Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble dew,
Steel true and blade straight,
The Great Artisan made my mate.
Honor, courage, valor, fire,
A love that life could never tire,
Death quench nor evil stir,
The Mighty Master gave to her.
Teacher, pupil, comrade, wife,
A fellow-farer true through life,
Heart-whole and soul free,
The august Father gave to me.
Edmund Gosse gives a pen-picture of Stevenson thus:
I came home dazzled with my new friend, saying as Constance does of
Arthur, "Was ever such a gracious creature born?" That impression of
ineffable mental charm was formed the first moment of acquaintance,
about Eighteen Hundred Seventy-seven, and it never lessened or
became modified. Stevenson's rapidity in the sympathetic interchange
of ideas was, doubtless, the source of it. He has been described as
an "egotist," but I challenge the description. If ever there was an
altruist it was Louis Stevenson; he seemed to feign an interest in
himself merely to stimulate you to be liberal in your confidences.
Those who have written about him from later impressions than those
of which I speak seem to me to give insufficient prominence to the
gaiety of Stevenson. It was his cardinal quality in those early
days. A childlike mirth leaped and danced in him; he seemed to skip
the hills of life. He was simply bubbling with quips and jest; his
inherent earnestness or passion about abstract things was
incessantly relieved by jocosity; and when he had built one of his
intellectual castles in the sand, a wave of humor was certain to
sweep in and destroy it. I can not, for the life of me, recall any
of his jokes; and written down in cold blood, they might not seem
funny if I did. They were not wit so much as humanity, the
many-sided outlook upon life. I am anxious that his laughter-loving
mood should not be forgotten, because later on it was partly
quenched by ill health, responsibility and the advance of years. He
was often, in the old days, excessively, delightfully silly--silly
with the silliness of an inspired schoolboy; I am afraid our
laughter sometimes sounded ill in the ears of age.
* * * * *
A visit to Scotland and the elders capitulated, apologized, and asked
for quarter. So delighted was Thomas Stevenson with Lloyd Osbourne that
he made the boy his chief heir, and declared in the presence of Robert
Louis that he only regretted that his own son was never half so likely a
lad. To which Robert Louis made reply, "Genius always skips one
generation."
Health had come to Robert Louis in a degree he had never before known.
He also had dignity and a precision such as his parents and kinsmen had
despaired of seeing in one so physically and mentally vacillating.
Stevenson was once asked by a mousing astrologer to state the date of
his birth. Robert Louis looked at his wife soberly and slowly answered,
"May Tenth, Eighteen Hundred Eighty." And not even a smile crossed the
countenance of either. Each understood.
That the nature of Stevenson was buoyed up, spiritualized, encouraged
and given strength by his marriage, no quibbler has ever breathed the
ghost of a doubt. His wife supplied him the mothering care that gave his
spirit wing. He loved her children as his own, and they reciprocated the
affection in a way that embalms their names in amber forevermore.
When Robert Louis, after a hemorrhage, sat propped up in bed, forbidden
to speak, he wrote on a pad with pencil: "Mr. Dumbleigh presents his
compliments and praises God that he is sick so he has to be cared for by
two tender, loving fairies. Was ever a man so blest?"
Again he begins the day by inditing a poem, "To the bare, brown feet of
my wife and daughter dear." And this, be it remembered, was after the
bare, brown feet had been running errands for him for thirteen years.
And think you that women so loved, and by such a man, would not fetch
and carry and run and find their highest joy in ministering to him? If
he were thrice blest in having them, as he continually avowed, how about
them? It only takes a small dole of love when fused with loyalty to win
the abject, doglike devotion of a good woman. On the day of his death
Stevenson said to his wife, "You have already given me fourteen years of
life." And this is the world's verdict--fourteen years of life and love,
and without these fourteen years the name and fame of Robert Louis
Stevenson were writ in water; with them "R. L. S." has been cut deep in
the granite of time, but better still, the gentle spirit of Stevenson
lives again in the common heart of the world in lives made better.