IN CALIFORNIA WITH ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
As the months passed, Stevenson, drawn by an irresistible desire to
see the one who had become dearest in all the world to him, and having
heard that she was soon to be freed from the bonds that held her to
another, decided to take ship for America. After the long ocean voyage
and the fatiguing journey from sea to sea, which he has himself so
graphically described, he went straight to meet the family at
Monterey.
In the year 1879 there remained one spot in practical America where
the Spirit of Romance still lingered, though even there she stood
a-tiptoe, ready to take wing into the mists of the Pacific. It seems
fitting that it should have been at that place that I first knew
Robert Louis Stevenson. Although the passing of the years has dimmed
the memory of those days to a certain degree, yet here and there a
high light gleams out in the shadowy haze of the picture and brings
back the impression of his face and personality and of the
surroundings and little events of our daily life in his company as
though they had happened but yesterday. The little town of Monterey,
being out of the beaten track of travel, and having no mines or large
agricultural tracts in its vicinity to stimulate trade, had dreamed
away the years since American occupation, and still retained much of
the flavour of the pastoral days of Spanish California. It is true
that at the _cascarone_[12] balls--at which the entire population,
irrespective of age or worldly position, dressed in silks or in
flannel shirts, as the case might be, still gathered almost weekly in
truly democratic comradeship--the egg-shells were no longer filled
with gold-dust, as sometimes happened in the prodigal Spanish days;
yet time was still regarded as a thing of so little value that no one
thought of abandoning the pleasures of the dance until broad daylight.
Along the narrow, crooked streets of the little town, with its
precarious wooden sidewalks, the language of old Castile, spoken with
surprising purity, was heard more often than English. In fact, as Mr.
Stevenson himself says in his essay on _The Old Pacific Capital_: "It
was difficult to get along without a word or two of that language for
an occasion."
[Footnote 12: These entertainments were so called in
allusion to the custom of breaking _cascarones_
(egg-shells), previously filled with finely cut coloured
or tinsel paper, upon the heads of the dancers. By the
time the midnight hour rolled around, every head
glittered with the confetti, and the floor was piled
several inches deep with it.]
High adobe walls, topped with tiles, concealed pleasant secluded
gardens, from which the heavy perfume of the floribundia and other
semitropical flowers poured out on the evening air. Behind such a wall
and in the midst of such a garden stood the two-story adobe dwelling
of the Señorita Maria Ygnacia Bonifacio, known to her intimates as
Doña Nachita. In the "clean empty rooms" of this house, furnished
with Spanish abstemiousness and kept in shining whiteness, "where the
roar of the water dwelt as in a shell upon the chimney," we had our
temporary residence, and here Louis Stevenson came often to visit us
and share our simple meals, each of which became a little fête in the
thrill of his presence and conversation. Something he had in him that
made life seem a more exciting thing, better worth living, to every
one associated with him, and it seemed impossible to be dull or bored
in his company. It is true that he loved to talk, and one of his
friends complained that he was too "deuced explanatory," but it seemed
to me that the flood of talk he sometimes poured out was the overflow
of a full mind, a mind so rich in ideas that he could well afford to
bestow some of it upon his friends without hope of return. His was no
narrow vein to be jealously hoarded for use in his writings, but his
difficulty lay rather in choosing from the wealth of his store. He
once remarked that he could not understand a man's having to struggle
to "find something to write about," and perhaps it is true that one
who has to do that has no real vocation as a writer.
When he came to us at Monterey he was newly arrived in this country,
and seemed to be in a rather peculiar state of mind concerning it,
complaining that it was too much like England to have the piquancy of
a foreign land, and yet not enough like it to have the restfulness of
home, therefore it left him with a strange, unsatisfied feeling. One
of the things in the new land that pleased him much was its food, for
he believed in enjoying the good things of this life, and he was like
a second Christopher Columbus, just discovering green corn and sweet
potatoes. In a letter to his friend Sidney Colvin he says: "In America
you eat better than anywhere else; fact. The food is heavenly!" During
his first days at Monterey he kept singing the praises of certain
delectable "little cakes," which he had found much to his liking in
the railroad eating-houses while crossing the continent. These were a
great mystery to us until one day Ah Sing, the Chinese cook, placed
upon the table a plate of smoking-hot baking-powder biscuits. Behold
the famous "little cakes"!
The unexpected discovery in the town of Jules Simoneau, to whom he
refers in his letters as "a most pleasant old boy, with whom I discuss
the universe and play chess," a man of varied talents, who was able to
furnish him with an excellent dinner, as well as the intelligent
companionship that he valued more than food, was a great satisfaction
to him. Often we all repaired together to Simoneau's little
restaurant, where we were served meals that were a rare combination of
French and Spanish cookery, for our host's wife, Doña Martina, was a
native of Miraflores, in Lower California, and was skilled in the
preparation of the _tamales_[13] and _carne con chile_[14] of the
Southwest. It has always seemed to me that in the oft-told story of
the friendship between Jules Simoneau and Robert Louis Stevenson but
scant justice has been done to that uncommonly fine woman Doña
Martina, who, no doubt, had her part in caring for the writer when he
lay so ill in Monterey. Perhaps more often than not it was her kind
and skilful hand that prepared the broth and smoothed the pillow for
Don Roberto Luís, as she called him; and though she had but little
book knowledge, she was, in her native good sense, her well-chosen
language, and the dignity and courtesy of her manners, what people
call a "born lady." Mrs. Stevenson was profoundly grateful to Jules
Simoneau for his early kindness to her husband, and had a sincere
admiration for his wife as well. When he fell into straitened
circumstances in his old age, she went to his rescue and provided him
with a comfortable living during his last years. When he died she
followed him to his last resting-place, and afterwards erected a
suitable monument to mark it, only stipulating that the name of Doña
Martina should also be placed upon it, she having died some time
before him.
[Footnote 13: _Tamales_, perhaps the most famous
culinary product of the Southwest, were probably of
Indian origin. Their construction is too complicated to
explain here, further than to say that they are made of
corn-meal and chopped meat rolled in corn-husks and
boiled.]
[Footnote 14: _Carne con chile_ (meat with chile) is
what its name indicates, a stew of meat and red
peppers.]
In the Señorita Bonifacio's garden, where we spent much of our time,
there was a riot of flowers--rich yellow masses of enormous
cloth-of-gold roses, delicate pink old-fashioned Castilian roses,
which the Señorita carefully gathered each year to make rose-pillows,
besides fuchsias as large as young trees, and a thousand other blooms
of incredible size and beauty. Loving them all, their little Spanish
mistress flitted about among them like a bird, alert, active,
bright-eyed, straight as an arrow, and as springy of step as a girl of
sixteen, although even then she was past her first youth.
As to flowers, it seemed to me that they made no particular appeal to
Mr. Stevenson except for their scent, in which he was very like the
rest of his sex the world over. He cared rather for nature's larger
effects--a noble cloud in the sky, the thunder of the surf on the
beach, or the fresh resinous smell of the pine forest.
To this house he came often of an afternoon to read the results of his
morning's work to the assembled family. While we sat in a circle,
listening in appreciative silence, he nervously paced the room,
reading aloud in his full sonorous voice--a voice that always seemed
remarkable in so frail a man--his face flushed and his manner
embarrassed, for, far from being overconfident about his work, he
always seemed to feel a sort of shy anxiety lest it should not be up
to the mark. He invariably gave respectful attention and careful
consideration to the criticism of the humblest of his hearers, but in
the end clung with Scotch pertinacity to his own opinion if he was
sure of its justice. In this way we heard _The Pavilion on the Links_,
which he wrote at Monterey, and read to us chapter by chapter as they
came from his pen. While there he also began another story which was
to have been called _Arizona Breckinridge_, or _A Vendetta in the
West_. This story, with its rather lurid title, was to have been based
upon some of his impressions of western America, but his heart could
not have been in it, for it was never finished. The name of Arizona
came out of his intense delight in the "songful, tuneful" nomenclature
of the United States, in which terms he refers to it in _Across the
Plains_. The name Susquehanna was a special joy to him, and he took
pleasure in rolling it on his tongue, adding to its music with the
rich tones of his voice, as he repeated it: "Susquehanna! Oh,
beautiful!" While on the train passing through Pennsylvania he wrote
some verses in a letter to Sidney Colvin about the beautiful river
with the "tuneful" name, of which one stanza runs thus:
"I think, I hope, I dream no more
The dreams of otherwhere;
The cherished thoughts of yore;
I have been changed from what I was before;
And drunk too deep perchance the lotus of the air
Beside the Susquehanna and along the Delaware."
Again, in writing the poem entitled _Ticonderoga_, it was the name
that first drew his attention, and
"It sang in his sleeping ears,
It hummed in his waking head;
The name--Ticonderoga."
Some story that we told him about a man who named his numerous family
of daughters after the States--Indiana, Nebraska, California,
etc.--took his fancy and suggested the name of Arizona Breckinridge to
him.
Out of the mist arise memories of walks along the beach--the long
beach of clean white sand that stretches unbroken for many miles
around the great sweeping curve of Monterey Bay, where we "watched the
tiny sandy-pipers, and the huge Pacific seas." Sometimes we walked
there at night, when the blood-red harvest-moon sprang suddenly like a
great ball of fire above the rim of horizon on the opposite side of
the circling bay, sending a glittering track across the water to our
very feet. To walk with Stevenson on such a night, and watch "the
waves come in slowly, vast and green, curve their translucent necks
and burst with a surprising uproar"--to walk with him on such a night
and listen to his inimitable talk is the sort of memory that cannot
fade. On other nights when the waters of the bay were all alight with
the glow of phosphorescence, we walked on the old wooden pier and
marvelled at the billows of fire sent rolling in beneath us by the
splashing porpoises.
Perhaps nothing about the place interested him more deeply than the
old mission of San Carlos Borroméo, once the home of the illustrious
Junípero Serra, and now the last resting-place of his earthly remains.
Within its ruined walls mass was celebrated once a year in honour of
its patron, Saint Charles Borroméo, and after the religious service
was over the people joined in a joyous _merienda_[15] under the trees,
during which vast quantities of _tamales_, _enchiladas_,[16] and other
distinctive Spanish-American viands were generously distributed to
friend and stranger, Catholic and Protestant. Mr. Stevenson attended
one of these celebrations, and was greatly moved by the sight of the
pitiful remnant of aged Indians, sole survivors of Father Serra's once
numerous flock, as they lifted their quavering voices in the mass. He
expressed much surprise at the clarity of their pronunciation of the
Latin, and in his essay on _The Old Pacific Capital_, he says: "There
you may hear God served with perhaps more touching circumstances than
in any other temple under Heaven.... These Indians have the Gregorian
music at their finger-ends, and pronounce the Latin so correctly that
I could follow the music as they sang." Much has been changed since
then, for the church has been "restored," and the little band of
Indians have long since quavered out their last mass and gone to meet
their beloved pastor, the saintly Serra.
[Footnote 15: _Merienda_--noonday luncheon.]
[Footnote 16: _Enchiladas_ are a sort of corn-meal
pancake rolled up and stuffed with cheese and a sauce
made of red peppers.]
Those were _dolce-far-niente_ days at Monterey, dreamy, romantic days,
spent beneath the bluest sky, beside the bluest sea, and in the best
company on earth, and all glorified by the rainbow hues of youth. But,
as Mr. Stevenson prophesied, the little town was "not strong enough to
resist the influence of the flaunting caravanserai which sprang up in
the desert by the railway," and after the coming of the fashionable
hotel the commercial spirit came to life in the place. The tile-topped
walls, hiding their sweet secluded gardens, gave way to the new frame
or brick buildings, the narrow, crooked streets were straightened and
graded, the breakneck sidewalks replaced by neat cement pavements,
and, at last, the Spirit of Romance spread her wings and vanished into
the mists of the Pacific.
The setting of the picture is now changed to Oakland, across the bay
from San Francisco, where we lived for some months in the little house
which Mr. Stevenson himself describes in the dedication to _Prince
Otto_ as "far gone in the respectable stages of antiquity, and which
seemed indissoluble from the green garden in which it stood, and that
yet was a sea-traveller in its younger days, and had come round the
Horn piecemeal in the belly of a ship, and might have heard the seamen
stamping and shouting and the note of the boatswain's whistle." This
cottage was of the variety known as "cloth and paper," a flimsy
construction permitted by the kindly climate of California, and on
winter nights, when the wind blew in strongly from the sea, its sides
puffed in and out, greatly to the amusement of the "Scot," accustomed
as he was to the solid buildings of his native land. It was, as he
says, "embowered in creepers," for over its front a cloth-of-gold rose
spread its clinging arms, and over one side a Banksia flung a curtain
of green and yellow.
It was during his stay in this house that we first realized the
serious nature of his illness, and yet there was none of the
depressing atmosphere of sickness, for he refused to be the regulation
sick man. Every day he worked for a few hours at least, while I acted
as amanuensis in order to save him the physical labour of writing. In
this way the first rough draught of _Prince Otto_ was written, and
here, too, he tried his hand at poetry, producing some of the poems
that afterwards appeared in the collection called _Underwoods_,
although it is certain that he never believed himself to be possessed
of the true poetic fire. Brave as his spirit was, yet he had his dark
moments when the dread of premature death weighed upon him. It was
probably in such a mood that he wrote the poem called _Not Yet, My
Soul_, an appeal to fate in which he expressed his rebellion against
an untimely end.
"Not yet, my soul, these friendly fields desert,
. . . . . . . . . . . .
The ship rides trimmed, and from the eternal shore
Thou hearest airy voices; but not yet
Depart, my soul, not yet awhile depart.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Leave not, my soul, the unfoughten field, nor leave
Thy debts dishonored, nor thy place desert
Without due service rendered. For thy life,
Up, spirit, and defend that fort of clay,
Thy body, now beleaguered."
While engaged in dictating, he had a habit of walking up and down the
room, his pace growing faster and faster as his enthusiasm rose. We
feared that this was not very good for him, so we quietly devised a
scheme to prevent it, without his knowledge, by hemming him in with
tables and chairs, so that each time he sprang up to walk he sank back
discouraged at sight of the obstructions. When I recall the sleepless
care with which Mrs. Stevenson watched over him at that critical point
in his life, it seems to me that it is not too much to say that the
world owes it to her that he lived to produce his best works.
But above and beyond his wife's care for his physical well-being was
the strong courage with which she stood by him in his hours of gloom
and heartened him up to the fight. Her profound faith in his genius
before the rest of the world had come to recognize it had a great
deal to do with keeping up his faith in himself, and her
discriminating taste in literature was such that he had begun even
then to submit all his writings to her criticism.
Although his own life work lay entirely in the field of letters, he
had a sincere admiration for work with the hands, and often expressed
his surprise at the mechanical cleverness of American women. He took
pleasure in seeing that we could cut, fit, and make our own clothing,
and do a pretty good job of it, too, and looked on at the operation
with serious interest, sometimes making useful suggestions, for he had
a genuine and unaffected sympathy with the work and aims of other
people, no matter how humble they might be. Any one could go to him
with a tale of daily struggle, of little ambitions bravely fought for,
even though it were nothing more than a job as waiter in a restaurant,
and be sure of his respectful consideration and sincere advice, always
granting that the ambition were honest and the fight well fought.
Sickness and discouragement were not enough to keep down his boyish
gaiety, which he sometimes manifested by teasing his womenfolk. One of
his favourite methods of doing this was to station himself on a chair
in front of us, and, with his brown eyes lighted up with a whimsical
smile, talk broad Scotch, in a Highland nasal twang, by the hour,
until we cried for mercy. Yet he was decidedly sensitive about that
same Scotch, and his feelings were much wounded by hearing me express
a horror of reading it in books.
A pleasant trivial circumstance of our life that comes to mind is an
occasion when we were all rejoicing in the possession of new
clothes--a rare event with any of us in those days, and Louis proposed
that we should celebrate this extraordinary prosperity by an evening
at the theatre. Women wore pockets then, but there had been no time to
provide my dress with one, so Louis agreed to carry my handkerchief,
but only on condition that I should ask for it when needed in a true
Scotch twang, "Gie me the naepkin!" a condition that I was compelled
to fulfill, no doubt to the surprise of our neighbours at the theatre.
Gilbert and Sullivan were in their heyday then, and the play given
that night was _The Pirates of Penzance_. Louis said the London
"bobbies" were true to life.
Chief among the amusements with which we tried to brighten the extreme
quietude of our lives in the little Oakland house was reading aloud.
We obtained books from the Mercantile Library of San Francisco, among
which I especially remember the historical works of Francis Parkman,
who was a great favourite with Mr. Stevenson. He had a theory that the
not uncommon distaste among the people for that branch of literature
was largely the fault of the dull style adopted by many historians,
and saw no good reason why the thrilling story of the great events of
the world should not be presented in a manner that would hold the
interest of readers. Yet he had no patience with the sort of writing
that subordinates truth to the desire of presenting a striking
picture. As an instance, certainly of rare occurrence in Parkman, he
noticed a paragraph in _The Conspiracy of Pontiac_, in which the
author refers to the shining of the moon on a certain night when a
party was endeavouring to make a secret passage down the river through
hostile country. He thought it unlikely that Parkman could have known
that the moon shone on that particular night, though it is possible
that he did him an injustice, for it sometimes happens that just such
a trivial circumstance is mentioned in the documents of the early
explorers.
Sometimes he read aloud to us from some French writer, translating it
into English as he read for our benefit. _Les Étrangleurs_ was one of
the books that he read to us in this way, while we sat and sewed our
seams. He seemed to get a good deal of rest as well as amusement from
the reading of such books of mystery and adventure. His taste was
always for the decent in literature, and he was much offended by the
works of the writers of the materialistic school who were just then
gaining a vogue. Among these was Emile Zola, and he exacted a promise
from me never to read that writer--a promise that has been faithfully
kept to this day.
His stay at Monterey had given him a fancy to study the Spanish
language, so we obtained books and began it together. He had a theory
that a language could be best acquired by plunging directly into it,
but I have a suspicion that our choice of a drama of the sixteenth
century, one of Lope de Vega's, I think, was scarcely a wise one for
beginners. He refers to this venture of ours in a letter to Sidney
Colvin as "the play which the sister and I are just beating our way
through with two bad dictionaries and an insane grammar."
Nevertheless, we made some headway, and I remember that he marvelled
greatly at the far-fetched, high-flown similes and figures of speech
indulged in by the writers of the "Golden Age" of Spain. In spite of
his confessed dislike for the cold-blooded study of the grammar, we
did not altogether neglect it, and a day comes to my mind when he was
assisting me in the homely task of washing the dishes in the pleasant
sunny kitchen where the Banksia rose hung its yellow curtain over the
windows. We recited Spanish conjugations while we worked, and he held
up a glass for my inspection, saying: "See how beautifully I have
polished it, Nellie. There is no doubt that I have missed my vocation.
I was born to be a butler." "No, Louis," I replied, "some day you are
to be a famous writer, and who knows but that I shall write about you,
as the humble Boswell wrote about Johnson, and tell the world how you
once wiped dishes for me in this old kitchen!"
For the long evenings of winter we had a game which Louis invented
expressly for our amusement. Lloyd Osbourne, then a boy of twelve, had
rather more than the usual boy's fondness for stories of the sea. It
will be remembered that it was to please this boy that Mr. Stevenson
afterwards wrote _Treasure Island_. Our game was to tell a continued
story, each person being limited to two minutes, taking up the tale at
the point where the one before him left off. We older ones had a
secret understanding that we were to keep Lloyd away from the sea, but
strive as we might, even though we left the hero stranded in the
middle of the Desert of Sahara, Lloyd never failed to have him sailing
the bounding main again before his allotted two minutes expired.
Many and long were the arguments that we had on the merits of our
respective countries, and I remember that Mr. Stevenson did not place
the sentiment of patriotism at the top of the list of human virtues,
for he believed that to concentrate one's affections and interest too
closely upon one small section of the earth's surface, simply on
account of the accident of birth, had a narrowing effect upon a man's
mental outlook and his human sympathies. He was a citizen of the world
in his capacity to understand the point of view of other men, of
whatsoever race, colour, or creed, and it was this catholicity of
spirit that made it possible for him to sit upon the benches of
Portsmouth Square in San Francisco and learn something of real life
from the human flotsam and jetsam cast up there by fate.
Of all the popular songs of America he liked _Marching Through
Georgia_ and _Dixie_ best. For _Home, Sweet Home_ he had no liking,
perhaps from having heard it during some moment of poignant
homesickness. He said that such a song made too brutal an assault upon
a man's tenderest feelings, and believed it to be a much greater
triumph for a writer to bring a smile to his readers than a
tear--partly, perhaps, because it is a more difficult achievement.
Here the scene changes again, this time to San Francisco, the city of
many hills, of drifting summer fogs, and sparkling winter sunshine,
the old city that now lives only in the memories of those who knew it
in the days when Stevenson climbed the steep ways of its streets.
Although he had something about him of the _ennui_ of the
much-travelled man, and complained that
"There's nothing under heaven so blue,
That's fairly worth the travelling to,"
yet no attraction was lost on him, and the Far Western flavour of San
Francisco, with its added tang of the Orient, and the feeling of
adventure blowing in on its salt sea-breezes, was much to his liking.
My especial memory here is of many walks taken with him up Telegraph
Hill, where the streets were grass-grown because no horse could climb
them, and the sidewalks were provided with steps or cleats for the
assistance of foot-passengers. This hill, formerly called "Signal
Hill," was used in earlier days, on account of its commanding outlook
over the sea, as a signal-station to indicate the approach of vessels
and give their class, and possibly their names as they neared the
city. When we took our laborious walks up its precipitous paths it
was, as now, the especial home of Italians and other Latin people. Mr.
Stevenson wondered much at the happy-go-lucky confidence, or perhaps
it was their simple trust in God, with which these people had built
their houses in the most alarmingly insecure places, sometimes hanging
on the very edge of a sheer precipice, sometimes with the several
stories built on different levels, climbing the hill like steps. About
them there was a pleasant air of foreign quaintness--little railed
balconies across the fronts, outside stairways leading up to the
second stories, and green blinds to give a look of Latin seclusion.
In stories of his San Francisco days there is much talk of the
restaurants where he took his meals. The one that I particularly
remember was a place kept by Frank García, familiarly known as
"Frank's." This place, being moderately expensive, was probably only
frequented by him on special occasions, when fortune was in one of her
smiling moods. Food was good and cheap and in large variety in San
Francisco in those days, and venison steak was as often served up to
us at Frank's as beef, while canvasback ducks had not yet flown out of
the poor man's sight; so we had many a savory meal there, generally
served by a waiter named Monroe, with whom Mr. Stevenson now and then
exchanged a friendly jest. I remember one day when Monroe, remarking
on the depression of spirits from which Louis suffered during the
temporary absence of the women of his family, said: "I had half a mind
to take him in a piece of calico on a plate."
Once more the picture changes, now to the town of Calistoga--with its
hybrid name made up of syllables from Saratoga and California--where
we stayed for a few days at the old Springs Hotel while on our way to
Mount Saint Helena, to which mountain refuge Mr. Stevenson was fleeing
from the sea-fogs of the coast. The recollection of this journey seems
to have melted into a general impression of winding mountain roads, of
deep canyons full of tall green trees, of lovely limpid streams
rippling over the stones in darkly shaded depths where the fern-brakes
grew rankly, of burning summer heat, and much dust. At the Springs
Hotel we lived in one of the separate palm-shaded cottages most
agreeably maintained for the guests who liked privacy. On the premises
were tiny sheds built over the steaming holes in the ground which
constituted the Calistoga Hot Springs. It gave one a sensation like
walking about on a sieve over a boiling subterranean caldron.
Determined not to miss any experience, we each took a turn at a
steambath in these sheds, but the sense of imminent suffocation was
too strong to be altogether pleasant.
Then came the wild ride up the side of the mountain, in a six-horse
stage driven at a reckless rate of speed by its indifferent driver,
whirling around curves where the outer wheels had scarcely an inch to
spare, while we looked fearfully down upon the tops of the tall trees
in the canyon far below. If the horses slackened their pace for an
instant, the driver stooped to pick up a stone from a pile that he
kept at his feet and bombarded them into a fresh spurt. At the Toll
House, half-way up the mountain, which still exists in much the same
condition as in those days, we arrived as mere animated pillars of
fine white dust, all individuality as completely lost as though we had
been shrouded in masks and dominoes.
The Toll House was a place of somnolent peace and deep stillness,
broken only by a pleasant dripping from the wooden flume that brought
down the cold waters of some spring hidden in the thick green growth
far up on the mountainside. And such water! He who has once tasted of
the nectar of a California mountain spring "will not ask for wine!" At
the Toll House we had liberal country meals, with venison steaks,
served to us every day. Bear were still killed on the mountain, but I
do not remember having any to eat. From this place we climbed, by way
of a toilsome and stiflingly hot footpath running through a tangle of
thick undergrowth, to the old Silverado mine bunk-house, where the
Stevenson family took up their headquarters. People said there were
many rattlesnakes about, and now and then we saw indubitable evidence
of their presence in a long, spotted body lying in the road, where it
had been killed by some passer-by, but fear of them never troubled our
footsteps. In _The Silverado Squatters_ Mr. Stevenson says, "The place
abounded with rattlesnakes, and the rattles whizzed on every side like
spinning-wheels," but I am inclined to think that he often mistook the
buzzing noise made by locusts, or some other insect, for the rattle of
the snakes.
The old bunk-house seemed to me an incredibly uncomfortable place of
residence. Its situation, on top of the mine-dump piled against the
precipitous mountainside, permitted no chance to take a step except
upon the treacherous rolling stones of the dump; but we bore with its
manifest disadvantages for the sake of its one high redeeming
virtue--its entire freedom from the fog which we dreaded for the sick
man. It was excessively hot there during the day, but there was one
place where coolness always held sway--the mouth of the old tunnel,
from whose dark, mysterious depths, which we never dared explore for
fear of stepping off into some forgotten shaft, a cold, damp wind blew
continuously. Just inside its entrance we established a cold-storage
plant, for there all articles kept delightfully fresh in the hottest
weather. When the coolness of the evening fell, "it was good to gather
stones and send them crashing down the chute," and indeed this was
almost our only pastime in our queer mountain eyrie. The noise made by
these stones as they went bounding down the chute was sent back in
tremendous rolling echoes by the mountains on the opposite side of the
valley, and it pleased us to liken it to the noise heard by Rip Van
Winkle, "like distant peals of thunder," made by the ghosts of Hendrik
Hudson's men playing at ninepins in the Catskill Mountains.
Then back to San Francisco, where the only memory that remains is that
of a confused blur of preparations for leaving--packing,
ticket-buying, and melancholy farewells--for the time had come to
return to old Scotland to introduce a newly acquired American wife to
waiting parents.
One day Louis came in with his pockets full of twenty-dollar gold
pieces, with which he had supplied himself for the journey. He thought
this piece of money the handsomest coin in the world, and said it made
a man feel rich merely to handle it. In a jesting mood, he drew the
coins from his pockets, threw them on the table, whence they rolled
right and left on the floor, and said: "Just look! I'm simply lousy
wid money!"
Then came the parting, which proved to be eternal, for I never saw him
again; but perhaps it is better to remember him only as he was
then--before the rainbow hues of youth had faded.
To this picture, which represents my own personal recollections of the
California period,[17] something yet remains to be added. Many
obstacles seemed to block the path to happiness of these two people,
not the least of which was Louis's ill health and consequent inability
to earn a sufficient sum to support new obligations. To his great joy
this difficulty was finally smoothed away by a promise from his father
of an allowance large enough for their needs until such time as
restored health might bring about his independence. I remember the day
this word came from his father, and the exceeding happiness it gave
him. While it is true that his parents had at first objected to his
marriage, their objections were based, not on the matter of the
divorce, for they held extremely liberal views on that subject, but
simply on the fact of his choice being an American and a stranger.
They would, quite naturally, have preferred a daughter-in-law of their
own race and acquaintance, but both were intensely attached to their
only and gifted son, and, although his decision caused their own plans
to "gang agley," when they found that his mind was irrevocably made
up, they yielded without reserve, and prepared to welcome their new
daughter to their home and hearts. Writing at this time to his friend
Mr. Edmund Gosse, Stevenson expressed his satisfaction at the turn
affairs were taking in these words:
"Many of the thunderclouds that were overhanging me when last I wrote
have silently stolen away, like Longfellow's Arabs; and I am now
engaged to be married to the woman whom I have loved for three years
and a half. I will boast myself so far as to say that I do not think
many wives are better loved than mine will be."
[Footnote 17: Previously published in _Scribner's
Magazine_, October, 1916.]
When the rain-clouds at last rolled away, and the snow had melted from
the mountain-tops in the Coast Range, Fanny Osbourne and Robert Louis
Stevenson went quietly across the bay and were married, on May 19,
1880, by the Reverend Mr. Scott, with only Mrs. Scott and Mrs. Virgil
Williams as witnesses. It was a serious, rather than a joyous
occasion, for both realized that a future overcast with doubt lay
before them. In 1881 Stevenson wrote from Pitlochry in Scotland to Mr.
P. G. Hamerton:
"It was not my bliss that I was interested in when I was married; it
was a sort of marriage _in extremis_; and if I am where I am, it is
thanks to the care of that lady, who married me when I was a mere
complication of cough and bones, much fitter for an emblem of
mortality than a bridegroom."
As for her, she married him when his fortunes, both in health and
finances, were at their lowest ebb, and she took this step in the
almost certain conviction that in a few months at least she would be a
widow. The best that she hoped for was to make his last days as
comfortable and happy as possible, and that her self-sacrifice was to
receive the bountiful reward of fourteen rich years in his
companionship, during which time she was to see him win fame and
fortune by the exercise of his genius, was far from her dreams.
At the time of their marriage they took with them Mrs. Stevenson's
son, Samuel Lloyd Osbourne, her daughter having been married a short
time before to Joseph Strong, a well-known artist of the Pacific
Coast. Mr. Stevenson took this boy, then about twelve years of age, to
his heart as his own. In fact he always counted it as one of the
blessings that came through his wife that she brought to him, a
childless man, a son and daughter to be a comfort to him in all the
years of his life. In his talk at his last Thanksgiving dinner he
referred to this as one of his chief reasons for gratitude.
In the healing air of Mount Saint Helena the invalid grew better with
astonishing rapidity, and at the end of June he wrote to his mother:
"You must indeed pardon me. This life takes up all my time and
strength. I am truly better; I am allowed to do nothing, never leave
our little platform in the canyon nor do a stroke of work. No one to
see me now would think I was an invalid."
When, in 1883, his mother expressed surprise that such a rough place
should have been chosen for his cure, her daughter-in-law answered:
[Illustration: Fanny Osbourne at the time of her marriage to Robert
Louis Stevenson.]
"You wonder at my allowing Louis to go to such a place. Why, if you
only knew how thankful I was to get there with him! I was told that
nothing else would save his life, and I believe it was true. We could
not afford to go to a 'mountain resort' place, and there was no other
chance. Then, on the other hand, the next day I put in doors and
windows of light frames covered with white cotton, with bits of
leather from the old boots (miners' boots found in the deserted cabin)
for hinges, made seats and beds, and got things to look quite
homelike. We got white and red wine, dried peaches and fruits which we
kept cool in the tunnel and which we enjoyed extremely. Louis says
nothing about the flowers, but the beauty of them was beyond
description, to say nothing of the perfume. At the back door was a
thicket of trees covered with cream-colored and scarlet lilies. I have
never seen the like anywhere in the world."
Again she writes from Calistoga, July 16, 1880, to the yet unknown
mother-in-law:
"As to my dear boy's appearance, he improves every day in the most
wonderful way, so that I fancy by the time you see him you will hardly
know that he has ever been ill at all. I do try to take care of him;
the old doctor insists that my nursing saved him; I cannot quite think
it myself, as I shouldn't have known what to do without the doctor's
advice, but even having it said is a pleasure to me. Taking care of
Louis is, as you must know, very like angling for shy trout; one must
understand when to pay out the line, and exercise the greatest caution
in drawing him in. I am becoming most expert, though it is an anxious
business. I do not believe that any of Louis's friends, outside of his
own family, have ever realized how very low he has been; letters
followed him continually, imploring, almost demanding his immediate
return to England, when the least fatigue, the shortest journey,
might, and probably would, have proved fatal; and, which at the moment
filled my heart with bitterness against them, they actually asked for
work. Now, at last, I think he may venture to make the journey without
fear, though every step must be made cautiously. I am sure now that he
is on the high road to recovery and health, and I believe his best
medicine will be the meeting with you and his father, for whom he
pines like a child. I have had a sad time through it all, but it has
been worse for you, I know. I am now able to say that all things are
for the best. Louis has come out of this illness a better man than he
was before; not that I did not think him good always, but the
atmosphere of the valley of the shadow is purifying to a true soul;
and though he may be no nearer your hearts than before, I believe you
will take more comfort in your son than you have ever done. I trust
that in about two weeks we shall be able to start, and perhaps in less
time than that. Please remember that my photograph is flattering;
unfortunately all photographs of me are; I can get no other. At the
same time Louis thinks me, and to him I believe I am, the most
beautiful creature in the world. It is because he loves me that he
thinks that, so I am very glad. I do so earnestly hope that you will
like me, but that can only be for what I am to you after you know me,
and I do not want you to be disappointed in the beginning in anything
about me, even in so small a thing as my looks. Your fancy that I may
be a business person is a sad mistake. I am no better in that respect
than Louis, and he has gifts that compensate for any lack. I fear it
is only genius that is allowed to be stupid in ordinary things."
In this letter the natural trepidation with which she looked forward
to the meeting with her husband's parents, divided as they were from
her in race and customs, is evident. She was, as she confessed to some
of her friends, quite terrified at the prospect, especially as
concerned the elder Mr. Stevenson, whose portrait represented a
serious Scotchman with a stern, almost forbidding face, firm mouth,
and long upper lip. Her fear of her mother-in-law was less, for from
her she had had many affectionate and reassuring letters. How utterly
groundless her apprehensions were in this matter we shall see later.
Notwithstanding the uncertainty of the future that lay before them,
they were both exceedingly happy in the fruition of their
long-frustrated plans, and for her it lifted a cloud that had rested
upon her spirits for years. One day in San Francisco, shortly after
the marriage, her daughter, upon entering a room, stopped with a
sudden shock, startled by the unaccustomed sound of a light happy
laugh, the first she remembered ever having heard from the lips of her
mother. For the first time she realized what a sad and bitter life
Fanny Osbourne's had been.
Louis's health now being considered strong enough for the journey,
they left their sunny eyrie on the mountainside in July, and on August
7, 1880, sailed from New York for England.