By Emily Soldene

In 1896 I strolled down Market Street, San Francisco, looking into the curio- and other shops under the Palace Hotel, when my attention was attracted by a crowd of people round one particular shop-window. Now, a crowd in San Francisco (except on political occasions) is an uncommon sight. Naturally, with the curiosity of my sex and the perseverance of the Anglo-Saxon, I took my place in the surging mass and patiently waited till the course of events, and the shoulders of my surroundings, brought me up close to the point of vantage. What came they out for to see? It was a bookseller’s window. In the window was a shrine. “The Works and Portraits of Robert Louis Stevenson,” proclaimed a placard all illuminated and embossed with red and purple and green and gold. In the centre of the display was an odd-looking document. This, then, was the loadstone—a letter of Stevenson’s, in Stevenson’s own handwriting. Many people stood and read, then turned away, sad and sorrowful-looking. “Poor fellow!” said one woman. “But he’s all right now. I guess he’s got more than he asked for.” I stood, too, and read. Before I had finished, my eyes, unknowingly, were full of tears. This is the document. When you have read, you will not wonder at the tears.

“I think now, this 5th or 6th of April, 1873, that I can see my future life. I think it will run stiller and stiller year by year, a very quiet, desultorily studious existence. If God only gives me tolerable health, I think now I shall be very happy: work and science calm the mind, and stop gnawing in the brain; and as I am glad to say that I do now recognise that I shall never be a great man, I may set myself peacefully on a smaller journey, not without hope of coming to the inn before nightfall.

O dass mein leben
Nach diesem ziel ein ewig wandeln sey!”I walked on a block or so, and, after a few minutes, when I thought my voice was steady and under control, turned back, went into the book-store, and asked the young man in attendance, “Could I be allowed to take a copy of the letter in the window?” He told me it was not, as I thought, an original document, but the printed reproduction of a memorandum found among the dead Stevenson’s papers. “Then,” said I, “can I not have one—can I not buy one?” And the young man shook his head. “No; they are not for sale.” “Oh, I am sorry!” said I. “I would have given anything for one.” “Well,” said he, in a grave voice, and with a grave smile, “they are not, indeed, for sale; but have been printed for a particular purpose, and one will be given to all lovers of Stevenson.” He spoke in such a low, reverent, sympathetic tone that I knew his eyes must be full, and so I would not look.

Next day I went to see Mr. Doxey himself, who is a Stevenson enthusiast, and has one window (the window of the crowd) devoted entirely to Stevenson. All his works, all his editions—including the Edinburgh Edition—are there; and he, with the greatest kindness, showed me the treasures he had collected. In the first place, the number of portraits was astonishing. Years and conditions and circumstances, all various and changing; but the face—the face always the same. The eyes, wonderful in their keenness, their interrogative, questioning, eager gaze; the looking out, always looking out, always asking, looking ahead, far away into some distant land not given to les autres to perceive. That wonderful looking out was the first thing that impressed me when I met Mr. Stevenson in Sydney in ’93. Unfortunately for us, he only stayed there a short time, would not visit, was very difficult of access, not at all well, and when he went seemed to disappear, not go. Mr. Doxey had pictures of him in every possible phase—in turn-down collar, in no collar at all; his hair long, short, and middling; in oils, in water-colour, in photos, in a smoking-cap and Imperial; with a moustache, without a moustache; young, youthful, dashing, Byronic; not so youthful, middle-aged; looking in this like a modern Manfred; in that like an epitome of the fashions, wearing a debonair demeanour and a degage tie; as a boy, as a barrister; on horseback, in a boat. There was a portrait taken by Mrs. Stevenson in 1885, and one lent by Virgil Williams; another, a water-colour, lent by Miss O’Hara; and a wonderful study of his wonderful hands. Then he was photographed in his home at Samoa, surrounded by his friends and his faithful, devoted band of young men, his Samoan followers; in the royal boat-house at Honolulu, seated side by side with his Majesty King Kalakaua; on board the Casco. Here, evidently anxious for a really good picture, he has taken off his hat, standing in the sun bareheaded. At a native banquet, surrounded by all the delicacies of the season, bowls of kava, poi, palo-sami, and much good company. Then the later ones at Vailima; in the clearing close to his house, in the verandah. Later still, writing in his bed. Coming to the “inn” he talks about in 1873—coming so close, close, unexpectedly, but not unprepared—Robert Louis Stevenson has passed the veil. Not dead, but gone before, he lives in the hearts of all people. But not so palpably, so outwardly, so proudly, as in the hearts of these people of the Sunny Land, who, standing on the extreme verge of the Western world, shading their eyes from the shining glory, watch the sunshine go out through the Golden Gate, out on its way across the pearly Pacific to the lonely Mountain of Samoa where lies the body of the man “Tusitala,” whose songs and lessons and stories fill the earth, and the souls of the people thereof.

On the fly-leaf of the copy of “The Silverado Squatters,” sent to “Virgil Williams and Dora Norton Williams,” to whom it was dedicated, is the following poem in the handwriting of the author, written at Hyeres, where, as he says in his diary, he spent the happiest days of his life—

Here, from the forelands of the tideless sea,
Behold and take my offering unadorned.
In the Pacific air it sprang; it grew
Among the silence of the Alpine air;
In Scottish heather blossomed; and at last,
By that unshapen sapphire, in whose face
Spain, Italy, France, Algiers, and Tunis view
Their introverted mountains, came to fruit.
Back now, my booklet, on the diving ship,
And posting on the rails to home, return
Home, and the friends whose honouring name you bear.
—The Sketch, Feb. 26, 1896