TUSI-TALA.*
WHEN posterity comes finally to " place " the life and works of Robert Louis Stevenson it will gain no small advantage from the possession of such a book as this. Miss Rosaline Masson has collected here the reminiscences of some hundred of those who were proud to call him friend. For what, after all, was it if not his-infinite capacity for friendship that drew all eyes to that hibiscus-shadowed home of his in Samoa ? He gathered friendship to him as the grass gathers dew. "From his cradle," writes Mr. Gosse, "lie was friendship incarnate." Even his books were but the means to further friendships. All the world, in fact, was his friend ; and when at last, up that steep slope behind Vailima, he was carried to his rest, all the world was touched to sorrow. Now the magic of his personality has gathered to his name : is still an incantation, an "open sesame." . . . Besides, there was an irresistible appeal in that lonely figure exiled in the Southern Seas that could not be denied. Men love the dramatic gesture : it objectifies for them the pent-up ache for romance they all must own.
Hero-worship, however, is not conducive to impartial estimation ; and it is significant that " glamour " is a word starting from almost every page of this Book of Remembrance.
Dry light," said Bacon, is ever the best." One voice, however, ventures above the chorus on a warning note of criticism ; it is the voice of Mr. William Archer :—
" I used to criticize the resolute, aggressive optimism of his philosophy and accuse him of a certain suppressio vers. One eveninl I had been saying that he did not make allowance for the amount of sheer boredom involved in existence. As soon as he heard th word 'boredom' he turned round upon me and said with slow, impressive emphasis : I never was bored in my life ! ' I might have retorted, but probably didn't, that this was a fine example of the suppressio veri wherewith I reproached him."
A few more such reminiscences would have added weight to the volume. It surely is no blasphemy to suggest that the whole method of Stevenson's life was an attempt to combat the restrictions imposed upon him by nature. What, indeed, were the toy-soldiers, winning mock battles for him at Davos, but a realization in romance of what, in actual fact, lie was denied ? Hardly a writer in this book fails to mention his brilliant, inventive, facile conversation. Was that not, like- wise, an escape ? His determination to triumph over circum- stance often gives his words an air of bombast :-
" Glad did I live, and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will."
He coloured life with hyperbole from his boyhood ; and that ideal, romantic ultimo Thule of his imagination seemed-to have been discovered at last when he set up his home in Samoa. Yet even there, it seems, life needed to be invested with this same glamour. Sir Graham Balfour quotes, in his Life, a note of Stevenson " . . . Such a morning as you have never seen ; heaven upon earth for sweetness ; depth upon depth of unimaginable colour ; and a huge silence broken only by the murmur of the Pacific and the rich piping of a single bird." Ah ! we know that "single bird."
Certainly Stevenson was never aware of this aggressive optimism and its accompanying dramatic gesture. Such • a book as Miss Masson's brings it too strongly before the reader. Whether her contributors get no further than the pleasant chit-chat of the . tea-table (little Louis scratches his hand gathering gooseberries in the garden ; or Stevenson, the Advocate, wets his whistle with a friend) or dredge the deeper memories of his most intimate associates, all alike testify to his large loving-kindness. Necessarily the writers concern themselves but little with the Samoan days. Especially im- portant are the contributions of Sir Sidney Colvin (" when you sit with Colvin," says Sir James Barrie, "you feel that Stevenson is nearer than in any other mortal room ; some
very slight disturbance of the atmosphere and he would break into the conversation "), Edmund Gosse, "Lantern Bearer,"
and Miss Flora Masson. The essential imp in Stevenson is most vividly seen in this last writer's description of the famous theatricals at Professor Fleerning Jenkin's house :— "The curtain had fallen on a powerful scene in a Greek tragedy and the stage was left in the possession of two of the young actor4. In a momentary reaction against the unrelieved tragedy these two, oblivious of their classic draperies, threw themselves into one another's arms, performed a rapid war-dance and then flung them- selves on to opposite ends of a couch on the stage, with their feet Can Remember Robert Louis Stevenson. Edited by ItossUas Reasoa, W A, Chambers, 1,7s, ed. new meeting in a kind of triumphal arch in the centre. R.L.S., who had been officiating at the curtain, took one look at them. He touched the spring—and up the curtain went again."
For that escapade, we are told, Stevenson suffered in the chilling presence of the Professor " the very worst ten minutes I ever experienced in the whole course of my life 1"
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