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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 8, Issue 2 (June 1, 1933)

Grey and Robert Louis Stevenson

Grey and Robert Louis Stevenson.

But the sidelights on Grey as humanist; his literary and artistic interests, his splendid bequests to Auckland City, his friendship with scholars and scientists, are the most pleasant things in retrospect. One remembers how he and Robert Louis Stevenson met in Auckland; two men with a great deal in common, particularly in their regard for the native races of the Pacific. Stevenson passed through Auckland in February, 1893, on his way to and from Sydney; it was his last voyage, for he died in Samoa the following year. Those two eloquent greathearts, how they delighted in each other's company for the brief time R. L. S. had to spare while the mail-ship was in port. I have a treasured memory of that last passing through of Stevenson, for I met him there, on board the Mariposa, and he talked of his books (he told me he was busy on “The Schooner Farallone,” a title which later he changed to “The Ebb Tide”) and of Vailima, but most of all of Samoa's troubled politics. Presently Sir George Grey came down in his carriage, and took Stevenson off to his Parnell home, Stevenson recorded that visit in “Vailima Letters.” He wrote that he had seen a good deal of Sir George Grey:

“What a wonderful old historic figure to be walking on your arm and recalling ancient events and instances!
The Bombardment of Ruapekapoka Pa. Sir George Grey (then Captain Grey), Governor, virtually directed the operations in the siege of Ruapekapeka Pa, the final scene in Hone Heke's war in the North. This picture, from a soldier's drawing, shows the attack on the stockade with artillery and war-rockets, on January 10, 1846. The Governor is in the group of officers in the middle of the picture.

The Bombardment of Ruapekapoka Pa. Sir George Grey (then Captain Grey), Governor, virtually directed the operations in the siege of Ruapekapeka Pa, the final scene in Hone Heke's war in the North. This picture, from a soldier's drawing, shows the attack on the stockade with artillery and war-rockets, on January 10, 1846. The Governor is in the group of officers in the middle of the picture.

It makes a man small, and yet the extent to which he approved what I had done—or rather have tried to do—encouraged me. Sir George is an expert, at least he knows these races: he is not a small employé with an ink-pot and a Whitaker.”

Stevenson hotly championed the cause of the Samoan people and assailed with all the indignation of his chivalrous soul the mismanagement of affairs there by the Powers. Grey understood all that, and he had a keenly sympathetic listener when he sketched his early-days dream, the federation of the South Pacific Islands which would have prevented the more than half-a-century of raruraru, to use an expressive Maori word—turmoil, botheration, distraction—in Samoa, for had he had his way the group would have been under a British protectorate in the Fifties.