The tale was to begin _sur le pont
d'Avignon_: a young Scotch exile watching the Rhone, thinking how much of
it he could cover with a salmon fly, thinking of the Tay or Beauly. To
him enter another shady tramping exile, Blairthwaite, a murderer. And so
it was to run on, as the author's fancy might lead him, with Alan Breck
and the Master for characters. At last, in unpublished MSS. I found an
actual Master of Ballantrae, a Highland chief--noble, majestically
handsome--and a paid spy of England! All these papers I sent out to
Samoa, too late. The novel was to have been dedicated to me, and that
chance of immortality is gone, with so much else.
Mr. Stevenson's last letters to myself were full of his concern for a
common friend of ours, who was very ill. Depressed himself, Mr.
Stevenson wrote to this gentleman--why should I not mention Mr. James
Payn?--with consoling gaiety. I attributed his depression to any cause
but his own health, of which he rarely spoke. He lamented the
"ill-staged fifth act of life"; he, at least, had no long hopeless years
of diminished force to bear.
I have known no man in whom the pre-eminently manly virtues of kindness,
courage, sympathy, generosity, helpfulness, were more beautifully
conspicuous than in Mr. Stevenson, no man so much loved--it is not too
strong a word--by so many and such various people. He was as unique in
character as in literary genius.
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