complains he could not pass a frontier or visit a
bank without suspicion. "A slender, boyish presence, with a
graceful, somewhat fantastic bearing, and a singular power of
attraction in the eyes and a smile were the first things that
impressed you," says his biographer. Like his mother, he remained to
the end of his life perennially young in appearance and spirits. The
burden of years never weighed him down or dimmed his outlook. His
face kindled and flushed with pleasure when he heard of a doughty
deed, a spice of wit, or some tale to his liking. Few drew him on
canvas in his lifetime, though he summered among artists. Sargent,
in 1885, did a small full-length portrait of him, which "is said to
verge on caricature, and is in Boston. W. B. Richmond, R. A., about
the same time, at Bournemouth, began another in oils, not much more
than laid in in two sittings." Louis sat to an Italian, Count Nerli,
in Samoa; but in this last portrait he looks painfully haggard,
reminding us of his own words, "the practice of letters is miserably
harassing." Because of the too brilliant light elsewhere in Vailima,
he was painted in a room which was close, and the air fatigued him.
While sitting, he wiled away an hour by making doggerel lines all to
rhyme with the artist's name, Nerli. The portrait was bought by a
Scotch-woman travelling in New Zeal and, where, after the author's
death, it had remained unsold. His mother, on returning to Scotland
when bereft of her boy, asked to see the picture again. She had
disapproved of it in Samoa, as it was over true a likeness,
representing him sadly emaciated. Seeing it again, she revoked her
former judgment, and wished to possess it, but the purchaser also
had grown to prize it. So it hangs in her drawing-room, near by
where the Eildons stand sentinel over Scott's resting-place. This
picture of him who lies on Vaea's crest looks down with a slightly
quizzical expression, as if amused at finding himself ensconced in a
place of honour in the house of strangers on Tweedside. Photographs
there are in plenty of Stevenson, and one snapshot, enlarged in the
Edinburgh Edition, recalls him looking up with "long, hatchet face,
black hair, and haunting gaze, that follows as you move about the
room." But his likeness was as difficult for the photographer, or
the sun, to catch, as for the painter to put on canvas, for the
peculiar fascination of the living man lay in himself, in the
elusive charm of his smile,