ways seemed to me, partly of a genuine carelessness,
certainly of a genuine lack of cash (the little he had was always
absolutely at the disposal of his friends), partly of a deliberate
detachment from any particular social class or caste, partly of his love
of pickles and adventures, which he thought befel a man thus attired
more readily than another. But this slender, slovenly, nondescript
apparition, long-visaged and long-haired, had only to speak in order to
be recognised in the first minute for a witty and charming gentleman,
and within the first five for a master spirit and man of genius. There
were, indeed, certain stolidly conventional and superciliously official
kinds of persons, both at home and abroad, who were incapable of looking
beyond the clothes, and eyed him always with frozen suspicion. This
attitude used sometimes in youth to drive him into fits of flaming
anger, which put him helplessly at a disadvantage unless, or until, he
could call the sense of humour to his help. Apart from these his human
charm was the same for all kinds of people, without distinction of class
or caste; for worldly-wise old great ladies, whom he reminded of famous
poets in their youth; for his brother artists and men of letters,
perhaps, above all; for the ordinary clubman; for his physicians, who
could never do enough for him; for domestic servants, who adored him;
for the English policeman even, on whom he often tried, quite in vain,
to pass himself as one of the criminal classes; for the shepherd, the
street arab, or the tramp, the common seaman, the beach-comber, or the
Polynesian high-chief. Even in the imposed silence and restraint of
extreme sickness the power and attraction of the man made themselves
felt, and there seemed to be more vitality and fire of the spirit in
him as he lay exhausted and speechless in bed than in an ordinary
roomful of people in health.

But I have strayed from my purpose, which was only to indicate that in
the best of these letters of Stevenson's you have some echo, far away
indeed, but yet the nearest, of his talk--talk which could not possibly
be taken down, and of which nothing remains save in the memory of his
friends an impression magical and never to be effaced.

SIDNEY COLVIN.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] From 1876 to 1879--see p. 185.

[2] The point was one on which Stevenson himself felt strongly. In a
letter of instructions to his wife found among his posthumous papers
he