however, was most successful, its chief event being a visit to Rodin the sculptor, to whom Mr. Henley introduced him. He came home in what was for him exceptionally good health; but returning in October to The Monument-his invariable name for Mr. Colvin's house at the British Museum-he did not escape so easily. The second holiday began delightfully, for it was on this occasion that he met some of the most distinguished of his elders in the world of letters and of art-especially, as Mr. Colvin records, Browning, Lowell, and Burne-Jones. But soon the visitor was taken ill, confined to bed, and unable to return home until the very end of November, when a succession of fogs made the danger of remaining in London greater than the risk of any journey.

This autumn there occurred a curious event in Stevenson's literary career, which is recorded only in a letter to his mother. "5th Sept., 1886.— . . . . . I have just written a French (if you please!) story for a French magazine! Heaven knows what it's like; but they asked me to do it, and I was only too pleased to try."

Mr. Osbourne and Mrs. de Mattos alone of the intimates of that time remember the fact, but whether the tale was ever despatched to its destination, or what that destination was, are questions that can no longer be answered. Although Stevenson had a wide and full vocabulary, and spoke French with a good accent and complete fluency, it seems certain that he had not the perfect knowledge of the language nec ssary for serious composition. He once wrote a French dedication in a book which he presented to Mrs. Low, prefacing it with the statement-"I am now going to make several

mistakes," as in fact, says her husband, he immediately proceeded to do.

By this time he had begun to write the Memoir of his friend Jenkin, the only biography which he ever actually carried to an end. A few months later Mrs. Jenkin came to Skerryvore to afford him what assistance he needed, and of his method of dealing with the work, she has given us a description.

"I used to go to his room after tea, and tell him all I could remember of certain times and circumstances. He would listen intently, every now and then checking me while he made a short note, or asking me to repeat or amplify what I had said, if it had not been quite clear. Next morning I went to him again, and he read aloud to me what he had written-my two hours of talk compressed into a page, and yet, as it seemed to me, all there, all expressed. He would make me note what he had written word by word, asking me, 'Does this express quite exactly what you mean?' Sometimes he offered me alternative words, 'Does this express it more truly?' If I objected to any sentence as not conveying my meaning, he would alter it again and again-unwearied in taking pains."

His life in England led him to take both in home and in foreign politics a closer interest than he had felt before. He was deeply moved during these years by two events, though neither in the end led to any action on his part, nor even an open declaration of his views. These were the death of Gordon and a case of boycotting women in Ireland.

In 1884 he had felt acutely the withdrawal of the garrisons from the Soudan. "When I read at Nice that

Graham was recalled from Suakim after all that butchery, I died to politics. I saw that they did not regard what I regarded, and regarded what I despised; and I closed my account. If ever I could do anything, I suppose I ought to do it; but till that hour comes, I will not vex my soul."

This was no passing wave of sentiment; Gordon's fate was laid even more deeply to heart, and one of the motives which induced Stevenson to begin his letters to the Times upon Samoan affairs was the memory that in 1884 he had stood by in silence while a brave man was being deserted and a population dependent for help on the government of this country was handed over to the mercies of barbarism. So when he finally came to the point of writing the letter to Mr. Gladstone about the Iron Duke,1 he could think of no other signature open to him than "Your fellow-criminal in the sight of God," and forbore.

But although the passionate indignation and “that chastity of honour which felt a stain like a wound" were highly characteristic of Stevenson, at the most they could have led to nothing more than a series of letters to the papers. They might have stirred the public conscience, but though Stevenson would have been dealing with matters less remote from the knowledge of his readers, yet his part in any agitation or protest would not have differed greatly from his efforts. in the cause of Samoa. The other project, on the contrary, would, if he had been able to carry it out, have led to a definite and entire change of the whole course of his life. On November 13th, 1885, Mr. John Curtin had 1 See vol. ii. p. 7.

been murdered by a party of moonlighters in his house, Castle Farm, at Castle Island, County Kerry. His grown-up sons and daughters had shown the greatest courage, and one of the murderers had been shot. For this the family were cut off as far as possible from all the necessaries of life, and in April, 1887, the boycott still continued. Stevenson, while admitting the wrongs of Ireland, had always the most profound regard for the paramount claims of the law, and had long been shocked both by the disregard of it in Ireland and by the callous indifference of the English to the needs of those engaged in its support. He now pitched upon the case of the Curtin family as a concrete instance in which it behoved England to do her duty, and since no one else was forthcoming for the task, he prepared to offer himself as an agent, and, if need were, a martyr in the cause. As a man of letters he was not tied down to any one place to do his work, so he proposed to take the Curtins' farm and there live with his wife and his stepson. His wife added her protests to those of all his friends who heard of the project, but in vain, and so without sharing his illusions she cheerfully prepared to accompany him.

It is impossible to conceive a more quixotic design. Many of the objections to it Stevenson realised himself, or was told by his friends.1 But perhaps he never suspected how little he understood the Irish, or how utterly futile his action would have proved. As a matter of fact he hardly ever came into contact with Irishmen at any time during his life, was probably misled by false inferences from the Highlanders as to Celtic peculiari1 Letters, ii. 27.

ties, and in the principal Irishman whom he drewColonel Burke in The Master of Ballantrae-he has not carried conviction.1 But these considerations, even if they had been brought home to him, would equally have failed to move him, and it was nothing but his father's illness which kept him for the time in this country. He abandoned the design with reluctance, and, as Mr. Colvin says, “to the last he was never well satisfied that he had done right in giving way."

It was driven from his mind, however, by events which touched him more nearly. In the autumn his parents had taken a house in Bournemouth for the winter, that Mr. Stevenson might have the companionship of his son. For some time after they came Louis was laid up in London, and even when he returned he was too ill to see much of his father or to have any cheering influence upon him. In February Thomas Stevenson was taken by his wife to Torquay, but came back to Bournemouth on the 1st of April. By the 21st he was so ill that it was thought better to bring him home, and he returned to Edinburgh. The accounts of him grew so alarming that Louis followed on the 6th of May, but was too late for his coming to be of any use, and on the 8th all was over.

Of the son's affection and of his appreciation for his father enough has been said to show how great the sense of his loss must have been. The shock of having found his father no longer able to recognise him preyed upon his mind, and for some time to come he was haunted day and night with "ugly images of sickness,

1 Mac, the Ulsterman in The Wrecker, is another story, but would not have helped his creator much in Kerry.