_BY_ Robert Louis Stevenson,
Author of _The Blue Scalper, Travels with a Donkey, etc._ PRICE 8d.
BLACK CANYON _or_ Wild Adventures in the FAR WEST A Tale of Instruction and Amus.e.m.e.nt for the Young.
_BY SAMUEL OSBOURNE_
ILl.u.s.tRATED.
_Printed by the Author._ Davos-Platz.]
"There was a dear old lady of Monastier with whom he struck up an attachment. She pa.s.sed judgment on his sketches and his heresy with a wry mouth and a twinkle of the eye that were eminently Scottish. "She was never weary of sitting to me for her portrait, in her best cap and brigand hat, and with all her wrinkles tidily composed, and though she never failed to repudiate the result, she would always insist upon another trial. * * * "No, no," she would say, "that is not it. I am old, to be sure, but I am better looking than that. We must try again."
"But the most characteristic work of Stevenson as ill.u.s.trator is to be found in the quaint little woodcuts which adorned the volumes turned out by the press of Osbourne & Co. at Davos. With some very primitive type and a boundless capacity for frivoling, this "company," consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Stevenson and young Lloyd Osbourne, managed to while away the hours of the Swiss Winter in delightful fashion. As Mr. Pennell states in _The Studio_ these Davos editions are exceedingly hard to secure. The British Museum itself has only two copies, and there is no hint of their existence in any of the published works. One of these works was ent.i.tled "Moral Emblems; a Collection of Cuts and Verses."
"There was also a second collection of "Moral Emblems, an edition de luxe, in tall paper, extra fine, price tenpence, and a popular edition for the million, small paper, cuts slightly worn, a great bargain, eightpence."
Another of these volumes was ent.i.tled "The Graver and the Pen," of which the author a.s.serted on the poster that it was "a most strikingly ill.u.s.trated little work, and the poetry so pleasing that when it is taken up to be read is finished before it is set down." There were five full-page ill.u.s.trations, eleven pages of poetry finely printed on superb paper, and the whole work offered a splendid chance for an energetic publisher. One of the moral emblems runs as follows:
"Industrious pirate! See him sweep The lonely bosom of the deep, And daily the horizon scan From Hatteras or Matapan.
Be sure, before that pirate"s old, He will have made a pot of gold, And will retire from all his labors And be respected by his neighbors.
You also scan your life"s horizon For all that you can clap your eyes on.
"Sometimes an unintentional effect was introduced into the woodcuts, as in the case of "The Foolhardy Geographer." We cannot tell the story, but the effect is thus described in a postscript:
"A blemish in the cut appears, Alas! it cost both blood and tears.
The glancing graver swerved aside, Fast flowed the artist"s vital tide!
And now the apologetic bard Demands indulgence for his pard."
STEVENSON"S LATER LETTERS
_London Bookman, Dec. 1899._
Out of these n.o.ble volumes of Stevenson letters two things come to me of new, of which the first is the more important. Before and above all else these books (with their appendage, the Vailima Correspondence) are the record of as n.o.ble a friendship as I know of in letters. And perhaps, as following from this, we have here a Stevenson without shadows. Not even a full statue, but rather a medallion in low relief--as it were the St.
Gaudens bust done into printer"s ink.
It is difficult to say precisely what one feels, with Mr. Colvin (and long may he be spared) still in the midst of us. And yet I cannot help putting it on record that what impresses me most in these volumes, wherein are so many things lovely and of good report, is the way in which, in order that one friend may shine like a city set on a hill, the other friend consistently retires himself into deepest shade. Yet all the same Mr.
Colvin is ever on the spot. You can trace him on every page--emergent only when an explanation must be made, never saying a word too much, obviously in possession of all the facts, but desirous of no reward or fame or glory to himself if only Tusitala continue to shine the first among his peers.
Truly there is a love not perhaps _sur_pa.s.sing the love of women, but certainly _pa.s.sing_ it, in that it is different in kind and degree.
Obviously, however, Mr. Colvin often wounded with the faithful wounds of a friend, and sometimes in return he was blessed, and sometimes he was banned. But always the next letter made it all right.
To those outside of his family and familiars Stevenson was always a charming and sometimes a regular correspondent. To myself, with no claim upon him save that of a certain instinctive mutual liking, he wrote with the utmost punctuality every two months from 1888 to the week of his death.
It is the irony of fate that about thirty of these letters lie buried somewhere beneath, above, or behind an impenetrable barrier of 25,000 books. In a certain great "flitting" conducted by village workmen these ma.n.u.scripts disappeared, and have so far eluded all research. But at the next upturning of the Universe, I doubt not they will come to light and be available for Mr. Colvin"s twentieth edition. It was a great grief to me that I had no more to contribute besides those few but precious doc.u.ments which appear in their places in the second volume of "Letters to Family and Friends."
Albeit, in spite of every such blank, here is such richness as has not been in any man"s correspondence since Horace Walpole"s--yet never, like his, acidly-based, never razor-edged, never, for all Stevenson"s Edinburgh extraction, either west-endy or east-windy. Here in brief are two books, solid, sane, packed with wit and kindliness and filled full of the very height of living.
Not all of Stevenson is here--it seems to me, not even the greater part of Stevenson. Considered from one point of view, there is more of the depths of the real Stevenson in a single chapter of Miss Eve Simpson"s "Edinburgh Days," especially in the chapter ent.i.tled "Life at Twenty-five," than in any of these 750 fair pages. But with such a friend as Mr. Colvin this was inevitable. He has carried out that finest of the maxims of amity, "Censure your friend in private, praise him in public!"
And, indeed, if ever man deserved to be praised it was Stevenson. So generous was he, so ready to be pleased with other men"s matters, so hard to satisfy with his own, a child among children, a man among men, a king among princes. Yet, all the same, anything of the nature of a play stirred him to the shoe soles, down to that last tragic bowl of salad and bottle of old Burgundy on the night before he died. He was a fairy prince and a peasant boy in one, Aladdin with an old lamp under his arm always ready to be rubbed, while outside his window Jack"s beanstalk went clambering heavenward a foot every five minutes.
All the same, it gives one a heartache--even those of us who knew him least--to think that no more of these wide sheets close written and many times folded will ever come to us through the post. And what the want must be to those who knew him longer and better, to Mr. Colvin, Mr. Gosse, Mr.
Henley, only they know.
For myself, I am grateful for every word set down here. It is all sweet, and true, and gracious. The heaven seems kinder to the earth while we read, and in the new portrait Tusitala"s large dark eyes gleam at us from beneath the penthouse of his brows with a gipsy-like and transitory suggestion.
"The Sprite" some one called him. And it was a true word. For here he had no continuing city. Doubtless, though, he lightens some Farther Lands with his bright wit, and such ministering spirits as he may cross on his journeying are finding him good company. _Talofa, Tusitala_; do not go very far away! We too would follow you down the "Road of Loving Hearts."
S. R. CROCKETT.
[Ill.u.s.tration:
THE PENTLAND RISING A PAGE OF HISTORY 1666
"A cloud of witnesses ly here, Who for Christ"s interest did appear."
_Inscription on Battle-field at Rullion Green._
EDINBURGH ANDREW ELLIOT, 17 PRINCES STREET 1866]
A STEVENSON SHRINE
_By Emily Soldene_
In 1896 I strolled down Market Street, San Francisco, looking into the curio- and other shops under the Palace Hotel, when my attention was attracted by a crowd of people round one particular shop-window. Now, a crowd in San Francisco (except on political occasions) is an uncommon sight. Naturally, with the curiosity of my s.e.x and the perseverance of the Anglo-Saxon, I took my place in the surging ma.s.s and patiently waited till the course of events, and the shoulders of my surroundings, brought me up close to the point of vantage. What came they out for to see? It was a bookseller"s window. In the window was a shrine. "The Works and Portraits of Robert Louis Stevenson," proclaimed a placard all illuminated and embossed with red and purple and green and gold. In the centre of the display was an odd-looking doc.u.ment. This, then, was the loadstone--a letter of Stevenson"s, in Stevenson"s own handwriting. Many people stood and read, then turned away, sad and sorrowful-looking. "Poor fellow!" said one woman. "But he"s all right now. I guess he"s got more than he asked for." I stood, too, and read. Before I had finished, my eyes, unknowingly, were full of tears. This is the doc.u.ment. When you have read, you will not wonder at the tears.
"I think now, this 5th or 6th of April, 1873, that I can see my future life. I think it will run stiller and stiller year by year, a very quiet, desultorily studious existence. If G.o.d only gives me tolerable health, I think now I shall be very happy: work and science calm the mind, and stop gnawing in the brain; and as I am glad to say that I do now recognise that I shall never be a great man, I may set myself peacefully on a smaller journey, not without hope of coming to the inn before nightfall.
_O da.s.s mein leben Nach diesem ziel ein ewig wandeln sey!_"
I walked on a block or so, and, after a few minutes, when I thought my voice was steady and under control, turned back, went into the book-store, and asked the young man in attendance, "Could I be allowed to take a copy of the letter in the window?" He told me it was not, as I thought, an original doc.u.ment, but the printed reproduction of a memorandum found among the dead Stevenson"s papers. "Then," said I, "can I not have one--can I not buy one?" And the young man shook his head. "No; they are not for sale." "Oh, I am sorry!" said I. "I would have given anything for one." "Well," said he, in a grave voice, and with a grave smile, "they are not, indeed, for sale; but have been printed for a particular purpose, and one will be given to all lovers of Stevenson." He spoke in such a low, reverent, sympathetic tone that I _knew his_ eyes must be full, and so I would not look.
Next day I went to see _Mr. Doxey_ himself, who is a Stevenson enthusiast, and has one window (the window of the crowd) devoted entirely to Stevenson. All his works, all his editions--including the Edinburgh Edition--are there; and he, with the greatest kindness, showed me the treasures he had collected. In the first place, the number of portraits was astonishing. Years and conditions and circ.u.mstances, all various and changing; but the face--the face always the same. The eyes, wonderful in their keenness, their interrogative, questioning, eager gaze; the looking out, always looking out, always asking, looking ahead, far away into some distant land not given to _les autres_ to perceive. That wonderful looking out was the first thing that impressed me when I met Mr. Stevenson in Sydney in "93. Unfortunately for us, he only stayed there a short time, would not visit, was very difficult of access, not at all well, and when he went seemed to disappear, not go. Mr. Doxey had pictures of him in every possible phase--in turn-down collar, in no collar at all; his hair long, short, and middling; in oils, in water-colour, in photos, in a smoking-cap and Imperial; with a moustache, without a moustache; young, youthful, dashing, Byronic; not so youthful, middle-aged; looking in _this_ like a modern Manfred; in _that_ like an epitome of the fashions, wearing a debonair demeanour and a _degage_ tie; as a boy, as a barrister; on horseback, in a boat. There was a portrait taken by Mrs. Stevenson in 1885, and one lent by Virgil Williams; another, a water-colour, lent by Miss O"Hara; and a wonderful study of his wonderful hands. Then he was photographed in his home at Samoa, surrounded by his friends and his faithful, devoted band of young men, his Samoan followers; in the royal boat-house at Honolulu, seated side by side with his Majesty King Kalakaua; on board the _Casco_. Here, evidently anxious for a really good picture, he has taken off his hat, standing in the sun bareheaded. At a native banquet, surrounded by all the delicacies of the season, bowls of _kava_, _poi_, _palo-sami_, and much good company. Then the later ones at Vailima; in the clearing close to his house, in the verandah. Later still, writing in his bed. Coming to the "inn" he talks about in 1873--coming so close, close, unexpectedly, but not unprepared--Robert Louis Stevenson has pa.s.sed the veil. Not dead, but gone before, he lives in the hearts of all people. But not so palpably, so outwardly, so proudly, as in the hearts of these people of the Sunny Land, who, standing on the extreme verge of the Western world, shading their eyes from the shining glory, watch the sunshine go out through the Golden Gate, out on its way across the pearly Pacific to the lonely Mountain of Samoa where lies the body of the man "Tusitala," whose songs and lessons and stories fill the earth, and the souls of the people thereof.
On the fly-leaf of the copy of "The Silverado Squatters," sent to "Virgil Williams and Dora Norton Williams," to whom it was dedicated, is the following poem in the handwriting of the author, written at Hyeres, where, as he says in his diary, he spent the happiest days of his life--
Here, from the forelands of the tideless sea, Behold and take my offering unadorned.