The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1896-06-07
STEVENSON'S
LAST NOVEL.
The ''Weir of HermistOn''
Little More Than a
Fragment.
Its Author Designed 1t for
His Greatest Work in
Romance.
The Character of the Hero Founded
Upon That of the Great
Scotch Judge.

OF his death, Will be of little interest to the
general public. 1t is altogether too small
fragment to afford satisfaction to those
who read for the sake OF d story. 1t does
very little more than introduce the char
acters and suggest the plot of the romance
that was intended to be- To the casual
reader therefore it will have but small at
traction and but little charm.
To that large circle of people, however,
who delight in literature as an art and to
whom the smallest fragment of the work
of master is of more value than the COM
pleted work of less skillfuI hands, this in
complete work will be one of the most in
teresting publications of the day. It has q
value OF no small worth in the very fact
that it is only fragment, inasmuch as it
reveals Stevenson's manner of doing his
work and shows the care and study which
be gave to the composition of those
romances which have been among the
chief delights of the readers of our time.
In letters to his friends Stevenson de-
clared that he designed this work to be
his masterpiece. 1t hardly needed his
declaration, however, to assure US of the
fact. There is ample evidence of it in the
chapters which he lived to write. In the
hrsS place, it is clear he had planned the
story on much larger scale than any
other he had written. In the space he has
taken to introduce the characters of this
story he would have told the full half of
any OF the other OF his romSnces. There is
everywhere in it an elaborateness of detail
which shows an evident intention to make
the work painStaking study of the times,
the people and the customs of Scotland
toward the close of the last century, and
he, no doubt, INDUCED the hope to achieve
something III the way of a historical ro-
hot fob h
immortal works of that class and have q
permanent place in literature.
TIE character of his hero was founded
upon that Of the historic personality of
Robert Macqueen, Lord Sraxfield, one of
the great judges of Scotland, who has been
for generations the subject of hundreds of
Edinburgh tales and anecdotes To those
who have read Stevenson's romances and
know the type of men that fascinated him,
1t will hardly be necessary to state
that this old magistrate was one Of those
hard, strong, forceful natures around
whom all gentle human sentiments seem
to play as idly as the summer wind around
the granite of the everlasting hills. Brax-
field was known to his time as the thang-
ing Judge" and Wier of Hermiston is
introduced to US in the same character
1t was concerning a nature of that stern
sort placed under circumstances of eX-
treme trial that Stevenson essayed to
write his masterpiece.
The hanging judge, however is by no
means the only strong, romantic char
acter of the book. In fact, in the fragment
written, he is comparatively overshadowed
by a family of ElliOtts known as the flour
black brothers" men of the type of that
fierce breed that kept the borders or Scot
land in the old days of the English wars,
and ready to take the law into their own
hands at any time when they thought fit.
m addition RI thara annfhar
character of the half savage type, of which
much would doubtless have been made in
the dramatic scenes that were to come.
This was certain Christina Elliot, cousin
of the four black brothers. and housekeeper
of the hanging judge. Enough of her is
told in the fragment to show that she
would have been altogether the most not
able of Stevenson's women, and it is posi-
bic that had he lived to complete the work
she might have been shown to be worthy
to take rank along with Meg Merriles and
the wife of Rob Roy.
While the finished part of the romance
gives no intimation of what the plot was
to be and what fate was allotted to the
characters, Stevenson had made his pur-
pose clear to his amanuensis and his
friends, and they have added an appendix
to the work giving full information on the
subject. 1t was to be the old story of
Brutus The son of Weir of Her
mission was of very different
nature from his father. OF gentle and
affectionate disposition, he had little sym
PATTY with the judge, and on one
occasion openly denounced the hanging of
a man as a case of judicial murder. For
that offense his father sent him away
from Edinburgh to live in the country.
There he meets the young and petted
sister of the four black brothers and the
play of the romance begins. Just here the
dc In told ha
pendIx that the plot involved a quarrel
in which young Hermiston kills his rival
and is brought before his own father to
answer for murder. The stern Judge per-
forms his duty with a Roman firmness,
but does not bear up afterward with
Roman pride. The conclusion of Steven
sons study of such a situation was that the
hidden affections of the father should
break out after the task of the Judge bad
been performed and that the strong man
should die of a broken heart. Meantime
the four black brothers were to have raised
their friends, burst open the Jail in which
young Weir was i'm prisoned, and enable
him and their sister to escape to America,
where IN all probability they lived hap
PLY ever after.
The interesting point in the explanation
of the story is the care which Stevenson
took to devise some means by which
young Weir could be brought before his
father for trial without violating the prob
abilities Of Scotch law. His letters
show he was in communication with
legal friends in Edinburgh on every
feature of law involved in the story. He
had written to Edinburgh for accounts of
noted criminal trials of the period at
which the story is supposed to have taken
place, and was posting himself thoroughly
on every step that would have to be taken
in a case like that of his romance so that
it would have been in no wise violation
OF historic proba bilities.
Up to the point where Stevenson had car
ried it there were no extraordinary incl
dents in the story, and his skill in work of
that kind had little play. He introduces,
however, one episode in the lives of the
four black brothers which serves to show
that with failing health there was no fell
ing in the force of the genius of the man.
In that respect he was still the same
Stevenson who wrote the master of Bal
Iantrae" and Treasure Island" and as
forceful as ever in depicting fight or
scene of peril and passion.
This episode which narrates the death
of the father of the black brothers and
the way in which it was avenged runs
thus:
He was due home from market any time
from at night to in the morning, and in
any condition from the quarrelsome 10 the
speech less for he maintained to that age the