_London Bookman, Dec. 1899._
Out of these noble 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 noble 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_passing the love of women, but
certainly _passing_ 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
manuscripts 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 documents
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 entitled "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."