New York Sun Columnist Bob Davis, left, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Palmer and writer Irvin Cobb pose at the Stevenson Cottage many years ago. (Photo provided)

“The annual meeting was held at the Memorial Cottage, Saturday, Aug. 27. Owing to rainy weather, the audience of about 175 persons gathered in the rooms on the ground floor.

“At 3 p.m., the president, Colonel Walter Scott, called the gathering to order and said, ‘My friends, it has always been our custom to open our meeting by thanking God for his blessings and asking Him for a continuance of them … We are to be very heartily congratulated on having with us two distinguished guests–the Rev. Dr. Charles R. Erdman, of Princeton … and Mr. Allen Hutchinson, the well-known sculptor, and friend of Stevenson. We are happy to greet a number of newcomers here to-day … It gives us particular pleasure to look into the faces of Doctors Brown, Kinghorn and Mayer, Mr. William Morris and many other members. We have all heard it said that Lindberg took the ‘I’ out of the language and in its place, put ‘We.’ This is a ‘We’ company.

“One dark cloud cast its shadow upon us a few months ago in the passing away of our good friend and true admirer of Stevenson, Mr. C.H.E. Griffith, whose whole heart was in his work here at the Shrine. He has left with us a very sweet memory. We are glad to say that Mrs. Griffith has carried on the work in spite of her great loss, and will continue as hostess at the cottage. We thank her sincerely for her kind assistance …

“Let us pause for a moment and think of his life here in 1887-88. As I have often remarked, I never visit this spot without visualizing that tall figure … in the open air for hours, walking restlessly this very porch that you see before you. During that struggle, as he inhaled the life-giving air of these snowclad mountains, he did some of his finest work–The Master of Ballantrae, The Lantern Bearers, A Christmas Sermon, and other essays. What an inspiring example he left for all who are compelled to dwell in this high altitude! He showed us that no matter how frail the body, the brain and will and spirit can be strong, and that with such outstanding qualities, as cheerfulness, courage and determination the most appalling obstacles can be removed from the path of life.”

“The secretary read the following report: Since our last annual meeting our list of members in perpetuity has grown to 133 … Among the recent loses by death are Sir Sidney Colvin, our British representative …”

The importance of Sir Sidney Colvin in the life and career of Robert Louis Stevenson can’t be overstated. Once again, it was the dazzling personality of the 22-year-old Louis that brought him to the attention of Colvin through the person of Colvin’s married but separated girlfriend, the beautiful and intelligent Mrs. Fanny Sitwell. Fanny was the subject of Louis’ first obsession with a woman in a puppy dog love crush kind of way, complete with letters. Sidney didn’t seem to mind. The people RLS met through Colvin would shape his career.

Sir Sidney had been the British Representative of the Stevenson Society of America in Saranac Lake since 1920, filling the position left vacant by the death of Lord Charles Guthrie. Colvin had also been the Vice President of the R.L. Stevenson Club in Edinburgh, Scotland. His correspondence with the society is in the archives which were not stolen by the previous curator. Colvin’s most unique gift to the Stevenson Society’s shrine/museum is the portion of a letter RLS wrote to him in 1880, from 308 Bush St., San Francisco, California, when Louis was being purified in the crucible, so to speak. The letter is in connection with the completion of his famous little epitaph, his poem Requiem, in bronze on his tomb to this day, very far away, in the South Seas “where the golden apples grow.”

The following was in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise: “Saranac Lake, N.Y., Aug. 27–A feature of today’s annual meeting of the Stevenson Society of America at the Stevenson Memorial Cottage was the presentation of the original bronze head of Robert Louis Stevenson, made by Allen Hutchinson in 1893 in Hawaii. The bronze was purchased recently by Col. Walter Scott of New York, president of the society in the cottage.”

Among the several new “sacred relics” donated to their collection and noted in the yearbook was “A large piece of tapa made by the South Seas Islanders and presented by Dr. Wherehiko Raweii, a personal friend of Stevenson.” This Polynesian-born doctor knew RLS in Scotland, during his student days. Many years later they hooked up again when they found themselves living on the same island, Upolu, in the middle of Oceania. Of this friend, Louis said: “Wherehiko Raweii is a Polynesian raconteur who fascinates one with the witchery of his word paintings, so beware lest he start you roaming o’er southern seas. Apart from this bad habit, he is a fine fellow, and one of my choice friends.”

This tapa delivered by the doctor is reputed to be one of three such ceremonial mats used to cover the bier of RLS at his funeral. A few months before this meeting, Dr. W.R. had come to town to lecture on Polynesian life and custom, back when the town was full of “lungers” with nothing to do.

Robert “Bob” Davis was a popular columnist for the New York Sun before he became a charter member of the Stevenson Society of America. Upon his return to the Big Apple after this meeting, he wrote an article for the Sun about things happening at the Saranac Lake memorial and mentioned the lone curator who was a highly trained nurse and highly intelligent according to sources though her first name can’t be found on the premises:

“Not so very long ago, Mrs. Charles H.E. Griffith, resident curator of the Memorial Cottage, seated among the treasures, tuned in her radio with the outer world. Faintly, as though from beyond, came strains of music followed by a rich contralto voice (someone singing a musical adaptation of the above-mentioned epitaph, Requiem) … On the wall in the next room hung the original wood carving … from which the epitaph on Stevenson’s grave in the distant isles of the South Seas was taken … Myriad ears heard that soaring epitaph, but none more clearly than the ears of the woman who sat thrilled and spellbound in the Stevenson home high in the Adirondacks. Robert Louis had recrossed the threshold of his cottage … ‘The hunter home from the hill.'”