Her broad sympathies, too, had much to do with it. If there is any word in the English language that means the opposite of snob, it may certainly be applied to her. She picked out her friends for the simple and sufficient reason that she liked them, and they might and did include a duchess, a Chinese, a great English playwright, a French fisherman, a saloon-keeper who was once shipwrecked with her, a noted actor—and so on through a long and varied list. Once in Sydney when she was out walking with her daughter, both richly dressed, she stopped suddenly to shake hands with a group of black-avised pirates (to all appearances) with rings in their ears. She had met them somewhere among the islands, and her little white-gloved hand grasped their big brown ones with genuine and affectionate friendship. Wide apart as she and her husband were in many things, in their utter lack of snobbery they were as one. Once they were at a French watering-place when from their room upstairs they heard a loud uproar below. A voice cried: "I will see my Louis!" Going out to see what the trouble was, Louis found four French fishermen in a char-à-bancs—all in peasant blouses. The major-domo of the fashionable hotel was trying to keep them out, but when Louis appeared he called out their names joyfully, and they all cried: "Mon cher Louis!" After each had embraced him, he asked them up to his rooms, and, despite the ill-concealed scorn of the waiter, ordered up a grand dinner for them. They were the French fishermen he had known at Monterey, California, and one may be sure that they met with as cordial a welcome from his wife as from himself. I know that in one of her letters she urges him not to forget to write to François the baker, at Monterey, saying: "It seems to me much more necessary to write some word to him than to Sir Walter, or Baxter, or Henley, for they are your friends who know you and will not be disappointed, either in a pleasure or in humanity, as this poor baker will be. Indeed you must write and say something to him."
As has been said, her dislike of deceit and treachery was one of the most strongly marked traits in her character. Once when she had reason to fear that a person whom she was befriending was deceiving her, and she was told that a simple inquiry would settle the matter, she replied: "But I couldn't bear to find out that he is lying to me."
Her charities were many, but they were always of the quiet, unobtrusive sort, of which few heard except those most nearly concerned. For instance, when she heard of a poor woman in her neighbourhood whose life could only be saved by an expensive operation, she paid to have it done. Her life was full of such acts, and there are many, many people who have good reason to be grateful to her memory.
But when all is said, it has always seemed to me that the bright star of her character, shining above all other traits, was her loyalty—that staunch fidelity that made her cling, through thick and thin, through good or evil report, to those whom she loved. But as she loved, so she hated, and as she endowed her friends with all the virtues, so she could see no good at all in an enemy. Yet, just when you thought you were beginning to understand her nature—with its love and hate of the primal woman—her anger would suddenly soften, not into tenderness, but into a sort of dispassionate wisdom, and she would quote her favourite saying: "To know all is to forgive all."
That she had infinite tenderness for the feelings of others, living or dead, she proved every day. In a letter to Mr. Scribner asking advice about the publication in London of certain letters of her husband, she says:
"Some of the letters that are intended to go into the book should not, in my judgment, appear at all. When my husband was a boy in his late 'teens' and early twenties he and his father—a rigid old Calvinist—quarrelled on the subject of religion. Louis being young enough to like the melodrama, it took on an undue importance, out of all keeping with the real facts. During this turbulent period Louis poured out his soul in letters, the publication of many of which would give a false impression of the relations between the son and the father. Louis was twenty-five when I first met him, and the period of the religious discussion was long past. Mr. Thomas Stevenson loved me and was as kind to me as though I were his own daughter. I cannot, for the sake of an extra volume that would produce a certain amount of money, do anything that in my heart would seem disloyal to the dear old man's memory—all the more because he is dead."
In her character there were many strange contradictions, and I think sometimes this was a part of her attraction, for even after knowing her for years one could always count on some surprise, some unexpected contrast which went far in making up her fascinating personality. Notwithstanding the broad view that she took of life in most of its aspects, in some things she was old-fashioned. She was never reconciled, for instance, to female suffrage, and once when she was persuaded to attend a political meeting at which her daughter was one of the speakers, she sat looking on with mingled pride in her daughter's eloquence and horror at her sentiments. Yet, after the suffrage was granted to women in California, her family was amused to see her go to the polls and vote and carefully advise the men employed on her place concerning their ballots.
Some persons were repelled by what they considered Mrs. Stevenson's cold and distant manner, but they were not aware of what it took her own family a long time to discover—that this apparent detachment and sphinxlike immobility covered a real and childlike shyness; yet it was never apathy, but the stillness of a frightened wild creature that has never been tamed. Though she said so little, she never failed to create an impression. Some one once said of her that her silence was more fascinating than the most brilliant conversation of other women, and, indeed, "Where Macgregor sits is the head of the table" applied very aptly to her. Her manner had nothing of the aggressive self-confidence of the "capable woman." She seemed so essentially feminine, low-voiced, quiet, even helplessly appealing, that it was difficult to realize that she was a fair shot, a fearless horsewoman, a first-rate cook, an expert seamstress, a really scientific gardener, a most skillful nurse, and had, besides, some working acquaintance with many trades and professions upon which she could draw in an emergency.
Her physical courage was remarkable; she would get on any horse, jump into a boat in any sea, face a burglar—do anything, in fact, that circumstances seemed to require. But perhaps her moral courage, that which gave her strength to face great crises—as when Louis was near death—with a smile on her face, was even greater. This I know came to her as a direct inheritance from our mother, Esther Van de Grift, who was never known to give way under the stress of great need.
In her fondness for animals she reminds one of her maternal ancestress, Elizabeth Knodle, who used to rush out and seize horses by the bridle when she thought they were being driven too fast by their cruel drivers. Nothing would more surely arouse her anger than the sight of any unkindness to one of these "little brothers." Once at Vailima a gentleman, who ought to have known better, came riding up on a horse that showed signs of being in pain. "That horse has a sore back," she cried. The rider angrily denied it, but she insisted on his dismounting, and when the saddle was removed found that her suspicions were but too well founded. She compelled him to leave the suffering creature in her care until its back was entirely cured.