Robert Louis Stevenson manner of death natural causes
Death
On 3 December 1894, Stevenson was talking to his wife and straining to open a bottle of wine when he suddenly exclaimed, "What's that?", then asked his wife, "Does my face look strange?", and collapsed. (Some sources have stated that he was, instead, attempting to make mayonnaise when he collapsed.) He died within a few hours, at the age of 44, due to a stroke. The Samoans insisted on surrounding his body with a watch-guard during the night and on bearing him on their shoulders to nearby Mount Vaea, where they buried him on a spot overlooking the sea on land donated by British Acting Vice Consul Thomas Trood. Based on Stevenson's poem Requiem, the following epitaph is inscribed on his tomb:
Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie
Glad did I live and gladly die
And I laid me down with a will
This be the verse you grave for me
Here he lies where he longed to be
Home is the sailor home from the sea
And the hunter home from the hillStevenson was loved by Samoans, and his tombstone epigraph was translated to a Samoan song of grief. The requiem appears on the eastern side of the grave. On the western side the biblical passage of Ruth 1:16-17 is inscribed:
cause of death mode of death method of death way of dying circumstances of death