Page:Robert Louis Stevenson - a Bookman extra number 1913.djvu/220

Rh Poems. Some lines in it proved strangely prophetic, and it has a peculiarly poignant interest in that it was one of the last things Stevenson read; and the last letter he wrote, two days before he died, was to Mr. Gosse acknowledging the receipt of the volume: "Let me speak first of the dedication. I thank you for it from my heart. It is beautifully said, beautifully and kindly felt; and I should be a churl indeed if I were not grateful, and an ass if I were not proud. I remember when Symonds dedicated a book to me; I wrote and told him of 'the pang of gratified vanity' with which I had read it. The pang was present again, but how much more sober and autumnal—like your volume. Let me tell you a story, or remind you of a story. In the year of grace something or other, anything between '76 and '78 Then follows the story, revealing a charming instance of Mr. Gosse's friendliness to R. L. S. and expressing a wistful doubt whether at the time the teller of the story had sufficiently appreciated that friendliness. Every lover of Stevenson's letters knows the story, and because of it gives Mr. Gosse a special place in his heart.

, whose admirable etching of Stevenson's Bournemouth house, "Skerryvore," we reproduce on page 64, is still a very young man; he is a gold-medalist of South Kensington, and a teacher in the Bournemouth technical schools. His etchings of local scenes, particularly of Poole Harbour, have met with the highest appreciation; by those competent to judge he is recognised as an artist of fine original gifts, and one whose work is destined to be heard much of in the near future. The "Skerryvore" etching is the property of Mr. Ernest Cooper, of 100, Old Christchurch Road, Bournemouth, and he has been kind enough to send us a print and permit us to reproduce it.

A new edition of "R. L. Stevenson's Edinburgh Days," by Eve Blantyre Simpson, has just been published, illustrated with portraits of Stevenson and photographs of places associated with him. Messrs. Chatto and Windus are issuing a handsome illustrated edition of one of the best of Stevenson's shorter stories, "The Pavilion on the Links," with a coloured frontispiece and twenty-four full-page black-and-white illustrations and end-papers by Gordon Browne; and Messrs. Cassell are publishing this month a new edition of "Kidnapped."