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A VISIT TO STEVENSON’S PACIFIC ISLE

It is a curious fact that Stevenson, whom we all regarded at home as being the personification of Samoa—indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that the average Englishman’s idea of Samoa was “some island or other in the Pacific where Stevenson lives,”—has left very little behind him in the way of tradition or story in the island he loved so well. He lived in the midst of a society which, outside his immediate family surroundings, must have been eminently uncongenial to a man of his refined nature, yet he damaged his fame here, at least, by meddling in the petty squabbles which agitate the beach at Apia, and his “Footnote to History” has made him a host of enemies, notably among the German colony, who, by the mouth of one of their many prophets, condemned him to me as a writer of “stupid stinks!” And therefore he may have made a mistake in imagining himself a factor in the insoluble equation of Samoan affairs. It is to the natives that he was more attached than to the vague ideals which form their so-called political future. To them he was a great chief, “Tusitala Talmita” by name, and many a native I have spoken to mentioned him with real affection as a good friend and a man with a golden heart. Perhaps this is the praise he himself would have chosen rather than that of the white colony.

It is not my purpose, however, to dilate on his life in Samoa, nor indeed would it be possible to gather, from the mass of conflicting evidence, any rational account of his doings in his island home. It is of a pilgrimage which I made to visit his library that I would give some short account. The room was walled from floor to ceiling with books, and I began to inspect them. To the left of the door were some “yellow backs,” but few, nor did I see in his library much trash of any description. Next came books of travel in almost every country in the world, the bulk of them, however, dealing with the Pacific. From Capt. Cook down, it would be hard to name a Pacific travel book that has not found itself on the shelves at Vailima. Next, I am bound to say, came my first disappointment. I had always thought that Stevenson must have been a good classical scholar, and had an idea formed, I know not how or whence, that a great style—and surely his may be justly called so—necessitated a close and intimate acquaintance with those classical authors who—

“Upon the stretched forefinger of all Time
Sparkle forever.”