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Star (Christchurch), Issue 18961, 7 January 1930, Page 11

Sir James Barrie has described his meeting with R. L. Stevenson as follows The only time I met Stevenson was in Edinburgh, and I had no idea who he was. It was in the winter of ’79. I well remember the wind was “blawin’ snell” when I set off that afternoon with my notebooks to the Humanities class of the University of Edinburgh. As I was crossing Princes Street—a blasty corner—l ran against another wayfarer. Looking up, I saw that he was a young man of an exceeding tenuity of body, his eyes, his hair, alr.eady beginning to go black, and that he was wearing a velvet jacket. He passed on, but he had bumped against me, and I stood in the middle of the street, regardless of the traffic, and stared contemptuously after him. He must have grown conscious of this, because he turned around and looked at me. I continued to glare. He went on a little bit and turned round again. I was still glaring, and he came back and said to me, quite nicely: “After all, God made me.” I said, “He is getting careless.” He lifted his cane, and then, instead, he said: “Do I know you?” He said it with such extraordinary charm that I replied, wistfully: “No, but I wish you did.” He said: “Let’s pretend 1 do,” and we went off to a tavern at the foot of Leith Street, where we drank what he said was the favourite wine of the Three Musketeers. , , .