It was then that he became fairly free from romantic youthful entanglements, and free, also, from the fear that he might be overborne by any narrow tenets of dogmatic religion. The sex element that preponderates in the early poetry, and which no biographer has yet dwelt upon, is largely absent from the years 1873-76. All the early, lighter loves may be said to have ended with the poem of 1874, beginning, "Let Love go, if go she will"; and though the wrench was not without pain, as the interjected quotation, "Ah! God!", reveals on the margin of the manuscript, love in any potent way did not again enter Stevenson's life until he met Mrs. Osbourne at the little town of Grez, in France.

Mrs. Osbourne had preceded him to obtain her divorce. So, too, in the succeeding chapter, wherein the marriage takes place, the approach is statistical, lacking color and warmth. We under

The poems that Stevenson addressed to the woman who was for many years his loyal wife form a series that establish the fine and ever ripening quality of his devotion to her, and he would be a churlish critic who would question Mrs. Stevenson's title to the love and gratitude of her husband. We are far more interested in considering how and why so loyal a companion, who was at the same time so intelligent a woman, undertook to create what we have called the Stevenson myth. The years 1876-79, covered by Mr. Balfour in the chapter entitled "Transition," give us no word of any moment concerning the inception of that passion which led Stevenson, in August, 1879, to reject the advice of friends, defy the parental wrath, and set forth, an emigrant, on his long journey to California, whither

stand, of course, that Mrs. Stevenson herself was advising with the biographer, if, indeed, not supervising him. There may have been, or, let us say, there assuredly was, modesty in her selfelimination. But she was, after all, too much the dea ex machina in the epic of Stevenson's life forever to escape the full attention that is her due. She was a woman of force, will, self-confidence. The year that she took Stevenson as her husband marked physically and financially the nadir of his career. He had come to counting his pennies before he bought a cup of coffee and a roll of bread. It was to an almost starving man that there came a message from his father that he might henceforth count upon twelve hundred dollars or more a year. There is no indication, however, that at any time did Mrs. Osbourne regret that she was being wooed by a poor, sick, and little-known writer, and as soon as the marriage was practical, she became his wife.

Yet one must come to the conclusion that, however sturdy her qualities from the point of view of generous comradeship, domestic economy, and questions relating to Stevenson's health, she was not the perfect wife for such a man as Robert Louis Stevenson. Her traits of character and temperament soon made her a welcome daughter-in-law, especially to the stern and practical

been, for his early experiences and his wide sympathies qualified him to approach the subject with rare humanity, while his studies in French literature, a phase of his literary de

velopment that has not been sufficiently studied, contributed to make him the one British writer of his time who might have handled the subject in an un-English way. Stevenson's treatment of the enforced victim of an elemental fact could easily have been a fine masterpiece of his style, and the even finer masterpiece of his philosophy toward life. Why, then, assuming its destruction, did Mrs. Stevenson consign this work to the flames? We offer the following theories as explanations consonant with circumstances.

father to whom, in many ways, she bore resemblance; but it is an open secret that she disturbed some of Stevenson's earlier friendships, and especially did her régime do much to alienate the affection of Henley. Of all this there is no mention in those pages of the official biography which follow the pilgrimage of Stevenson and his wife to Davos and the Highlands, and to the Riviera during the years 1880-84. Sir Sidney Colvin, in his latest essay on Stevenson, does indeed touch upon the disciplinarian quality in Mrs. Stevenson, but he gives no details, and unless he may still choose to verify or to lay at rest a rumor long credited in the inner Stevensonian circles, we shall probably never be able to know whether this strong-willed, self-confident woman did not push her prerogatives too far along the most regrettable channels that an author's wife can follow in a spirit of kindly meant autocracy. For the story goes that, during a period of special physical distress, when Stevenson was so weakened by hemorrhages that his conversations were conducted by means of a note-book and pencil, Mrs. Stevenson, over-riding the objections, of R. L. S., took it upon herself to throw into the fire the manuscript of a novel by her husband. The early eighties has been given as the date, Hyères the place, and the subject of the manuscript the life of a street-walker. We need not accept the statement that Stevenson considered this his masterpiece, although it well might have

"An Inland Voyage," published in 1878, and "Travels with a Donkey," in 1879, had created a circle of admirers of Stevenson, but in both these volumes the author appears as the lover of wanderings, and not as a stable member of society. The serious side of Stevenson as an essayist whose writings might advisedly furnish instruction to youth was first appreciated on a wide scale with the appearance, in 1881, of "Virginibu's Puerisque." The next year saw the publication of "Familiar Studies of Men and Books," a volume that further established Stevenson as a mentor of youth. Then, in 1883, came "Treasure Island," one of the finest and most exciting of romances, and appealing more strongly to the young reader than any other book of

its day from the pen of a notable stylist. Stevenson at last was financially successful as an author. He was, moreover, in the field of verse busy with the poems that were to be published, in 1885, under the title of "A Child's Garden of Verses." How would this public have been affected if the life-story of a harlot had then appeared? One can readily imagine the reaction of teachers and preachers and the consternation of the publishers. Art is all very well in its way, but royalties have to be considered. Or we may ascribe to Mrs. Stevenson a finer motive than the merely financial one, and consider, from her point of view, the pity of destroying by one too daring an act the position to which her husband had attained as an entertainer and instructor of youth. She saw him on a pedestal, and she made it her business to keep him there. This, we surmise, accounts for the obliteration of his reputed masterpiece, if, it seems again safer to add, this writing of his was, as we believe, destroyed.

It is significant that Henley divides the life of Stevenson into two parts, and that the period immediately following his marriage marks the division-line. There was the younger Stevenson, brave, capricious, buoyant, vain, impatient of dogma, hating Mrs. Grundy, fascinating, and unconventional. This was the Stevenson whom Henley had loved despite his manifest faults. The second Stevenson was never quite comprehensible to Henley. The lighter posing of early days seemed now to have developed into a conscious pose before the world, not of the artist, but of the moralist. Here, I think, Henley was not quite fair to Stevenson, and though no doubt the author of "Virginibus Puerisque," and

of the many letters written sometimes in a rather fatherly spirit, enjoyed the unexpected position that he had won, Stevenson never fell into any vital insincerity or hypocrisy. The Covenanter strain was his by inheritance, but his early conviction that one must not fear to pluck the rose on account of the thorn, and that life was much more than a matter of ethics, he never abandoned. The influence of his wife, the modifications that differentiate eager youth from respected middle age, played their parts in his attitude and in his writings.

Only in two instances, as far as I know, did Stevenson's courage not rise to the heights of his opportunity, and in both of these one surmises he would, if left to himself, have carried out his own intrepid ideas. I have in mind his protest on behalf of Boer independence embodied in the draft, written in 1881, found in a note-book among his unpublished papers, and printed for the first time by the Bibliophile Society forty years later. The proclamation of the South African Republic in December, 1880, with Kruger, Pretorious, and Joubert as its executive triumvirate, led in the following February to the battle of Majuba Hill, which culminated in the rout of the British. While this defeat enraged the greater part of England, there were many Englishmen who felt it folly to seek to deprive the freeborn Dutch of independence in their internal affairs. In March a truce was concluded, and a status involving internal self-government was arranged for, which lasted until the Second Boer War eighteen years later. It was during the weeks preceding the conclusion of the terms of peace that Stevenson drafted a letter wherein he wrote:

"We are in the wrong or all that we profess is false; blood has been lost, and, I fear, honour also. But if any honour yet remains, or any chivalry, that is certainly the only chivalrous or honourable course, for the strong to accept his buffet and do justice, already tardy, to the weak whom he has misused and who has so crushingly retorted. As if there were any prestige like the prestige of being just; or any generosity like that of owning and repairing injustice; as if in this troubled time, and with all our fair and plucky history, there were any course left to this nation but to hold back the sword of vengeance and bare the head to that state, possibly enough misguided, whom we have tried ineffectually to brutalize!"

Unless this letter has been lost in the files of some newspaper, we must regretfully resort to the conclusion that it was never sent, and we cannot free ourselves from the thought that Stevenson refrained on the practical advice of a wife who felt that political affairs were not her husband's métier, and that to accuse Englishmen of deficiency in chivalry and honor would eliminate a great body of the author's admirers. The point can indeed be well taken that a man who gives up his life to belles-lettres can be of widest value in sticking to his art; but the regret is still there that Stevenson's fearless words advocating the granting of independence to the Boers remained unspoken.

The second instance had to do with the Home Rule uprising in Ireland in 1886, when Stevenson evolved the scheme of going to live on a poor Irish farm and of braving in person the dangers exemplified by the imprisonment of the Curtin women. The de

tails of his mental debate are outlined in his letter of April 15 to Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin. The crux of the matter was that "here was a wrong founded on crime; crime that the Government cannot prevent; crime that it occurs to no man to defy." But the crime is defied in Stevenson's mind, and his personal example can, he hopes, cause people to take more drastic notice of the terrible conditions then obtaining. He is willing to lose "friends, all comforts, and society." He is filled with the spirit of the Crusader. But though his wife does not refuse, "she hates the idea." We do not blame her in the least, and it is most doubtful that Stevenson could have accomplished much worth while for the cause of England in Ireland or for Home Rule by the Irish. At any rate, the plan went by the board, and Stevenson abandoned this opportunity to engage in an act of outstanding, even if quixotic, courage.

The philosophy of conduct which Stevenson exemplified in his life and illustrated in his writings was preponderantly a code based on the master words of simple courage and forbearance. Even if we consider the final period at Vailima, when he conducted the religious services, and when the family meal was preceded by a prayer composed by the head of the household, we need not regard Stevenson's attitude as colored by sanctimoniousness or the least insincerity. It is a far cry from the year 1873, when in "A Valentine Song" Stevenson attacked the "white neck-cloth'd bigot" with the cry:

"Back, minister of Christ and source of fear,

We cherish freedom-back with thee and thine!"

But as early as 1869, when Stevenson was yet a boy, in another mood he wrote a poem entitled "Prayer," ending with the stanza:

"O let my thoughts abide in Thee Lest I should fall; Show me Thyself in all I see,

Thou Lord of all."

Moreover, Stevenson of the Samoan days was, according to the custom of the South Sea Islands, "father" of a household in which children of the native chieftains were inmates, there to acquire such spiritual and intellectual education and other civilizing influences as, so runs the general supposition, the enlightened Occidental can confer. He was thus charged with responsibilities quite apart from the desire to give pleasure to his religiously inclined mother, then living with him, that made these prayers somewhat more, or, if you will, somewhat less, than the expression of individual inclination. Even so, the dominant note in these invocations is that of the weakness of human nature and of the value of kindness and courage.

Excerpts from these prayers, which were among Stevenson's unpublished manuscripts, are in consonance with what we believe was Stevenson's lifelong aversion to regarding himself as in any way an exemplar.

Despite the duality of his nature, the author of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," a work dramatically revealing the gleaming and the black sides of the spiritual shield, is deserving of the high admiration of his fellows for two basic reasons. As a man he fought despondency of mind, suffering of body, and other harassments along the road of 'fe with consistent valor and with wide

And thereupon he goes on with verses that offer his solution of despair, the easing of “individual pain, in others' joy."

In maintaining this attitude and injecting its support into his writings, Stevenson made his permanent contribution to the general stock of courage on which mankind must draw whether or not the analyst of human actions finds in an inscrutable fate the predestinating agent negating the power of the individual will. Add to this that he was a devoted craftsman ever arduously and delightfully successfully engaged in the difficult field of stylistic achievement, and there need be no reluctance in seeing him step down from a pedestal of too elevated righteousness and take the place where he himself, we feel assured, would best like to have it, a man among other men-a man of many faults and weaknesses more than counterbalanced by his charm, by the tenacity of his courage, by the breadth of his generous vision.