FROM R.L.S. -BY FRANCIS WATT

CHAPTER XIII

SOME FRENCH PASSAGES

"He was always happy in France." So said W. E. Henley of our author. He had a real affection for the country as well as an educated Scots comprehension for and interest in the people. He found everything more sympathetic than in England. Also he understood better. He liked what was odd and picturesque and quaint. And he found it here. He was emotional, in strange sudden ways. His French company rose to the occasion as the stolid Saxon never did. Most of all was the attraction of the literature. He found writers of his own way of thinking and working. With them good expression was an end in itself. He admired the constant effort to say what was to be said in the best possible manner. Though not a painter, he was a sketcher. He understood something about pictures, and the life of the art student in the Paris studio was pleasing to him. It is well pictured in *The Wrecker*. He knew Paris better than London, not merely modern Paris but the Paris of former days. The mediaeval town is admirably presented in *A Lodging for the Night*. The sketch is as deftly done though of necessity slighter than Victor Hugo's elaborate picture in

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his famous *Notre Dame* romance. Also in France he was recognized as Bohemian, and treated with easy tolerance. A Bohemian sober and well-mannered might seem impossible in Edinburgh and difficult in London: R. L. S. was this. He was the exception, that it may be proved the rule for his own country. But he was no exception in France, where there were others like him. Yet they were painters and not writers. He knew men who were already or afterwards became famous in the world of art. None, it seems, who was to be great in the world of letters. It may be because of his fondness for the gipsy-life of the road and the forest. Such was useful, nay necessary, for the painter who worked from nature. It was usually impossible for the man of letters. Many people lived at Siron's to paint, but none to write, except R. L. S. himself.

His connection with "the forest," by which he meant Fontainebleau, was intimate. It is a huge tract—about forty thousand English acres. Here is the most beautiful woodland scenery—beeches, elms, oaks, huge clumps of black firs; also, like our own New Forest, it is not continuous wood. Much is covered with heath and broom, whilst across it there run some eight or ten ridges of gaunt sandstone. These diverse elements give picturesque touches to the scenery. Once deer abounded, and the old French kings hunted them on many a bright morning long years ago. These same deer are rare to-day, but the dead and gone monarchs have left substantial trace of their presence, for in