第44章 EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN'S ESTIMATE(1)

It should be clearly remembered that Stevenson died at a little over forty - the age at which severity and simplicity and breadth in art but begin to be attained.If Scott had died at the age when Stevenson was taken from us, the world would have lacked the WAVERLEY NOVELS; if a like fate had overtaken Dickens, we should not have had A TALE OF TWO CITIES; and under a similar stroke, Goldsmith could not have written RETALIATION, or tasted the bitter-

sweet first night of SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER.At the age of forty-

four Mr Thomas Hardy had probably not dreamt of TESS OF THE

D'URBERVILLES.But what a man has already done at forty years is likely, I am afraid, to be a gauge as well as a promise of what he will do in the future; and from Stevenson we were entitled to expect perfect form and continued variety of subject, rather than a measurable dynamic gain.

This is the point of view which my friend and correspondent of years ago, Mr Edmund Clarence Stedman, of New York, set out by emphasising in his address, as President of the meeting under the auspices of the Uncut Leaves Society in New York, in the beginning of 1895, on the death of Stevenson, and to honour the memory of the great romancer, as reported in the NEW YORK TRIBUNE:

"We are brought together by tidings, almost from the Antipodes, of the death of a beloved writer in his early prime.The work of a romancer and poet, of a man of insight and feeling, which may be said to have begun but fifteen years ago, has ended, through fortune's sternest cynicism, just as it seemed entering upon even more splendid achievement.A star surely rising, as we thought, has suddenly gone out.A radiant invention shines no more; the voice is hushed of a creative mind, expressing its fine imagining in this, our peerless English tongue.His expression was so original and fresh from Nature's treasure-house, so prodigal and various, its too brief flow so consummate through an inborn gift made perfect by unsparing toil, that mastery of the art by which Robert Louis Stevenson conveyed those imaginings to us so picturesque, yet wisely ordered, his own romantic life - and now, at last, so pathetic a loss which renews "'The Virgilian cry, The sense of tears in mortal things,'

that this assemblage has gathered at the first summons, in tribute to a beautiful genius, and to avow that with the putting out of that bright intelligence the reading world experiences a more than wonted grief.

"Judged by the sum of his interrupted work, Stevenson had his limitations.But the work was adjusted to the scale of a possibly long career.As it was, the good fairies brought all gifts, save that of health, to his cradle, and the gift-spoiler wrapped them in a shroud.Thinking of what his art seemed leading to - for things that would be the crowning efforts of other men seemed prentice-

work in his case - it was not safe to bound his limitations.And now it is as if Sir Walter, for example, had died at forty-four, with the WAVERLEY NOVELS just begun! In originality, in the conception of action and situation, which, however phantastic, are seemingly within reason, once we breathe the air of his Fancyland;

in the union of bracing and heroic character and adventure; in all that belongs to tale-writing pure and simple, his gift was exhaustless.No other such charmer, in this wise, has appeared in his generation.We thought the stories, the fairy tales, had all been told, but 'Once upon a time' meant for him our own time, and the grave and gay magic of Prince Florizel in dingy London or sunny France.All this is but one of his provinces, however distinctive.

Besides, how he buttressed his romance with apparent truth! Since Defoe, none had a better right to say: 'There was one thing I determined to do when I began this long story, and that was to tell out everything as it befell.'

"I remember delighting in two fascinating stories of Paris in the time of Francois Villon, anonymously reprinted by a New York paper from a London magazine.They had all the quality, all the distinction, of which I speak.Shortly afterward I met Mr Stevenson, then in his twenty-ninth year, at a London club, where we chanced to be the only loungers in an upper room.To my surprise he opened a conversation - you know there could be nothing more unexpected than that in London - and thereby I guessed that he was as much, if not as far, away from home as I was.He asked many questions concerning 'the States'; in fact, this was but a few months before he took his steerage passage for our shores.I was drawn to the young Scotsman at once.He seemed more like a New-