صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

stored his mind with images such as no great artist had previously transferred to the printed page. In May, 1889, he finished in Hawaii "The Master of Ballantrae," which appeared serially in "Scribner's Magazine," and was at once recognized as the sternest and loftiest note of tragedy he had yet struck. Even Honolulu, however, was too cold for him, and in June he again set sail, cruising for two years more in the central Pacific among Polynesians and Micronesians, high islands and low islands. As he cruised, he and Lloyd Osbourne wrote "The Wreckers," which is as full of thrills as a dime novel and at the same time a masterpiece of English and of art. Finally, in 1891, he bought in Samoa 300 acres in the bush three miles behind and 600 feet above the town of Apia.

Apia is located on the island of Upolu, which is 45 miles long and eleven wide. The interior is densely wooded and a range of hills runs from east to west. Stevenson's house and clearing lay between two streams. On the west Vaea Mountain rose 1300 feet above the sea. On the east the ground fell away rapidly into a deep valley. From one of the streams and its four tributaries Stevenson gave to his domain its Samoan name of Vailima, or Five Waters. Here the temperature never falls below 62 degrees Fahrenheit and never rises above 95 degrees in the shade. Malaria, tropical fevers, and mosquitoes are unknown. At first only a rugged path led to Vailima, but later, as a mark of gratitude to its owner, the natives built to his door a roadway, the Ala Loto Alofa, the Road of the Loving Heart. In this island paradise, Stevenson dwelt for three years, living a strenuous out-of-door life and writing his latest and in some respects his best works "The Island Nights' Entertainments,"" The Ebb Tide," " St. Ives," "Catriona," and " Weir of Hermiston "; and here, on December 3, 1894, he died suddenly and almost painlessly.

He was buried on the summit of Vaea, to which the natives who loved him so well hewed a rugged path and bore his body. Upon one side of the tomb which was later erected above his grave is a bronze plate bearing in Samoan the words, "The Tomb of Tusitala," and a verse from the Samoan Bible, with a thistle and a hibiscus flower. On the other side, in English, Stevenson's own "Requiem," which he wrote in San Francisco in 1880, appears as follows:

[blocks in formation]

The chiefs tabooed the use of firearms on the mountain that the birds might live there undisturbed and sing around his grave.

Evidence is abundant that Stevenson laid a spell on most men whom he met. His perfect honesty, his incurable optimism, and his hatred of sham may account for this. He thought the life of cities miserable, conventional people and amusements bored him, and in his earlier days at least he had an invincible dislike for the acquisition of property. He was quite without fear. Edmund Gosse was so dazzled with him that he wrote: "Was ever such a gracious creature born?" His intense and rare spirit was so full of schemes that he was never bored. The dream of his life was to be the leader of a great horde of irregular cavalry. Above everything else he hated cruelty. He always liked the people he was with. He seems, in short, to have united in himself the charm of a perpetual breeze blowing off the shores of youth, an almost feminine fineness of feeling, and a manly courage as heroic as that which is required to lead a forlorn hope. He hated sham. "Nothing," he said, " is so deadly as respectability." He could labor terribly. Some of his books were rewritten as many as eight times before he permitted himself to let them see the light. All of this and more was seen by W. E. Henley, when, in 1888, he wrote the following sonnet, in which is embodied perhaps the most acute analysis which anyone has yet made of Stevenson's character:

"Thin-legged, thin-chested, slight unspeakably,
Neat-footed and weak-fingered; in his face—

Lean, large-boned, curved of beak, and touched with race,
Bold-lipped, rich-tinted, mutable as the sea,

The brown eyes radiant with vivacity

There shines a brilliant and romantic grace,

A spirit intense and rare, with trace on trace
Of passion, impudence, and energy,
Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck,
Most vain, most generous, sternly critical,
Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist;
A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck,
Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all,
And something of the Shorter Catechist."

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Give an account of Stevenson's life.

2. What other English authors have been burdened with unsound bodies? 3. In a two-hundred-word essay write your frank estimate of "Treasure Island or "Kidnapped," and compare it with any so-called "boy's book" you have recently read.

4. What is the subject of "The Silverado Squatters"?

5. Where is Apia?

6. Recount Stevenson's relations with America.

7. What effect had Stevenson upon the men with whom he came in contact?

8. What lessons do we draw from his life?

9. What marks "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" as different from the cheap detective story?

10. In what different forms of literature did Stevenson excel?

[ocr errors]

Suggested Readings. Of his stories "Treasure Island Ives," of his essays Virginibus Puerisque" should be read. David Balfour is full of interest, as are all Stevenson's letters.

Nibat Luis Stevenson

[merged small][ocr errors]

and " St. A life by

CHAPTER XLIV

WOMAN WRITERS

"The woman's cause is man's: they rise or sink
Together, dwarf'd or godlike, bond or free."
-Tennyson.

In the first volume of Chambers's Encyclopædia of English Literature, which covers the period that ends 1700, the only woman writers mentioned are Queen Elizabeth, Lady Elizabeth Carey, Lady Fanshawe, Lucy Hutchinson, Margaret Duchess of Newcastle, and Mrs. Katherine Philips. The second volume, which brings the story down, roughly speaking, to the year 1800, contains notices of no less. than 54 woman writers, while in the third and last there are 97. The following table will show the facts a little more clearly:

[blocks in formation]

The sudden jump between the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries was unquestionably due to a broader view of woman's place, a view which was, perhaps, modified by the influence of France, by the Revolution of 1688, and by the writings of Addison and Steele. The works of many of these ladies, like those of many gentlemen, of course remind one of Dr. Johnson's remark: "Sir, a woman preaching is like a dog walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to see it done at all." Some of them, however, have produced work which renders this saying obsolete. Among these the most eminent names are Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning in poetry, and in fiction Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, and George Eliot. To give a brief account of these and the other women writers of England is the purpose of this and the following chapters.

Queen Elizabeth (1533-1603) could speak Latin, Greek, French, and Italian. She translated "Boëthius " and "Sallust." Her English style both in prose and verse is by turns terrible, insinuating, cold,

stately, playful, direct, and oracular, but always memorable. She seems, however, to have been indifferent to Shakespeare and Spenser, and in her last illness told Sir John Harrington, her godson, that, when he felt time creeping at his gate, these fooleries would please him less. Lady Elizabeth Carey published 1613 a long-winded poem called "The Tragedie of Marian the Faire Queene of Jewry.”—Lady Fanshawe (born Anne Harrison 1625-1680) wrote excellent memoirs of her own life, which were published 1829.-Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson (1620-?) also wrote memoirs, not of her own, but of her husband's life; they contain good pictures of a Puritan gentleman and his home and have been reprinted frequently since their first publication 1806. She was also author of some theological essays and translations of "Virgil " and " Lucretius."-Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle (16241674), was picturesque and proud as a woman and voluminous and unreadable as an author. Her writings include philosophical essays, poems, and plays-all equally bad. Her life of her husband, however, Charles Lamb considered a jewel for which no casket was rich enough.— Mrs. Katherine Philips (1631-1664) was honored by the praises of Cowley, Dryden, and Jeremy Taylor; and was known in her own day as the matchless Orinda, though one is led from an inspection of her poetry to suspect that the real cause of her admirers' enthusiasm must have been her charm as a woman. Like Queen Mary and many another fair lady in the ante-vaccination days, she died of smallpox.

Mrs. Aphra Behn (1640–1689) as a writer was much more skillful than any previous authoress. She composed novels, plays, and poems that are about as good artistically and about as bad morally as the average of her time. Her best book is a novel called "Oroonoko," the hero of which is a slave, and thus she has the distinction of being the first champion of the slave on record in the history of fiction. She is buried in Westminster Abbey. Up to 1735 her works had passed through eight editions.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) by her wit and beauty so won Pope's admiration that he wrote of her:

"In beauty and wit no mortal as yet

To question your empire has dared,

But men of discerning have thought that in learning
To yield to a lady was hard.

« السابقةمتابعة »