Among many letters received by me in acknowledgment of, or in commentary
on, my little tributes to R. L. Stevenson, in various journals and
magazines, I find the following, which I give here for reasons purely
personal, and because my readers may with me, join in admiration of the
fancy, grace and beauty of the poems. I must preface the first poem by a
letter, which explains the genesis of the poem, and relates a striking
and very touching incident:
"37 ST DONATT'S ROAD,
LEWISHAM HIGH ROAD, S.E.,
1_st_ _March_ 1895.
"DEAR SIR,--As you have written so much about your friend, the late
Robert Louis Stevenson, and quoted many tributes to his genius from
contemporary writers, I take the liberty of sending you herewith some
verses of mine which appeared in _The Weekly Sun_ of November last. I
sent a copy of these verses to Samoa, but unfortunately the great
novelist died before they reached it. I have, however, this week,
received a little note from Mrs Strong, which runs as follows:
"'Your poem of "Greeting" came too late. I can only thank you by
sending a little moss that I plucked from a tree overhanging his grave
on Vaea Mountain.'
"I trust you will appreciate my motive in sending you the poem. I do
not wish to obtrude my claims as a verse-writer upon your notice, but
I thought the incident I have recited would be interesting to one who
is so devoted a collector of Stevensoniana.--Respectfully yours,
F. J. COX."
GREETING
(TO ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, IN SAMOA)
We, pent in cities, prisoned in the mart,
Can know you only as a man apart,
But ever-present through your matchless art.
You have exchanged the old, familiar ways
For isles, where, through the range of splendid days,
Her treasure Nature lavishly displays.
There, by the gracious sweep of ampler seas,
That swell responsive to the odorous breeze.
You have the wine of Life, and we the lees!
You mark, perchance, within your island bowers,
The slow departure of the languorous hours,
And breathe the sweetness of the strange wild-flowers.
And everything your soul and sense delights--
But in the solemn wonder of your nights,
When Peace her message on the landscape writes;
When Ocean scarcely flecks her marge with foam--
Your thoughts must sometimes from your island roam,
To centre on the sober face of Home.
Though many a league of water rolls between
The simple beauty of an English scene,
From all these wilder charms your love may wean.
Some kindly sprite may bring you as a boon
Sweets from the rose that crowns imperial June,
Or reminiscence of the throstle's tune;
Yea, gladly grant you, with a generous hand,
Far glimpses of the winding, wind-swept strand,
The glens and mountains of your native land,
Until you hear the pipes upon the breeze--
But wake unto the wild realities
The tangled forests and the boundless seas!
For lo! the moonless night has passed away,
A sudden dawn dispels the shadows grey,
The glad sea moves and hails the quickening day.
New life within the arbours of your fief
Awakes the blossom, quivers in the leaf,
And splendour flames upon the coral reef.
If such a prospect stimulate your art,
More than our meadows where the shadows dart,
More than the life which throbs in London's heart,
Then stay, encircled by your Southern bowers,
And weave, amid the incense of the flowers,
The skein of fair romance--the gain is ours!
F. J. COX.
_Weekly Sun_, 11_th_ November 1904.
R. L. S., IN MEMORIAM.
An elfin wight as e'er from faeryland
Came to us straight with favour in his eyes,
Of wondrous seed that led him to the prize
Of fancy, with the magic rod in hand.
Ah, there in faeryland we saw him stand,
As for a while he walked with smiles and sighs,
Amongst us, finding still the gem that buys
Delight and joy at genius's command.
And now thy place is empty: fare thee well;
Thou livest still in hearts that owe thee more
Than gold can reckon; for thy richer store
Is of the good that with us aye most dwell.
Farewell; sleep sound on Vaea's windy shrine,
While round the songsters join their song to thine.
A. C. R.
APPENDIX
The following appeared some time ago in one of the London evening papers,
and I make bold, because of its truth and vigour, to insert it here:
THE LAND OF STEVENSON,
_ON AN AFTERNOON'S WALK_
Will there be a "Land of Stevenson," as there is already a "Land of
Burns," or a "Land of Scott," known to the tourist, bescribbled by the
guide-book maker? This the future must tell. Yet will it be easy to
mark out the bounds of "Robert Louis Stevenson's Country"; and, taking
his native and well-loved city for a starting-point, a stout walker may
visit all its principal sites in an afternoon. The house where he was
born is within a bowshot of the Water of Leith; some five miles to the
south are Caerketton and Allermuir, and other crests of the Pentlands,
and below them Swanston Farm, where year after year, in his father's
time, he spent the summer days basking on the hill slopes; two or three
miles to the westward of Swanston is Colinton, where his mother's father,
Dr Balfour, was minister; and here again you are back to the Water of
Leith, which you can follow down to the New Town. In this triangular
space Stevenson's memories and affections were firmly rooted; the fibres
could not be withdrawn from the soil, and "the voice of the blood" and
the longing for this little piece of earth make themselves plaintively
heard in his last notes. By Lothian Road, after which Stevenson quaintly
thought of naming the new edition of his works, and past Boroughmuirhead
and the "Bore Stane," where James FitzJames set up his standard before
Flodden, wends your southward way to the hills. The builder of suburban
villas has pushed his handiwork far into the fields since Stevenson was
wont to tramp between the city and the Pentlands; and you may look in
vain for the flat stone whereon, as the marvelling child was told, there
once rose a "crow-haunted gibbet." Three-quarters of an hour of easy
walking, after you have cleared the last of the houses will bring you to
Swanston; and half an hour more will take the stiff climber, a little
breathless, to
THE TOP OF CAERKETTON CRAGS.
You may follow the high road--indeed there is a choice of two, drawn at
different levels--athwart the western skirts of the Braid Hills, now
tenanted, crown and sides of them, by golf; then to the crossroads of
Fairmilehead, whence the road dips down, to rise again and circumvent the
most easterly wing of the Pentlands. You would like to pursue this
route, were it only to look down on Bow Bridge and recall how the last-
century gauger used to put together his flute and play "Over the hills
and far away" as a signal to his friend in the distillery below, now
converted into a dairy farm, to stow away his barrels. Better it is,
however, to climb the stile just past the poor-house gate, and follow the
footpath along the smoothly scooped banks of the Braid Burn to
"Cockmylane" and to Comiston. The wind has been busy all the morning
spreading the snow over a glittering world. The drifts are piled
shoulder-high in the lane as it approaches Comiston, and each old tree
grouped around the historic mansion is outlined in snow so virgin pure
that were the Ghost--"a lady in white, with the most beautiful clear
shoes on her feet"--to step out through the back gate, she would be
invisible, unless, indeed, she were between you and the ivy-draped
dovecot wall. Near by, at the corner of the Dreghorn Woods, is the
Hunters' Tryst, on the roof of which, when it was still a wayside inn,
the Devil was wont to dance on windy nights. In the field through which
you trudge knee-deep in drift rises the "Kay Stane," looking to-day like
a tall monolith of whitest marble. Stevenson was mistaken when he said
that it was from its top a neighbouring laird, on pain of losing his
lands, had to "wind a blast of bugle horn" each time the King
VISITED HIS FOREST OF PENTLAND.
That honour belongs to another on the adjacent farm of Buckstane. The
ancient monument carries you further back, and there are Celtic
authorities that translate its name the "Stone of Victory." The
"Pechtland Hills"--their elder name--were once a refuge for the Picts;
and Caerketton--probably Caer-etin, the giant's strong-hold--is one of
them. Darkly its cliffs frown down upon you, while all else is flashing
white in the winter sunlight. For once, in this last buttress thrown out
into the plain of Lothian towards the royal city, the outer folds of the
Pentlands loses its boldly-rounded curves, and drops an almost sheer
descent of black rock to the little glen below. In a wrinkle of the
foothills Swanston farm and hamlet are snugly tucked away. The spirit
that breathes about it in summer time is gently pastoral. It is
sheltered from the rougher blasts; it is set about with trees and green
hills. It was with this aspect of the place that Stevenson, coming
hither on holiday, was best acquainted. The village green, whereon the
windows of the neat white cottages turn a kindly gaze under low brows of
thatch, is then a perfect place in which to rest, and, watching the smoke
rising and listening to "the leaves ruffling in the breeze," to muse on
men and things; especially on Sabbath mornings, when the ploughman or
shepherd, "perplext wi' leisure," it is time to set forth on the three-
mile walk along the hill-skirts to Colinton kirk. But Swanston in winter
time must also
HAVE BEEN FAMILIAR TO STEVENSON.
Snow-wreathed Pentlands, the ribbed and furrowed front of Caerketton, the
low sun striking athwart the sloping fields of white, the shadows
creeping out from the hills, and the frosty yellow fog drawing in from
the Firth--must often have flashed back on the thoughts of the exile of
Samoa. Against this wintry background the white farmhouse, old and crow-
stepped, looks dingy enough; the garden is heaped with the fantastic
treasures of the snow; and when you toil heavily up the waterside to the
clump of pines and beeches you find yourself in a fairy forest. One need
not search to-day for the pool where the lynx-eyed John Todd, "the oldest
herd on the Pentlands," watched from behind the low scrag of wood the
stranger collie come furtively to wash away the tell-tale stains of
lamb's blood. The effacing hand of the snow has smothered it over.
Higher you mount, mid leg-deep in drift, up the steep and slippery hill-
face, to the summit. Edinburgh has been creeping nearer since
Stevenson's musing fancy began to draw on the memories of the climbs up
"steep Caerketton." But this light gives it a mystic distance; and it is
all glitter and shadow. Arthur Seat is like some great sea monster
stranded near a city of dreams; from the fog-swathed Firth gleams the
white walls of Inchkeith lighthouse, a mark never missed by Stevenson's
father's son; above Fife rise the twin breasts of the Lomonds. Or turn
round and look across the Esk valley to the Moorfoots; or more westerly,
where the back range of the Pentlands--Caernethy, the Scald, and the
knife-edged Kips--draw a sharp silhouette of Arctic peaks against the
sky. In the cloven hollow between is Glencarse Loch, an ancient chapel
and burying ground hidden under its waters; on the slope above it, not a
couple miles away, is Rullion Green, where, as Stevenson told in _The
Pentland Rising_ (his first printed work)
THE WESTLAND WHIGS WERE SCATTERED
as chaff on the hills. Were "topmost Allermuir," that rises close beside
you, removed from his place, we might see the gap in the range through
which Tom Dalyell and his troopers spurred from Currie to the fray. The
air on these heights is invigorating as wine; but it is also keen as a
razor. Without delaying long yon plunge down to the "Windy Door Nick";
follow the "nameless trickle that springs from the green bosom of
Allermuir," past the rock and pool, where, on summer evenings, the poet
"loved to sit and make bad verses"; and cross Halkerside and the
Shearers' Knowe, those "adjacent cantons on a single shoulder of a hill,"
sometimes floundering to the neck in the loose snow of a drain, sometimes
scaring the sheep huddling in the wreaths, or putting up a covey of
moorfowl that circle back without a cry to cover in the ling. In an hour
you are at Colinton, whose dell has on one side the manse garden, where a
bright-eyed boy, who was to become famous, spent so much of his time when
he came thither on visits to his stern Presbyterian grandfather; on the
other the old churchyard. The snow has drawn its cloak of ermine over
the sleepers, it has run its fingers over the worn lettering; and records
almost effaced start out from the stone. In vain these "voices of
generations dead" summon their wandering child, though you might deem
that his spirit would rest more quietly where the cold breeze from
Pentland shakes the ghostly trees in Colinton Dell than "under the
flailing fans and shadows of the palm."
Footnotes:
{1} Professor Charles Warren Stoddard, Professor of English Literature
at the Catholic University of Washington, in _Kate Field's Washington_.
{2} In his portrait-sketch of his father, Stevenson speaks of him as a
"man of somewhat antique strain, and with a blended sternness and
softness that was wholly Scottish, and at first sight somewhat
bewildering," as melancholy, and with a keen sense of his unworthiness,
yet humorous in company; shrewd and childish; a capital adviser.
{3} _Inferno_, Canto XV.
{4} Alas, I never was told that remark--when I saw my friend afterwards
there was always too much to talk of else, and I forgot to ask.
{5} Quoted by Hammerton, pp. 2 and 3.
{6} Tusitala, as the reader must know, is the Samoan for Teller of
Tales.
{7} _Wisdom of Goethe_, p. 38.
{8} _The Foreigner at Home_, in _Memories and Portraits_.
{9} A great deal has been made of the "John Bull element" in De Quincey
since his _Memoir_ was written by me (see _Masson's Condensation_, p.
95); so now perhaps a little more may be made of the rather conceited
Calvinistic Scot element in R. L. Stevenson!
{10} It was Mr George Moore who said this.
{11} _Fortnightly Review_, October, 1903.