STEVENSON AND SIMONEAU.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14223, 20 November 1909, Page 5

STEVENSON AND SIMONEAU.

Last year. there died: in the old-fashioned '■ Californian town of ' Monterey, once the capital of the State, an old man between whom and R. L. Stevenson a beautiful and lasting attachment had grown up in the brief three months of their association. The old man was Jules' Simoneau, the keeper of a restaurant to which Stevenson ' paid this towering tribute: , "Of all my private collections of remembered inns and restaurants I believe it, other things being equal, to bo unrivalledone particular house of entertainment stands forth alone. lam grateful,'indeed, to many a swinging signboard, to many a rusty wine bush, but not with the same kind of gratitude. Some were beautifully, situated, some • Had an admirable table, some .were "< the gathering-places of excellent. companions; but, take them all in all, not one can be compared with Simoneau's at Monterey." | Vivid, tooi is his description of the place .- in the following passage "To the front, it was part barber's shop, part bar; to the back, there was a kitchen and a salle-a-manger. The intending diner found him- " v self in a- little, chill, bare; adobe room, furnished with chairs and" tables, and adorned with some oil sketches, roughly brushed upon the wall in the manner of Barbizon • <tnd Cernay. The table, at whatever hou* you ■ entered,*:; was already laid with a not spotless napkin, and, by way of eperghes with a dish of green peppers and tomatoes, pleasing alike to eye and palate. If yo* stayed there to- meditate ■ before a meal, you would hear Simoneau all about the kitchen, and rattling among the dishes." Simoneau had chanced upon Stevenson while the latter was ill and lonely anf, helplessly confined to his bed. He was alsd in danger of starvation. The old-French-man at once devoted himself to the sick writer, nursed him tenderly, and brought him every day the choicest tit-bits '-■> and morsels from his bill of fare. It was food cooked ; with:; Gallic" refinement, I art, and y piquancy. '■:'. : ■"'■■•'•'V.'- ' ■'■ : ' . When Stevenson recovered, he naturally v>' became a patron of this little restaurant of wanderers and Bohemians on/the; shores of that "Homeric deep" the Pacific. It soon _ became a haUnt .; for 'painters; and poets _" j whom ; the glamour of Monterey lured from afar. Little it mattered to the .generous host whether these sons of genius had money or not. They were ever welcome, in particular, Stevenson, for": a meal, a talk, • a'pame of chess, or a solo on the' flute. • • t Stevenson and Simoneau saw each other only for three months, but in their daily and devoted intercourse a life-long friendship was forged. .