Robert Louis Stevenson

by Margaret Moyes Black

Letters for the mail were due to be written in the afternoon, and he spent his time penning long and kindly greetings to absent friends.

'At sunset,' Mr Osbourne says, 'he came downstairs, rallied his wife about the forebodings she could not shake off; talked of a lecturing tour in America he was eager to make, "as he was so well," and played a game of cards with her to drive away her melancholy.'

By-and-bye he said that he was hungry, and proposed a little feast, for which he produced a bottle of old Burgundy, and went to help her to prepare a salad, talking gaily all the while. As they were on the verandah, he suddenly cried out, 'What is that?' put his hands to his head, and asked, 'Do I look strange?' In a moment he had fallen down beside her.

His wife called for help, and she and his body-servant Sosima carried him into the great hall, where he had known so much happiness, and placed him in the old arm-chair which had been his grandfather's. Medical aid was quickly obtained, but he had already lost consciousness, and, in spite of every effort, he never regained it. His mother's letters written after his death touchingly describe how, although called at once, she yet reached the hall too late to find him conscious, as by that time he was leaning back in his chair breathing heavily. The family, with an agony of grief, quickly realised that there was no hope.

A little bed was brought, and he was placed on it in the middle of the hall, and there, with those he loved close about him, and his faithful Samoan servants seated round him on the floor, he quietly passed away. The deep breaths came at ever longer intervals, the sleep of unconsciousness was never broken, and as his loved and valued friend, the Reverend Mr Clark, prayed beside him, his spirit took its flight into eternity. He died as he had wished, quickly and well-nigh painlessly. He had known so much of lingering illness, he dreaded that greatly, but of death he had no fear, and peacefully and suddenly he passed into the Unseen.

His death took place at a little past eight o'clock on the evening of the 3rd December at the early age of forty-four.

When the news was cabled to England, it was received by many people with grave doubts. His relatives and friends dreaded its truth, but could not at first believe it. Many exaggerated newspaper reports, copied especially from the more sensational American press, had from time to time caused needless distress and anxiety to those who loved him, so that it was possible to allow oneself the shadow of a hope, particularly as his uncle, Dr George W. Balfour, who had at first received the news somewhat vaguely worded, doubted it also, and wrote to the Scotsman expressing his unbelief.

Too soon, unfortunately, all such hopes were proved false, and eager eyes scanning the morning papers on the 23d December 1894 read this sad corroboration of the news that had been posted in London on the 17th of the same month.