Mr. Joseph Pennell has contributed to The Studio an account of an unpublished chapter, which is delightful reading and reveals Stevenson to the world as an illustrator and wood engraver. With the people of Le Monastier, the lace-makers, Stevenson became a popular figure and was known for miles in the country. In the town every urchin seemed to know his name, “although no living creature could pronounce it.” One group of lace-makers brought out a chair whenever he went by, and insisted on having a good gossip. They would have it that the English talked French, or patois, and “of all patois they declared that mine was the most preposterous and the most jocose in sound. At each new word there was a new explosion of laughter, and some of the younger ones were glad to rise from their chairs and stamp about the streets in ecstasy.” In a notice of the article, a writer in The London Chronicle says:

“There was a dear old lady of Monastier with whom he struck up an attachment. She passed judgment on his sketches and his heresy with a wry mouth and a twinkle of the eye that were eminently Scottish. ‘She was never weary of sitting to me for her portrait, in her best cap and brigand hat, and with all her wrinkles tidily composed, and though she never failed to repudiate the result, she would always insist upon another trial. * * * “No, no,” she would say, “that is not it. I am old, to be sure, but I am better looking than that. We must try again.”

“But the most characteristic work of Stevenson as illustrator is to be found in the quaint little woodcuts which adorned the volumes turned out by the press of Osbourne & Co. at Davos. With some very primitive type and a boundless capacity for frivoling, this ‘company,’ consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Stevenson and young Lloyd Osbourne, managed to while away the hours of the Swiss Winter in delightful fashion. As Mr. Pennell states in The Studio these Davos editions are exceedingly hard to secure. The British Museum itself has only two copies, and there is no hint of their existence in any of the published works. One of these works was entitled ‘Moral Emblems; a Collection of Cuts and Verses.’

“There was also a second collection of ‘Moral Emblems, an edition de luxe, in tall paper, extra fine, price tenpence, and a popular edition for the million, small paper, cuts slightly worn, a great bargain, eightpence.’ Another of these volumes was entitled ‘The Graver and the Pen,’ of which the author asserted on the poster that it was ‘a most strikingly illustrated little work, and the poetry so pleasing that when it is taken up to be read is finished before it is set down.’ There were five full-page illustrations, eleven pages of poetry finely printed on superb paper, and the whole work offered a splendid chance for an energetic publisher. One of the moral emblems runs as follows:

“Industrious pirate! See him sweep
The lonely bosom of the deep,
And daily the horizon scan
From Hatteras or Matapan.
Be sure, before that pirate’s old,
He will have made a pot of gold,
And will retire from all his labors
And be respected by his neighbors.
You also scan your life’s horizon
For all that you can clap your eyes on.

“Sometimes an unintentional effect was introduced into the woodcuts, as in the case of ‘The Foolhardy Geographer.’ We cannot tell the story, but the effect is thus described in a postscript:

“A blemish in the cut appears,
Alas! it cost both blood and tears.
The glancing graver swerved aside,
Fast flowed the artist’s vital tide!
And now the apologetic bard
Demands indulgence for his pard.”