A few weeks after his death, the mail from Samoa, brought to Stevenson's
friends, myself among the number, a precious, if pathetic, memorial of
the master. It is in the form of "A Letter to Mr Stevenson's Friends,"
by his stepson, Mr Lloyd Osbourne, and bears the motto from Walt Whitman,
"I have been waiting for you these many years. Give me your hand and
welcome." Mr Osbourne gives a full account of the last hours.
"He wrote hard all that morning of the last day; his half-finished
book, _Hermiston_, he judged the best he had ever written, and the
sense of successful effort made him buoyant and happy as nothing else
could. In the afternoon the mail fell to be answered--not business
correspondence, for this was left till later--but replies to the long,
kindly letters of distant friends received but two days since, and
still bright in memory. At sunset he came downstairs; rallied his
wife about the forebodings she could not shake off; talked of a
lecturing tour to America that he was eager to make, 'as he was now so
well'; and played a game of cards with her to drive away her
melancholy. He said he was hungry; begged her assistance to help him
make a salad for the evening meal; and, to enhance the little feast he
brought up a bottle of old Burgundy from the cellar. He was helping
his wife on the verandah, and gaily talking, when suddenly he put both
hands to his head and cried out, 'What's that?' Then he asked
quickly, 'Do I look strange?' Even as he did so he fell on his knees
beside her. He was helped into the great hall, between his wife and
his body-servant, Sosimo, losing consciousness instantly as he lay
back in the armchair that had once been his grandfather's. Little
time was lost in bringing the doctors--Anderson of the man-of-war, and
his friend, Dr Funk. They looked at him and shook their heads; they
laboured strenuously, and left nothing undone. But he had passed the
bounds of human skill. He had grown so well and strong, that his
wasted lungs were unable to bear the stress of returning health."
Then 'tis told how the Rev. Mr Clarke came and prayed by him; and how,
soon after, the chiefs were summoned, and came, bringing their fine mats,
which, laid on the body, almost hid the Union jack in which it had been
wrapped. One of the old Mataafa chiefs, who had been in prison, and who
had been one of those who worked on the making of the "Road of the Loving
Heart" (the road of gratitude which the chiefs had made up to Mr
Stevenson's house as a mark of their appreciation of his efforts on their
behalf), came and crouched beside the body and said:
"I am only a poor Samoan, and ignorant. Others are rich, and can give
Tusitala {6} the parting presents of rich, fine mats; I am poor, and
can give nothing this last day he receives his friends. Yet I am not
afraid to come and look the last time in my friend's face, never to
see him more till we meet with God. Behold! Tusitala is dead;
Mataafa is also dead. These two great friends have been taken by God.
When Mataafa was taken, who was our support but Tusitala? We were in
prison, and he cared for us. We were sick, and he made us well. We
were hungry, and he fed us. The day was no longer than his kindness.
You are great people, and full of love. Yet who among you is so great
as Tusitala? What is your love to his love? Our clan was Mataafa's
clan, for whom I speak this day; therein was Tusitala also. We mourn
them both."
A select company of Samoans would not be deterred, and watched by the
body all night, chanting songs, with bits of Catholic prayers; and in the
morning the work began of clearing a path through the wood on the hill to
the spot on the crown where Mr Stevenson had expressed a wish to be
buried. The following prayer, which Mr Stevenson had written and read
aloud to his family only the night before, was read by Mr Clarke in the
service:
"We beseech thee, Lord, to behold us with favour, folk of many
families and nations, gathered together in the peace of this roof;
weak men and women, subsisting under the covert of Thy patience. Be
patient still; suffer us yet a while longer--with our broken purposes
of good, with our idle endeavours against evil--suffer us a while
longer to endure, and (if it may be) help us to do better. Bless to
us our extraordinary mercies; if the day come when these must be
taken, have us play the man under affliction. Be with our friends; be
with ourselves. Go with each of us to rest: if any awake, temper to
them the dark hours of watching; and when the day returns to us, our
Sun and Comforter, call us up with morning faces and with morning
hearts--eager to labour--eager to be happy, if happiness shall be our
portion; and if the day be marked for sorrow, strong to endure it.
"We thank Thee and praise Thee, and in the words of Him to whom this
day is sacred, close our oblations."
Mr Bazzet M. Haggard, H.B.M., Land-Commissioner, tells, by way of
reminiscence, the story of "The Road of Good Heart," how it came to be
built, and of the great feast Mr Stevenson gave at the close of the work,
at which, in the course of his speech, he said:
"You are all aware in some degree of what has happened. You know
those chiefs to have been prisoners; you perhaps know that during the
term of their confinement I had it in my power to do them certain
favours. One thing some of you cannot know, that they were
immediately repaid by answering attentions. They were liberated by
the new Administration. . . . As soon as they were free men--owing no
man anything--instead of going home to their own places and families,
they came to me. They offered to do this work (to make this road) for
me as a free gift, without hire, without supplies, and I was tempted
at first to refuse their offer. I knew the country to be poor; I knew
famine threatening; I knew their families long disorganised for want
of supervision. Yet I accepted, because I thought the lesson of that
road might be more useful to Samoa than a thousand bread-fruit trees,
and because to myself it was an exquisite pleasure to receive that
which was so handsomely offered. It is now done; you have trod it to-
day in coming hither. It has been made for me by chiefs; some of them
old, some sick, all newly delivered from a harassing confinement, and
in spite of weather unusually hot and insalubrious. I have seen these
chiefs labour valiantly with their own hands upon the work, and I have
set up over it, now that it is finished the name of 'The Road of
Gratitude' (the road of loving hearts), and the names of those that
built it. 'In perpetuam memoriam,' we say, and speak idly. At least,
as long as my own life shall be spared it shall be here perpetuated;
partly for my pleasure and in my gratitude; partly for others
continually to publish the lesson of this road."
And turning to the chiefs, Mr Stevenson said:
"I will tell you, chiefs, that when I saw you working on that road, my
heart grew warm; not with gratitude only, but with hope. It seemed to
me that I read the promise of something good for Samoa; it seemed to
me as I looked at you that you were a company of warriors in a battle,
fighting for the defence of our common country against all aggression.
For there is a time to fight and a time to dig. You Samoans may
fight, you may conquer twenty times, and thirty times, and all will be
in vain. There is but one way to defend Samoa. Hear it, before it is
too late. It is to make roads and gardens, and care for your trees,
and sell their produce wisely; and, in one word, to occupy and use
your country. If you do not, others will. . . .
"I love Samoa and her people. I love the land. I have chosen it to
be my home while I live, and my grave after I am dead, and I love the
people, and have chosen them to be my people, to live and die with.
And I see that the day is come now of the great battle; of the great
and the last opportunity by which it shall be decided whether you are
to pass away like those other races of which I have been speaking, or
to stand fast and have your children living on and honouring your
memory in the land you received of your fathers."
Mr James H. Mulligan, U.S. Consul, told of the feast of Thanksgiving Day
on the 29th November prior to Mr Stevenson's death, and how at great
pains he had procured for it the necessary turkey, and how Mrs Stevenson
had found a fair substitute for the pudding. In the course of his speech
in reply to an unexpected proposal of "The Host," Mr Stevenson said:
"There on my right sits she who has but lately from our own loved
native land come back to me--she to whom, with no lessening of
affection to those others to whom I cling, I love better than all the
world besides--my mother. From the opposite end of the table, my
wife, who has been all in all to me, when the days were very dark,
looks to-night into my eyes--while we have both grown a bit older--with
undiminished and undiminishing affection.
"Childless, yet on either side of me sits that good woman, my
daughter, and the stalwart man, my son, and both have been and are
more than son and daughter to me, and have brought into my life mirth
and beauty. Nor is this all. There sits the bright boy dear to my
heart, full of the flow and the spirits of boyhood, so that I can even
know that for a time at least we have still the voice of a child in
the house."
Mr A. W. Mackay gives an account of the funeral and a description of the
burial-place, ending:
"Tofa Tusitala! Sleep peacefully! on thy mountain-top, alone in
Nature's sanctity, where the wooddove's note, the moaning of the waves
as they break unceasingly on the distant reef, and the sighing of the
winds in the distant tavai trees chant their requiem."
The Rev. Mr Clarke tells of the constant and active interest Mr Stevenson
took in the missionaries and their work, often aiding them by his advice
and fine insight into the character of the natives; and a translation
follows of a dirge by one of the chiefs, so fine that we must give it:
I.
"Listen, O this world, as I tell of the disaster
That befell in the late afternoon;
That broke like a wave of the sea
Suddenly and swiftly, blinding our eyes.
Alas for Loia who speaks tears in his voice!
_Refrain_--Groan and weep, O my heart, in its sorrow.
Alas for Tusitala, who rests in the forest!
Aimlessly we wait, and sorrowing. Will he again return?
Lament, O Vailima, waiting and ever waiting!
Let us search and inquire of the captain of ships,
'Be not angry, but has not Tusitala come?'
II.
"Teuila, sorrowing one, come thou hither!
Prepare me a letter, and I will carry it.
Let her Majesty Victoria be told
That Tusitala, the loving one, has been taken hence.
_Refrain_--Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., etc.
III.
"Alas! my heart weeps with anxious grief
As I think of the days before us:
Of the white men gathering for the Christmas assembly!
Alas for Aolele! left in her loneliness,
And the men of Vailima, who weep together
Their leader--their leader being taken.
_Refrain_--Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., etc.
IV.
"Alas! O my heart! it weeps unceasingly
When I think of his illness
Coming upon him with fatal swiftness.
Would that it waited a glance or a word from him,
Or some token, some token from us of our love.
_Refrain_--Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., etc.
V.
"Grieve, O my heart! I cannot bear to look on
All the chiefs who are there now assembling:
Alas, Tusitala! Thou art not here!
I look hither and thither in vain for thee.
_Refrain_--Groan and weep, O my heart, etc., etc."
And the little booklet closes with Mr Stevenson's own lines:
"REQUIEM.
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie;
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
'Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea;
And the hunter home from the hill.'"
Every touch tells here was a man, with heart and head, with soul and mind
intent on the loftiest things; simple, great,
"Like one of the simple great ones gone
For ever and ever by.
His character towered after all far above his books; great and beautiful
though they were. Ready for friendship; from all meanness free. So,
too, the Samoans felt. This, surely, was what Goethe meant when he
wrote:
"The clear head and stout heart,
However far they roam,
Yet in every truth have part,
Are everywhere at home."
His manliness, his width of sympathy, his practicality, his range of
interests were in nothing more seen than in his contributions to the
history of Samoa, as specially exhibited in _A Footnote to History_ and
his letters to the _Times_. He was, on this side, in no sense a dreamer,
but a man of acute observation and quick eye for passing events and the
characters that were in them with sympathy equal to his discernments. His
portraits of certain Germans and others in these writings, and his power
of tracing effects to remote and underlying causes, show sufficiently
what he might have done in the field of history, had not higher voices
called him. His adaptation to the life in Samoa, and his assumption of
the semi-patriarchal character in his own sphere there, were only tokens
of the presence of the same traits as have just been dwelt on.