Robert Louis Stevenson: a record, an estimate, and a memorial Part 3

"Any time between eight and half-past nine in the morning a slender gentleman in an ulster, with a volume b.u.t.toned into the breast of it, maybe observed leaving No. 608 Bush and descending Powell with an active step. The gentleman is R. L. Stevenson; the volume relates to Benjamin Franklin, on whom he meditates one of his charming essays. He descends Powell, crosses Market, and descends in Sixth on a branch of the original Pine Street Coffee-House, no less... . He seats himself at a table covered with waxcloth, and a pampered menial of High-Dutch extraction, and, indeed, as yet only partially extracted, lays before him a cup of coffee, a roll, and a pat of b.u.t.ter, all, to quote the deity, very good. A while ago, and R. L. Stevenson used to find the supply of b.u.t.ter insufficient; but he has now learned the art to exact.i.tude, and b.u.t.ter and roll expire at the same moment. For this rejection he pays ten cents, or fivepence sterling (0 0s. 5d.).

"Half an hour later, the inhabitants of Bush Street observed the same slender gentleman armed, like George Was.h.i.+ngton, with his little hatchet, splitting kindling, and breaking coal for his fire. He does this quasi-publicly upon the window-sill; but this is not to be attributed to any love of notoriety, though he is indeed vain of his prowess with the hatchet (which he persists in calling an axe), and daily surprised at the perpetuation of his fingers. The reason is this: That the sill is a strong supporting beam, and that blows of the same emphasis in other parts of his room might knock the entire shanty into h.e.l.l. Thenceforth, for from three hours, he is engaged darkly with an ink-bottle. Yet he is not blacking his boots, for the only pair that he possesses are innocent of l.u.s.tre, and wear the natural hue of the material turned up with caked and venerable slush. The youngest child of his landlady remarks several times a day, as this strange occupant enters or quits the house, 'Dere's de author.' Can it be that this bright-haired innocent has found the true clue to the mystery? The being in question is, at least, poor enough to belong to that honourable craft."

Here are a few letters belonging to the winter of 1887-88, nearly all written from Saranac Lake, in the Adirondacks, celebrated by Emerson, and now a most popular holiday resort in the United States, and were originally published in Scribner's Magazine... "It should be said that, after his long spell of weakness at Bournemouth, Stevenson had gone West in search of health among the bleak hill summits-'on the Canadian border of New York State, very unsettled and primitive and cold.' He had made the voyage in an ocean tramp, the Ludgate Hill, the sort of craft which any person not a born child of the sea would shun in horror. Stevenson, however, had 'the finest time conceivable on board the "strange floating menagerie."'" Thus he describes it in a letter to Mr Henry James:

"Stallions and monkeys and matches made our cargo; and the vast continent of these incongruities rolled the while like a haystack; and the stallions stood hypnotised by the motion, looking through the port at our dinner-table, and winked when the crockery was broken; and the little monkeys stared at each other in their cages, and were thrown overboard like little bluish babies; and the big monkey, Jacko, scoured about the s.h.i.+p and rested willingly in my arms, to the ruin of my clothing; and the man of the stallions made a bower of the black tarpaulin, and sat therein at the feet of a raddled divinity, like a picture on a box of chocolates; and the other pa.s.sengers, when they were not sick, looked on and laughed. Take all this picture, and make it roll till the bell shall sound unexpected notes and the fittings shall break loose in our stateroom, and you have the voyage of the Ludgate Hill. She arrived in the port of New York without beer, porter, soda-water, curacoa, fresh meat, or fresh water; and yet we lived, and we regret her."

He discovered this that there is no joy in the Universe comparable to life on a villainous ocean tramp, rolling through a horrible sea in company with a cargo of cattle.

"I have got one good thing of my sea voyage; it is proved the sea agrees heartily with me, and my mother likes it; so if I get any better, or no worse, my mother will likely hire a yacht for a month or so in the summer. Good Lord! what fun! Wealth is only useful for two things: a yacht and a string quartette. For these two I will sell my soul. Except for these I hold that 700 a year is as much as anybody can possibly want; and I have had more, so I know, for the extra coins were of no use, excepting for illness, which d.a.m.ns everything. I was so happy on board that s.h.i.+p, I could not have believed it possible; we had the beastliest weather, and many discomforts; but the mere fact of its being a tramp s.h.i.+p gave us many comforts. We could cut about with the men and officers, stay in the wheel-house, discuss all manner of things, and really be a little at sea. And truly there is nothing else. I had literally forgotten what happiness was, and the full mind-full of external and physical things, not full of cares and labours, and rot about a fellow's behaviour. My heart literally sang; I truly care for nothing so much as for that.

"To go ash.o.r.e for your letters and hang about the pier among the holiday yachtsmen-that's fame, that's glory-and n.o.body can take it away."

At Saranac Lake the Stevensons lived in a "wind-beleaguered hill-top hat-box of a house," which suited the invalid, but, on the other hand, invalided his wife. Soon after getting there he plunged into The Master of Ballantrae.

"No thought have I now apart from it, and I have got along up to page ninety-two of the draught with great interest. It is to me a most seizing tale: there are some fantastic elements, the most is a dead genuine human problem-human tragedy, I should say rather. It will be about as long, I imagine, as Kidnapped... . I have done most of the big work, the quarrel, duel between the brothers, and the announcement of the death to Clementina and my Lord-Clementina, Henry, and Mackellar (nicknamed Squaretoes) are really very fine fellows; the Master is all I know of the devil; I have known hints of him, in the world, but always cowards: he is as bold as a lion, but with the same deadly, causeless duplicity I have watched with so much surprise in my two cowards. 'Tis true, I saw a hint of the same nature in another man who was not a coward; but he had other things to attend to; the Master has nothing else but his devilry."

His wife grows seriously ill, and Stevenson has to turn to household work.

"Lloyd and I get breakfast; I have now, 10.15, just got the dishes washed and the kitchen all clean, and sit down to give you as much news as I have spirit for, after such an engagement. Gla.s.s is a thing that really breaks my spirit; and I do not like to fail, and with gla.s.s I cannot reach the work of my high calling-the artist's."

In the midst of such domestic tasks and entanglements he writes The Master, and very characteristically gets dissatisfied with the last parts, "which shame, perhaps degrade, the beginning."

Of Mr Kipling this is his judgment-in the year 1890:

"Kipling is by far the most promising young man who has appeared since-ahem-I appeared. He amazes me by his precocity and various endowments. But he alarms me by his copiousness and haste. He should s.h.i.+eld his fire with both hands, 'and draw up all his strength and sweetness in one ball.' ('Draw all his strength and all his sweetness up into one ball'? I cannot remember Marvell's words.) So the critics have been saying to me; but I was never capable of-and surely never guilty of-such a debauch of production. At this rate his works will soon fill the habitable globe, and surely he was armed for better conflicts than these succinct sketches and flying leaves of verse? I look on, I admire, I rejoice for myself; but in a kind of ambition we all have for our tongue and literature I am wounded. If I had this man's fertility and courage, it seems to me I could heave a pyramid.

"Well, we begin to be the old fogies now, and it was high time something rose to take our places. Certainly Kipling has the gifts; the fairy G.o.dmothers were all tipsy at his christening. What will he do with them?"

Of the rest of Stevenson's career we cannot speak at length, nor is it needful. How in steady succession came his triumphs: came, too, his trials from ill-health-how he spent winters at Davos Platz, Bournemouth, and tried other places in America; and how, at last, good fortune led him to the South Pacific. After many voyagings and wanderings among the islands, he settled near Apia, in Samoa, early in 1890, cleared some four hundred acres, and built a house; where, while he wrote what delighted the English-speaking race, he took on himself the defence of the natives against foreign interlopers, writing under the t.i.tle A Footnote to History, the most powerful expose of the mischief they had done and were doing there. He was the beloved of the natives, as he made himself the friend of all with whom he came in contact. There, as at home, he worked-worked with the same determination and in the enjoyment of better health. The obtaining idea with him, up to the end, as it had been from early life, was a brave, resolute, cheerful endeavour to make the best of it.

"I chose Samoa instead of Honolulu," he told Mr W. H. Trigg, who reports the talk in Ca.s.sells' Magazine, "for the simple and eminently satisfactory reason that it is less civilised. Can you not conceive that it is awful fun?" His house was called "Vailima," which means Five Waters in the Samoan, and indicates the number of streams that flow by the spot.

CHAPTER VII-THE VAILIMA LETTERS

The Vailima Letters, written to Mr Sidney Colvin and other friends, are in their way delightful if not inimitable: and this, in spite of the idea having occurred to him, that some use might hereafter be made of these letters for publication purposes. There is, indeed, as little trace of any change in the style through this as well could be-the utterly familiar, easy, almost child-like flow remains, unmarred by self-consciousness or tendency "to put it on."

In June, 1892, Stevenson says:

"It came over me the other day suddenly that this diary of mine to you would make good pickings after I am dead, and a man could make some kind of a book out of it, without much trouble. So for G.o.d's sake don't lose them, and they will prove a piece of provision for 'my floor old family,' as Simele calls it."

But their great charm remains: they are as free and gracious and serious and playful and informal as before. Stevenson's traits of character are all here: his largeness of heart, his delicacy, his sympathy, his fun, his pathos, his boylike frolicsomeness, his fine courage, his love of the sea (for he was by nature a sailor), his pa.s.sion for action and adventure despite his ill-health, his great patience with others and fine adaptability to their temper (he says that he never gets out of temper with those he has to do with), his unbounded, big-hearted hopefulness, and fine perseverance in face of difficulties. What could be better than the way in which he tells that in January, 1892, when he had a bout of influenza and was dictating St Ives to his stepdaughter, Mrs Strong, he was "reduced to dictating to her in the deaf-and-dumb alphabet"?-and goes on:

"The amanuensis has her head quite turned, and believes herself to be the author of this novel [and is to some extent.-A.M.] and as the creature (!) has not been wholly useless in the matter [I told you so!-A.M.] I propose to foster her vanity by a little commemoration gift! ... I shall tell you on some other occasion, and when the A.M. is out of hearing, how very much I propose to invest in this testimonial; but I may as well inform you at once that I intend it to be cheap, sir-d.a.m.ned cheap! My idea of running amanuenses is by praise, not pudding, flattery, and not coins."

Truly, a rare and rich nature which could thus draw suns.h.i.+ne out of its trials!-which, by aid of the true philosopher's stone of cheerfulness and courage, could trans.m.u.te the heavy dust and clay to gold.

His interests are so wide that he is sometimes pulled in different and conflicting directions, as in the contest between his desire to aid Mataafa and the other chiefs, and his literary work-between letters to the Times about Samoan politics, and, say, David Balfour. Here is a characteristic bit in that strain:

"I have a good dose of the devil in my pipestem atomy; I have had my little holiday outing in my kick at The Young Chevalier, and I guess I can settle to David Balfour, to-morrow or Friday like a little man. I wonder if any one had ever more energy upon so little strength? I know there is a frost; ... but I mean to break that frost inside two years, and pull off a big success, and Vanity whispers in my ear that I have the strength. If I haven't, whistle owre the lave o't! I can do without glory, and perhaps the time is not far off when I can do without corn. It is a time coming soon enough, anyway; and I have endured some two and forty years without public shame, and had a good time as I did it. If only I could secure a violent death, what a fine success! I wish to die in my boots; no more Land of Counterpane for me. To be drowned, to be shot, to be thrown from a horse-ay, to be hanged, rather than pa.s.s again through that slow dissolution."

He would not consent to act the invalid unless the spring ran down altogether; was keen for exercise and for mixing among men-his native servants if no others were near by. Here is a bit of confession and casuistry quite a la Stevenson:

"To come down covered with mud and drenched with sweat and rain after some hours in the bush, change, rub down, and take a chair in the verandah, is to taste a quiet conscience. And the strange thing that I mark is this: If I go out and make sixpence, bossing my labourers and plying the cutla.s.s or the spade, idiot conscience applauds me; if I sit in the house and make twenty pounds, idiot conscience wails over my neglect and the day wasted."

His relish for companions.h.i.+p is indeed strong. At one place he says:

"G.o.d knows I don't care who I chum with perhaps I like sailors best, but to go round and sue and sneak to keep a crowd together-never!"

If Stevenson's natural bent was to be an explorer, a mountain-climber, or a sailor-to sail wide seas, or to range on mountain-tops to gain free and extensive views-yet he inclines well to farmer work, and indeed, has to confess it has a rare attraction for him.

"I went crazy over outdoor work," he says at one place, "and had at last to confine myself to the house, or literature must have gone by the board. Nothing is so interesting as weeding, clearing, and path-making: the oversight of labourers becomes a disease. It is quite an effort not to drop into the farmer; and it does make you feel so well."

The odd ways of these Samoans, their pride of position, their vices, their virtues, their vanities, their small thefts, their tricks, their delightful insouciance sometimes, all amused him. He found in them a fine field of study and observation-a source of fun and fund of humanity-as this bit about the theft of some piglings will sufficiently prove:

"Last night three piglings were stolen from one of our pig-pens. The great Lafaele appeared to my wife uneasy, so she engaged him in conversation on the subject, and played upon him the following engaging trick: You advance your two forefingers towards the sitter's eyes; he closes them, whereupon you subst.i.tute (on his eyelids) the fore and middle fingers of the left hand, and with your right (which he supposes engaged) you tap him on the head and back. When you let him open his eyes, he sees you withdrawing the two forefingers. 'What that?' asked Lafaele. 'My devil,' says f.a.n.n.y. 'I wake um, my devil. All right now. He go catch the man that catch my pig.' About an hour afterwards Lafaele came for further particulars. 'Oh, all right,' my wife says. 'By-and-by that man be sleep, devil go sleep same place. By-and-by that man plenty sick. I no care. What for he take my pig?' Lafaele cares plenty; I don't think he is the man, though he may be; but he knows him, and most likely will eat some of that pig to-night. He will not eat with relish.'"

Yet in spite of this R. L. Stevenson declares that:

"They are a perfectly honest people: nothing of value has ever been taken from our house, where doors and windows are always wide open; and upon one occasion when white ants attacked the silver chest, the whole of my family treasure lay spread upon the floor of the hall for two days unguarded."

Here is a bit on a work of peace, a reflection on a day's weeding at Vailima-in its way almost as touching as any:

"I wonder if any one had ever the same att.i.tude to Nature as I hold, and have held for so long? This business fascinates me like a tune or a pa.s.sion; yet all the while I thrill with a strong distaste. The horror of the thing, objective and subjective, is always present to my mind; the horror of creeping things, a superst.i.tious horror of the void and the powers about me, the horror of my own devastation and continual murders. The life of the plants comes through my finger-tips, their struggles go to my heart like supplications. I feel myself blood-boltered; then I look back on my cleared gra.s.s, and count myself an ally in a fair quarrel, and make stout my heart."

Here, again, is the way in which he celebrates an act of friendly kindness on the part of Mr Gosse:

"My dear Gosse,-Your letter was to me such a bright spot that I answer it right away to the prejudice of other correspondents or-dants (don't know how to spell it) who have prior claims... . It is the history of our kindnesses that alone makes this world tolerable. If it were not for that, for the effect of kind words, kind looks, kind letters, multiplying, spreading, making one happy through another and bringing forth benefits, some thirty, some fifty, some a thousandfold, I should be tempted to think our life a practical jest in the worst possible spirit. So your four pages have confirmed my philosophy as well as consoled my heart in these ill hours."

CHAPTER VIII-WORK OF LATER YEARS

Mr Hammerton, in his Stevensoniana (pp. 323-4), has given the humorous inscriptions on the volumes of his works which Stevenson presented to Dr Trudeau, who attended him when he was in Saranac in 1887-88-very characteristic in every way, and showing fully Stevenson's fine appreciation of any attention or service. On the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde volume he wrote:

"Trudeau was all the winter at my side: I never saw the nose of Mr Hyde."

And on Kidnapped is this:

"Here is the one sound page of all my writing, The one I'm proud of and that I delight in."

Stevenson was exquisite in this cla.s.s of efforts, and were they all collected they would form indeed, a fine supplement and ill.u.s.tration of the leading lesson of his essays-the true art of pleasing others, and of truly pleasing one's self at the same time. To my thinking the finest of all in this line is the legal (?) deed by which he conveyed his birthday to little Miss Annie Ide, the daughter of Mr H. C. Ide, a well-known American, who was for several years a resident of Upolo, in Samoa, first as Land Commissioner, and later as Chief Justice under the joint appointment of England, Germany, and the United States. While living at Apia, Mr Ide and his family were very intimate with the family of R. L. Stevenson. Little Annie was a special pet and protege of Stevenson and his wife. After the return of the Ides to their American home, Stevenson "deeded" to Annie his birthday in the following unique doc.u.ment:

I, Robert Louis Stevenson, advocate of the Scots Bar, author of The Master of Ballantrae and Moral Emblems, civil engineer, sole owner and patentee of the palace and plantation known as Vailima, in the island of Upolo, Samoa, a British subject, being in sound mind, and pretty well, I thank you, in mind and body;

In consideration that Miss Annie H. Ide, daughter of H. C. Ide, in the town of Saint Johnsbury, in the County of Caledonia, in the State of Vermont, United States of America, was born, out of all reason, upon Christmas Day, and is, therefore, out of all justice, denied the consolation and profit of a proper birthday;

And considering that I, the said Robert Louis Stevenson, have attained the age when we never mention it, and that I have now no further use for a birthday of any description;

And in consideration that I have met H. C. Ide, the father of the said Annie H. Ide, and found him as white a land commissioner as I require, I have transferred, and do hereby transfer, to the said Annie H. Ide, all and whole of my rights and privileges in the 13th day of November, formerly my birthday, now, hereby and henceforth, the birthday of the said Annie H. Ide, to have, hold, exercise, and enjoy the same in the customary manner, by the sporting of fine raiment, eating of rich meats, and receipt of gifts, compliments, and copies of verse, according to the manner of our ancestors;