SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA
"Tis a good land to fall in with men, and a pleasant land to see."
--(_Words spoken by Hendrik Hudson when he first brought his
ship through the Narrows and saw the Bay of New York_.)
Stevenson's second landing in New York was a great contrast to his
first. The "Amateur Emigrant" had no one to bid him welcome and Godspeed
but a West Street tavern-keeper, and now when Mr. Will Low, his old
friend of Fontainebleau days, hastened to the dock to welcome him on the
_Ludgate Hill_, he found the author of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" already
surrounded by reporters.
The trip had done him good in spite of their passage having been an
unusually rough one, with numerous discomforts. The _Ludgate Hill_ was
not an up-to-date liner and she carried a very mixed cargo. The very
fact of her being a tramp ship and that the passengers were free to be
about with the men and officers, stay in the wheel-house, and enjoy a
real sea life, delighted Stevenson, and he wrote back to Sidney Colvin:
"I enjoyed myself more than I could have hoped on board our floating
menagerie; stallions and monkeys and matches made our cargo; and the
vast continent of the incongruities rolled the while like a haystack;
and the stallions stood hypnotized by the motion, looking through the
port at our dinner table, and winnied when the crockery was broken; and
the little monkeys stared at one another in their cages ... and the big
monkey, Jacko scoured about the ship and rested willingly in my arms ...
the other passengers, 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 state rooms,
and you have the voyage of the Ludgate Hill. She arrived in the port of
New York without beer, porter, soda-water, curaçoa, fresh meat, or fresh
water, and yet we lived and we regret her."
After a short visit with friends in Newport they returned to New York
and settled down for a time in the Hotel St. Stephen, on 11th Street,
near University Place, to make plans for their winter's trip.
Soon after their arrival "Jekyll and Hyde" was dramatized and produced
with great success. When it was known that the author of this remarkable
story was in the city, people flocked from all sides to call on him, and
fairly wearied him with their attentions, although he liked to see them
and made many interesting acquaintances at the time.
Washington Square was one of his favorite spots in New York, and he
spent many hours there watching the children playing about. A day he
always recalled with special pleasure was the one when he had spent a
whole forenoon in the Square talking with Mark Twain.
Among those who were anxious to know Stevenson was the American
sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens. He had been delighted with his writings
and regretted he had not met him in Paris when he and Mr. Low had been
there together. "If Stevenson ever comes to New York," he said to Mr.
Low, "I want to meet him," and added that he would consider it a great
privilege if Stevenson would permit him to make his portrait.
It was with much pleasure, therefore, that Mr. Low brought them
together, and they took to one another immediately. "I like your
sculptor. What a splendid straightforward and simple fellow he is," said
Stevenson; and St. Gaudens's comment after their first meeting was:
"Astonishingly young, not a bit like an invalid and a bully fellow."
Stevenson readily consented to sit for his portrait, and they spent many
delightful hours together while the sketches were being made for it.
One day the sculptor brought his eight-year-old son, Homer, with him,
and years afterward gave the following description of the child's visit:
"On the way I endeavored to impress on the boy the fact that he was
about to see a man whom he must remember all his life. It was a lovely
day and as I entered the room Stevenson lay as usual on rather a high
bed. I presented Homer to him ... but since my son's interest,
notwithstanding my injunctions, was to say the least far from
enthusiastic, I sent him out to play.
[Illustration: Bas-relief of Stevenson by Augustus Saint Gaudens]
"I then asked Stevenson to pose but that was not successful ... all the
gestures being forced and affected. Therefore I suggested to him that if
he would try to write, some natural attitude might result. He assented
and taking a sheet of paper ... he pulled his knees up and began.
Immediately his attitude was such that I was enabled to create something
of use and continued drawing while he wrote with an occasional smile.
Presently I finished and told him there was no necessity for his writing
any more. He did not reply but proceeded for quite a while. Then he
folded the paper with deliberation, placed it in an envelope, addressed
it, and handed it to me. It was to 'Master Homer St. Gaudens.'
"I asked him: 'Do you wish me to give this to the boy?'
"'Yes,'
"'When? Now?'
"'Oh, no, in five or ten years, or when I am dead.'
"I put it in a safe and here it is:
"May 27, 1888.
"DEAR HOMER ST. GAUDENS--Your father has brought you this day to see me
and tells me it is his hope you may remember the occasion. I am going to
do what I can to carry out his wish; and it may amuse you, years after,
to see this little scrap of paper and to read what I write. I must begin
by testifying that you yourself took no interest whatever in the
introduction, and in the most proper spirit displayed a single-minded
ambition to get back to play, and this I thought an excellent and
admirable point in your character. You were also,--I use the past tense
with a view to the time when you shall read rather than to that when I
am writing,--a very pretty boy, and to my European views startlingly
self-possessed. My time of observation was so limited that you must
pardon me if I can say no more ... but you may perhaps like to know that
the lean, flushed man in bed, who interested you so little, was in a
state of mind extremely mingled and unpleasant; harassed with work which
he thought he was not doing well, troubled with difficulties to which
you will in time succeed, and yet looking forward to no less a matter
than a voyage to the South Seas and the visitation of savage and desert
islands.
"Your father's friend,
"ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON."
The portrait was finished in bas-relief and many copies were made of it.
The most familiar is the one giving only Stevenson's head and
shoulders, but the splendid big one placed as a memorial to him in St.
Giles's Cathedral in Edinburgh shows him as he must have looked that day
lying in bed, writing to Homer St. Gaudens.
Another man in New York whom Stevenson had admired for years and longed
to meet was General Sherman. The war was long past, and he was then an
old gentleman living very quietly. One day St. Gaudens took Stevenson to
call on him, and he was asked afterward if he was at all disappointed in
his hero.
"Disappointed," he exclaimed. "It was simply magnificent to stand in the
presence of one who has done what he has, and then to find him so genial
and human. It was the next thing to seeing Wellington, and I dare say
the Iron Duke would not have been half so human."
The anticipation of a train trip across the continent was so distasteful
that a proposed visit to Colorado was given up, and they decided to try
the climate of the Adirondacks for the winter instead.
They chose Saranac, not far from the Canadian border, and rented a
cottage there.
The climate was as unpleasant as possible. It rained, snowed, sleeted,
and froze continually. The cold at times was arctic, the thermometer
dropping thirty degrees below zero in January. "Venison was crunching
with ice after being an hour in the oven, and a large lump of ice was
still unmelted in a pot where water was steaming all around it."
Their cottage was dubbed "Hunter's Home." It was far from the railroad,
few luxuries were to be had, and they lived a simple life in earnest.
Of course, they had a dog; no "hunter's home" would be complete without
one, but Louis scouted the idea of adding things as unfitting as plush
table-covers and upholstered footstools. The table went bare, and he
fashioned a footstool for his mother out of a log, in true backwoods
fashion.
His wife and mother found the cold hard to bear, but he stood it
remarkably well and benefited by it. Saranac reminded him of Scotland,
he said, without the smell of peats and the heather.
Dressed in a buffalo coat, astrakhan cap, and Indian boots, he and Lloyd
walked, skated, or went sleighing every day.
His pen was kept busy also. A new novel, "The Master of Ballantrae," was
started, and he contributed a series of articles to _Scribner's
Magazine_. For these he was paid a regular sum offered by the publishers
and agreed upon in advance--a new experience. It made him feel "awfu'
grand," he told a Scotch friend.
A venture he had been longing to make since a boy was a cruise among the
islands of the South Seas. While enduring the bitter cold of Saranac
such hazy ideas as he had had about such a trip began to form themselves
into a definite scheme. He was anxious for a long voyage; perhaps the
warm sea air might cure him after all else had failed.
So night after night he and Lloyd eagerly pored over books and maps,
and the family discussed plans for such an expedition.
When spring came Mrs. Stevenson started for San Francisco to secure, if
possible, a yacht in which they might undertake such a cruise. If all
went well Louis and his mother and Lloyd would follow.
While they waited for results they spent the time at Manasquan, on the
New Jersey coast. There Stevenson and his son enjoyed the sailing, and
their New York friends came often to see them.
Mr. Low tells of the day at Manasquan when word was received from Mrs.
Stevenson that she had found a schooner-yacht satisfactory for the
voyage.
An answer must be sent at once. Her husband telegraphed that they would
come, but it was not without misgivings that he made this final
decision. There was much at stake in an uncertain venture of the kind.
It meant a sacrifice of comfort for his wife and mother, big expense,
and perhaps no better health in the end.
However, it seemed worth the risk, and having decided to go he began to
look forward to the trip with boyish delight. "It will be horrid fun,"
he said, "to be an invalid gentleman on board a yacht, to walk around
with a spy-glass under your arm, to make landings and trade beads and
chromos for cocoanuts, and to have the natives swim out to meet you."
He and Lloyd spent hours laying their course and making out lists of
stores with which to furnish the schooner, regardless of the doubt
expressed by their friends as to the capacity of the boat. "They calmly
proceeded with their interminable lists and scorned the criticism of a
mere land-lubber. All conversation that was not of a nautical character
failed to hold their interest."
Cheered with strong hopes for Louis's future, the family departed for
San Francisco on the 28th of May, 1888. Their one regret was the good
friends they were leaving behind. This particularly affected Louis, but
he tried to hide his feelings by making all sorts of lively and
impossible proposals for their joining him later on.
His parting words to Mr. Low were: "There's England over there--and I've
left it--perhaps I may never go back--and there on the other side of
this big continent there's another sea rolling in. I loved the Pacific
in the days when I was at Monterey, and perhaps now it will love me a
little. I am going to meet it; ever since I was a boy the South Seas
have laid a spell upon me."