dent islets, and the far-withdrawing sides of the mountain, rich with every shape and shade of verdure. Nothing lacked but temples and galleys, and our own long whaleboat, sped (to the sound of song) by eight nude oarsmen, figured a piece of antiquity better than perhaps we thought. No road lead along this coast; we scarce saw a house; these delectable inlets lay quiet desert, inviting seizure, and there was hoik like Keats' End; mion to hear our snowlighl cadences." The difficulty of Stevenson's after-life in Samoa "was its great expense. In 188 Stevenson had written : ' Wealth is only useful for two things— yacht and a string quartette. Except for these, I hold tbn ( £700 a year, is as much as anyone can possibly want.' But though he had neithei the music nor the vessel, and was now making an income of six or seven times tin amount mentioned, it was no more thai; enough to meet the cost of his living and the needs of his generosity, while he was occasionally haunted by a fear lest his power of earning should come to an end."

TOE BEGINNING OF THE END. The residence at Samoa /was the beginning of the end. the end which came swiftly to oife who had worked hard and waited patiently, knowing that amid things beautiful he was creating much to beautify posterity, and happy in the strange though simple circumstances of his not unhappy exile. During the October and November of 1894 Stevenson "remained hard at work, and to all appearance in his ordinary health. His birthday was celebrated by the usual native feast, and on Thanksgiving Day, November 29, he gave a dinner to all his American friends. " What remains to tell has been so related by Mr. Osbourne that no other account is possible or to be desired: — "' He wrote hard all the morning of the last dya; his -finished book " Hermiston" he judged the best he had written.

AT SUNSET. "'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 at 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 nnick.v. "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 bound of human skill.' "

THE TOMII CX THE HILL. So there be was laid to rest, and in after time a large tomb in the Samoan fashion, built of great blocks of cement, was placed upon the grave. On either side there is a bronze plate : die one bearing the words in Samoan, " The Tomb of Tusitala," followed by the speech of Ruth to .Naomi, taken from the Samoan Jbble : — '"Whithei iliou goes!, 1 will go; and where thou lodgest, 1 will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God ; where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried." Upon the othec panel, in English, is his own Requiem :—■ ROBERT LOUIS IS3O STEVENSON. 1C34. Under the wide and starry sky, Dii? the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die. And J laid me down with a will. This bo the verso you grave for me: " Here lie lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill.'* "Since his death," says Mr. Balfour, "the chiefs have tabooed the use of firearms upon the hillside where he lies, that the birds rray live there undisturbed, and raise about his grave the songs he loved so well."