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He lightly performs the miracle, to my own sense, which R. L. Stevenson, which even Pierre Loti, taking however long a rope, had not performed; he charmingly conjures away though in this prose more than in the verse of his second volume the marked tendency of the whole exquisite region to insist on the secret of its charm, when incorrigibly moved to do so, only at the expense of its falling a little flat, or turning a little stale, on our hands.
He was getting uneasy about his paddock; and he thought Spanker might be at some inconvenience. But that black beard of his is more than half white already. And something like me I never thought of mentioning this to Bob when he was here. Absence of mind. Bad habit." "This Dan has much to be thankful for," remarked Stevenson, with strong feeling in his voice.
"Well, lads," said Mr. Stevenson, accosting the men, "what think you of this state of things? Will the good ship weather it?" "Nae fear o' her, sir," replied one confidently, "she's light and new; it'll tak' a heavy sea to sink her." "Ay," observed another, "and she's got little hold o' the water, good ground-tackle, and no tophamper; she'll weather anything, sir."
I sang it on that occasion for the first time, and later at Apia at a dinner given for the ship. This was before Mr. Stevenson had given away his birthday, so he was allowed to enjoy it, as did we all. Speeches were made and we drank his health, severally and all together. We felt as happy as any crew on board of a 20,000 tonner."
Stevenson touched on the same insular sentiment when he said that many men he knew, who were meat-salesmen to the outward eye, might in the life of contemplation sit with the saints. Now the extraordinary achievement of the American meat-salesman is that his poetic enthusiasm can really be for meat sales; not for money but for meat.
Twenty years later I met with the only other person whom I have ever encountered who had even heard of 'The Cameronian's Dream'. This was Robert Louis Stevenson, who had been greatly struck by it when he was about my age. Probably the same ephemeral edition of it reached, at the same time, each of our pious households.
All this ground-breaking, house-building, and gardening were new to Stevenson, and he revelled in them to the neglect of his writing. "This is a hard and interesting and beautiful life we lead now," he wrote to Sidney Colvin.
Miss Austen's is not the style of startling tricks: nor has she the flashing felicities of a Stevenson which lead one to return to a passage for re-gustation. Her manner rarely if ever takes the attention from her matter. If this is style, then Jane Austen possesses it, as have very few of the race.
And to show by one instance the inverted nature of his reputation, comparatively small at home, yet filling the world, a friend of mine was this winter on a visit to the Spanish main, and was asked by a Peruvian if he "knew Mr. Stevenson the author, because his works were much esteemed in Peru." My friend supposed the reference was to the writer of tales; but the Peruvian had never heard of "Dr.
Grant Allen, too, would have been his contemporary the only man in Oxford who took to Herbert Spencer, whom Stevenson also read with much edification. Yet it is clear that Stevenson should not have been domiciled in the paternal mansion of Heriot Row. The genie might have transported him to a German University, perhaps to Heidelberg.
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