text:
Title: Robert Louis Stevenson
Author: G.K. Chesterton and W. Robertson Nicoll
Date first posted:  Jan 2013
Most recent update: Jan 2013
This eBook was produced by: Colin Choat and Roy Glashan
G.K. Chesterton AND W. Robertson Nicoll
WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS
First published by Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1902
1. The Personality and Style of Robert Louis Stevenson
by W. Robertson Nicoll
2. The Characteristics of Robert Louis Stevenson
by G. K. Chesterton
3. Home From the Hill
4. Biographical Note
Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson at the age of four
The Rev. Lewis Balfour in his Youth
The Rev. Lewis Balfour, grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson
Illustrations 05a and 05b
No. 8, Howard Place, Edinburgh—Stevenson's birth house
Thomas Stevenson, father of Robert Louis Stevenson
No. 17, Heriot Row, Edinburgh
Robert Louis Stevenson at the age of six
Colinton Manse
Swanston Cottage
Mrs. Thomas Stevenson, Mother of Robert Louis Stevenson
Illustration 12-13
Mr. Thomas Stevenson and his son, when Louis was ten years old/
A photograph of Robert Louis Stevenson in fancy dress
Robert Louis Stevenson at the age of 15
Alison Cunningham ("Cummy")
Robert Louis Stevenson (from a drawing by A. S. Boyd)
Robert Louis Stevenson in the "Bart's" hat, 1876
Two views of the Chalet la Solitude, Hyères
Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson
A Photograph taken during Robert Louis Stevenson's second visit to America in 1887
Molokai, Hawaiian Islands, the terrible leper settlement
Stevenson's house at Vailima
Robert Louis Stevenson (from a painting by Sir Wm. Blake Richmond, R.A.)
Robert Louis Stevenson (from a painting by Count Nerli)
Dining- and Reception-Hall in the residence at Vailima
Portrait of Tusitala ("Teller of Talks") with native chief Tui-ma-le-alh- fano
Robert Louis Stevenson and his favourite horse "Jack"
Mataafa, the "Rebel" King
Tembinoka, the King of Apemama
Kava Drinking at the opening of the road made by the Samoans for Mr. Stevenson, October 1894
Stevenson playing his flageolet
A portrait of Mrs. Strong, Stevenson's step-daughter and valued amanuensis
The San Francisco memorial to Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson at the house of the Hon. B. R. Wise, Sydney
H.M.S. Curaçoa at Apia, Samoa
Entertainment given to the band of the Katoomba by Mr. and Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson at Vailima
Robert Louis Stevenson, from the medallion by A. St. Gaudens
The Tomb of Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa
Loto Alofa—the "Road of the Loving Heart"
The Last Resting-place of Robert Louis Stevenson on the Summit of Mount Vaea
Robert Louis Stevenson—A portrait by John Singer Sargent, at the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati
Cover of first edition of Robert Louis Stevenson (restored)
THE PERSONALITY AND STYLE OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
AS the years pass they disengage the virtue of a writer, and decide whether or not he has force enough to live. Will Stevenson live? Undoubtedly. He is far more secure of immortality than many very popular writers. The sale of his books may not be great, and he may even disappear from the marts of literature now and then, but he will always be revived, and it may turn out that his reputation may wear as well as that of Charles Lamb. For he engages his readers by the double gift of personality and style. The personality of Stevenson is strangely arresting. In the first place it was a double personality. In his journey to the Cevennes he reflects that every one of us travels about with a donkey. In his "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," the donkey becomes a devil. Every Jekyll is haunted by his Hyde. Somebody said that "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" showed Stevenson as Poe, with the addition of a moral sense. Critics may differ as to the exact literary value of the famous little book, but as an expression of Stevenson's deepest thought about life it will retain its interest.
He was not content to dwell in a world where the lines are drawn clear, where the sheep are separated from the goats. He would have a foot in both worlds, content to dwell neither wholly with the sheep nor wholly with the goats. No doubt his ruling interest was in ethical problems, and he could be stern in his moral judgments, as, for example, in his discussion of the character of Burns. He was by nature and training religious, "something of the Shorter Catechist." His earliest publication was a defence of the Covenanters, and in his last days he established close friendships with the Samoan missionaries. Yet he was by no means "orthodox," either in ethics or in religion. Much as he wrote on conduct, there were certain subjects, and these the most difficult, on which he never spoke out. On love, for example, and all that goes with it, it is quite certain that he never spoke his full mind—to the public at least. Another very striking quality in his personality was his fortitude. He was simply the bravest of men. Now and then, as in his letter to George Meredith, he lets us see under what disabling conditions he fought his battle. Human beings in a world like this are naturally drawn to one who suffers, and will not let himself be mastered or corrupted by suffering. They do not care for the prosperous, dominant, athletic, rich and long-lived man. They may conjecture, indeed, that behind all the bravery there is much hidden pain, but if it is not revealed to them they cannot be sure.
They love Charles Lamb for the manner in which he went through his trial, and they love him none the less because he was sometimes overborne, because on occasions he stumbled and fell. Charlotte Brontë was an example of fortitude as remarkable as Stevenson, but she was not brave after the same manner. She allowed the clouds to thicken over her life and make it grey. Stevenson sometimes found himself in the dust, but he recovered and rose up to speak fresh words of cheer. He took thankfully and eagerly whatever life had to offer him in the way of affection, of kindness, of admiration. Nor did he ever in any trouble lose his belief that the Heart of things was kind. In the face of all obstacle he went steadily on with his work, nor did he ever allow himself to fall below the best that he could do. An example so touching, so rare, so admirable, is a reinforcement which weary humanity cannot spare. With these qualities, and, indeed, as their natural result, Stevenson had a rare courtesy. He was, in the words of the old Hebrew song, "lovely and pleasant," or rather, as Robertson Smith translated it, "lovely and winsome," in all his bearings to men of all kinds, so long as they did not fall under the condemnation of his moral judgment. With a personality so rich, Stevenson had the power of communicating himself. He could reveal his personality without egotism, without offence. Many writers of charming individuality cannot show themselves in their books. There is as little of themselves in their novels as there would be in a treatise on mathematics, if they could write it. Perhaps less. There have been mathematicians like Augustus de Morgan, who could put humour and personality into a book on geometry.
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But Stevenson had not only a personality, he had a style. His golden gift of words can never be denied. He may sometimes have been too "precious," but the power of writing as he could write is so uncommon that he must always stand with a very few.
We believe that Stevenson's style is largely an expression of his courtesy. He wished as a matter of mere politeness and goodwill to express himself as well as he could. In fact, it was this courtesy that led him to his famous paradox about the end of art, his characterisation of the artist as the Son of Joy. "The French have a romantic evasion for one employment, and call its practitioners the Daughters of Joy. The artist is of the same family; he is of the Sons of Joy, chooses his trade to please himself, gains his livelihood by pleasing others, and has parted with something of the sterner dignity of man."
The theory that all art is decoration cannot be seriously considered. It was certainly not true of Stevenson's art. He wished to please, but he had other and higher ends. He had to satisfy his exacting conscience, and he obeyed its demands sincerely and righteously, and to the utmost of his power. But he was too good a man to be satisfied even with that.
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Milton put into all his work the most passionate labour, but he did not believe that pleasure was the end of art. Nor would he have been satisfied by complying with his conscience. He had a message to deliver, and he delivered it in the most effective forms at his command. Stevenson had his message, too, and uttered it right memorably.
If the message had to be put in a few words, they would be these: Good my soul, be brave! He was bold enough to call Tennyson a Son of Joy, but he would have assented with all his soul to Tennyson's lines:
And here the singer for his art
Not all in vain may plead;
The song that nerves the nation's heart
Is in itself a deed.
W. Robertson Nicoll
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
All things and all men are underrated, much by others, especially by themselves; and men grow tired of men just as they do of green grass, so that they have to seek for green carnations. All great men possess in themselves the qualities which will certainly lay them open to censure and diminishment; but these inevitable deficiencies in the greatness of great men vary in the widest degree of variety. Stevenson is open to a particularly subtle, a particularly effective and a particularly unjust disparagement.
The advantage of great men like Blake or Browning or Walt Whitman is that they did not observe the niceties of technical literature. The far greater disadvantage of Stevenson is that he did. Because he had a conscience about small matters in art, he is conceived not to have had an imagination about big ones. It is assumed by some that he must have been a bad architect, and the only reason that they can assign is that he was a good workman.
The mistake which has given rise to this conception is one that has much to answer for in numerous departments of modern art, literature, religion, philosophy, and politics. The supreme and splendid characteristic of Stevenson, was his levity; and his levity was the flower of a hundred grave philosophies. The strong man is always light: the weak man is always heavy. A swift and casual agility is the mark of bodily strength: a humane levity is the mark of spiritual strength. A thoroughly strong man swinging a sledge-hammer can tap the top of an eggshell. A weaker man swinging a sledge-hammer will break the table on which it stands into pieces. Also, if he is a very weak man, he will be proud of having broken the table, and call himself a strong man dowered with the destructive power of an Imperial race.
This is, superficially speaking, the peculiar interest of Stevenson. He had what may be called a perfect mental athleticism, which enabled him to leap from crag to crag, and to trust himself anywhere and upon any question. His splendid quality as an essayist and controversialist was that he could always recover his weapon.
He was not like the average swashbuckler of the current parties, tugged at the tail of his own sword. This is what tends, for example, to make him stand out so well beside his unhappy friend Mr. Henley, whose true and unquestionable affection has lately taken so bitter and feminine a form. Mr. Henley, an admirable poet and critic, is, nevertheless, the man par excellence who breaks the table instead of tapping the egg. In his recent article on Stevenson he entirely misses this peculiar and supreme point about his subject.
He there indulged in a very emotional remonstrance against the reverence almost universally paid to the physical misfortunes of his celebrated friend. "If Stevenson was a stricken man," he said, "are we not all stricken men?" And he proceeded to call up the images of the poor and sick, and of their stoicism under their misfortunes. If sentimentalism be definable as the permitting of an emotional movement to cloud a clear intellectual distinction, this most assuredly is sentimentalism, for it would be impossible more completely to misunderstand the real nature of the cult of the courage of Stevenson. The reason that Stevenson has been selected out of the whole of suffering humanity as the type of this more modern and occult martyrdom is a very simple one.
It is not that he merely contrived, like any other man of reasonable manliness, to support pain and limitation without whimpering or committing suicide or taking to drink. In that sense of course we are all stricken men and we are all stoics. The ground of Stevenson's particular fascination in this matter was that he was the exponent, and the successful exponent, not merely of negative manliness, but of a positive and lyric gaiety.
This wounded soldier did not merely refrain from groans, he gave forth instead a war song, so juvenile and inspiriting that thousands of men without a scratch went back into the battle. This cripple did not merely bear his own burdens, but those of thousands of contemporary men. No one can feel anything but the most inexpressible kind of reverence for the patience of the asthmatic charwoman or the consumptive tailor's assistant. Still the charwoman does not write "Aes Triplex," nor the tailor "The Child's Garden of Verses."
Their stoicism is magnificent, but it is stoicism. But Stevenson did not face his troubles as a stoic, he faced them as an Epicurean. He practised with an austere triumph that terrible asceticism of frivolity which is so much more difficult than the asceticism of gloom. His resignation can only be called an active and uproarious resignation. It was not merely self-sufficing, it was infectious. His triumph was, not that he went through his misfortunes without becoming a cynic or a poltroon, but that he went through his misfortunes and emerged quite exceptionally cheerful and reasonable and courteous, quite exceptionally light-hearted and liberal-minded. His triumph was, in other words, that he went through his misfortunes and did not become like Mr. Henley.
There is one aspect of this matter in particular, which it is as well to put somewhat more clearly before ourselves. This triumph of Stevenson's over his physical disadvantages is commonly spoken of with reference only to the elements of joy and faith, and what may be called the new and essential virtue of cosmic courage. But as a matter of fact the peculiarly interesting detachment of Stevenson from his own body, is exhibited in a quite equally striking way in its purely intellectual aspect.
Apart from any moral qualities, Stevenson was characterised by a certain airy wisdom, a certain light and cool rationality, which is very rare and very difficult indeed to those who are greatly thwarted or tormented in life. It is possible to find an invalid capable of the work of a strong man, but it is very rare to find an invalid capable of the idleness of a strong man.
It is possible to find an invalid who has the faith which removes mountains, but not easy to find an invalid who has the faith that puts up with pessimists. It may not be impossible or even unusual for a man to lie on his back on a sick bed in a dark room and be an optimist. But it is very unusual indeed for a man to lie on his back on a sick bed in a dark room and be a reasonable optimist: and that is what Stevenson, almost alone of modern optimists, succeeded in being.
The faith of Stevenson, like that of a great number of very sane men, was founded on what is called a paradox—the paradox that existence was splendid because it was, to all outward appearance, desperate. Paradox, so far from being a modern and fanciful matter, is inherent in all the great hypotheses of humanity. The Athanasian Creed, for example, the supreme testimony of Catholic Christianity, sparkles with paradox like a modern society comedy. Thus, in the same manner, scientific philosophy tells us that finite space is unthinkable and infinite space is unthinkable. Thus the most influential modern metaphysician, Hegel, declares without hesitation, when the last rag of theology is abandoned, and the last point of philosophy passed, that existence is the same as non-existence.
Thus the brilliant author of "Lady Windermere's Fan," in the electric glare of modernity, finds that life is much too important to be taken seriously. Thus Tertullian, in the first ages of faith, said "Credo quia impossibile."
We must not, therefore, be immediately repelled by this paradoxical character of Stevenson's optimism, or imagine for a moment that it was merely a part of that artistic foppery or "fuddling hedonism" with which he has been ridiculously credited. His optimism was one which, so far from dwelling upon those flowers and sunbeams which form the stock-in-trade of conventional optimism, took a peculiar pleasure in the contemplation of skulls, and cudgels, and gallows.
It is one thing to be the kind of optimist who can divert his mind from personal suffering by dreaming of the face of an angel, and quite another thing to be the kind of optimist who can divert it by dreaming of the face of an angel, and quite another thing to be the kind of optimist who can divert it by dreaming of the foul fat face of Long John Silver. And this faith of his had a very definite and a very original philosophical purport. Other men have justified existence because it was a harmony.
He justified it because it was a battle, because it was an inspiring and melodious discord. He appealed to a certain set of facts which lie far deeper than any logic—the great paradoxes of the soul. For the singular fact is that the spirit of man is in reality depressed by all the things which, logically speaking, should encourage it, and encouraged by all the things which, logically speaking, should depress it.
Nothing, for example, can be conceived more really dispiriting than that rationalistic explanation of pain which conceives it as a thing laid by Providence upon the worst people. Nothing, on the other hand, can be conceived as more exalting and reassuring than that great mystical doctrine which teaches that pain is a thing laid by Providence upon the best. We can accept the agony of heroes, while we revolt against the agony of culprits. We can all endure to regard pain when it is mysterious; our deepest nature protests against it the moment that it is rational.
This doctrine that the best man suffers most is, of course, the supreme doctrine of Christianity; millions have found not merely an elevating but a soothing story in the undeserved sufferings of Christ; had the sufferings been deserved we should all have been pessimists.
Stevenson's great ethical and philosophical value lies in the fact that he realised this great paradox that life becomes more fascinating the darker it grows, that life is worth living only so far as it is difficult to live. The more steadfastly and gloomily men clung to their sinister visions of duty, the more, in his eyes, they swelled the chorus of the praise of things. He was an optimist because to him everything was heroic, and nothing more heroic than the pessimist.
To Stevenson, the optimist, belong the most frightful epigrams of pessimism. It was he who said that this planet on which we live was more drenched with blood, animal and vegetable, than a pirate ship. It was he who said that man was a disease of the agglutinated dust. And his supreme position and his supreme difference from all common optimists is merely this, that all common optimists say that life is glorious in spite of these things, but he said that all life was glorious because of them. He discovered that a battle is more comforting than a truce. He discovered the same great fact which was discovered by a man so fantastically different from him that the mere name of him may raise a legitimate laugh—General Booth.
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He discovered, that is to say, that religious evolution might tend at last to the discovery, that the peace given in the churches was less attractive to the religious spirit than the war promised outside; that for one man who wanted to be comforted a hundred wanted to be stirred; that men, even ordinary men, wanted in the last resort, not life or death, but drums.
It may reasonably be said that of all outrageous comparisons one of the most curious must be this between the old evangelical despot and enthusiast and the elegant and almost hedonistic man of letters. But these far-fetched comparisons are infinitely the sanest, for they remind us of the sanest of all conceptions, the unity of things.
A splendid and pathetic prince of India, living in far-off aeons, came to many of the same conceptions as a rather dingy German professor in the nineteenth century; for there are many essential resemblances between Buddha and Schopenhauer. And if any one should urge that lapse of time might produce mere imitation, it is easy to point out that the same great theory of evolution was pronounced simultaneously by Darwin, who became so grim a rationalist that he ceased even to care for the arts, and by Wallace, who has become so fiery a spiritualist that he yearns after astrology and table-rapping.
Men of the most widely divergent types are connected by these invisible cords across the world, and Stevenson was essentially a Colonel in the Salvation Army. He believed, that is to say, in making religion a military affair. His militarism, of course, needs to be carefully understood. It was considered entirely from the point of view of the person righting.
It had none of that evil pleasure in contemplating the killed and wounded, in realising the agonies of the vanquished, which has been turned by some modern writers into an art, a literary sin, which, though only painted in black ink on white paper, is far worse than the mere sin of murder. Stevenson's militarism was as free from all the mere poetry of conquest and dominion as the militarism of an actual common soldier. It was mainly, that is to say, a poetry of watches and parades and camp-fires. He knew he was in the hosts of the Lord: he did not trouble much about the enemy. Here is his resemblance to that Church Militant, which, secure only in its own rectitude, wages war upon the nameless thing which has tormented and bewildered us from the beginning of the world.
Of course, this Stevensonian view of war suggests in itself that other question, touching which so much has been written about him, the subject of childishness and the child. It is true, of course, that the splendidly infantile character of Stevenson's mind saved him from any evil arising from his militarism. A child can hit his nurse hard with a wooden sword without being an aesthete of violence. He may enjoy a hard whack, but he need not enjoy the colour harmonies of black and blue as they are presented in a bruise. It is undoubtedly the truth, of course, that Stevenson's interest in this fighting side of human nature was mainly childish, that is to say, mainly subjective.
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He thought of the whole matter in the primary colours of poetic simplicity. He said with splendid gusto in one of his finest letters:
"Shall we never taste blood?" But he did not really want blood. He wanted crimson-lake.
But of course, in the case of so light and elusive a figure as Stevenson, even the terms which have been most definitely attached to him tend to become misleading and inadequate, and the terms "childlike" or "childish," true as they are down to a very fundamental truth, are yet the origin of a certain confusion. One of the greatest errors in existing literary philosophy is that of confusing the child with the boy.
Many great moral teachers, beginning with Jesus Christ, have perceived the profound philosophical importance of the child. The child sees everything freshly and fully; as we advance in life it is true that we see things in some degree less and less, that we are afflicted, spiritually and morally, with the myopia of the student. But the problem of the boy is essentially different from that of the child.
The boy represents the earliest growth of the earthly, unmanageable qualities, poetic still, but not so simple or so universal. The child enjoys the plain picture of the world: the boy wants the secret, the end of the story. The child wishes to dance in the sun; but the boy wishes to sail after buried treasure. The child enjoys a flower, and the boy a mechanical engine. And the finest and most peculiar work of Stevenson is rather that he was the first writer to treat seriously and poetically the aesthetic instincts of the boy.
He celebrated the toy gun rather than the rattle. Around the child and his rattle there has gathered a splendid service of literature and art; Hans Andersen and Charles Kingsley and George Macdonald and Walter Crane and Kate Greenaway and a list of celebrities a mile long bring their splendid gifts to the christening. But the tragedy of the helpless infant (if it be a male infant—girls are quite a different matter) is simply this, that, having been fed on literature and art, as fine in its way as Shelley and Turner up to the age of seven, he feels within him new impulses and interests growing, a hunger for action and knowledge, for fighting and discovery, for the witchery of facts and the wild poetry of geography. And then he is suddenly dropped with a crash out of literature, and can read nothing but "Jack Valiant among the Indians." For in the whole scene there is only one book which is at once literature, like Hans Andersen, and yet a book for boys and not for children, and its name is "Treasure Island."
G.K. Chesterton.
HOME FROM THE HILL.
First published in Blackwood's Magazine, February 1895
"Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill."—R.L.S.
Let the weary body lie
Where he chose its grave,
'Neath the wide and starry sky,
By the Southern wave;
While the island holds her trust
And the hill keeps faith,
Through the watches that divide
The long night of death.
But the spirit, free from thrall,
Now goes forth of these
To its birthright, and inherits
Other lands and seas:
We shall find him when we seek him
In an older home,—
By the hills and streams of childhood
Tis his weird to roam.
In the fields and woods we hear him
Laugh and sing and sigh;
Or where by the Northern breakers
Sea-birds troop and cry;
Or where over lonely moorlands
Winter winds fly fleet;
Or by sunny graves he hearkens
Voices low and sweet.
We have lost him, we have found him:
Mother, he was fain
Nimbly to retrace his footsteps;
Take his life again
To the breast that first had warmed it,
To the tried and true,—
He has come, our well beloved,
Scotland, back to you!
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
"Thin-legged, thin-chested, slight unspeakably,
Neat-footed and weak-fingered: in his face—
Lean, large-boned, curved of beak, and touched with race,
Bold-lipped, rich-tinted, mutable as the sea,
The brown eyes radiant with vivacity—-
There shines a brilliant and romantic grace,
A spirit intense and rare, with trace on trace
Of passion and impudence and energy."—W. E. HENLEY.
In "Memories and Portraits" Stevenson described his grandfather, the Rev. Lewis Balfour, Minister of Colinton, as "of singular simplicity of nature; unemotional, and hating the display of what he felt; standing contented on the old ways; a lover of his life and innocent habits to the end." "Now I often wonder," he added later, "what I have inherited from this old minister. I must suppose, indeed, that he was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, though I never heard it maintained that either of us loved to hear them."
The birthplace of Robert Louis Stevenson/ No. 17, Heriot Row, Edinburgh
Robert Louis Stevenson, only son of Thomas Stevenson, Civil Engineer, was born on November 13th, 1850, at No. 8, Howard Place, Edinburgh. The house was one of a row of unpretentious stone buildings, situated just north of the water of Leith. When Louis reached the age of two-and-a-half, a removal was made to a more commodious dwelling in Inverleith Terrace; but this proving unsuitable to the child's delicate health, the family settled at No. 17, Heriot Row, which continued to be their Edinburgh home for thirty years.
Of his father, Stevenson wrote also in "Memories and Portraits." "He was a man of a somewhat antique strain; with a blended sternness and softness that was wholly Scottish, and at first somewhat bewildering; with a profound essential melancholy of disposition, and (what often accompanies it) the most humorous geniality in company; shrewd and childish; passionately attached, passionately prejudiced; a man of many extremes, many faults of temper, and no very stable foothold for himself among life's troubles."
At the age of six/Other early photographs
In his nurse's possession there remains a treasured album containing a series of photographs of Robert Louis Stevenson, dating from babyhood onwards: the first, as an infant on his mother's knee; the second, at the age of twenty months; and again, at four years old, with bright, dark eyes, wide apart, and stiff curls framing his face. In the next, taken at the age of six, his hair is cropped to a manlike shortness. His hands have lost their baby podginess, and are nervous, long-fingered. He has a whip in his grasp, which falls slackly down, as if toys were not in his line, and he looks pensively ahead. A few years later he was photographed with his father, on whose shoulder one hand is resting, the other being tucked, boyishly, into his pocket. "Stevenson calls himself 'ugly' in his student days," writes Mr. Baildon; "but I think this is a term that never at any time fitted him. Certainly to him as a boy about fourteen (with the creed which he propounded to me, that at sixteen one was a man) it would not apply. In body Stevenson was assuredly badly set up. His limbs were long and lean and spidery, and his chest flat, so as almost to suggest some malnutrition, such sharp angles and corners did his joints make under his clothes. But in his face this was belied. His brow was oval and full, over soft brown eyes, that seemed already to have drunk the sunlight under southern vines. The whole face had a tendency to an oval Madonna-like type. But about the mouth and in the mirthful, mocking light of the eyes, there lingered ever a ready Autolyens roguery, that rather suggested the sly god Hermes masquerading as a mortal. The eyes were always genial, however gaily the lights danced in them; but about the mouth there was something a little tricksy and mocking, as of a spirit that already peeped behind the scenes of life's pageant and more than guessed its unrealities."
But it was at Colinton that Stevenson passed the happiest days of his childhood. "Out of my reminiscences of life in that dear place, all the morbid and painful elements have disappeared," he wrote; "I can recall nothing but sunshiny weather. That was my golden age: et ego in Arcadia vixi." In "Memories and Portraits" he drew a vivid picture of the Manse. "It was a place at that time like no other; the garden cut into provinces by a great hedge of beech, and overlooked by the church and the terrace of the churchyard, where the tombstones were thick, and after nightfall 'spunkies' might be seen to dance, at least by children; flowerpots lying warm in sunshine; laurels and the great yew making elsewhere a pleasing horror of shade; the smell of water rising from all round, with an added tang of paper-mills; the sound of water everywhere, and the sound of mills—the wheel and the dam singing their alternate strain; the birds from every bush and from every corner of the overhanging woods pealing out their notes till the air throbbed with them; and in the midst of all this the Manse."
Two other houses were closely connected with the pleasant memories of Stevenson's youth—Swanston Cottage, the country residence of his parents, and Colinton Manse, the abode of his maternal grandfather. The situation and history of the former he described in "Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh," indeed, the cottage and its garden have been immortalised by Stevenson, both in prose and in verse, "Upon the main slope of the Pentlands...a bouquet of old trees stands round a white farmhouse, and from a neighbouring dell you can see smoke rising and leaves rustling in the breeze. Straight above, the hills climb a thousand feet into the air. The neighbourhood, about the time of lambs, is clamorous with the bleating of flocks; and you will be awakened in the grey of early summer mornings by the barking of a dog, or the voice of a shepherd shouting to the echoes. This, with the hamlet lying behind unseen, is Swanston."
Stevenson's mother
There is no descriptive sketch of Stevenson's mother from his pen—a want probably accounted for by the fact that she survived him. In person she was tall and graceful; her vivacity and brightness were most attractive, and some idea of her undaunted energy and spirit may be gathered from Mr. Cope Cornford's "Robert Louis Stevenson," in which he says of Mrs. Thomas Stevenson, "At past sixty, after a lifetime of conventional Edinburgh, this lady broke up the house in Heriot Row, removed herself and her belongings to Apia, learned to ride bare-backed and to go bare-footed, and took on the life at Vailima and the life of Tusitala's native friends with equal gusto and intelligence. Stevenson was fond of calling himself a tramp and a gipsy, and that he could do so with justice was owing to the fact that his mother was Margaret Balfour."
Robert Louis Stevenson in fancy dress
From the days of his toy theatre onwards, Robert Louis Stevenson had always taken an intense interest in matters theatrical, and, with another of his friends, Fleeming Jenkin, he took part in numerous amateur performances. The portrait in fancy dress was no doubt the outcome of this favourite pursuit.
Stevenson at the age of twenty
Three-and-a-half years were employed by Stevenson in preparation for the profession of civil engineer. He spent the winter and sometimes the summer sessions at the University of Edinburgh. In 1871, however, he informed his father of his inclination to follow literary pursuits. Engineering was given up forthwith, and it was arranged that he should study for the Scottish Bar, to which he was called in July 1875.
Another important factor in his early life was the devotion of his nurse, Alison Cunningham, "Cummy," as he invariably called her, whose care during his ailing childhood did so much both to preserve his life and foster his love of tales and poetry, and of whom, until his death, he thought with the utmost constancy of affection. "My dear old nurse," he wrote to her, "—and you know there is nothing a man can say nearer his heart, except his mother or his wife—my dear old nurse, God will make good to you all the good that you have done, and mercifully forgive you all the evil."
Robert Louis Stevenson at the age of twenty-five
In the photograph you have him "bewigged as Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate, and there is the suspicion of a playful duplicity in the would-be wisdom-framed face."
Robert Louis Stevenson in the "Barts" hat, 1876
It was at this period that Stevenson came in close companionship with Sir Walter Simpson, "the Bart.," who was also studying Law. Sir Walter figured as "The Cigarette" to Stevenson's "Arethusa" in "The Inland Voyage."
Chalet la Solitude, Hyères
In the hope of finding a climate suited to his health, Stevenson went abroad at the close of 1882, and settled for a time at Hyères, where, by the end of March 1883, he was established in a house of his own—the Chalet la Solitude. This was a picturesque cottage, built in the Swiss manner, on the slope of the hill just above the town, and here, for some eight or nine months, he enjoyed the happiest period of his life. "We all dwell together and make fortunes in the loveliest house you ever saw, with a garden like a fairy story, and a view like a classical landscape," he wrote. "Little? Well, it is not large. But it is Eden and Beulah and the Delectable Mountains and Eldorado and the Hesperidean Isles and Bimini."
On his return with Sir Walter Simpson from the Inland Voyage, Stevenson became acquainted with Mrs. Osbourne, who was later to become his wife. The marriage took place in San Francisco in the spring of 1880.
A photograph taken in America, 1887
Year after year the struggle against ill-health was increasing, and in 1887 Stevenson's uncle, Dr. George Balfour, insisted on a complete change of climate, and a second voyage to America was undertaken. In the following June began the South Sea cruises, which, after three years of wandering, culminated in the period of settled residence at Samoa.
Molokai, the terrible leper settlement
While in the South Seas, in 1889, Stevenson paid a visit to Molokai, the leper settlement in the Hawaiian Islands, which resulted in his famous "Letter to Dr. Hyde," in defence of Father Damian, who died a month previous to his arrival. "The place as regards scenery is grand, gloomy, and bleak," he wrote, describing the settlement. "Mighty mountain walls descending sheer along the whole face of the island into a sea unusually deep; the front of the mountain, ivied and furred with clinging forest, one viridescent cliff; about half way, from east to west, the low, bare, stony promontory edged in between the cliff and the ocean; the two little towns (Kalawao and Kalaupapa) seated on either side of it, as bare almost as bathing machines upon a beach; and the population gorgons and chimaeras dire."
Stevenson's house at Vailima/ Dining- and reception hall at Vailima
About three miles inland, on the hills above Apia (the chief town of Upolu in the Samoan group), the Stevensons made their home in November 1890. The house itself was erected on a clearing of some three hundred acres, between two streams, from the westernmost of which the steep side of Vaea mountain, covered with forest, rose to a height of thirteen hundred feet above the sea. From this stream and its four tributaries the estate was called Vailima, the Samoan name for Five Waters. "This is a hard and interesting and beautiful life that we lead now," he wrote. "Our place is in a deep cleft of Vaea mountain, some six hundred feet above the sea, embowered in forest, which is our strangling enemy and which we combat with axes and dollars." The house was built of wood throughout, painted a dark green outside, with a red roof of corrugated iron. The building was finally enlarged in compatibility with the requirements of the family, and consisted, after December 1892, of three rooms, bath, storeroom, and cellars below, with five bedrooms and library upstairs. On the ground floor a verandah, twelve feet deep, ran in front of the whole house and along one side of it. The chief feature of the interior was the large hall. "My house is a great place," he added on another occasion; "we have a hall fifty feet long, with a great red-wood stair ascending from it, where we dine in state." The two posts of the big staircase were guarded by a couple of Burmese gilded idols.
Stevenson gave many glimpses of his life at Vailima in his letters to Mr. Sidney Colvin. The following extract seems typical:—"I know pleasure still; pleasure with a thousand faces and none perfect, a thousand tongues all broken, a thousand hands and all of them with scratching nails. High among these I place the delight of weeding out here alone by the garrulous water, under the silence of the high wood, broken by incongruous sounds of birds. And take my life all through, look at it fore and back and upside down—though I would very fain change myself—I would not change my circumstances."
Stevenson and his favourite horse, "Jack"
His favourite exercise was riding, and he was an excellent horseman. "Jack," the New Zealand pony which he bought in 1890, carried him well. "I do not say my Jack is anything extraordinary, he is only an island horse, and the profane might call him a Punch, and his face is like a donkey's, and natives have ridden him and he has no mouth in consequence, and occasionally shies. But his merits are equally surprising, and I don't think I should ever have known Jack's merits if I had not been riding up of late on moonless nights."
Tembinoka, the King of Apemama/Mataafa, the "Rebel" King
Stevenson's influence with the natives was probably as great as that of any white resident in the islands. He was certainly respected by them as a whole, and by many he was beloved. Indeed, his friendship with Tembinoka, the king of Apemama, whose character is described in "The South Seas," forms an important episode in that volume. "He is the Napoleon of the group, poet, tyrant, altogether a man of mark. 'I got power,' is his favourite word; it interlards his conversation." Another chief, with whom Stevenson was in great sympathy, was Mataafa, the "rebel" king who was defeated and banished in August 1893, upon outbreak of war in the island. Mataafa he believed to be the one man of governing capacity among the native chiefs, and it was his desire that the Powers should conciliate rather than crush him. "Mataafa is the nearest thing to a hero in my history, and really a fine fellow; plenty of sense, and the most dignified, quiet, gentle manners."
During Stevenson's four years' residence in Samoa, no fewer than eight British men-of-war entered the harbour, and at the time of the bombardment of the rebels of Atua, H.M.S. Curaçoa was more often stationed at Apia than any of the others. "We have in port the model warship of Great Britain," he wrote, describing a cruise to Manùa: "she is called the Curaçoa...a ship that I would guarantee to go anywhere it was possible for men to go, and accomplish anything it was permitted man to attempt."
Robert Louis Stevenson at the house of the Hon. B. R. Wise/Ala Loto Alofa, the "Road of the Loving Heart"/Kava drinking at the opening of the "Ala Loto Alofa," Oct. 1894.
After taking up his abode at Vailima, Stevenson only twice returned to the world of populous cities. In the early part of 1893 he spent several weeks in Sydney, where he visited his friend, the Hon. H.H. Wise. In September of the same year be made a voyage to Honolulu. On his return to Apia in November, he was gratified by the mark of esteem and gratitude extended to him by the native chiefs, who cleared, dug, and completed the road to Vailima—till then a mere track, which could only be traversed in dry weather by wagons or by a buggy, goods being taken to the house by two New Zealand pack-horses. On the estate itself the route lay by a lane of limes, and this was cut off by the Ala Loto Alofa, or "Road of the Loving Heart," which the chiefs cut to commemorate Stevenson's kindness to them during their imprisonment by the European Powers. "Considering the great love of Tusitala, in his loving care of us in our distress in the prison, we have therefore prepared a splendid gift. It shall never he muddy, it shall endure for ever, this road that we have dug." Upon its completion a great Kava drinking was held, there was a solemn returning of thanks, and Stevenson gave an address, which was his best and most outspoken utterance to the people of Samoa.
Only two months later, on December 3rd, 1894, Stevenson died. He was in his forty-fifth year. The Union Jack which flew over the house was hauled down and placed over the body as it lay, in the hall where he had spent some of the most delightful hours of his life.
Entertainment given to the band of the Katoomba by the Stevensons
It was Stevenson's great delight to keep open house at Vailima, and especially to organise any festivity in which the natives could share. An example of this hospitality was the entertainment given to the band of the Katoomba, on September 12th, 1893. "I got leave from Captain Bickford to have the band of the Katoomba come up, and they came, fourteen of 'em, with drum, fife, cymbals and bugles, blue jackets, white caps, and smiling faces. The house was all decorated with scented greenery above and below. We had not only our nine outdoor workers, but a contract party that we took on in charity to pay their war-fine; the band besides, as it came up the mountain, had collected a following of children by the way, and we had a picking of Samoan ladies to receive them. They played to us, they danced, they sang, they tumbled."
On the tombstone, built of great blocks of cement, are carved the Scotch thistle and the native ante, and between them is a bronze plate bearing the following inscription, his own requiem:—
"Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me die;
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me,—
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill."
His devoted Samoans cut an almost perpendicular pathway to the top of the mountain Vaea, which he had designed as his last resting-place. Thither with almost herculean labours they bore him, and decked his grave with costly presents, of the most valuable and highly-prized mats. There he lies, by a strange, almost ironic fate, under other stars than ours. Driven forth, not, thank God, by neglect nor by any injustice of man, but by the scourge of sickness and threat of death and the unfriendliness of his native skies, into his beautiful exile amid tropic seas, he draws, and long will draw, perhaps while the language lasts, with a strange tenderness, the hearts of men to that far and lonely Samoan mount.
Cover of first edition of "Robert Louis Stevenson" (restored)


Years ago, we used to scour flea markets for oversize damask napkins that were once a mainstay of early 20th century tables. They'd range anywhere from 20-to-36-inches square. Putting one across your lap at table felt incredibly luxurious: like being tucked into bed while sitting at a wonderful feast.
An inexpensive — though not nearly as luxurious — alternative to linen is muslin. Since it usually comes in a murky beige color, we like to bleach it white by throwing it in the washing machine with about 1 1/2 cups of bleach; rinse twice to remove the chlorine smell, then dry in a dryer. Smooth out and rip napkins as directed above.
Hi Sally: I have several yards of linen sitting in my closet just waiting for the time when I can source a sewing machine to sew them into napkins. (Do I need to mention that its been sitting there for several years?) So I LOVE this solution but wonder how well the unhemmed napkins hold up in the washer. Do they continue to fray and shed threads? Do you avoid the drier?
Hi Dana, Well, I did these experiments because I too have years of linen sitting in my closet waiting to sew. I find the unhemmed napkins hold up fine in the washer (but I do recommend washing the swath of linen first, because you won't know how it will shrink until you've washed it. I do this for any sewing fabric project where I want to be able to wash the items repeatedly — essential with slipcovers). Occasionally some threads will come loose but I just pull them off. I put the linen in a medium hot dryer and then smooth them out as they come out. Then fold them. Easy peasy.
Thank you Sally! I'm going to do this for sure.
Wow, I had no idea. What a GREAT simple technique: literally pressing and smoothing them while their still damp. Thanks a million!
Oh, and the best part it works beautifully for tablecloths too.
I learned from my weaving teacher to rinse anything that has been bleached in a solution of white vinegar and water. It takes away the smell, but the reason for that (and the more important reason to use the rinse) is that it stops the reaction. Bleach that isn't "stopped" will keep eating away at fibers and weaken them, even when you think it has all been rinsed away.
I use the "press" method for pillowcases, too. Also fabric place mats … and flat sheets.
those are beautiful napkins. I have some of this gigantic damask napkins – still find them at secondhand stores.
I like the pressing while damp technique – I'm going to try that. I rarely use my dryer because I like to line-dry things, but I could see using it in this manner.
I inherited over four dozen linen napkins from my grandmother. I used them while my children were growing up and now I use them with my grandchildren almost every day. They still look beautiful. And while I fold them damp during the winter, once I bring my summer linens out, my iron comes out as well, When I have a free morning I set my dining room up in a "French Laundry". I fill my spray bottle up with water and five drops of lavender oil and spray as I iron my shirts, capris, pillow cases, napkins and top sheets (after the sheets have been folded). The entire house smells like lavender. Sometimes I will take my two six year old granddaughter's fancy cotton dresses into my French laundry. It's amazing how relaxing it is. Pour a cup of tea and put on some quiet music and it becomes meditative. Thank you to your generation for continuing to live with, and enjoy cotton.
GORGEOUS! As things wear out in my house I've been trying to replace them with linen- napkins, pillow covers, tablecloths… it's such a wonderful fabric! I would love to link to your tutorial if you didn't mind.
How does linen hold up to stains? I love this idea !!
Great. It's totally washable. Just use this stuff.
You can also repurpose linen sheets, tableclothes, etc that may have a rip or permanent stain. Rip em into napkins!
Thank you so much for this little titorial. I have just purchased 26 metres (Australia) of linen cotton blend to make napkins and table runners for my daughters wedding. So hope it works out and linen cotton blend works ok. The pure linen was too expensive.


2 bedroom apartment with 87 sq. m, balconies 1 sq. m, set in a new development constructed in the early 20th century, with a unique centrality, a few steps from Marques do Pombal and the beginning of Avenida da Liberdade. The refurbishment of the building – excellent example of that period – preserves its original facade and other original structural and decorative elements, combining it with contemporary, functional and comfortable spaces.


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text:
Pride in the AFLW: Interview with Bulldog Hannah Scott
February 24, 2018 by Kasey Symons 7 Comments
Much has been said during the week in the lead up to Friday night's first ever AFLW Pride match between the Western Bulldogs and Carlton. Kate O'Halloran wrote beautifully in The Guardian about what the game meant to the LGBTI community, the team at This AFL Life discussed the meaning and complications surrounding the game that featured a club that made an emphatic statement during the marriage equality plebiscite by making no statement at all, but perhaps the most raw, moving and emotional commentary was in a video released by the Western Bulldogs featuring defender Hannah Scott.
The video is Hannah's journey and as she sits alongside her partner of almost four years, Jess Havlin, she details the fear she felt when she was trying to tell the world who she was in a world that made it clear to her that who she was, was different and being different was something to be ashamed of.
Hannah is candid, honest and brave. She didn't have to do this video. She didn't have to share her story and have it in the public eye, but she did because despite now (finally) having marriage equality in Australia and society progressing in terms of acceptance, she knows it's still an incredibly fraught time for the LGBTI community. Especially in traditionally male dominated spaces like sport.
Make what you will of politics in sport and club's being social justice warriors, for what was achieved on Friday night was not just an important stance on equality and acceptance to a marginalised community but absolutely necessary in highlighting how much more than just football AFLW is.
After recording the highest score in AFLW and having teammate Brooke Lochland also write herself into the history books by booting seven goals, Hannah's response to the support she felt in the stands in front of 8,987 fans at Whitten Oval was more about the history created by her club in being strong in their stance on equality.
'It is really hard to put into words. I've gone through a lot of things to get where I am and not just in life but in football as well and the Western Bulldogs have totally embraced me and everyone here.
To know that the culture that they want is so clear and equality is a massive thing they're really striving for, I just feel like I belong here and I don't know what else I can really say that imparts that more.
I just feel like I'm at home here.'
These initiatives speak volumes and to a collective of people who have been traditionally kept out and women's football is not just about bringing women in to space where they have not only been unwelcome but actively pushed out, it's about everyone who has historically been unwelcome and told to go back to some preconceived notion about where they belong. Women's football is about gender, sexuality, class, race, religion, passion, determination and the social benefits of sport.
The Daughters of the West celebrate after defeating Carlton by 73 points
in the first ever AFLW Pride game.
Photo: Kasey Symons
Emma Race on The Outer Sanctum put it so eloquently in this week's podcast and I thoroughly recommend listening to the entire episode.
She says in regards to the criticism of the low scoring (until last night) and low skill level that, 'for decades we female fans of footy, we've supported the men's game, we've paid our memberships, we've bought the merchandise but we've also been asked by our friends and strangers to justify the behaviour of the players, the stance of the clubs, and the morality of the code that we love.
Now, I love my team and I love this game but I don't know how to reconcile the racism, the sexism and the misogyny around the game and I can no longer defend it. On Twitter, recently I was told that it was a total cop out to cite the positive social ripples that the AFLW has created in defence of the scrappy opening night game and this has stayed with me because what I can't do is split the joy that AFLW gives me into on field and off field experiences. Because the AFLW gives us something to hold on to, to keep us invested in the code, it's a safe place for us to celebrate our love of this game so I can easily defend what lack of skills there may be and defending the numbers on the scoreboard that is so easy because it doesn't hurt my sisters, their kids, the code or the community.'
Scott sees this. She has experienced this and that is why she put herself out there this week in sharing her story. However, it doesn't define her. She's still a professional athlete pursuing the ultimate prize with her team and her Western Bulldogs have a big few weeks ahead of them to achieve it.
After going down in an absolute cracking game against the Crows last week and losing Captain Katie Brennan (again), the critics were out in force speculating the Bulldogs' season may have been over, having previously lost another key forward in Isabel Huntington. What they put on the park last night will surely silence their naysayers – as well as those who have written off AFLW as 'too low-scoring'.
'It's never nice losing players and we've lost a couple of cracking girls and I think we just really tried to focus on how we wanted to play for them, so a lot of passion was there and we just had a clear game plan. We try to keep pretty internal and work on the things we need to work on and not focus too much on what the outsiders are saying because they're not in here, they don't see what goes on inside our walls and we've got a great amount of belief in everyone.'
Hannah's game has come a long way as well from season one as she develops her game now to fit the defensive role the that coach Paul Groves has asked her to play.
'I've been trying to work on my efficiency a bit more, I think last season I got a lot of the ball but maybe bombed it a little bit too much so I've been trying to work on hitting a target and just trying to work on my craft as I'm not actually used to playing that much of a defensive role, when I was drafted I was a midfielder and I'm just trying to work on that and be there for my team mates as much as possible.
I'm definitely enjoying it, we've got such an amazing mid field and I knew it was going to be hard for me to break into that so I'm just keen to play my role for the team. I love running off half back and the girls down there are so selfless, it's like a little team within a team down there.'
Now at the half way mark, the Bulldogs have stamped their position in the competition as contenders for the flag and we'll all be watching to see what they can do in the next couple of weeks.
'I think they way that we're playing selfless footy. It's not about what you can do personally for yourself it's what you can do to build up your team mates around you and play the best brand of footy that we can and I think it's definitely working when we stick to it, we're really hard to beat so I think, yes, we did really well tonight but we're just over halfway through the season so we've got a lot of work to do so we'll stick to the guns. '
And the AFLW community will be sticking to their guns too. Enjoying this competition, the camaraderie between supporters, the acceptance, the understanding, the celebration of people and their stories, their histories and their perspectives in safe and collaborative place. We will continue to celebrate the pride of the game and people that are a part of it.
About Kasey Symons
Kasey Symons a writer and PhD Candidate at Victoria University. Her research is focused on gendered issues in sports cultures (primarily AFL) at a fan level. Kasey is a born and raised Victorian who barracks for the West Coast Eagles and yes, she knows that is weird.
Yvette Wroby says
Well said Kasey. There are so many positives in the games, so many stories, surprises and developments. The meaning of the footy and the changes in the way we see women athletes. So many changes. I even barracked for the Pies tonight as they told yet another great story of the season. As I wind down for sleep I wonder how others can't see what we are seeing.
Kasey Symons says
Thanks Yvette – every week this game gives us something great and I am loving every minute of it.
Jennifer Muirden says
Ditto Yvette and Kasey! Last night's AFLW Dees v Pies clash in oppressively hot Darwin was a belter of a game to watch! Can't believe I'm going to say this / type this out loud … but I actually wanted the Pies to win!! They whole heartedly deserved their first win for the 2018 season. Great to finally see Mo Hope's markedly improved on-field performance!
Looking forward to catching up with you both at the Fitzroy North Arms this Saturday night for the AFL ADE v CAR game. Should be a fierce contest.
Kirst says
The Trans Community was not celebrating this GLB Exclusive event whilst the AFLW has banned trans players whilst the IOC. Commonwealth Games even the AFL don't
Smokie says
It is tough, I will admit it:
But to ignore, ignore, ignore the haters and/or those that just don't get it,
makes the season so much ore enjoyable.
It is their loss.
Good point Kirst, definitely something that is overlooked and I can't imagine the pain that has been caused to the Trans Community by the AFL by not only not having a trans-athlete policy, but by actively ignoring the issue and making decisions without doing any research – especially when you point out that the IOC have a policy they could easily have adopted. I'm definitely trying to be more intersectional in my approach to thinking about the communities this game excludes as I have a very privileged position being a white, heterosexual, able, middle-class woman, so while I'm fighting to find my place as a woman in a male dominated space, I know that my position is very different to other women fighting different battles for acceptance and I hope this game I love is more loving to the groups it has excluded soon.
Thanks for commenting and highlighting this.
Terrific work, Kasey and Hannah. The more we read and listen the more we learn to broaden our knowledge and understand who language and culture excludes and why. Stories like Hannah's help to peel away the layers of misinformation, indifference and irrational fear. That is a good thing. Kudos.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


I am often inspired by Swedish homes and their simplicity. (Though frequently I may not be simple.) Even though it is a couple of weeks away, I am sharing it now, because I am working on other things.
This is a simple advent "wreath".
I bought pinecones, because we don't have pinecones here.
I normally would have candles, but I left them out of the refrigerator in the potting shed, so they melted in the summer.
First, I cut a piece of floral foam to the size that would fit nicely in the bowl.
Then I decided where the holes would go on the foam so there would be enough space to fit a pinecone in the middle.
Then I pushed the candles into the foam carefully, so as not to break them, and then removed them.
Next, I used my hot glue gun to put a nickel sized dot at the bottom of the bowl to secure foam.
Then I put hot glue in the holes and placed the four candles.
My daughter than placed fifteen pinecones of various sizes to cover the foam; so, the number of pinecones depends on the size of the pinecones and the size of the bowl.
Then we tied a piece of twine around the third week's candle.
I think this could be done to make a menorah in a different shaped dish, though I might use something other than menorah candles, because they melt really fast and are very short by the last day.
I also think it could be done colorfully or traditionally.
I love Nordic Christmas decor too. There is something so wonderful about them.
It's very pretty! I love the simple yet elegant look.
It Looks so pretty, I like it.
This is so pretty. It's always enlightening to remember that something so simple can be elegant.
Hello Su you are speaking to me ... Rustic elegance with Nordic flare. I'm into simple and this is it. I spy - Loving the blue metal book trolley with wheels!
That is very pretty! I love the sparkly ones!! Simple designs are so classic and lovely - great ideas!
I love pinecones too. Add some glitter as you have, and they are even prettier! Love your idea!
I love it! Simple and elegant...nothing better. I almost bought two big white pinecones at a craft fair this weekend. They were so pretty, but I wasn't sure what to do with them.
So lovely!! This would be a beautiful simple centerpiece for a round dining table!
It is lovely! The simple things are the best. I love the Nordic blogs and last winter pinned simple things as it seems like what I've done in the past is too much, too busy.
Advent devotions with our children when they were growing up are some of my best Christmas memories. The day after Thanksgiving instead of going to the mall we went to the florist and bought purple and pink heather and came home to make our advent wreath. Such good memories of those days and I hope they think so too.
Love the simplicity of this...very nice.
I am going for a simple theme this year and this is so pretty. Love the pinecone with the white candles. So pretty.
This is just beautiful. Thanks for sharing how you put it together.
I love how simple and elegant the candles and pine cones look in the bowl! T F S!
This is so beautiful and it coordinates perfectly with your home decor. I think the scented pine cones would be lovely in this wreath as well. I'm super afraid of lit candles in the house so I always go with flameless ones.
Such simple elegance and beauty Su. I really love the idea. Easy and inexpensive.
I really like this idea. I like simple and elegant. I have really changed my way of decorating to be simple and I use a lot of nature.
I love Nordic Christmas decor.
That turned out so pretty!
I wish I could have candles but I'm afraid the critters would burn the house down!
I love your advent wreath. So simple and pretty.
Sometimes simple is best! Love the pine cones surrounded by candles. I occasionally use real candles, but mostly flameless ones to be safe.
I like this! So simple and clean and elegant. Great idea to put a spot of glue in the holes to keep those candles from tipping! I'm going to use that idea this year. I'll use my traditional Advent wreath and also this one. Love it!
Yes Su, I too am drawn to a Nordic feel, this is the direction I want to go I. With my tree if I can find the right one, you pine cone candle holder bowl looks just like JDA and would appear in their magazine without a doubt. I have to mention the chair and the library cart, I love that cart you could do a whole post on that piece.
See you soon dear and all that you are creating.
Keep inspiring your Swedish look, we love it too!
Thank you, Dore. I just picked up my magazine yesterday, and I am enjoying it. There is one shop that I know of that carries it, and I visit it once a month to pick it up.
very beautiful. This simplicity is in the end just timeless.
Very pretty. Love the touch of the baker's twine!
I too love the simplicity of the Swedish homes and I love seeing the advent candles on Instagram.
Thank you, Carol. It would look pretty in colors too.
Such a pretty accent for a tabletop! I'm trying to simplify my Christmas decor, and the Scandinavian look really appeals to me too.
Thank you, Vickie. Happy Thanksgiving!
It looks so beautiful !! I love these decorations !!
BEAUTIFUL ... Elegant and just the perfect tough for your home.
I love the simplicity of it. It looks rustic and pure.
So sweet....I love it! I might try to make one like yours rather than the huge aden wreaths we make at church every year. I like yours better, and it would be much easier on our allergies!
So pretty and perfect, Su. I love the clean, natural look of it.
I love Scandinavian decorating Su and your advent candles look so lovely. I've just featured them on my Sunday Features post at Shabby Art Boutique.
Love it! Scandinavian simplicity at its best. A wonderful style that I find very appealing. Well done, Su.
simple CAN be beautiful. nicely done!!!
Looks so pretty, the place with the books.
I could have enjoyed the place just now.


The Budget 2019 has been shocking for Congress party. The middle class and poor farmers are dancing in the rain of happiness! Indeed, Lok Sabha election is near, and Interim Finance Minister Piyush Goyal presents the budget keeping that in mind.
• Setting up of Rashtriya Kamdhenu Aayog.
• Allocation for Rashtriya Gokul Mission increased to Rs. 750 crore.
• Enhance production and productivity of cows.
Here is another tweet by MyGovIndia that further summarizes the budget.
Certainly, the Budget for New India offered relaxation to all the poor and middle-class families. The salaried individuals are especially joyful because of this news. The event, however, inspired the individuals to create new online trends and budget 2019 viral memes.
Applaud to whoever made this. This video has certainly become an eye-catching joke of the year!
Shocked Congress. I can just imagine their dull and depressed faces here.
Literally true! Comment if you guys agree with me.
No comments because I'm busy laughing my heads off right now.
This is how the middle-class danced after Budget was out.
Do you need a short and concise explanation of Budget 2019? Here it is.
This is how the middle-class people think. Comment if you're one of them.
Yes, indeed, Piyush Goyal is a hero for Middle-class individuals having a job paying less than 5 lakhs a year.
Well, they are indeed depressed, surprised, anxious, shocked, and helpless all at the same time.
Seriously, tell me the name of the person who made this. I'm going to give him/her a Meme award of the year!
Yes, Zero chances. Even Google didn't have an answer to that.
Dedicated to all the followers of BJP, enjoy.
Who else is going to vote for BJP this election?
I never imagined that the Army would be proud of PM Modi too!
Well, of course. Legends take slow and surprising steps.
Comment if you feel the same.
Are you one among these?
Only honest individuals would be this happy to hear about Budget 2019.
I'm not sure if this actually happened, but this is funny.
Comment if you're going to do this!
Certainly, the Expectations of the public has risen with the Budget 2019. It has been surprising for the opposition parties. PM Modi, however, should be more cautious in future. The Congress Party will be angrier after the News of the budget. They can come up with new strategies to win. However, after the budget, I can only ask you for this: How's the Josh?


Cohousing is the ultimate expression of community – people who like each other, share each other it's values and want to spend time together.
In our case, cohousing is a condominium where you choose your neighbors. It's a familiar community where decisions are made by consensus among friends. You will own your individual unit, and there will be spacious shared facilities, including a full kitchen, group dining area, entertainment and recreation rooms, and a view deck on each floor.
Cohousing is exploding across suburban America. Walnut Commons is unique in that it's a single building and decidedly urban, situated a short walk from Santa Cruz 's eclectic downtown, legendary boardwalk, and popular beaches.
There's never a dull moment in Santa Cruz. Everything you could want — music, pubs, night clubs, natural-foods groceries, restaurants, cafes, bookstores, biking, hiking, surfing, even ukulele clubs — right next door.
Walnut Commons is an urban community that fosters mutual support and cooperation while respecting privacy. We encourage ecologically responsible living, nonviolence, a healthy living environment, and we value active participation in the local and larger world.
Mutual support includes listening for the needs of others and being willing to express our own needs, trusting others will listen, recognize, and facilitate meeting those needs.
Cooperation is a spirit and attitude of responsibility to others by participating in tasks, meetings, and group activities for the welfare of the community as a whole.
Ecologically responsible living is a spirit and attitude of responsibility to others by participating in tasks, meetings, and group activities for the welfare of the community as a whole.
Nonviolence includes being kind, living in a weapon-free community, practicing compassionate communication and promoting a peaceful world.
Healthy living environment includes an environment that is safe and secure, with good quality air and food, and attention to people's health needs (such as allergies, diet, physical access and mobility).


The outer thighs, known as the Nitty Gritty at SHIFT, can be a frustrating problem area for women. Although the best exercises differ for everybody, you can tone up thighs with specific exercises as part of an overall fitness routine. The key is to stay consistent with your workouts and do a combination of cardio for fat-loss with strength training for muscle-building benefits. You will also need to eat a healthy diet that is low in calories to assist in weight-loss all over the body including the thighs.


Countries that Expand Internet Access and Use Can Spur Digital Economy Growth.
Greasing the Wheels of the Internet Economy is a new report by Boston Consulting Group, commissioned by ICANN. The report takes a look at Internet access and use around the world, and the economic importance of an open single Internet. The report's "e-friction" index describes and quantifies factors that inhibit the growth and maturity of the Internet economy. It measures obstacles to access to, and engagement with, the Internet for both individuals and businesses across four components; Infrastructure, Industry, Individual and Information.
Easy access and use of the Internet can dramatically affect the growth of national economies, according to new research by The Boston Consulting Group. The research, described in a new BCG report, measured the constraints on Internet use in 65 countries and found that those with fewer limitations on online activity can have larger digital economies. The difference can amount to 2.5 percent of GDP.
The new report introduces the Boston CG e-Friction Index, which ranks countries according to four types of e-friction: infrastructure-related frictions that limit basic access; industry and individual frictions that affect the ability of companies and consumers to engage in online transactions; and information frictions that involve availability of, and access to, online content.
• The countries in the top quintile—those with the lowest e-friction—tend to score well across all four components: they have strong infrastructures and supportive business and regulatory environments.
• At the other end of the scale, issues of basic access, price, and speed—common problems in developing economies—are widespread, as are shortcomings related to capital, labor, and consumers' ability to conduct business online.
• Among small and midsize enterprises (SMEs), Web users are 50 percent more likely to sell products and services outside of their immediate region and 63 percent more likely to source products and services from outside of their region.
• SMEs encounter a range of frictions that slow or prevent them from fully exploiting the Internet's potential. Their biggest single concern is the protection of consumer data online—a prevalent issue for consumers as well.
The report argues that good policy in a few key areas can have a significant impact on e-friction and speed the development of Internet use and individual countries' Internet economies. Policies that promote investment, especially in infrastructure, are essential. Policy responses that fail to take into account how quickly technologies and the innovations they enable are evolving can cause more, rather than less, friction.
Tribunal de Justicia de la Unión Europea, Vista pública sobre el ejercicio de derechos frente a buscadores.
El Tribunal de Justicia de la Unión Europea (TJUE) celebra el próximo día 26 de febrero en Luxemburgo Vista pública para tratar las cuestiones prejudiciales planteadas por la Audiencia Nacional en marzo de 2012 sobre el ejercicio de derechos frente a buscadores de Internet.
A través de la cuestión prejudicial, la Sección Primera de la Sala de lo Contencioso Administrativo de la Audiencia Nacional solicita el pronunciamiento del TJUE sobre cómo interpretar la directiva europea de protección de datos en relación con los recursos interpuestos por el principal buscador de internet contra las resoluciones en las que la AEPD ha amparado los derechos de oposición y de cancelación de datos personales de ciudadanos frente a buscadores en Internet.


Student Kevin Isbister has been brooding on Lesson No. 4, in which we discussed casino gambling and how it becomes more attractive to the masses when there is less risk-taking available in the economy at large. Says he: [Your] reasoning implies that something that I don't believe is a reasonable assumption; that the people who most frequent gambling establishments have the means to invest. Casinos around the country aren't patronized en masse by rich Texas oilmen, who possess the financial means and likely the accompanying smarts to recognize a bad investment when they see them. The bulk of a casino's income is generated by lower-middle-class to outright poor people who are enticed by the chance, remote as it is, to pull themselves into a higher tax bracket by putting some quarters in a slot machine."
The assumption of mine which you infer is that I wish to have the very rich who are in the casinos bet instead on small business. I was trying to make the argument that casino gambling in some, but not all ways, is a symptom of the problems in the general political economy -- where it has become increasingly difficult for an ambitious poor man to lift himself up by hard work, risk-taking and enterprise. Perhaps it would help if I turned the problem around, and began with a perfectly functioning political economy, and you would see that casino gambling and state lotteries do lose much of their appeal when individuals can work hard and save a sufficient amount to either invest in others in order to climb into a higher economic class, or invest in themselves to that end.
First, we should make clear that most of the savings and investment in the United States is done by ordinary people in the lower- and middle-income classes. That's where most of the money is in a $6 trillion economy. We don't expect the 125 million people who are in the work force to "know a bad investment when they see one." That's why we have a market economy, in which tiny amounts of money are deposited in banks, S&Ls and credit unions or pension funds or mutual funds. People who are supposed to know good from bad investments work for these institutions. They gather the mites into bundles and package them for other people who show up in search of capital. The mechanics of the marketplace requires that the experts -- the broad class of financial intermediaries -- be able to assess the likelihood of the potential return on investment to these bundles of cash.
In a casino, except when big wins are involved, there is no tax collector involved in the proceedings. Almost everyone knows which casinos have better payoffs, "looser slots," and that returns on the table games are fixed by the laws of probability. When you increase your savings out of your after-tax earnings, the financial intermediary in assessing the risk of investment must take into account the tax take of the government on a successful investment. This becomes very complicated, especially when the inflation rate is figured into the equation.
Remember, on one side of the economy we have people who are able to save something out of their after-tax income and on the other side people who need immediate resources to accomplish what they wish to accomplish. The financial intermediary is between them, undertaking the job of matching the funds of one with the needs of the other. When the intermediary sees the after-tax returns decreasing because the government has raised tax rates on returns, or expected inflation will produce fictitious returns on capital that will be taxed as real returns on capital, the intermediary will reject the "bet," because the after-tax payoff is too uncertain or likely negative. When the enterprise is rejected because of that burden of taxation, the number of people who would have been employed in that enterprise remain unemployed or underemployed. A small part of the economy that would have been, is not. A risk that would have been taken at X payoff, is no longer willing to bet at X - T payoff.
As you add these experiences up week by week, month by month, year by year, your healthy, growing economy will go into reverse gear -- which is what the U.S. economy has been doing for the past 30 years. The measure of the economy's production has been showing an increase, but that is only because the decline in capital formation has been offset by the number of people working. That is, it takes more and more people working to produce the same amount of usable goods. The government also measures unusable goods as part of "economic growth," so we are stuck with having 615 out of every 100,000 citizens in jail -- the highest percentage of any nation on earth. The cost of tracking them down, bringing them to justice, and caring for them in a prison system, is all counted as Gross Domestic Product! We also have almost a million lawyers plus the several million who work for them and several million accountants who count as part of the GDP. All of this economic waste is the product of a tax system and a monetary inflation that has smothered capital formation. In this corrupting atmosphere, the potential return on the investment of a dollar in Las Vegas becomes competitive with the investment of a dollar in your future through the market economy.
I hope you can see that when you have a market mechanism trying to link up savings over here with the demand for saving over there, there can be no deal if there is no positive return in the calculation. This is why the breakdown of capitalism because of poor tax and monetary policies will almost always lead to a socialist government. Because a people have to save and invest for the future to survive -- and must take risks to that end -- if the market mechanism will not let them do it, the people will turn to government to do it for them. As inefficient as the government is next to a free market, at least it doesn't pay taxes, so it can take risks which have positive returns, up to a point.
These should be simple concepts for those of you who have not been educated in a demand-side world, but they are almost impossible to grasp for an academically trained Ph.D. economist. The economics profession today says our problem is that our people do not save enough. The problem is that the tax and monetary system erected on the advice of these Ph.D. economists prevents the people from coming together in the marketplace to share their surplus time, energy and talent with others who have great ideas on how to succeed in business, but are short of time, energy and talent. From a supply-side perspective, we have too much savings in our economy -- an enormous fraction of our population which should be producing usable goods and services is instead "saving" itself from productive efforts. Practically the entire prison population is there because the society made it unattractive for them to take the normal risks that would result in self-realization, forcing them underground, where you only pay a confiscatory "tax" when you are caught.
Your question was an excellent one. All growth is the result of risk-taking and the human impulse is to advance by taking risks that have commensurate rewards. If the "system" of government discourages risk-taking through normal means of work, saving and investment, people will take abnormal risks outside the system, through legal or illegal gambling and even crime.


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Journalist and best-selling author Linda McQuaig has developed a reputation for challenging the establishment.
As a reporter for The Globe and Mail, she won a National Newspaper Award in 1989 for a series of articles which sparked a public inquiry into the activities of Ontario political lobbyist Patti Starr, and eventually led to Starr's imprisonment.
As a Senior Writer for Maclean's magazine, McQuaig (along with business writer Ian Austen) probed the early business dealings of Conrad Black, uncovering how Black used political connections to avoid prosecution. An irate Black suggested on CBC radio that McQuaig should be horsewhipped.
In 1991, she was awarded an Atkinson Fellowship for Journalism in Public Policy to study the social welfare systems in Europe and North America.
McQuaig has been a rare voice in the mainstream media challenging the prevailing economic and political dogma — as a columnist in the financial pages of the National Post in the late 1990s, and since 2002, as an op-ed columnist in the Toronto Star.
She has also taken on the status quo in a series of controversial books -- including seven national best-sellers -- such as Shooting the Hippo (short-listed for the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction), The Cult of Impotence, It's the Crude, Dude: War, Big Oil and the Fight for the Planet and Holding the Bully's Coat: Canada and the U.S. Empire. Her most recent book is The Trouble with Billionaires, co-authored with Neil Brooks.
Her rabble column appears courtesy of the Toronto Star.
Trudeau's climate plan is a dangerous fraud
Justin Trudeau's climate package gives us a false sense that we can dramatically increase output from Alberta's tar sands without seriously imperiling the world, and ourselves.
Ontario Conservatives should scrap the privatized Highway 407 contract
Doug Ford has shown a willingness to rip up contracts with business. Why not be bold and discard the mother of all Ontario's bad deals with business -- the privatization of Highway 407?
Ford fakes deficit concerns to justify brutal spending cuts
Doug Ford's measures -- despite his claim to be acting "for the people" -- redirect resources from ordinary people to corporations and the rich.
Why aren't we hearing about the growing threat of nuclear war?
Unlike the climate change battle, where a worldwide movement is managing to push the issue onto the political agenda, the fight to rid the world of nuclear weapons has become regarded as hopeless.
Billionaire claims about capitalism's benefits are wrong
Claims by billionaires like Bill Gates about capitalism heroically lifting humankind out of poverty turn out to be easily debunked. Imagine if that news got out.
Canada talks democracy while U.S. eyes Venezuela's oil
The Trudeau government talks about restoring democracy to Venezuela, hoping to keep the focus off any suspicions that our involvement is helping Washington get control of Venezuela's oil reserves.
Trudeau bold on pipeline investment, but timid when it comes to electric cars
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau jumped on buying an aging, climate-destroying pipeline, but has shrugged and shown no interest in using taxpayer dollars to create a Canadian-owned automaker.
Canada's compliance with Huawei extradition gives support to Trump's international thuggery
By co-operating with the U.S. request to extradite Chinese executive Meng Wanzhou, Canada is enabling rogue and reckless behaviour by the Trump administration.
In wake of Lac-Mégantic disaster, why do circumstances that led to crash still remain?
After Lac-Mégantic, we need proper regulation of railways -- and every other aspect of our economy that requires government oversight to protect us from corporations whose only interest is profit.
Ford's labour law rollbacks are another blow against Ontario workers
Doug Ford is scrapping labour legislation, updated last year after a two-year review with extensive public consultations, and replacing it with a bill hastily assembled behind closed doors.


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Podcasts and presentations: July 2014
Podcasts and presentations from CEDA events in July 2014 are available exclusively to CEDA members
July 2014 event audio and powerpoint presentations are available below.
The Economics of Climate Change
3 July 2014, Perth
3 July 2014, Sydney
2014 Transport & Infrastructure Review
4 July 2014, Adelaide
International lectern: Professor Joseph Stiglitz
WA's future energy grid
9 July 2014, Melbourne
Queensland Economic Development Forum
10 July 2014, Brisbane
Women in Leadership: influence and action
State of the State - NSW Premier's Address
15 July 2014, Sydney
Doing Business in Asia
23 July 2014, Adelaide
Shifting paradigms in higher education: Vice-Chancellors panel
30 July 2014, Perth
The Committee for the Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) was established more than half a century ago as an apolitical forum focused on major policy questions facing the nation. Over the years it has participated in several of our most contentious debates over changes that challenged prevailing economic or social orthodoxies. So it isn't news to anyone at CEDA that structural economic reform is profoundly politically challenging.
The Hon. Malcolm Turnbull, Former Prime Minister of Australia


"What a brilliant scheme – one visit to the opticians and I made my money back – I got a free eye test and 15% off frames and lenses ! "
"It is an amazing idea – I get discounts everywhere I go."
"I like the fact that it provides discounts for the everyday things – like kitchen items and lights."
"I love the fact that the number of discounts is growing all the time – I can save even more money as the days go on !!"
"I will definitely be getting a 14 day one for my friends who are coming out to visit – they can get a discount when they buy me dinner !!!"


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Meet the bike team who keep errant heavy vehicle drivers in check
Land Transport Authority and covert Traffic Police officers leaving the Traffic Police headquarters in Ubi for their joint operation on March 23, 2018.ST PHOTO: LEE WEN-YI
Mar 23, 2018, 3:34 pm SGT
http://str.sg/oq5U
Lee Wen-Yi
leewenyi@sph.com.sg
SINGAPORE - Heavy vehicles make up just 5 per cent of traffic in Singapore's roads, but last year they were involved in three out of every 10 fatal accidents.
With their size giving them greater potential to cause damage and loss of life, the Traffic Police (TP) and Land Transport Authority (LTA) are carrying out a joint operation against errant heavy vehicle drivers.
The Straits Times joined them on Friday (March 23), accompanying a motorbike fleet of 12 covert TP officers and four LTA officers.
Dressed in black and riding black motorbikes that are harder for drivers to distinguish as police vehicles,the covert team has been in operation since June 2016.
Within 20 minutes of entering the PIE from the TP headquarters in Ubi, the ST witnessed two vehicles being pulled over, one for failing to wear a seatbelt and one for driving with curtains drawn.
In an op lasting just under two hours, the officers stopped five vehicles in total, for a range of offences including using a mobile phone and overloading.
While most drivers were chagrined and quick to comply, some were more defensive, like those of a tour bus pulled over along the ECP.
A Land Transport Authority and a Traffic Police officer with a heavy vehicle driver who was caught not wearing a seat belt during a joint operation on March 23, 2018. ST PHOTO: LEE WEN-YI
The man and woman, wearing bright blue Hawaiian-print shirts, argued with the officers for several minutes about the charge of inconsiderate driving.
In 2017, the top violations committed by heavy vehicle drivers were speeding, careless driving, failing to keep left on the expressway, beating a red light and driving without a seatbelt.
Drivers of these vehicles receive higher penalties for traffic offences.
The proportion of fatal accidents involving heavy vehicles was two in 10 in 2015, rising to three in 10 in 2016, which is also the latest total.
This is despite the number of accidents involving heavy vehicles falling 13 per cent from 879 cases in 2016 to 764 in 2017. The over-representation of such vehicles in fatal accidents is still a large concern.
"Heavy vehicles have the propensity to cause greater damage to others due to their size and this is why it is important for heavy vehicle drivers to practise good road sense and remain vigilant on the roads," said TP Inspector Hafiz Johari, patrol unit team leader.
"The Traffic Police will continue to adopt a tough enforcement stance against errant heavy vehicle drivers."
The TP also urged other road users to play their part in looking out for one another on the road.
TRAFFIC OFFENCES
TRAFFIC/ROAD RULES


Today is all about the latest Touch event last night, this time at Hythe. It was the last one I could attend for this year and I wouldn't miss it, no matter how tired I was.
I didn't know what to expect after the last one I've been in Eastleigh. Every Touch evening I've been has been incredible, but that one was very special. And last night was definitely one of my favourite so far.
There were no staff at St Andrews church cafe, so Rachel and I were on tea and coffee duty, which I enjoyed more than I thought I would. If only waitressing paid as well as my current job!
The first speaker was our own Debs who's been sharing her story of how she founded Touch two years ago (you can read it here) at our events across Hampshire and although I've heard it twice so far, last night was different. Debs shared more than she did before, she moved everyone, she made everyone laugh. It was the perfect start.
Next up was Emily* (not real name), who Debs interviewed. And she was incredible. She told us all about her tough childhood, her struggles with depression, alcohol and drug addiction and the muscle disease she's been living with since she was a teenager.
What I loved most about Emily was her sense of humour and her honesty. She somehow made talking about serious, sensitive, deeply personal matters very easy and natural.
As Emily herself said due to her stubbornness and honesty, her greatest strengths and weaknesses, and the love for her children, she never gave up, despite the physical and mental problems, dealing with unemployment due to her condition and so many other obstacles life threw at her. She learnt that being strong and independent doesn't mean you shouldn't ask for help and support, it actually means the opposite.
She is now 7 years clean and every day wakes up knowing there is a reason she is on this earth, there's a reason she wakes up and she is doing her best with whatever life gives her.
I had the chance to meet Emily after the break, as she came over to ask for another cup of tea and I was in such awe, I didn't know what to say to her. So I made a complete fool of myself as one does and just said 'You are so cool'. That's the only thing I could come up with!
She smiled awkwardly, replied with a thank you and went back to her table. I'm such an idiot!
Next up was Denise* (not real name). Denise had a completely different life to Emily. She had a great life, a great husband, they had their first child as planned, everything was going well and then she suddenly didn't feel like herself. She was diagnosed with post-natal depression a few months later, after she heard all the 'advice' most people give to you when you are struggling with depression.
You get the gist. A few years later, with great support from her family and therapist, she managed her depression with no medication. And all of a sudden, after partially losing her hearing on one ear, she was diagnosed with a brain tumour, which to begin with didn't cause any other problems. Denise worried that her depression will flare up again but she tried her best to forget about her tumour and got on with her life. Until about a year ago, when her tumour grew and became dangerous. So she had to have an 8-hour surgery and re-teach her brain with physio how to use the left side of her body.
She is still to the day dealing with the side effects of her surgery but is feeling much better. She shared her story to say it's OK not to be OK and it's OK to talk about it. Another amazing human.
Last but not least was Heather (I've used Heather's real name as she has shared her story in public before). Another astonishing story, another extraordinary human. Heather caught a life-threatening infection after a holiday and woke up in intensive care, fighting for her life. What actually brought her back from coma was her love for her son, Will. With not much support other than few friends and her mother, she moved back home after 6 months in hospital and pushed herself to get better and after a long, painful recovery, she was eager to help others.
A few years later she became a carer of her beloved mother, who suffered from severe back pain, which they later discovered was advanced metastatic cancer. Sadly her mum died of cancer a year ago but Heather is grateful.
Grateful she is alive, grateful of the lovely friends she made during her ordeal, who were there last night to cheer her on, grateful that her friends nominated her for Strictly's Comic Relief and met her favourite dancers and celebrities.
She has since founded a charity, Where There's A Will, to support ICU patients and their families.
What a marvellous evening. One of the highlights was a, at first glance serious man, who didn't say much but by the end of the night he was moved so much he almost cried and thanked everyone and he couldn't wait for our next event.
'I don't find them, they find me… but it's easy really, because everyone is amazing in their own way and tonight was a great example. Three completely different but amazing people. Everyone is amazing and everyone has a story and I'm grateful I bring these people together and make them feel comfortable to share their stories.
And people like that man, who was touched by the stories and loved it so much he asked us if we recorded it so he can watch it back as soon as he goes home, makes it all worthwhile'.
That's what Christmas is all about really isn't it? It's all about people, helping each other, inspire one another and that's what Touch does.