Robert Louis Stevenson

by Margaret Moyes Black

'San Francisco (no date).

Balfour, 17 Walker Street, Edinburgh.

Louis died suddenly third. Tell friends.

Stevenson.'

The telegram was from his mother in answer to one from his uncle asking for true particulars as to the earlier report, and on its receipt and publication relatives and friends knew that hope was dead, and there remained only a sad waiting for further particulars. These by-and-bye came in letters from his mother to her relatives and friends in Scotland, in letters to his literary friends and in that 'Letter' to the Times from his friend and stepson Mr Lloyd Osbourne to the vast mass of acquaintances and readers who all claimed him as a loved personal friend.

From all these sources the manner of his death, and the touching final tragedy of his pathetic funeral became known to the world of English-speaking people everywhere, who each and all mourned individually for the loved and lost author as one near and dear in their personal regard.

He had always expressed a wish to be buried on the Vaea mountain which rises immediately behind Vailima, and the summit of which commands a wide prospect of land and sea and sky. In the spring of 1894, he had suggested the making of a road, and the planting of the spot which he had chosen for his resting-place, but, as the idea was painful to his family, nothing was done in the matter. As soon as he had passed away, those whom he loved hastened to give effect to his wishes, and Mr Lloyd Osbourne planned and courageously carried out in an incredibly short time the forming of a road which made it possible to carry him to the summit of Vaea, and lay him on the spot that he had chosen. Forty Samoans with knives and axes cut a path up the mountain side, and Mr Lloyd Osbourne, with a few specially chosen dependents, dug the grave in which he was to lie.

Meantime, his body covered with the Union Jack rested in the Samoan home that he had loved so well, surrounded by the furniture of the old Scotch home around which his childish feet had played, and on which his father, and possibly his father's fathers, had daily looked, for his mother had taken with her to Vailima all that had most of memory and of family tradition from the house in Heriot Row.

His family lingered in the dear presence, the heartbroken Samoans knelt and kissed his hands, and at the request of his favourite servant, Sosima, who was a Romanist, the solemn and touching prayers of the Church of Rome were, with a certain fitness, repeated over the man who had been the champion of Father Damien, and among whose friends were numbered the earnest and faithful Roman Catholic missionary priests of the South Sea Islands.

On his coffin was laid the 'Red Ensign' that had floated from his mast on many a cruise, and he was carried up the steep path by those who loved him. Europeans as well as Samoans toiled up that difficult ascent to place him with reverent hands in that grave which was so fitting a resting-place for the man who had loved, above all things, the freedom of the open air, the glory of the sea and the sky, the sighing of God's winds among the trees, and the silent companionship of the stars.