Robert Louis Stevenson Part 11

All great changes and large undertakings are fraught with difficulty, and the Vailima venture was no exception to the rule. The Samoan home meant much pleasure to its owner, but it entailed keen anxiety also.

Nevertheless the mental worry of those later months was by no means justified by the facts. Mr Stevenson's literary work had long been paid according to its merits, so that each book brought him in a satisfactory sum; while the future of the _Edinburgh Edition_ of his works gave cause for sincere satisfaction to the friends who were seeing it through the press, and whose letters gave a.s.surance of its success. The cloud was therefore due to internal, not to external causes, and in the state of Mr Stevenson's health was, alas! to be found the explanation of this sad change from the gay bravery with which he had hitherto faced the world.

Suspected by his doctors, feared by his friends, but unknown to himself, for at this time he constantly wrote of his improved health, a new development in his illness was nearing its fatal crisis, and these symptoms of mental distress and irritation were only the foreshadowing of the end.

In these last days his life had many pleasures; he was enjoying the Samoan climate and the free unconventional existence to the full; he was surrounded by all his loved home circle; and in the October of 1894, two months before his death, the Samoan chiefs, in whose imprisonment he had proved his friendship to them, gave him a tribute of their love and grat.i.tude which was peculiarly pleasing and valuable to him. An account of this and of the very beautiful speech he made in return appeared in the home papers at the time, and are to be found in an appendix to _The Vailima Letters_. The chiefs, who knew how much store he set by road-making as a civilising element in Samoa, as elsewhere, themselves went to him and offered their services to make a road to join his property to the main highway. They, as well as their young men, worked at it with picks and spades, and when it was finished they presented it to their beloved 'Tusitala' as an abiding remembrance of their grateful regard. It was a n.o.ble tribute to a n.o.ble nature, and one the value of which can only be fully appreciated by those who realise what the personal manual labour meant to these proud island chiefs so wholly unaccustomed to exertion of any kind, and so imbued with the idea that all labour was derogatory to their dignity. Their loving service touched Mr Stevenson and all his family very deeply, and this bright memory gladdened the last weeks of his life, and must be a very pleasant one to recall for those of the Vailima household who still survive him.

At the celebration of his birthday on 13th November he had received also a tribute of kindly appreciation from the European and American residents in Apia. On the occasion of a 'Thanksgiving' feast in that same November, he made a speech, in which he said he had always liked _that_ day, for he felt that he had had so much for which to be thankful. He especially mentioned the pleasure he had in his mother being with him, and said that to America--where he had married his wife--he owed the chief blessing of his life.

In spite of his a.s.surances that he was very well, he was exceedingly thin and wasted in those days, and later Samoan photographs show a melancholy change in him. On the morning of the 3rd December, however, he felt particularly well and wrote for several hours. It is very pleasant to know, from _A Letter to Mr Stevenson's Friends_, sent to the _Times_ after his stepfather's death by Mr Lloyd Osbourne as an acknowledgment of the vast amount of sympathy expressed, and so impossible to be otherwise answered, that he had enjoyed his work on _Weir of Hermiston_, and felt all the buoyancy of successful effort on that last morning of his life.

Letters for the mail were due to be written in the afternoon, and he spent his time penning long and kindly greetings to absent friends.

'At sunset,' Mr Osbourne says, 'he came downstairs, rallied his wife about the forebodings she could not shake off; talked of a lecturing tour in America he was eager to make, "as he was so well," and played a game of cards with her to drive away her melancholy.'

By-and-bye he said that he was hungry, and proposed a little feast, for which he produced a bottle of old Burgundy, and went to help her to prepare a salad, talking gaily all the while. As they were on the verandah, he suddenly cried out, 'What is that?' put his hands to his head, and asked, 'Do I look strange?' In a moment he had fallen down beside her.

His wife called for help, and she and his body-servant Sosima carried him into the great hall, where he had known so much happiness, and placed him in the old arm-chair which had been his grandfather's.

Medical aid was quickly obtained, but he had already lost consciousness, and, in spite of every effort, he never regained it. His mother's letters written after his death touchingly describe how, although called at once, she yet reached the hall too late to find him conscious, as by that time he was leaning back in his chair breathing heavily. The family, with an agony of grief, quickly realised that there was no hope.

A little bed was brought, and he was placed on it in the middle of the hall, and there, with those he loved close about him, and his faithful Samoan servants seated round him on the floor, he quietly pa.s.sed away.

The deep breaths came at ever longer intervals, the sleep of unconsciousness was never broken, and as his loved and valued friend, the Reverend Mr Clark, prayed beside him, his spirit took its flight into eternity. He died as he had wished, quickly and well-nigh painlessly. He had known so much of lingering illness, he dreaded _that_ greatly, but of death he had no fear, and peacefully and suddenly he pa.s.sed into the Unseen.

His death took place at a little past eight o'clock on the evening of the 3rd December at the early age of forty-four.

When the news was cabled to England, it was received by many people with grave doubts. His relatives and friends dreaded its truth, but could not at first believe it. Many exaggerated newspaper reports, copied especially from the more sensational American press, had from time to time caused needless distress and anxiety to those who loved him, so that it was possible to allow oneself the shadow of a hope, particularly as his uncle, Dr George W. Balfour, who had at first received the news somewhat vaguely worded, doubted it also, and wrote to the _Scotsman_ expressing his unbelief.

Too soon, unfortunately, all such hopes were proved false, and eager eyes scanning the morning papers on the 23d December 1894 read this sad corroboration of the news that had been posted in London on the 17th of the same month.

'SAN FRANCISCO (no date).

BALFOUR, 17 Walker Street, Edinburgh.

LOUIS died suddenly third. Tell friends.

STEVENSON.'

The telegram was from his mother in answer to one from his uncle asking for true particulars as to the earlier report, and on its receipt and publication relatives and friends knew that hope was dead, and there remained only a sad waiting for further particulars. These by-and-bye came in letters from his mother to her relatives and friends in Scotland, in letters to his literary friends and in that 'Letter' to the _Times_ from his friend and stepson Mr Lloyd Osbourne to the vast ma.s.s of acquaintances and readers who all claimed him as a loved personal friend.

From all these sources the manner of his death, and the touching final tragedy of his pathetic funeral became known to the world of English-speaking people everywhere, who each and all mourned individually for the loved and lost author as one near and dear in their personal regard.

He had always expressed a wish to be buried on the Vaea mountain which rises immediately behind Vailima, and the summit of which commands a wide prospect of land and sea and sky. In the spring of 1894, he had suggested the making of a road, and the planting of the spot which he had chosen for his resting-place, but, as the idea was painful to his family, nothing was done in the matter. As soon as he had pa.s.sed away, those whom he loved hastened to give effect to his wishes, and Mr Lloyd Osbourne planned and courageously carried out in an incredibly short time the forming of a road which made it possible to carry him to the summit of Vaea, and lay him on the spot that he had chosen. Forty Samoans with knives and axes cut a path up the mountain side, and Mr Lloyd Osbourne, with a few specially chosen dependents, dug the grave in which he was to lie.

Meantime, his body covered with the Union Jack rested in the Samoan home that he had loved so well, surrounded by the furniture of the old Scotch home around which his childish feet had played, and on which his father, and possibly his father's fathers, had daily looked, for his mother had taken with her to Vailima all that had most of memory and of family tradition from the house in Heriot Row.

His family lingered in the dear presence, the heartbroken Samoans knelt and kissed his hands, and at the request of his favourite servant, Sosima, who was a Romanist, the solemn and touching prayers of the Church of Rome were, with a certain fitness, repeated over the man who had been the champion of Father Damien, and among whose friends were numbered the earnest and faithful Roman Catholic missionary priests of the South Sea Islands.

On his coffin was laid the 'Red Ensign' that had floated from his mast on many a cruise, and he was carried up the steep path by those who loved him. Europeans as well as Samoans toiled up that difficult ascent to place him with reverent hands in that grave which was so fitting a resting-place for the man who had loved, above all things, the freedom of the open air, the glory of the sea and the sky, the sighing of G.o.d's winds among the trees, and the silent companionship of the stars.

Life for those who remained in the Samoan home became an impossible thing without him, and so Mrs Stevenson, with her son and daughter, by-and-bye left Vailima, and the home of so much happiness is now falling into ruin, the cleared ground lapsing back to the bush. And perhaps it is best so; without him Vailima is like a body without a soul; and he who so dearly loved nature would hardly have regretted that the place he loved should return to the mother heart of the earth and become once more a solitude--a green place of birds and trees.

CHAPTER XIII

HIS LIFE-WORK

'Art's life, and when we live we suffer and toil.'

--MRS BARRETT BROWNING.

'A healthful hunger for the great idea, The beauty and the blessedness of life.'

--JEAN INGELOW.

It is perhaps impossible for those who knew Mr Stevenson and came under the influence of the rare attraction of his charming personality, to a.s.sign to him and to his work a suitable place in the world of letters.

Probably it is still too early for anyone to say what rank will in the future be held by the man who in his life-time a.s.suredly stood among the masters of his craft. Fame, while he lived, was his, and, better than fame, such love as is seldom given by the public to the writer whose books delight it.

Deservedly popular as the books are, the man was still more popular; and the personality that to his friends was so unique and so delightful, made friends of his readers also. He was so frank, so human, in his relations with his public.

His dedications not only gave pleasure to the members of his family, or to the many friends to whom he wrote them, they, as it were, took his readers into his confidence also, and let them share in the warmth of his heart. His prefaces are delightfully autobiographical, and are valuable in proportion to the glimpses they give of one of the most amiable and most widely sympathetic natures imaginable.

His methods of work were singularly conscientious; even in the days when, as a truant lad, he carried in his pocket one book to read, and another to write in, he was slowly perfecting that style which was to give to his literary work a distinction all its own. He spared himself no trouble in ensuring the accuracy of all that he wrote.

It may be interesting to recall in this connection the letters written by two of his readers to the _Scotsman_ expressing some doubt as to there having been shops in Princes Street at the date of his story _St Ives_--Mr Stevenson mentions shops in _St Ives_. In reply to the letters of enquiry, his uncle, Dr G. W. Balfour, wrote to the _Scotsman_ on 26th November 1897:--

'Sir,--It may interest your correspondents "J. W. G." and "J. C.

P." to know that Louis Stevenson always took care to verify his statements before making them, and that his correspondent, to whom he applied for information as to the existence of shops in Princes Street at the early date referred to, took the only legitimate means open to him of ascertaining this by consulting the directories of the date.'

And, as a matter of fact, it was conclusively proved that Mr Stevenson was correct, by the name and number of at least one well-known shop, of that date, being given by another correspondent in the paper very shortly afterwards.

No minute observation was too trying for Mr Stevenson, no careful research too tedious for him; no historical fact apparently too insignificant or obscure for him to verify. He was never weary of reading books dealing with the periods in which the action of his stories takes place.

Costume, dialect, scenery, were all thoroughly studied, and when himself distant from the scenes of his tales, he is to be found constantly writing from Vailima to friends in London or in Edinburgh for the books and the information he required. In the period between 1745 and 1816, in which the plots of _Kidnapped_, _Catriona_, _The Master of Ballantrae_, _Weir of Hermiston_, and _St Ives_ are laid, he is especially at home, and old record rolls, books on manners and on costume, are all laboriously studied to give to his stories that accuracy and truth to life which he considered to be absolutely necessary. To such good effect did he study volumes of old Parliament House trials, that the dress of Alan Breck, in _Kidnapped_, is literally transcribed from that of a prisoner of Alan's period, whose trial he had perused.

Nor did his conscientiousness stop here; he wrote and re-wrote everything, sometimes as often as five times, and no page ever left his hands which had not been elaborately pruned and polished. No wonder, therefore, that his work was welcome to his publishers, and that he was never among the complaining authors who think themselves underpaid and unappreciated by the firms with whom they deal.

He gave of his best, good honest hard work, and he received in return not only money but regard and consideration; and his own verdict was that it was difficult to choose among his publishers which should have a new book, for all of them were so good to him. A pleasant state of matters that goes far to prove that, where work is conscientious and author and publisher honourable and sensible, there need be little or no friction between them. In this, as in the care which he bestowed on his work, the long and earnest apprenticeship he served to the profession of letters, he sets an example to his fellow-authors quite as impressive as that which he showed to his fellow-men in the patience with which he bore his heavy burden of bad health, and the courage with which he rose above his sufferings and looked the world in the face smiling.

In an age when a realism so strong as to be unpleasant has tinged too much of latter-day fiction Mr Stevenson stood altogether apart from the school of the realists. His nature, fresh and boyish to the end, troubled itself not at all with social questions, so he dipped his pen into the wells of old romance and painted for us characters so alive with strength and with humour that they live with us as friends and comrades when the creations of the problem novelists have died out of our memories with the problems they propound and worry over.

His books are bright, breezy, cheerful, rich in idealism, full of chivalry, and they have in them a glamour of genius, a power of imagination, and a spirit of purity, which makes them peculiarly valuable in an age when these things are too often conspicuous by their absence from the novel of the day.

His essays are full of a quaint, delightful humour, his verses have a dainty charm, and in his tales he has given us a little picture gallery of characters and landscapes which have a fascination all their own.

Like Sir Walter Scott he had to contend with the disadvantages of a delicate childhood which interfered with settled work; and yet, in both cases, one is tempted to think that that enforced early leisure was of far more ultimate benefit to the life-work than years of dutiful attendance at school and college. Like Sir Walter Scott, also, he has drawn much of his inspiration from 'Caledonia, stern and wild'; and none of her literary sons, save Burns and 'The Wizard of the North' himself, has Caledonia loved so well or mourned so deeply.