“TUSUALA’S” EPITAPH

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 951, 19 April 1930, Page 16

“TUSUALA’S” EPITAPH

STEVENSON MISQUOTED ON HIS TOMB “HOME IS THE SAILOR’’ » i'A N interesting story is recounted in -*• an English newspaper of Stevenson's famous epitaph, engraved on his magnificently-plu<vd tomb on Mount Vaea, outside Apia, Samoa. "Tupitala’s” lines. "Under "the wide and starry sky . , .” are known wherever English is known and. set to music, have been sung in many lan-ls. It appears that Mrs. Stevenson made a mistake in copying the lines for engraving on the tomb and that relatives will not authorise any alteration. Stevenson wrote his epitaph in these eight great lines: t'nrier the wide and starry sky, Dirt the grove and let me lie. G' lad did J live and gladly die. And I laid me doun with a w'ill. This be the verse you grave for me: Hr re h* lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea. .Inti the hunter home* from the hill. He asked that the lines should he •ngraved on his tomb, but liis wish nas not been carried out. Those who erected the tomb to his memory on a hilltop above Apia, in Samoa, have unhappily muddled the words that should have been sacred in liieir eyes. They have changed the penultimate line to: Home in the sailor , home from the sea, «Jwd the hunter home from the hill. -oing that, those ro whom the • memory should be dearest

have not only disregarded the diction of a great writer, but have impoverished his thought. "Going to the sea” is quite a different thing from “going to sea.” Home from sea is a far richer thought to the sailor than the landsman’s return from the seaside. The sailor has been at sea, on a great, adventurous quest symbolical of life itself. A great element in the charm of Stevenson is found in the choiceness of his selection of words, and Mrs. Stevenson, in distorting her husband’s words, made them comparatively commonplace. All discriminating lovers of Stevenson see this is so. The Scottish Stevenson Club and the American Stevenson Society see that it is so. They have

courteously approached the son and the daughter of Mrs. Stevenson, Robert Louis Stevenson’s stepchildren, with the suggestion that the wording on the tomb should be corrected. It can be corrected quite easily, and without cost to the poet’s relatives by marriage. But the tomb is under their guardianship, and the daughter’s reply on their behalf is. in effect, that ■what her mother put on the tomb must not. be touched. The Universal Desire Apparently, their mother’s careless copy of the poem is more sacred to them than the poem itself or the memory of the poet. Instead of correcting a mistake which no doubt was a mistake, they persist in allowing the error to remain on his tomb. The facts are fully set out in the January number of “My Magazine,” and they have so far elicited a universal desire for this literary correction to be made, except in that quarter where, through sensitiveness to Stevenson's literary integrity, it should have been welcomed first of all.