THE LATE ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1197, 8 February 1895, Page 30

THE LATE ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TRIBUTES OF CRITICS AND POETS,

The death of the late Robert Louis Stevenson at Samoa seems to have created a most painful sensation at Home. The London papers are full of lengthy and highly appreciative articles on the life and work of the deceased novelist. Our Loudon correspondent, writing on December 29th, says : The Pall Mall Gazette of Monday evening, which contained the cable announcing the death of Robert Louis Stevenson, also pub lisbed for the first time, the following verses by him : i. Home no more home to me, whither must 1 wander ? Hunger my driver, I go where I must. Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather ; Thick drives the rain, and my roof is in the dust. Loved of wise men was the shade of my rooftree. 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, n. 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 da 7 dawns on the brow of the moorland, Lone stands the house, and the chimneystone is cold. Lone let it stand, now the friends are all departed, The kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place of old.

hi. Spring shall come, come again, calling up the.*' moorfowl, Spring shall bring the sun and rain, bring the bees and flowers ; Red shall the heather bloom, over hill and valley, Soft flow the stream through the evenflowing 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 Oudins. 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, w rites 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 ‘lnHospital: Rhymes and Rhythms’ —has given under the same heading the following picture of an f 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-fingered : in his face — Lean, large-boned, 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 t”ace 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 Shorfcer-Catechist. Stevenson’s portrait of himself is far too unkind— I am a kind of farthing dip, Unfriendly to the nose and eye 3 ; A blue-behinded 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 battener upon garbage, I —• Dear Heaven, with such a rancid life, Were 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 : Thanh God, and there's an end of that!

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 Mon>day - -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 Ruskin and ’Arry and ’Arriet, learned pundits and little children, found common ground. Whether Stevenson 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 reach is, 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 bitter disappointment, for which there is no consolation. “ From 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, or 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 grateful 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. But our friend ani benefactor has died as Le would have chosen to die—passing with undiminished 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 most esteemed, has gone outfof our sight and hearing. But his works endure, and will endure j with his cheery message, that for the brave j 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 nis delightful genius, to speak now of Mr Stevenson as a writer. The shock is too sudden, and the loss too recent. Still \ less is this the moment for anecdote and trivial reminiscence. The facts in his career may be briefly stated, but, indeed, they are commonly known to leaders 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 Stevensous. Far back in his family history, which was of much interest to him, he found retainers of the house of Kennedy, men who may have taken their part in that mystery of iniquity, the tragedy of Auchendrane. A preacher celebrated by Burns, Smith of ‘ The Cauid Harangues,’ was also of his ancestry. He had many ministers in his pedigree, and his friends used to, banter him on the leaven of the Covenant., the didactic or preaching element in liis works. His youth was passed chiefly in Bdinourgh, in Peebles-shire, and on the slopes of the Pentlands, where the Dairy J rising of Whigs was stamped out on Bullion Green. He has written about the shepherds and gardeners in whose society he took j delight, about the diversions of his imaginative childhood, the theatrical pictures, plain or coloured, and the mysterious feast of lanterns. As a boy at the Edinburgh academy he evaded scholastic distinction and j never was heard of on the cricket field, j Already he was a dreamer, a rhymer, a j wanderer. He has himself told the world i how he neglected lectures at the College of j 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 he was deeply read, | and in Scotch history and legend. His first 1 ( published work, the work of a boy of fifteen, | was a pamphlet on the Pentland rising. At j colie.e he edited a short-lived academic j 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 advoeate, and his name might be seen cn a brass plate on a door in Heriot-row. He was fond of acting, which brought him acquainted with the late ingenious Professor Fleeming Jenkin, whose • biography he wrote. His health was alwa.s j bad. He has 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 he saw Hyde change into Jekyll, and, calling for paper, he began his extraordinary romance. For his health’s sake he was * ordered south ’ to Mentone, in the company of his life-long friend Mr Sidney 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 cloak, 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 his pen. Macmillan's was the magazine. He next wrote his ‘ Edinburgh ' in the Portfolio , and many delightful studies in the Corhhill. “ When Mr Henley was in Edinburgh as a very young man, and was composing -his., ‘Hospital Sonnets,’ Mr Stevenson made his acquaintance, appreciated his genius, and later in London, under Mr Henley’s editor-

ship, 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 boy to the last, fascinating chances on the Spanish Main tor 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 sm of too self-eonscious 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 his admirers were enthusiastic worshippers - from the schoolboy to Mr Matthew Arnold he won every vote. But his health drove him hither and thither about the world. He tried Bournemouth, Davos, California (crossing as a steerage passenger to see more of life). Finally he settled in Samoa with his wife* and step-son collaborator, Mr Osbourne. Of his dealings in Samoan politics his kindness for ‘ The King over the water '—this is not the place to speak. Probablj l - 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, among others a romance on the unknown, mysterious years of Prince Charles Edward, for which only a month ago manuscript materials were sent cut to him. But the busy band and brpin, which weakness and the presence of death couM 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, thanks 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.”

A POET’S TRIBUTE. The London Daily Chronicle of the 25tli December contains an elegy by Mr Richard Le Gallienne, one of the most brilliant of the younger English poets. A few of the finest qf the many fine lines we quote as follows : High on his Patmos of the Southern Seas Our northern dreamer sleeps, Strange stars above him, and above his grave Strange leaves and wings their tropic splendours wave, While, far beneath, for shimmering mile on. mile, The great Pacific, with its fairy deeps, Smiles all day long its silken secret smile. Son of a race nomadic, finding still Its home in regions furthest from its home, Tireless to range the borders of the world, And resting but to roam ; Loved of his land, and making all his boast The birthright of the blood from which he came, Heir to those lights which guard the Scottish, coast, And caring only for a filial fame ; Proud, if a poet, he was Scotsman most, And bore a Scottish name. ***** We talk of loss —nay, let us count the gain, That which is written—shall it not remain? Faces must fade, for all their golden looks, Unless some poet them eternalise, Make live those golden looks in golden books; Death, soon or late, will quench the brightest eyes—’Tis only what is written never dies. Yea, memories that guard like sacred gold Some sainted face, they also must grow old, Pass and forget, and think—or think thou not! — Of' all the beauty that is quite forgot. Virgil of prose! far distant is the day That at the mention of your heartfelt name Shall shake its head, oblivious, and say : “We know him not, this master, nor his fame.” Not for so swift forgetfulness you wrought Day upon day, with rapt fastidious pen, Turning, like precious stones, with anxious thought, This word and that again and yet again, Seeking to match its meaning with the world ; Nor to the morning stars gave ears attent, That you, indeed, might ever dare to be With other praise than immortality Unworthily content. Not while a boy still whistles on the earth, Not while a single human heart beats true, Not Avhile Love lasts, and Honour, and the Brave, Has earth a grave, O well-beloved, for you !