My Brother’s Return—Scenery—Old Providence—Robert Louis Stevenson—New
York—At Sea—The Change
IN August that year I at last received a letter from my brother, telling
me he had left California and would arrive in Providence in a few days.
I was delighted, for I was then completely on the rocks, having spent
all my earnings on buying a violin bow and a stock of music! My comrade
the Swede promised to come with me to meet my relative at the station.
The next day we stood on the platform together at eleven o’clock. The
telegram said 12.30 P.M., but we were young and eager. We rubbed our
hands with joyful anticipation as we stood there anxiously watching. Our
funds were low and my brother had performed a miracle—he was a poet and
journalist, and had made money out of his profession. When the train
steamed in and the saloon car door opened I recognised at a glance the
characteristic contour of the family face, though I had not seen my
brother since we were children. I rushed forward overjoyed, and the
welcome of brotherhood smiled in his expression. Six feet in height, and
correspondingly athletic in appearance, he was well able to carry his
own portmanteau, but privations and thoughts of affluence from his
exchequer inspired me. Impulsively I seized it!
Years of residence in the States seemed to have changed his original
nationality and the accent of his speech. He stood smiling before me, a
Yankee of the aristocratic type. His keen grey eyes stared at my shabby
clothes: the situation was evident to him at a glance. In a store by the
civic centre, with an entrance that looked like the south nave of the
Crystal Palace, my comrade and I were measured for new suits. Words
could not express my gratitude.
With this lightening of my financial cares I felt the dim delirium, the
exuberance, the faint revival of my old romantic glamour return; the
world seemed beautiful after all.
My Swedish friend was delighted too, and smiled from ear to ear. I can
still see his tall, lanky figure, and his merry round blue eyes as he
puffs and tootles away on his beloved clarionet. Ah, how happy we were,
marching on, carelessly unfulfilling the great promise of youth while we
were yet youthful! Yet what is the good of promise fulfilled when youth
is gone, when the glamour has faded, and you look through the grim
spectacles of reality at the rouged cheeks of blushing truth and beauty?
Oh, to remould this scheme of life, and be born old! To travel with Time
and grim experiences down the years towards cheerful, glorious youth,
back, back to the innocence and beauty of childhood’s dreams! To die
full of hope and fond beliefs—and let the true believers travel the
other way!
I know not where we went or why we went. I only know that my brother
embraced the occasion and caught the vagabond fever; and that our valet,
an old Turk (who kept swearing that he wasn’t an Armenian), sang jovial
songs that were musically reminiscent of his harem days as he stumbled
and struggled behind us, carrying our bundles of fruit, new suits,
bouquets of flowers, and my long-wanted expensive copyright _Etudes_,
Petrie’s _Violin Studies_, and all that sudden and unexpected affluence
inspired us to buy.
I recall, too, how we were walking up the brilliantly lighted main
street when a negro, who was anxiously watching for the editor of a
Providence journal (that had criticised his lodging-house and the lady
lodgers who kept such late hours), suddenly whipped out a revolver and
fired. The editor had appeared at his door and received a bullet in his
face, but he too had a revolver—probably he had been expecting the
negro’s compliments—and he fired back and blew all the negro’s front
teeth out. The next bullet from the negro’s revolver went through the
_Violin Studies_ which I held by my side, and but for the fortunate
ricochetting of the bullet I should not now be able to write my
reminiscences! I think the negro recovered from his wound and the editor
was severely reprimanded for not hitting a vital spot. For the sins of
negroes are dwelt upon like the sins of the poor relation, and I must
admit that negroes are sometimes almost as bad as white men. There were
no moving pictures in those days to perpetuate the episode, but still it
is flashed vividly before my mind’s eye. I see the three races of good
fellowship, my tall brother and myself, between us my lanky Swede
comrade, and, just behind us, straight-nosed Turkey struggling along on
bandy legs. Equipped with argosies of youthful dreams, pitching the moon
and stars and sun from hand to hand, with rollicking song on our lips we
fade away down the uncharted seas of Westminster Street, Providence!—to
awaken on dim shores of cold daybreak as once more I kneel and take the
sacrament before the grim, mock-eyed old priest—Reality! When I was
twenty years and one month old—how long ago it seems!
We visited most of the fashionable places of interest, went almost
everywhere, through the Open Sesame of my brother’s liberality. And that
is saying a good deal, for theatres and palatial halls of amusement
abound. There’s “The Gaiety,” “The Colonial,” “Hippodrome,” “Sans
Souci,” “Bijou,” and heaven knows how many more, wherein the cheerful
multitudes of R.I. folk scream with laughter and weep over unreal
dramas.
I no longer played the monotonous second fiddle in the orchestra of the
music hall; we sat, a happy trio, the smiling occupants of orchestral
stalls, where I saw the Indian squaw fade to a shadow and die rather
than sell her honour; and the American missionary weep over the grave of
the half-caste Zulu in Timbuctoo who had died sooner than he would drink
rum! Here was no painting of true life, no dramatic, realistic scene
showing the besotted derelict who died far away in the isolation of some
alien land—the man from nowhere, who took the wrong turning twenty years
before, being hurried into his roughly made coffin: then his two lonely
comrades watching the sunrise gleam in his dead eyes, and the
half-boyish smile on the silent lips, as they place the coffin lid on,
and creep along at daybreak, carrying him under the mahogany-trees to
the hole by the swamp. They say a prayer and murmur: “Pity, Bill, that
we left the bottle of whisky by his bed. Didn’t he rave about someone in
the old country? Wonder what ’twas all about. The weather’s hot. Buried
him rather quick, eh? Here’s the cross: ‘Bill.’ No name. ‘Died of Fever,
Remembered by Us.’”
Moonlight ferry trips, picnics, concerts and songs are as characteristic
of Providence as of the South Sea islanders of Samoa and Tonga. One
difference divides the Providence population from the islanders—the
natives of Providence wear clothes; but the Yankee mechanics outdo the
Savaii and Fiji islanders in tobacco-chewing, and can spit over their
shoulders with even swifter certitude than my sailor comrades of San
Francisco, whom I told you about in my first book of South Sea
reminiscences. Boating is an essential feature in their amusements.
Rhodes-on-the-Pawtucket is crammed with boats. On sunshiny days
thousands of youths and girls paddle and sing away, and never reflect on
the time when Red Indian canoes darted in the moonlight over those same
waters.
My comrade was still with me, and we got several engagements to play at
dances and concerts. My brother was in the ring, so to speak, and so we
were received with an enthusiasm that we had greatly missed when we
really wanted it. My friend eventually, however, went off to Alaska to
some relations. He promised to write to me, but I never heard of him
again.
My brother owned, and still owns, I hope, estates called Cranston
Heights, an elevated, breezy place. On the hottest day a sleepy wind
creeps about them. From that spot you can gaze down into the valleys and
see a wall of cliffs about an eighth of a mile long, rising a hundred
feet high. There on a large boulder, known as Middleton’s Rock, my
brother and I would sit reflectively smoking long Yankee corn-cob pipes,
as we reclined, shaded by umbrellas of green-leafed trees from the hot
sunlight. We sat there talking and dreaming of years ago when the
Indians camped on Cranston Heights. I think my brother could outrival
Fenimore Cooper and Cody in his knowledge of Indian history and the
legends of the original tribes that owned America. Stone arrow-heads and
Indian pottery to this day are often found there, and my brother showed
me several relics which were dug out of his estate.
Rhode Island was of course originally an Indian settlement. Forests grew
by the rushing rivers, and on the prairie landscapes stood native
villages. The dominion was under a King Philip, and the island is
sometimes called, for poetical purposes, “Land of King Philip.” The
forests have succumbed to the woodman’s axe, though still patches of
woods and prairie-land are left, and it was in that clump that I sat and
played my violin and dreamed sometimes. Still the beautiful rivers run
across the landscapes like veins of silver and gold fluid, glittering
under the leafy clumps of beech, maple, hickory and many varieties of
trees that resemble tropical types. The waters of those old rivers, like
the coming and passing of singing humanity, have long since slipped into
the distant seas, but still other waters flow on and are known by the
ancient Indian names. The Seekonk river winds through Providence and
throws its liquid mass into Narragansett Bay. From Cranston Heights you
can see the exquisite scenery that is characteristic of the
neighbourhood of Providence; across the valleys the hills fade before
the eyes into dreamy distances as sunset floods the horizon. If you are
poetical you can see the ghostly camp fires and dead Indian riders
galloping and fading into the arched sunset of blood fire. The view
reminded me of a South Sea modern shore village, for here and there were
dotted bungalows, fenced by trees and green shrub and flowers. Things
have altered a good deal since those days, for I have recently visited
Providence.
Mr J——, whose palatial bungalow was among them, is one of Rhode Island’s
greatest business men, and his commercial success is deserved, through
his unassuming philanthropy. He has given a great deal of land, parks
and drives to Providence. I think it was in Meshanticut Park, one of his
gifts to the city, that I met with an adventure. The weather was hot,
and I spied a small lake by some trees. Immediately I undressed and,
though my brother expostulated, I dived into the water: the park
officials came and arrested me, but my brother explained and I got off
with a caution. Years of wild life in the South Seas had taught me to
bathe where and when I liked, and I had yet to learn that park lakes in
Providence were not as lagoons on the isles of the wild South Seas,
wherein the whole population bathe without even the modest fig leaf,
gossip, mention the weather and go their ways.
Oaklawn is another pretty spot. I stayed there with some of my brother’s
friends, at Wilbur Avenue, I think. There is a little wooden bridge
thereabouts, not far from an old stone mill. Near this spot in the old
days a great Indian battle was fought, and there by that little bridge
my brother would sit for hours, writing his articles for the provincial
and New York papers.
It was at Oaklawn Bridge that I sat and told my brother of my various
boyish experiences in the South Seas, of the island chiefs, and of my
reminiscences of Robert Louis Stevenson, whom I had met at Apia and on
ships at sea. My brother was deeply interested in all I told him. He was
a great admirer of Stevenson’s work and his perfect literary style. We
talked of Stevenson’s easy and careless manner that seemed such a
contrast to his perfection and polish in writing. How he did not care a
tinker’s curse for the opinion of the conventional world, and loved to
shock visitors to Samoa by appearing before them suddenly in old
clothes, bare-headed and bootless. I saw him come aboard a ship dressed
in that way; and I recalled how, on another occasion, I met him coming
down the track inland from Saluafata, the native village. “Hello,
youngster,” he said; and, as I was going his way, off we tramped along
the track together as he hummed beside me. Then, with the sunset, out
came the native children rushing from the forest. Like tiny ghosts they
glided, begging, in the shadows at our legs as we strode alone; and as
Robert Louis Stevenson threw brass buttons to them, they raced after
them, and then, half frightened that he might want to reclaim the
prizes, they suddenly disappeared, racing back into the forest. The
sunset died behind our backs and the stars crept over the Vaea Mountain
top and the dark-branched coco-palms each side of the track; the shadows
thickened as the stars brightened. So well do I remember that night that
even now I seem to see my companion striding onward beside me, his loose
neck-cloth fluttering in the wind that drifts in from the sea, stirring
the coco-palms and pungent-smelling forest flowers as it passes. Still I
see his ghost-like shadow, the clear eyes, the thin, æsthetic face;
still he is humming a folk-song, while his right hand beats the moonlit
bush with a stick—and yet he has lain there many years on the top of the
Vaea Mountain—his rugged island tomb railed by the dim sky-lines of
surrounding tropical seas, his vaulted roof the everlasting sky, studded
with the brightest stars, as he lies with his stricken aspirations like
some dead Christ of the lost children of the wild, solitary South.
A critic in _The Times_, reviewing my first book, _Sailor and
Beachcomber_, after writing a column of critical appreciation, finished
up by saying: “Mr Safroni-Middleton prides himself on having known
Robert Louis Stevenson in the South Seas.” My book has three hundred and
four pages: on three of them I spoke of Stevenson; but I fail to see why
I should pride myself on knowing him, except in this sense, that I am
proud to have met him and to count him among the many men who followed
after my own heart.
If he had not died before I returned, a little older, to Samoa, he would
have welcomed me as I should have welcomed him; for he had several times
expressed a wish that I should call on him and take my violin, but in
the foolishness of a boy’s thoughtlessness I did not go. Worldly
greatness did not appeal to him, nor did my letters of introduction, for
I had none, and he was, I am quite sure, aware of the fact.
Well, to return to my experiences in North America. After a time I left
Providence, and then went down the Hudson river bound for New York.
There I stayed in a temperance hotel close to the Bowery, and I cannot
forget the scene.
Along winding avenues that divide the towering wooden buildings rushed
battalions of hurrying legs. The noise of car bells and gongs and the
babble of shouting voices assailed my ears. All the races under the sun
seemed to have emigrated to that spot to fight in scheming regiments for
the almighty dollar. White men, Chinamen, black men, tawny men, yellow
men, Armenians, Turks, Germans with thick necks—all were there. Over my
head rushed express trains. No space seemed wasted. Indeed the Yankees
in their commercial search for gold peg out claims in the sky, claim
square miles of stars, as up go their buildings to the heavens. By the
second-storey windows on elevated railway tracks crash along the trains.
In those days they ran by steam, and the coal-dust showered down your
neck and in your eyes as you moved along with the thick crowd below; a
crowd so dense that you could shut your eyes, make no effort, and still
be propelled along in the mighty rush, as you dreamed of other days of
peace and solitude! I went across Brooklyn Bridge by night: swung on
mighty steel cables, it dangles in space and has several divisions for
vehicles and pedestrians. Below rushed the ferry-boats on the Hudson
river, their port-holes ablaze with light, and the sound of music on
deck fading as they passed underneath. Across the bridge hurried
electric cars, racing along by the mechanical genius of man’s brain, the
light of the Universe—the stars switched on to wheels!
I only stayed one week in New York, for I met an old shipmate whom I had
sailed with from Sydney. He was on a tramp steamer. One of the
deck-hands had gone into hospital, so I yielded to my friend’s
persuasion, went on board, secured the job and signed on. For the rest,
it is all like a dream now: I can hear the rattle of the rusty chain as
they haul the anchor up, and the uncouth, shrill calls of the pulling
crew rising above the clamour of the steam winches, just before the
tramp steamer moves away from the wharf to put to sea. New York and its
babble of voices with their nasal twang, its vast drama of scheming
existence in a feverish hurry, fades away and becomes a memory of some
monstrous “magic shadow show” lit by the sun far off somewhere across
the lone sea miles astern.
The sea routine has commenced: deep down in the stokehold firemen with
cadaverous faces turned to the furnace blaze are toiling away. They look
like shadows in the flame-lit gloom, like dead men working out their
penance in hell. Attired in pants and a sweater only, with their hairy
chests steaming with running perspiration, they work furiously. Their
conversation is made up chiefly of oaths and forcible criticism on the
lack of generosity they found in Bill or Jim, who only stood them ten
drinks ashore, after all they had treated them to on that first spree
night of the last trip. They are not bad men, and as they spit out the
coal-dust in a thick mass from their stained lips, and take a gulp of
condensed water to quench their thirst, I feel deeply sorry for them,
and realise that they are the unsung heroes of the sea. I look at the
row of unshaved faces thrust forward to the roaring fires, and at their
shrivelled hands and big arms moving the long steel stoking bars, and
wonder at the marvellous strength and virtue of the hard-working ship’s
firemen.
On deck, like iced wine to my lips, I drink in the fresh sea breeze. It
is dark. I cannot turn in, for I should not sleep, so I go into the
fo’c’sle and watch the sailors playing cards, then return on deck and
look over the ship’s side. Under the pendulous, curved moon—for it seems
to sway to the roll of the rigging—the mate’s form moves to and fro as
he tramps the bridge. The sailing ship that we sighted on the
weather-side at sunset is now only a tiny travelling star low down on
the ocean darkness far astern, where her mast head-light shines.
The weariness of the sea’s monotony is on me; we have been to sea long
enough to be half-way across the Atlantic. The weather is much colder.
The moon is large and low, and looks like a ghostly arch to the south,
for it seems half submerged far away on the edge of the ocean, that
seems shivering for miles with silver mystery. Just over the side I
watch the mirrored masts and rigging glide along with us as though a
ghostly ship is following; and the hours fly and dawn breaks greyly, and
once more the tramp steamer is surrounded by blue sky-lines, till sunset
sinks to a wild blaze in the western arch of the sky. The sailors go on
watch. The cook washes his pots and pans ere he cuts his corns and turns
into his bunk.
The wind’s voice murmurs mournfully in the rigging and round the bridge
awnings; as the night grows older it swells to a tremendous voice that
is really me! for it is the re-echo of my own hearing and dreaming
consciousness. I fancy I hear the hounds of death racing across the wild
sea moors as shadows dropping from the flying clouds go running over the
moonlit sea, and now, as though a door in the sky is opened, the stars
and moon are driven and shut away in the outer Universe. For a mighty
sheet of storm-cloud slides across the heavens. The world is changed to
an infinity of dark and wind, and the one dim figure of the look-out man
on the fo’c’sle head. The thundering seas slowly rise with their white
crests glowing in the ebon darkness as the brave old tramp steamer, like
a frightened thing, stays her way a moment, and shivers as seas strike
the weather bow. Then again she pitches onward, as wonderful little men,
with bony, haggard faces with weary eyes in them, stare into the furnace
fires of the steamer’s bowels, and shovel and stoke to sustain an honest
existence, and drink tank water. No wonder they drink beer when they get
the chance. I am quite sure I should.
A week later we sighted the cliffs of England, and soon after the sea
tramp touched the wharf at Liverpool with a jerk and a shiver, and went
to sleep among a forest of masts and funnels till her next trip.
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